lacto-ovo-mollusco-vegetarianism
Doug Dyment
evolutionary chain (as described in Pete Singer's "Animal Liberation")
motivates me to add the following two comments:
1) there are, of course, many reasons other than concern for the welfare of
animals to embrace vegetarianism (though that is a good one); some shun
animal foods for health reasons, ecological reasons, conviction that the
human digestive system is not suited for carnivorous purposes, etc. Note in
particular that health concerns would suggest avoiding such bottom-feeding
scavengers as lobster, which tend to be large concentrators of industrial
wastes, DDT, and other goodies.
2) if moral concern for the welfare of animals is your REAL reason for
following a vegetarian diet, then you should seriously reconsider the lacto-
portion of your regime. Milk comes from cows who produce it in order to feed
their offspring. They do not do so indefinitely; in order to keep them
producing milk, they must be bred regularly in order to generate offspring.
The dairy farm has no use for an exponentially growing number of calves to
feed (though a few are obviously saved to replenish aging stock), so guess
what happens to them. They become part of the veal industry, arguably the
cruelest form of animal victimization (I'll spare the net the details) --
all in order to keep milk on your table.
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Doug Dyment, Department of Computer Science |\
University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON Canada N2L 3G1 /| \
office: 519/888-4451, home: 888-7895 / | \
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Raghu Ramakrishnan
> Today's milk cattle are bred (and fed, and maybe drugged) to pro-
>duce titanic quantities of milk, with minimal relationship to calving
>cycles. The moral argument against milk in the diet should not rest
>on whether you're depriving the calf. A more promising concern is the
>unhappy life the cow leads. (I can't really define "moral," so I
>won't sustain a question on my correctness in using the term.)
>
> I have no good idea how to treat such a question, and would wel-
>come suggestions.
I am a vegetarian (lacto-ovo, to be precise). The reason is simply that
having been a vegetarian all my life ('cos my family was), I'm unable
to bring myself to eat meat. Curiously enough, I can see no reason why
killing animals for food is wrong 'morally'. (I share Oded's unfamiliarity
with - and distaste for - this word. It usually represents the collective
prejudices of a group of people, with little or no ethical basis.)
Fish eat worms. Big fish eat small fish. And fishermen eat stupid fish.
The point is that there seems to be an ecological food chain. I do not
understand how morality enters this. I do consider some things to be
unjustifiable. Unnecessary cruelty is one. Wasteful killing (in fact,
waste, period) is another. But I see nothing wrong in killing for food,
per se.
raghu