this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2026
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A lot of the vegan haters are uncomfortable with the moral issues with meat consumption and rather than seriously work through their feelings and try to figure out where they stand they just mock those who make them uncomfortable and conflate them to the most annoying of the group.
Very similar to people who haven't worked out their religious trauma hating on even decent religious folks
Why do you assume omnivores have any "moral issues with meat"? Your comment implies that vegan diet is somehow morally supreme, which is an utter rubbish. It is a dietary choice, the same as eating bread or not.
They seem to imply that in their experience omnivores do indeed have such moral qualms with eating meat. That does not mean that they think that is objectively the case or the case for everyone.
Would you have moral issues with factory farming and then slaughtering dogs and cats? If so, then you have moral issues with meat. For vegans, these issues persist regardless of the species, whereas most other people make arbitrary distinctions between which species they care about and which species they don’t
everyone makes such distinctions. including vegans. they don't care that animals are displaced by agriculture, killed in the protection of crops, or their harvesting.
It takes far more plant matter to feed a cow than to feed a human. As you go up the food chain you lose the majority of energy to heat (up to 90% IIRC) so it actually takes far less to plants to just est them directly rather than eat meat. For that reason alone there would be far more displacement with a carnivorous diet, but then there is also the added land displacement from the actual rearing of the animals themselves. So if you care about animals killed by the protection of crops, or displaced by agriculture, then a vegan diet makes the most sense.
people can't eat grass or silage. but that's entirely besides the point. vegans don't avoid plants that were protected from pests and scavengers. they decide to treat some animals differently for just as arbitrary reasons.
I think you’re letting perfect be the enemy of good here. You’re acting like the options are (a) cause as much suffering as you like, or (b) literally not eat anything at all. But of course there is ample middle ground between these two poles.
Note that in my other messages I said the point of veganism is to not cause any unnecessary suffering. Eating a burger is unnecessary. Eating in general, however, is necessary. That said, there are ways of eating that which cause drastically less suffering (ie by being vegan). So if your goal is to minimize suffering, that’s the way to go.
>You’re acting like the options are (a) cause as much suffering as you like
no. I'm saying that everyone makes decisions about which animals get treated which ways. eating a burger doesn't cause any harm, anyway.
Letting animals be tortured and slaughtered en masse just to satisfy your trivial gustatory preferences is acting as if you can just cause as much suffering as you like.
Are you unfamiliar with the industry standards in factory farms and slaughterhouses? If you are then theres no way you can honestly believe that eating a burger does not cause harm. Does it not harm the cow to slit her throat and let her bleed out?
And there you go:
"Holier-than-thou vegans with pamphlet level arguments they force upon everybody are a problem."
People don't share your dietary choices. Deal with it.
>Letting animals be tortured and slaughtered en masse
eating beans doesn't stop this. vegans are letting them be slaughtered as well.
My options are
A) raise cattle which, as there are not enough grassy pastures, I will have to grow food to feed, causing harm to lots of smaller animals and insects
B) eat the food I was already growing, and I will have to cause about 1/4th the harm
C) grow my own food and use fencing and netting to prevent as much harm as I can
D) starve to death
If you can't do C because you don't have the space or time, then I wouldn't blame someone for picking "reduce harm as much as I can without starving to death." Paying money to people who are engaging in factory farming is not on that same level.
I get my food from a grocery store, and I bet you do too.
So the factory farms abuse animals, but since the grocery store is paying them with money I gave the grocery store, it's okay now. How could I know that paying for the product of the factory farm would make them buy more from that factory farm?
the animal is already dead. all the harm took place long before I decided what to eat.
You do realize that they only kill the animal because people like you pay to eat their flesh, right?
that's not causal.
Please explain to me how you think economics works then. If everyone were to stop buying meat then would these people be slaughtering the cows for free?
I love this description of morality, but am curious about your opinion on the arbitrary decisions comment: do you feel that cultural tuning (often underpinned by cultural heritage and available food options) is an invalid way to select "acceptable" meats? No judgement, your comment just got me thinking
I think in general culture is a pretty poor way to determine what behaviours are morally acceptable. Moral progress is often a matter of overcoming the moral defects of our cultural heritage.
For example the idea that women should be subordinate to men is/was very deeply engrained in Western culture for a very, very long time. But that’s not an argument against gender equality. It is, instead, an argument for improving our culture. So anyone who said “hey, we can’t have gender equality because it goes against our cultural heritage” would be missing the mark. Sure, it might go against our cultural heritage, but so what? We must change our culture to match morality, not ignore morality to preserve our culture.
