Why are more people becoming Vegetarian?

No. I like meat.

At that time I was about 12

Is this really rational, though? Would you rather a politician, say, was so dead set on adopting a course of action regardless of the consequences, or would you rather he or she was willing to look at arguments against their position and change their mind if necessary? If the latter, then is it not logical to hold yourself to the same standards as you would anybody else? I understand that people are perfectly free not to follow logic, but it still seems alien to me not to use logic in every aspect of life.

Cool. It's not that deep though.

English people really support vegetarian rights!

Its not easy getting protein if you are a vegetarian, my aunt is veggie and I stayed with her for 2 months, I got weak

The problem with becoming a vegetarian is iron deficiency, not protein, which you can provide in your diet if you have enough variety of vegetables a day. Also, the other problem is that the iron in vegetables is not well absorbed by the body for which I tend to take supplements. Cereals also provide enough of your daily iron requirement.

Another logically fallacious appeal to nature, with a dose of mistaking plants for sentient beings; that is, beings that can feel pain and suffer. But, even if it were true that plants could feel pain and suffer, you yourself admit that cows eat plants, so by eating meat, you're responsible for both the suffering of the animal and the plants: it takes a lot more plant protein to produce 1kg of meat than it does to produce 1kg of plant protein.

So, even in that case, there would be a more ethical diet.

Well, it seemed that we needed.

I'm not sure there is anything to back that up, other than personal anecdotes. A large portion of vegetarians are likely to be Buddhist, Hindu and Jain.

But a long time has passed since then, no?

That doesn't make any sense.

But please explain.

If it doesn't make any sense then don't say something which you don't understand. I don't think you are even able to explain your own response.


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This makes even less sense.

If you say something which means nothing, it is not anyone else's fault that they cannot understand.

Your inability to explain otherwise is telling.

Well, it seemed that we needed.

If this was an attempt to justify speciesism, it doesn't do much good.

A society which rejected speciesism would act consistently with its logical conclusions. Changes would not happen instantly, but progress would be made gradually towards the overall goal.

This reads more as an appeal to undesirable consequences rather than a refutation of anti-speciesism.

Practically, we would have to gradually make progress, and that involves eliminating the largest instances of suffering first. Mice being killed by combine harvesters can actually be avoided by using better technologies, moving towards veganic farming, and growing more of one's own food in one's house and backyard.

But, do combine harvesters significantly kill mice in a habitat? A couple of studies have looked at this. Tew and MacDonald conducted a study in 1993. Their results? 1 in 33 mice were killed by the combine harvester. Not exactly significant. Cavia and colleagues did another study in 2005, and found that the density of animals on farms went down after harvesting. Why? They had moved to the forests instead. Mice do have senses, and they can generally move out of the way of combine harvesters.

It's also worth noting that 40% of the world's grain is actually fed to nonhuman animals reared for meat, so, by consuming meat, one is responsible for the suffering of the nonhuman animals and the death of the odd mouse which may be killed. The expansion of pasture is also one of the best ways to destroy habitat, so grass-fed won't work either.

As for insects, it's unlikely that they can feel pain or suffer; they are not sentient.

Anti-speciesism is not to say that humans and nonhuman animals are equal in every respect. Most humans have an interest in continuing to live, and they have future plans and desires which wouldn't be satisfied if they were not to live. Ensuring that the lives of most humans continue, therefore, is more important than ensuring that the lives of most other animals continue, not because they're humans (indeed, severely intellectually disabled humans and human infants are also unable to reason and have no self-awareness), but because they have a preference to continue to live, whereas most nonhuman animals, but for a few, do not.

Let's face it. Abolishing meat production will prevent 58 billion animals from going through the cycle of suffering and death every year.

Yet you fail to provide a logical justification for this.

Greenhouse gas emissions are still higher than those from the vast majority of plant-based products, nonetheless, particularly methane emissions.

Plus, even if we assume that everyone switches to 100% grass-fed beef and lamb, we'd all have to drastically reduce our meat consumption anyway: there's simply not enough land for everyone to keep up their current rate of meat consumption and reduce the impact on sentient beings and environment.

Essentially, the best way to reduce one's impact on the environment and sentient beings is to go vegan. I am, however, simply making an argument that we should do the most good we can do. I applaud people who reduce their meat consumption with a view to eliminating it, and who even go so far as to support the Reducetarian movement: I'm not an absolutist. In my view, Richard Dawkins put it best when he said: "Full vegetarianism is a noble ideal, but many are intimidated by an illogical fear that it has to be a single major, all-or-nothing leap. Reducetarianism is a good, humane, environment-friendly, step-by-step approach to an ideal whose time will finally come."

No, but given that many people have nothing to eat at all, taking grain from poor, developing countries where people are starving and feeding it to nonhuman animals in the developed world to satisfy our craving for meat is hardly justifiable.

As for antibiotic resistance, a substantial proportion of our antibiotic use in Britain is still dedicated to the meat industry, and recent findings of MRSA strains in pork highlight all too well the dangers of meat production.

That really does makes no sense even with context. And grammatically it is appaling.