Putting Veganism On the Ethical Scale

Vegans don’t want to harm animals. Fair enough.

But how should we measure the harm that we must do to eat?

One way to think about it is that we should try to avoid harming sentient creatures … those that think and behave in ways we have empathy for.

If we do, there’s a problem: range-fed beef is far less harmful than grain production:

… The largest and best-researched loss of sentient life is the poisoning of mice …

… at least 55 sentient animals die to produce 100kg of useable plant protein: 25 times more than for the same amount of rangelands beef.

And you know what? Having had some experience with mice, and some with cows … I’d take a mouse any day.

Via Marginal Revolution.

Technorati Tags: vegan,vegetarian,mouse,cow,harm,sentient

Comments

[SadButMadLad]

And with some animal rights activists complaining about Jeremy Clarkson's comments about the death of a mouse, or rat, during filming of Topgear then it's not just vegans who live their lives on pure emotion and rhetoric with no connection to reality.

[Dave Tufte]

I'm not familiar with what Clarkson said ...

Whatever though ... I'm not sure I'd say the problem is "pure emotion and rhetoric with no connection to reality".

Instead, I think it's about perspective. But to have perspective you have to have some awareness of the alternatives to the claims that you're making. That requires empathy too.