And its not just our culture that falls into this trap, other cultures can be deeply flawed too. For example, in some cultures female genital mutilation and child marriage are the norm. Does that mean these behaviours are okay, simply because they are culturally accepted? Clearly not. Human rights are universal. If these behaviours were human rights violations in, say, Denmark, then they do not cease to be human rights violations just because they are taking place in a different country with different cultural attitudes.
Now regarding our attitudes to animals, it is true that there is a lot of cultural variation in which animals are acceptable to eat. In India, eating a cow would be largely be seen as disgusting and disrespectful. In Canada, for example, eating a dog would be an outrage, but in some Asian nations this is not the case.
Is this because the value of the individual animals lives shifts from culture to culture? Or is it because the pain these animals experience differs from country to country (does getting your throat slit hurt less for dogs in South Korea than dogs in Canada)? The answers to these questions are no and no. The only differences going on here is culture, and nothing more. These different cultural attitudes do not track any relevant moral differences; they are merely accidents of history.
It is no different than how different regions tend to be racist towards different groups. For example, in the US (to oversimplify a bit) the primary target of racism has been Black people, whereas in China the primary target of racism has the Uyghurs. Is this because racism against Black people is okay in the US (but not in China) and conversely because racism against the Uyghurs is okay in China (but not the US)? No, it’s not. The Americans primarily focus their racism against one group due to circumstances of history, and the Chinese primarily focus their racism against another group due to the circumstances of their history. But that’s all that’s going on. There are no relevant moral differences here, just differences in history and culture. Because in all circumstances, and in all countries, racism directed at any one of any group is morally indefensible.
It’s similar with animals. Causing significant unnecessary suffering to a being who does not want to suffer is morally indefensible. It does not matter who the being that suffers is. It does not matter if that being is a dog, cat, pig, chicken or human. If that being does not want to suffer, and there is no strong overriding reason as to why they ought suffer, then we have no morally defensible reason for causing them to suffer. Culture does not change that.
So, since farming and slaughtering animals with industrial efficiency causes animals significant suffering, the compassionate thing to do is to simply not partake in that system. And in order to not participate in this system one must have a vegan diet.
If you’re interested in this line of reasoning then I recommend checking out the paper All Animals Are Equal by Peter Singer. It gets into the ethics behind veganism with much more detail and clarity than I can provide here.
Thank you for your question, I hope you found this response helpful.
I see you got into an extensive discussion with the other poster, I'm looking forward to digging into that.
While it hasn't shifted my own opinion, I want to thank you for a very well elucidated commentary, this was extremely insightful and responded to my question well. I sense the passion underpinning it.
I will definitely take a look into the Peter Singer article. Thank you again, take care :)
Not the person to whom you were replying, but I appreciated your comment.
These are really fun philosophical topics, that I've enjoyed talking about in person several times. I don't think that human rights are universal, because I don't personally believe that morality exists external to culture.
This implies that certain cultures' mores are more correct than others', which probably feels right to you because those countries' norms align more closely with yours. I feel the same way, but I don't think it's a FACT.
I absolutely also agree that FGM is bad, but being a human rights violation in Denmark doesn't ipso facto prove that it's true. I.e. in the U.S. it's now illegal for many industries/schools/orgs to promote DEI, but that doesn't mean that other countries should do the same. I'm sure Denmark has some bad takes too, though I don't know the country well enough to think of any.
Just starting an argument online for fun while on the throne, don't take me too seriously, friend!
I was just using human rights ad a shorthand here. You don’t necessarily need to believe in rights per se to believe that morality is more than just a cultural phenomenon.
The biggest problem with the idea that morality is solely a cultural phenomenon is that it leads to some pretty crazy conclusions. To give on example: in the culture of Nazi Germany, they did not think that the holocaust was a bad thing. They actually thought it was a moral good. Is there no sense in which we can day, actually, no, the Nazis were wrong on this one: rounding people up and torturing/killing them en masse is actually wrong, regardless of what your culture says? Similarly with slavery. In the culture of the confederacy, slavery was okay. Is there no sense in which we can say, actually no: a culture in which slavery is okay is a flawed culture; it is better to have a culture that does not promote this sort of thing? If culture is only a product of culture then we cannot actually assert this, just like we cannot say that the Nazis were in the wrong even though, from the point of view of their culture, they were in the right.
