Part One. Sadism and Brutality: Faulty Comparison?
Thesis That Defends Vegetarianism by Refuting the Comparison Meat-Eaters Make Between Humans and Animals
Some argue that we must kill animals for food because killing animals is part of nature. Animals kill animals. And that’s what we do. Tim, a reader from my blog, argues that vegans base their ideals on a false utopia. He writes:
I agree that man should be humane in all things, including the manner in which he kills his food. But let me add one little remark that the anti meat-eaters seldom appreciate.
Have you ever gone camping? What do the woods sound like at - say - 2 or 3 AM? To exaggerate a little, they sound like a slaughterhouse. Animals kill and eat other animals. They don't fuss over HOW the killing is done or how MUCH killing is done; they just do it. And it can be pretty horrible. Nature is savage; period.
So, don't forget, vegans, that nature itself is not a serene pacifistic green little utopia, whereas man is an abominable meat-lusting monster. Nature is often brutal and ugly.
In agreement with Tim, is another reader, Angelo. He writes:
I had a crayfish a few years ago---and he would eat "feeder" goldfish thrown in the tank. The "feeders" are sold for a dime each. The crayfish would ambush the goldfish, grab the fish and puncture its gill. Then, with the goldfish struggling, the crayfish would scrape the goldfish's scales off, before beginning to eat. The fish was still alive as the crayfish would chomp down on the tail, body parts, etc. Admittedly on a smaller scale--- that's still worse than electrocuting a cow.
But another reader, Shorty, believes comparing nature’s brutality with the brutality animals are subjected to in the slaughterhouses is a false one. He writes:
Nature is indeed savage, but animals seldom kill but for hunger. The animals that get eaten in the wild don't know what it's like to be confined in a pen, wallowing in their own waste - only to die fat and tender. Livestock warehousing, and mass killing will never be vindicated. It will always be a symbol of greed, arrogance, and a barometer of the human condition. Eating meat is OK if you hunt for it in an ethical manner. Otherwise, vegetarianism is the holy grail for me.
Animals are obligate carnivores; humans are not entirely; animals eat out of necessity; too many humans eat out of gluttony; animals eat to survive; people kill animals for profit; animals don’t slaughter animals on the mass scale that humans do. Therefore, the comparison between nature’s brutality and man’s brutality is a faulty one and as such it constitutes a logical fallacy.
Another Faulty Comparison: Animals Don’t Cause Waste and Pollution the Way Humans Do
1. Pig waste ruins lakes and rivers.
2. Cattle feedlots contaminate water over 1,900 times the state’s maximum standard for E. coli in surface waters (Masson).
3. Raising pigs and cattle (animals don’t raise animals to eat) creates 80 million metric tons of waste nitrogen annually (Masson).
4. Animal waste is 130 times greater than human waste annually in America (Masson).
5. Animal waste results in E. coli, Salmonella, and other diarrheal diseases (Masson).
6. Rain forests are being destroyed to grow soy, but the majority of the soy is used to feed livestock (Masson).
7. According to the Smithsonian Institution, every minute land the size of seven football fields is currently being bulldozed to create room for farmed animals and the crops need to feed them (Masson).
8. Livestock accounts for 18% of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions in carbon dioxide, more than the entire transportation sector of the whole world, including cars, ships, airplanes, and trains (Masson).
Another Faulty Comparison: Humans Subject Animals to Horrors on a Mass Scale That Can’t be Compared to Predator and Prey
1. Humans separate calves from their mothers at birth so mother can give milk for human consumption
2. Cows are transported in boxcars where they panic.
3. Chickens like to sunbathe but are doomed to a life of cramped darkness.
4. Ducks crave water but are doomed to a life of arid dryness.
5. Hens have their beaks cut off with a hot blade and live their lives in pain from the nerve damage.
6. Birds raised in pens and kicked so they scatter and are shot at close-range (like Dick Cheney did when he shot someone) requires no skill and suggests a certain amount of sadism. There’s even a business where you can use computer graphics to kill your prey.
7. Cows are forced to feed on corn, which is cheaper than grass but can’t be digested properly so the cows suffer indigestion and a bacteria count that leads to food-born disease.
8. One million calves are used for veal every year. They are removed from their mothers and holed up in a small crate, about two-feet wide, with no straw or bedding. They cannot stretch. Mortality rate is 20%. That is their life before being slaughtered.
