Philosophical Vegan Forum

So, guys, what do you think is the best response to "Most grain given to cattle is unfit for human consumption"? I've received that argument while arguing that people switching to a mostly plant-based diet on another forum.
I've responded with something like "OK, then, if raising animals for meat isn't resource-wasting, how come is meat so much more expensive than most of the plant food?", but I don't think that's the best response that can be made for that.
I've done some research on-line, and it seems to me there are a few convincing arguments that's true, see, for instance, here.
Perhaps we should stop using the environmental argument for veganism altogether, it seems to me it's based on very wobbly premises?

If we took away cattle, that would free up the land, allowing different grain ideal for human consumption to be grown there. Or allowing nature to develop in the land. Or allowing the human population to expand. It doesn't really matter therefore whether the grain used by cattle is fit for human consumption.

There are many environmental problems with meat including toll on the land, climate change, excessive water use, pollution from defecation affecting rivers, air and oceans. We need to continue using the environmental argument. It's compelling.

Jamie in Chile wrote: ↑Sun Nov 03, 2019 12:58 pm If we took away cattle, that would free up the land, allowing different grain ideal for human consumption to be grown there. Or allowing nature to develop in the land. Or allowing the human population to expand. It doesn't really matter therefore whether the grain used by cattle is fit for human consumption.

There are many environmental problems with meat including toll on the land, climate change, excessive water use, pollution from defecation affecting rivers, air and oceans. We need to continue using the environmental argument. It's compelling.

I don't know. Arguing for that requires some quite specialized knowledge, which takes ages to learn. It's probably much better to argue for veganism in terms of nutrition and ethics, rather than in terms of ecology. Except for the antibiotic resistance, that argument is very easy to defend.

Jamie in Chile is correct. It's just one grain grown instead of another, or often just another variety of grain that is less palatable to human beings or even just harvested and processed in a less meticulous manner, or simply harvested a little early (as for hay or silage production).

There's a common misconception that animals can eat a significant amount of straw (which is distinct from hay, straw is what's left over AFTER the grain is harvested), ultimately most feed is not a waste product but requires a similar level of investment and land usage as human grade foods, it mostly just has looser regulations on storing and processing.

On occasion animals may be fed spoiled/moldy grain, but keep this in mind: bioaccumulation.
Animals fed contaminated grains result in contaminated carcasses, and these toxins are largely heat stable so no realistic amount of cooking is going to change that.

teo123 wrote: ↑Sun Nov 03, 2019 11:19 pm I don't know. Arguing for that requires some quite specialized knowledge, which takes ages to learn.

Arguing for just about anything empirical, even f*cking arguing against Flat-Earth, requires "quite specialized knowledge". So that point is just kind of defeatest on the point of arguing for anything ever. And yet people can can do change their minds.

The ecological argument against animal farming is very strong. It's strongest against cows, but also very strong against farmed fish, chicken, pigs.

There are ways to produce meat more ecologically, specifically pork if fed a diet of feces and compost -- however, that is no longer done and can no longer be done due to public health concerns. It's not a viable means for correcting the meat industry; it just needs to be replaced by mock meats and clean meats (cellular agriculture).

If you don't wan to learn all that, you can just appeal to the consensus which is strong already and growing as research on the environmental harms amasses.

teo123 wrote: ↑Sun Nov 03, 2019 11:19 pmIt's probably much better to argue for veganism in terms of nutrition

You can make a rock-solid case for reducetarianism on nutritional grounds. You can pile on population data like Okinawan diet patterns, Maditerranean diet patterns, Adventists, and you can add to that the concordance of mechanistic evidence and the limited intervention studies we have.

The trouble is that making a case for veganism (not just reducetarianism) on health grounds relies on mechanistic arguments and animal models which people are more likely to doubt (because of whatever distrust of science, and because "humans are special").
Veganism in theory also only represents only a small improvement in health outcome over radical reduction or vegetarianism.

If veganism only gives a person an extra couple years of life vs. vegetarian with limited dairy/eggs and meat once a week, but is significantly harder to do and perceived to be a large sacrifice, it's a hard case to make.

While most people might cut back on animal products to save a decade of life, most people are probably willing to give up two years off the ends of their lives for occasional cheese and a weekly indulgence of meat.

It's a cost benefit analysis for the person you're trying to convince, and unless somebody just isn't that into food to begin with or is *really* obsessed with living as long as possible, you're probably not going to find that argument goes far.

teo123 wrote: ↑Sun Nov 03, 2019 11:19 pmand ethics, rather than in terms of ecology. Except for the antibiotic resistance, that argument is very easy to defend.

Antibiotic resistance is a strong argument, I think we can all agree on that.
The ethical argument is also very strong, but because many people don't care that much about non-human animals making the ethical argument from environmental (and antibiotic) impact on human beings is much easier. Otherwise, you need to first convince a person of the importance of caring about non-humans, which is an extra step. It can mean getting really deep into metaethics. If you think the specialized knowledge needed for an environmental argument is steep, metaethics makes that look like a mole hill.