As a vegan, I don’t think is the case! I think our cultures norms around animals does not align closely what feels right to me at all. Of all the cultures that have ever existed, the Western treatment of animals is by far the worst. Christian doctrine places animals very low down on the totem pole of moral consideration. Other religions, that have influenced other regions of the world, do not do this. Granted our system of factory farming is being exported to the rest of the world, but there are still some holdouts. For example there some Indigenous or Inuit cultures in rural Canada or Greenland that still partly live their traditional ways of life. I think those cultures are actually better than ours.
I would certainly prefer that the arc of time bend towards people and the environment having more protection/freedom/rights than the other way around, but without an external directive I don't believe that it's meaningful to use labels like "correct" in this context. For your specific examples, I would rather say something like "Nazi Germany and the Confederacy were below the contemporaneous and current commonly-held threshold for human rights." That's a self-important mouthful, which I already regret typing out.
Any evaluation of another culture is necessarily done through the lens of the evaluator's opinions and preferences, which are (by default) a product of their home culture. I hope I'm explaining my view clearly; I certainly am not arguing that those societies were not abominable places to live, led by awful people.
I feel like these two statements are in contradiction? You state that some traditional cultures are better because they align with your beliefs, which was my argument. Again, I'm not saying that those cultures are NOT an improvement over my own in this particular regard, based on my own view of morality, just that my opinion on the subject is my own and not "The Correct Opinion".
Again, I mean absolutely no disrespect and am just trying to stretch my smooth and rarely-used brain a bit. Feel free to simply ignore me.
If moral evaluation of a culture is necessarily done through the lens of that person’s culture, then how can anyone ever critique their own culture? How can a moral progress be possible? If my culture raised me to believe that killing animals is a-okay then how did I ever come to the conclusion that it is, in fact, not a-okay to kill animals? Because, by your view, my critique of this culture would necessarily stem from my culture. But this doesn’t make any sense because this critique directly contradicts what my culture has taught me. How could I critique what a culture teaches people if I myself have been taught those same things? Do you see the problem here?
Cleary it is possible (albeit, often difficult) to evaluate your and other cultures through an independent standpoint, such as through a process of moral reasoning. That is the only way we can explain how cultures can critique themselves and gradually improve.
You are though. You are arguing that your evaluation that these people are awful is something that is only true from your particular cultural standpoint. Someone, from an other culture could say “hey, actually, Hitler was a saint, truly the best of the best” and he would be right from his cultural standpoint. And neither of you would be right or wrong. It would all literally all just be a matter of opinion. I don’t know about you but I think Hitler was a bad guy. And that’s not just a matter of opinion; it’s a fact.
You cannot agree with me on this and also think that morality is just a product of culture. That’s a contradiction.
I was trying to show that the way I evaluate the morality of a culture is not itself a product of my culture. If it was, then I would of course always say my culture is the best. But I don’t. So I must be using some other, culturally independent metrics to make these evaluations (i.e. I must be actually engaged in a process of moral reasoning).
So, I do think some traditional cultures are better, and they do better align with my beliefs. But I came to my beliefs not because my culture told me to but rather through a process of moral reasoning.
It’s easy to think that there is no objective morality when you are not being oppressed or harmed. Sure we, here, in the first world (I assume) can sit in our Ivory Towers and contemplate these issues. But what about the victims of the holocaust? Do you think the would find comfort in the idea that there is no objective right or wrong? I don’t think it would help much. Because the Nazis were not compassionate people, even if they were the good guys according to their own cultural narratives.
Similarly, I don’t think these issues about subjective/objective morality really matter much to the animals in our factory farms; they just want their suffering to stop.
So we might be able to convince ourselves that morality is subjective, because morality is an abstract concept. But pain and suffering, these are not subjective notions. When you are suffering, the suffering is real, it is acute, and it is concrete, and you want it to stop. Suffering is not culturally dependant.
When a being is suffering, the compassionate thing to do is to help alleviate its suffering or better yet to prevent it in the first place. And to cause a being unnecessary suffering is cruel. This is something that is true in any culture, in any time, and in any place.
Well, at least we can agree on the distinction being arbitrary.
And, there you go, as per the original comment above: "Holier-than-thou vegans with pamphlet level arguments they force upon everybody are a problem."
🙄
You are only "more moral" on the same level as Jehova Witnesses are somehow "more moral" than other religions.
I was literally just answering your question
By quoting a pamphlet 🙄 And I don't remember asking you anything.
That's an interesting fallacy, I haven't heard it before. I'll have to note it down, "dismissal from imaginary pamphlet"
It's sort of Appeal to Authority, but in this case it's an Appeal to Hypothetical Authority?
Reread my original message. I literally quoted your question in it word for word