{"items": [{"author": "Steven", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/656257402782?comment_id=656258770042", "anchor": "fb-656258770042", "service": "fb", "text": "Good questions, the \"vegan\" way as far as I've taken it is to reduce animal suffering as much as possible as well as to pollute less (and generally being healthier). It is very, very difficult to keep all of the products you purchase in check with those goals and most of the time you're unaware when they're falling out of sync with your intentions.
Because the definition of vegan varies, as well as the reason to adhere to the diet, I wouldn't say being vegan completely fits. Those vegans doing it for lesser animal suffering may be considered a particular \"sect\" and maybe could be used as a closer model. Your thoughts comparing wild v.s. destroyed habitat is interesting - haven't heard that argument before! For contrast, I believe that 40% of Earths land mass is now dedicated to live stock (I'll try to find you that source later, but in Eating Animals, Jonathan Foer claims 30%, and I heard 40% just the other day).", "timestamp": "1398032976"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/656257402782?comment_id=656260561452", "anchor": "fb-656260561452", "service": "fb", "text": "@Steven: \"40% of Earths land mass is now dedicated to live stock\"
This seems high to me, even including land used to grow crops to feed animals. If you have a source I'd be curious to read more, though it's not central to the question here.", "timestamp": "1398034043"}, {"author": "H", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/111048496655804586662", "anchor": "gp-1398034493695", "service": "gp", "text": "Honey is definitely NOT vegan. It is made by Bees for the themselves. No vegan I know eats honey.\n
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\nHowever it is an interesting question. You do not cover supporting compassionate animal farming. A vegetarian/vegan can not support the farms that are treating animals well, thereby reducing the suffering of animals while not eliminating the suffering. Given that most of our population is not going to be vegetarian or vegan, Which is better? Supporting farms that treat animals well, so the animals have good lives and do not live in a dark box standing in their own refuse, or boycotting animal farms entirely?\n
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\nIt is not clear cut issue.", "timestamp": 1398034493}, {"author": "Ben", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/656257402782?comment_id=656261719132", "anchor": "fb-656261719132", "service": "fb", "text": "Jeff Kaufman, Steven: fao says 26% plus presumably some fraction of the 10% of land used for crops (animal feed): ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/010/a0701e/a0701e02.pdf (table 2.1)", "timestamp": "1398034679"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/103013777355236494008", "anchor": "gp-1398035143993", "service": "gp", "text": "@Harriet\n\u00a0\"Honey is definitely NOT vegan\"\n
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\nI'm sorry, I wasn't trying to say it was. \u00a0I was saying that food grown with saturation pollination probably involves more bee-suffering than honey, but that food is vegan and honey isn't.", "timestamp": 1398035143}, {"author": "Chris", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/112938759017605010116", "anchor": "gp-1398036736550", "service": "gp", "text": "@Harriet\n\u00a0\"No vegan I know eats honey.\"\n
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\nI'm a vegan who eats honey, for the reasons Jeff mentioned (as well as a relative disregard of insect suffering), and last time I polled my vegan friends most of them were unbothered by honey too.\n
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\nAn attempt at minimizing animal suffering would have to start by making some assumption about how much different animals are capable of suffering in the first place, and I expect bees would not be given much capability -- you might end up worrying more, for instance, about mice killed during crop harvesting. \u00a0But ultimately you have to pick \nsomething\n to eat, of course.\n
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\nHere's the best (only?) page I've found attempting to rank suffering options: \u00a0\nhttp://www.utilitarian-essays.com/suffering-per-kg.html\n
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\nIt claims that by weight, eggs cause 50x more suffering than beef and 850x more than milk. \u00a0Cows are pretty efficient!", "timestamp": 1398036736}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/656257402782?comment_id=656268774992", "anchor": "fb-656268774992", "service": "fb", "text": "@Ben: that table has \"Other\" at about 25% but it looks like deserts are about 1/3 of the earth's land area and that's only one kind of \"other\". So I'm confused.", "timestamp": "1398038103"}, {"author": "Gordon", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/656257402782?comment_id=656295286862", "anchor": "fb-656295286862", "service": "fb", "text": "Good question.
To quote Adam Weissman, \"With veganism your initial premise is fairly narrow. You're saying that you will not consume anything made from an animal, and you will not consume anything secreted by an animal, and you will not use anything tested on an animal. Yet veganism is not necessarily saying that you will not use anything for which an animal has suffered. It says that in spirit but not necessarily in practise.\"
Last time I checked, there was a scarcity of useful data on how and how many animals are harmed during crop production. If a particular crop stands out, causing more harm than other crops, we should avoid it.", "timestamp": "1398048910"}, {"author": "Kali", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/656257402782?comment_id=656371469192", "anchor": "fb-656371469192", "service": "fb", "text": "When I was living in the UK I spoke with a vegan about how there was a debate about whether or not figs are vegan because of fig wasps.", "timestamp": "1398104763"}, {"author": "Brad", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/116032343632043704302", "anchor": "gp-1398119518256", "service": "gp", "text": "\"If you think that animals in the wild generally have good lives then this is a bad thing, but if you think the typical life of a wild animal is mostly suffering then this habitat destruction is probably beneficial on balance and should be counted in the favor of the food in question.\"\u00a0\n
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\nI know Brian Tomasik has written about wild animal suffering and he thinks most wild animals' lives are not worth living, but his arguments seem to assume that animals spend most of their time dying, being hunted, starving, or being slowly consumed by parasites. Biologists who study time budgeting (how animals actually spend their time) would have a very different view. Many birds, for example spend 40% or more of their time resting. Much of the remaining time is spent foraging, defending their territories, or sleeping. You don't see these activities in nature films on television, because it's boring. You see animals being hunted down and killed, sometimes brutally. Animals die just once: if they suffer terribly during death does that mean they lived lives of suffering? I've spent a lot of time following animals (mostly birds) and recording their behavior, and I haven't seen much in the way of suffering.\n
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\nI think, as with humans, the degree to which an animal lives a life of suffering depends strongly on the ndividual and the location in which it lives. Animals in areas prone to droughts or floods may suffer more than animals in nutrient-rich, mild-climate areas. The argument that we should feel okay about destroying the habitat of future generations of animals makes it sounds like we should feel equally fine if we were to destroy farmland and villages in developing countries, because so many people in developing countries \"live lives of suffering\" that we'd reduce suffering if we make it impossible for future generations to be born and live in developing countries.", "timestamp": 1398119518}]}