You've got to be ready to debunk any assortment of theological claims, deontological ones, and boil things down to consequenitalism then explain how we can't just arbitrarily devalue other beings because we want -- and that can take some hard analogies (like racism) which can strike people are pretty severe. The getting into cognition and consciousness, etc.

brimstoneSalad wrote:Arguing for just about anything empirical, even f*cking arguing against Flat-Earth, requires "quite specialized knowledge".

When arguing against Flat-Earthism, you don't need to appeal to statistics, you can do it just by pointing to some well-known facts everybody agrees on. The same goes for most of the things in linguistics. You don't need that sort of specialized knowledge to argue that Grimm's Law is correct, or for my interpretation of the names of places in Croatia.
On the other hand, when arguing that meat hurts the environment, you need to point to statistics, and that never seems convincing, especially since estimates about those things often vary widely, and it's well-known how statistics can be manipulated. You constantly have that feeling that you are dealing with a very soft science, and that feeling is, if you ask me, completely justified.

brimstoneSalad wrote:but also very strong against farmed fish

What?! I thought farmed fish hurts the environment a lot less than caught fish does.

Teo, one thing we might agree is that when someone says something like "ah but grass fed beef" it's better not to wander off down that rabbit hole. They want to get into long, inconclusive arguments about grass fed beef, which should be avoided. Make a quick argument like "there just isn't enough land to feed everyone grass fed beef" and then steer back to health or ethics.

You can also say that it's irrelevant because most beef is not grass fed for its whole life and ask them when was the last time they ate grass fed beef and if they check their beef is grass fed when they buy it at the supermarket or at the fast food place.

teo123 wrote: ↑Tue Nov 05, 2019 12:51 am What?! I thought farmed fish hurts the environment a lot less than caught fish does.

I think he means that is more environmentally costly that a vegan diet, not than wild fish consumption.

Jamie in Chile wrote: ↑Wed Nov 06, 2019 6:12 pm Teo, one thing we might agree is that when someone says something like "ah but grass fed beef" it's better not to wander off down that rabbit hole. They want to get into long, inconclusive arguments about grass fed beef, which should be avoided. Make a quick argument like "there just isn't enough land to feed everyone grass fed beef" and then steer back to health or ethics.

You can also say that it's irrelevant because most beef is not grass fed for its whole life and ask them when was the last time they ate grass fed beef and if they check their beef is grass fed when they buy it at the supermarket or at the fast food place.

Well, I think that a better response to that is something like "Look, if we are going to try to feed the world, we need to search for food that's less expensive, rather than one which is more expensive, do you agree? And grass-fed beef is obviously more expensive than grain-fed beef, whatever be the reason.", without getting into obscure topics.

esquizofrenico wrote: ↑Thu Nov 07, 2019 1:29 am

teo123 wrote: ↑Tue Nov 05, 2019 12:51 am What?! I thought farmed fish hurts the environment a lot less than caught fish does.

I think he means that is more environmentally costly that a vegan diet, not than wild fish consumption.

Wild caught fish aren't fed feed. It's more or less benign until the point of over-fishing because you're not increasing the biomass or dumping food you grew into the water.

Wild-caught fish, when over-fished and they almost always are over-fished (and even those not over-fished may threaten other species as bycatch), are usually more of a habitat/species extinction threat than a climate change and pollution threat.

teo123 wrote: ↑Sat Nov 02, 2019 4:36 pm So, guys, what do you think is the best response to "Most grain given to cattle is unfit for human consumption"?

I didn't read the other topics (if it's supposed to be an argument that grain is therefore less fit than meat), but I was reading about grain in general (along with the tortilla topic). What I've read about grain given to cattle is that it isn't fit for human consumption, because the FDA or USDA sets lower standards for it (allowing more toxins in other words). The same goes for baby food compared to groceries in general, baby food is allowed to have fewer toxins show up in testing, or it is considered unfit for babies (even though it wouldn't be unfit for older kids or adults). So one could argue that people end up eating lower quality plant food, second hand, through the meat in which more toxins accumulate from plants, and higher quality plant food for not eating meat, in general. Corn, for example is the grain which is most prone to contamination with the deadliest mycotoxin, and is also used more than any other grain for feed (which is allowed to contain more of this aflatoxin, which is a carcinogen to both humans and farm animals).

Basically, it's like why would you want to eat cattle if most grain given to it is unfit for human consumption? It's kind of like eating fish from a red tide (or otherwise more polluted water than plants grow in).

Well, this was on my mind lately, but since you mentioned resources, I guess it was supposed to be an argument that the grain wasn't being wasted when fed to cattle. For that matter, there is a level of mycotoxicity in grain which is considered unfit for consumption by farm animals, and perhaps all of it should be used for something else if it isn't fit for human consumption. In that case, there may not be enough grain which is fit for human consumption left to feed the cattle (which is possibly why they set lower standards for it in the first place).