How to eat without killing anything

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Eat rock-salt that's been sterilised.

Or clay.


But then...microbes would get killed in the sterilisation process.


Unfortunately, human beings can't photosynthesise.

Some nudibranchs (sea slugs) can.
But even they have to eat sometimes...

Last edited by AmberEyes on 14 Aug 2009, 8:46 am, edited 1 time in total.

..I will add that I don't remember where that study came from, and it was about 15 years ago that I heard about it and I wondered how they could measure the responses of plants.

..I will also add that I don't know if boiling vegetables kills them. I also read that when we eat salad, we are eating living stuff.

The onion has the answer for you!! try the new enviromentally friendly taco bell menu!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M91dv1_QuuA[/youtube]

I love The Onion

By that logic you should just eat the cows meat because they are going to die in a slaughterhouse anyway, and there's nothing you can do about it.

We live (and die) according to our nature. Since we are animals we must eat organisms that can synthesize amino acids from non-living matter. Eating plants directly or indirectly is the only way we can live.

ruveyn

How do you survive bacterial infection without killing something? Answer: You don't. In order to live we must kill something.

ruveyn

I blame the anthropomorphisization of the religious vegetables for this post.

A lot of people think there is a real difference between killing a bacterium, an insect, or even a fish, and killing a mammal like a cow. Many of the more complex creatures we eat are indeed capable of limited thought and emotion, though they are not self-aware by any test we can devise. (One can make a case for apes, dolphins, elephants, and possibly others; but these aren't generally eaten.) In general, carnivores are "smarter" than herbivores, since it takes more brain to outwit your prey than to simply find and eat a plant. Dogs and cats, for example, are unusually smart, as far as animals go. Most of the things we eat are herbivores--not as smart, not as close to self-awareness.

Having the biggest brains and the most complex thought in the world does carry with it a great deal of responsibility. When my cat brings down a mouse, she doesn't understand that the mouse can feel pain. For that matter, most likely she isn't aware that she herself exists to feel anything; she's just aware of the feelings. (Think "metacognition". Cats can't do that. For them the world is sensation and action, not self.)

On the other hand, when I'm at the lab (summer internship with pharm/tox department at a university) and we've reached the tissue-collection stage of an experiment, when the mice have to be killed, I'm aware that a mouse very much like the one my cat catches can indeed feel pain and fear. We can even measure the animal's stress level. That's why, when we plan the experiments and euthanize the animals, we work to minimize distress of all sorts. If we're going to kill a mouse, we won't do it in a painful way. If a mouse is subjected to surgery, it gets anesthesia and painkillers afterward. The mouse isn't aware that it exists; so it's not aware of death. Death can't cause distress for a mouse. Pain, fear, and other sorts of stress, on the other hand, are very real for the mouse. That's why you work to minimize those things.

You simply can't get a plan past the animal use committee without explaining how you're going to minimize pain and distress; and if you change the plan without approval, the institutional veterinarian will take it very seriously and might even get you fired, if it's bad enough. The housing for the animals has to be humane--about the size of the cage you'd keep a pet mouse in, containing something the mouse can hide in (usually some shredded paper). The conditions have to be humane--no intense heat, freezing cold, deafening noise. In one experiment, we deliberately caused stress for the mice--by cleaning their cages without, as is usual, putting some of the old bedding in with the new (the old bedding is a familiar smell which keeps them calm).

There is a big difference between a self-aware human and a mouse or even a cat. That's why it's OK to euthanize a cat and not OK to euthanize a human. Death for a self-aware species is a totally different thing than it is for a species that isn't self-aware.

It's problems like this that stopped me being a vegetarian!

idiocratik:

I take offense to your post and think that you have little to no idea what you are talking about when it comes to veganism. Please do some thinking before you post a hateful diatribe about something you know so little about.

Thanks in advance

divest

I don't think eating fruit counts as killing it...fruit falls from the tree so that animals will eat it and spread the seeds around.

I have this theory. Look at nature. Separate white meat from red meat in your head. Doesn't it make sense that red meat was intended to eat? It seems that way to me. Cattle serves no real purpose (IMO) but to eat the meat and make clothes of the fur and drink milk.

Anyway, I don't kill anything to eat it. Somebody else usually does that for me.

I loved Ruveyn's posts. and I loved the posts on the road kill...LOL

A question for the vegans... So if you are up against an animal that is trying to kill you because it's hungry, do you defend yourself inflicting pain and possible death on the animal or do you allow the animal to just kill you and eat you? If you opted for self defense, then why is self defense allowed? Survival? Because if we are talking survival, then how is eating not a form of survival?

In nature, there's the predator and the prey. You are either one or the other. Which one do you want to be? It's funny, if you allowed that world you are trying to protect take over, then who would protect you?

1973 Tompkins & Bird, The Secret Life of Plants

Also, Callista, I question whether we can know whether or not a mouse is aware of the possibility or imminence of death. It seems an assumption to think that their fear of the jaws of a cat is motivated only by the threat of pain.

Bottom line, it's not only not possible to eat without killing something sentient, it's not possible to breathe without inhaling living creatures.

A steady diet of Twinkies, Pasturized Process Imitation Cheese Food and Kool Aid made with Splenda would come closest.

Perhaps I don't move in the right circles (AS joke), but it seems to me that most of the people who go on about the ideology of vegetarianism are non-vegetarians.

I chose not to eat meat because I didn't like the idea of eating animals and I don't have to. It's not a philosophy, it's a diet. What do I have to do, conform?

The only way I can think of creating a diet of food to eat without killing anything would be to chemically make food from oil or gas.

It's a personal opinion. I feel no need to apologize for that. We all hear things we don't like. It's also a choice to be offended. Perhaps I don't know much about it, but I think I know enough to think it's an absurd way to live.