9. Pigs tails are cut off with no anesthesia so they don’t bite each other’s tails off during confinement.
10. Confined, often the pigs go crazy, biting the bars or their own tails, or shaking their heads constantly.
11. Confined, pigs have elevated levels of cortisol (stress hormone).
12. Too often, pigs, cows, chickens, and other livestock are still alive on the conveyer belt as pieces of their body are taken apart. They die slowly, piece by piece, and in essence are tortured. The slaughterhouses won’t let you see what is happening.
Part Two. The Abuse of Language
1. Organic is associated with elitist, rich, out-of-touch. Organic may be that in part, but that’s an over simplification.
2. Veal is French for calf but we don’t want to admit to eating calf.
3. Pork is French for pig but we say we eat “pork,” not “pig.”
4. Words like “meat,” “bacon,” and “burger” hide the association with the animal origin.
5. Downer, an animal that collapses from ill health or is crippled. By law, this animal is not supposed to be slaughtered, but these downers are slaughtered all the time.
6. Factory farm is euphemism for slaughterhouse
7. Fresh food: According to USDA “fresh” chicken can be frozen and for any length of time. What?
8. Processing: euphemism for slaughter and butchery
9. Radical, anyone who doesn’t agree with you or challenges your beliefs or challenges your capacity for denial.
10. Sportsman, a euphemism for someone who sadistically hunts and tortures animals.
Part Three. Example of a Thesis That Refutes Factory Farming by a Meat-Eating Omnivore
Let's be clear. I am a failed vegetarian, a man for whom the vegetarian diet left me weak and so hungry that I overate carbs until I gained lots of weight to the point that I was saddled by corpulence. So let's put this on the table: I eat animal protein. Having confessed my carnivorous ways, let me say here that I am morally revolted by factory farming and that I am prepared to refute with all my heart and soul the major arguments that factory farm apologists use to defend the abominations that ensue in 99% of the slaughterhouses.
The central weakness of the farm factory apologists is their specious claim that we are entitled to brutalize animals since brutality is the norm in nature. Comparing farm factory slaughter with animal-on-animal slaughter is anegregious comparison wrought with many fallacies. First, animals kill for hunger while farm factories kill for profit. Second, the scale of brutality in the farm factory far surpasses that which occurs in nature. Third, the amount of waste farm factories impose on the environment cannot be compared to the almost nonexistent waste that occurs in the animal world. Fourth, farm factory butcheries spread disease like E.coli on a mass scale whereas in Nature such spread of contagion does not occur. Revealing this faulty comparison for the outlandish fraud that it is, what are meat eaters like me to do? Surely, the answer lies in trying to eat meat that comes from non-farm factory sources, such as meat labeled "organic" and "sustainable."
Part Four. Refuting the Vegetarian Diet
While I concede that there is way too much mindless cruelty in the factory farming of animals, we must not obfuscate the truth, namely, that the vegetarian diet does not provide optimum nutrition. The omnivore diet, which includes meat eating, is defensible from an evolutionary, biological, and nutritional point of view.
Essay’s First Page
Summarize the book’s major arguments that support a vegetarian or vegan diet for animal rights. Since I rotate the books, your book might be Animal Liberation by Peter Singer, The Face On Your Plate by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer or Dominion by Matthew Scully.
Essay’s Second Page
If after reading the book, you are not convinced that you should “convert” to vegetarianism or veganism, you may want to defend an omnivore diet. To write a defense of the omnivore diet (which includes meat eating), one would have to concede that the current system of factory farming needs reform and that the system is changed. Also one would concede that people eat too much meat but that the solution is not the elimination of meat eating but the reduction of it. One will cut down from the national average of meat consumption (200 pounds) to approximately one-third of that (70 pounds). One would concede that that 70 pounds of meat would be as organic and sustainable as much as possible even at the higher costs. This section would take about a page.
Essay’s Final Four Pages In Which You Support Your Thesis Mapping Statements
You would have to argue that the vegan diet is not optimum nutrition and may even be dangerous, especially for pregnant woman and newborns. You might look to Nina Planck in her New York Times article or her book Real Food. Or you might look to Lierre Keith’s book The Vegetarian Myth or her book excerpt from her website.
Part Two. Other Sources That Challenge the Vegan/Vegetarian Diet
Meat Eating Was Essential to Human Evolution
Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human
How Our Vegan Diet Made Us Ill
In Defense of Meat Eaters, Parts 1 and 2
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