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I could easily buy manufactured pellets for my tortoises or buy green leaves from a supermarket, but I would not dream of doing so. Instead I take 2 or 3 back breaking trips a week to pick dandelions, hawk bits, plantains, sow thistle and so on, because that is what they have evolved to eat. Who am I to question 300 million years of evolution?Man has interfered with nature quit enough as it is, dogs/cats are carnivores, we should not try to change that.
Man has interfered with nature quit enough as it is, dogs/cats are carnivores, we should not try to change that.
Please don't drag quotes from other people's comments in other threads across into new threads without providing references back to their origins. It's just rude.
In answer to your question.. it's exactly as morally acceptable as eating meat ourselves. If you are a vegetarian and keep a dog/cat/badger that you feed on meat you haven't a leg to stand on.Infact, keeping a cat, at any rate, is probably morally very dubious because you can't stop cats going out and killing birds/rodents/frogs, and this is therefore a predictable effect of keeping a cat and is equivalent to going out and killing these animals yourself.If you are a meat eater, then the notion that you would then not feed your pet on meat because it's not morally acceptable is laughably hypocritical.
I'm not sure, given that you're already engaged in a threat about the acceptability or otherwise of humans eating meat, what your point is. Perhaps you could elaborate?
Furthermore, you only seem to be thinking about companion dogs, which are omnivores and not carnivores, when you refer to companion animals, and completely ignore other companion animals that may be carnivores, such as companion domestic cats.
Who is to say that plants don't experience some analogue of pleasure when it's just rained and then sun comes out?
Are you just arguing that only humans and dogs should not eat meat because it is now an option? Is it still going to be ok for domesticated cats to eat meat? Is it still going to be ok for carnivores in nature to still eat meat? And if it's ok to eat meat in nature, why is it not ok for us and our dogs to eat meat?
Ultimately though, the argument will become null relatively soon anyway; meat for consumption will be vat-grown - doh!
I've already considered that plants may feel pain & pleasure, or analogues to them. I am currently actively looking for evidence for it. If you can point me in the direction of research that shows they do, please do so.
If you really think that plants feel pleasure then why do you think that killing animals is wrong? Because if plants do, and killing them is therefore wrong too, you would be arguing against all of existence of life above plants on the planet!But anyway, my understanding is that pain is not felt if there is no nervous system. If i make a slide with cells extracted from my mouth, am i hurting them? There has to be somewhere to draw the line.
Life was easier when it was believed that God put animals on the earth for our benefit.
The subject of whether companion animals should be vegetarian opens up other questions: Should people have them (animals) at all? Should there be breeding or other genetic manipulations of species to satisfy our nefarious desires? If "no" to these questions, what happens to the breeds humans have developed?Similar questions apply to other animals bred for humans to exploit - cattle, sheep etc. Is it better for these animals to be allowed to die out gracefully?
Personally, I like meat and have not found an adequate substitute. If there was one I would be attracted to transfer to it for the sake of the planet, and possibly to ease the conciences of future generations who would not have this particular moral contradiction to deal with. If the synthetic meat was good enough then I expect carnivore pets would eat it too.
As for man interfering too much in "natural" developments in the world; we have and will continue to do so. Maybe we should have a lighter touch and do so for less selfish reasons but, when sharing a planet with many other species, I doubt we can ever not "interfere" at all, either accidentally or deliberately.
I did not see you give your views on how you would probably be condemning most domesticated animals to extinction by removing their worth in society. You also did not confront the issue of whether you should standby whilst one animal kills another, like a cat and a bird for example.
Would you reason that the cat is "wrong" because it is following an instinct rather than needing to kill for food?
What would you do regarding, say, plagues of locusts or malarial mosquitoes?
Do you not think that you are using logical reasoning to justify a position that you innately believe to be right? There is nothing wrong in this, it's just that the logic just takes you a step further but will probably never completely solve the inherent contradiction. I suppose we do this with most moral judgements although with many I can reason that the morals are part of living with other humans harmoniously.
Anyway, good for you. I will live with my contradictions for the time being but am not averse to changing to another diet if I found it satisfactory. Man's development of agriculture replaced him being primarily a hunter-gatherer and the domestication of animals was a big step forward for human society. Maybe we are ready for another step, though my tastebuds have yet to approve. I would not gratuitously kill anything but I would not be so committed as to worry too much about flies. I actually do try to release them but have a limit to my patience and am even less tolerant of wasps.
Seems to me that pleasure is a subjective “good thing” rather than an objective “good thing”. Just ask any sadist or masochist. Or ask anyone who enjoys spicy food, or who doesn’t enjoy it. Or ask anyone who enjoys laying out in the hot sun, or who doesn’t enjoy it.
The other half of this reply, which concerns humans eating animal produce, is in this topic:
worthwhile causes to be concerned about.