460 sats \ 1 reply \ @td 2 Nov 2023 \ parent \ on: Talking to a vegan meta
Thanks for the response. Nothing better than a civilised discussion! And nothing wrong with choosing to be vegan of course. The beauty of this whole thing is you get to choose.
On deer management I have heard first hand about mass-starvings durning bad winters, so in our arrogant human fashion we think we are doing these poor creatures “a favour” by reducing the numbers artificially so as to mitigate nature’s own cruel balancing mechanisms. However, I can’t help but think it might be the right way to go about it.
A low standard for me would be allowing an animal to suffer when I know I can do something about it.
I suppose this now circles back to whether before all this human action is ultimately responsible for artificially elevated deer populations. I don’t know the answer to that.
My take is slightly different, but unsurprisingly it's closer to @Bullen's. What I think constitutes the "low standard" is that hunting is fun and meat is tasty, so the incentive to rationalize this behavior is very high and the incentive to look for alternatives is very low.
In principle though, I'm not opposed to particular animal products, but rather to the conventional means of producing them. If you found a dead deer and turned it into venison, I don't have any objection to that.
On the specific situation of overpopulation, I'm not a utilitarian, so I'm probably opposed. If it were extremely well targeted to eliminating only the animals in extreme states of distress with no hope of recovery, I'd feel differently. However, killing perfectly healthy animals for the good of the many is too close to moral reasoning that has justified many human atrocities for me to buy in.
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