My tweets

[sacramentalist]

• Tue, 19:13: To people crying over a lion: Yes, it's sad. How many pigs, chickens and cows have you eaten this year? Rein it in with a little perspective

Comments

[sabotabby]

Zero. And no fish or other sea creatures either. I may have eaten some bugs, but I assume they consented if they flew into my food.

This said, while there are lots of good reasons to not eat animals, none of those are endangered.

[sacramentalist.livejournal.com]

Oh crap. I forgot I had my tweet poster on.

FWIW, I've been told off repeatedly on Facebook. Yes, it's inhumane, and this caused the death of more endangered animals than one. Yes, he's a cowardly jerk (apparently with a small penis). No, I'm not making fun of you. You're entitled to your feelings. No, I'm not being dismissive or sarcastic, I'm just being brief.

I'm not even a vegetarian, and I wish I was more comfortable with my dialectics. I'm not so clear on it not being the same thing. I'm actually jealous people can do this. I just do wrong and feel a constant twinge of guilt. How many bred-to-the-slaughter chickens are worth a rare lion? A million?

This is a perfect storm. You have a privileged North American white guy.. a dentist, even, breaking International laws and torturing and killing Mufasa,

African parks need to give all their animals Western names so this outrage exists every time an extant species is poached to extinction.

[sabotabby]

African parks need to give all their animals Western names so this outrage exists every time an extant species is poached to extinction.

Hey, it works.

I think we can only have so much empathy as a species. It's easier to identify with something unique and something cute. FWIW, I don't think there's an inherent immorality to eating meat, though I don't think there's really any good philosophical argument in favour of it, either. So I don't. I sometimes make a yearly exception to the rule (usually for the_axel's pig roast, where the animal is free range and raised in a sustainable way, but those exceptions are getting rarer and rarer the more I think about it.

But I think there's a moral difference in eating, say, an oyster, which has no higher brain functions and is environmentally sustainable to raise, and sport-hunting a sentient animal from a species of which there's a very finite number. You can probably never eat as many oysters as it would take to make an impact on the biosphere, whereas a handful of people—probably even one person—are capable of actually causing the extinction of all the rhinos in the world.

Regular livestock are somewhere along that continuum. Chickens will never be extinct, but factory farming is devastating and world-altering. That's the main reason, not animal cruelty, that I don't touch the stuff.

I feel guilty about almond milk, though, given the drought. You can't avoid participating in all horrors, but you can avoid the worst easily enough.

[sacramentalist.livejournal.com]

Domestication is extinctive (I don't know if that's a word, but I'll use it). The source cows and chickens are long gone. That's the drawback of monoculture.

Extinctions happen every day. Very sad.

[sienamystic.livejournal.com]

Hey, you're in luck! Turns out there aren't many almonds in almond milk.

http://www.refinery29.com/2015/07/91466/almond-milk-lawsuit#.wirpux:BwEc

[sabotabby]

Awesome! Because I make a really great horchata cocktail.