Before tractors, almost the entire food chain involved animal slavery, since farms used draft animals. For that matter, even transportation was based on animal slavery (horses). Many of the sustainable and high performance fabrics like wool, silk, and leather are now replaced by synthetic fossil-derived plastics. But petroleum is also an animal product.

To be vegan, is to choose fossilized animal products and services over fresh.

  • RAM@discuss.tchncs.de
    20·
    11 hours ago

    there is a lot of weird things about what you’re saying, but for one:

    the same amount or more petroleum would be spend on cultivating food for the to-be-slaughtered animals and transporting the meat around.

    I’m not a vegan (anymore), but veganism is still the lesser evil here

    • LovableSidekick@lemmy.world
      13·
      7 hours ago

      I always wonder how many people who think eating meat is murder, evil, etc. have actually watched animals die in the wild. If I had to choose between getting knocked out with a stunner or being chased down by a predator, struggling and screaming while being torn apart by teeth and claws until finally losing consciousness from blood loss and pain - which is how wild animals tend to die - I would absolutely pick the slaughterhouse any time. From that standpoint alone I would absolutely call eating meat the lesser evil.

      Of course death is only one dimension - many domestic animals live in terrible conditions - but mistreatment isn’t necessary for vegans to condemn using animal products. Even eating honey is frowned on, simply because bees are animals. I don’t think that simple flat rule takes enough information into account.

      • Ephera@lemmy.ml
        3·
        6 hours ago

        I would choose dying in the wilderness. A few solid years in freedom and then a potentially horrid death sounds like a much better deal to me than a few weeks/months in purgatory before a less horrid death.
        I am writing “purgatory”, because at this point, I do assume that mistreatment is involved.

        Ultimately, I just find that simple rule …simpler.
        Is it a capitalistic thing with animals involved? Then the default assumption should be that the animals get mistreated, because treating animals well doesn’t generally pay out.
        I just don’t care enough about honey to get into the gritty details of whether this doesn’t involve animal mistreatment.

        I would also bet a lot of money that it does involve questionable treatment at some point. For example, I’ve heard that beekeepers get live honeybees in the mail, and not in some fancy transport box.
        But you’ve got other moral aspects, too, like honeybees killing local ecosystems by taking food away from better pollinators.

        I could think about all that and try to work out the exact details of when eating honey is coolio, or I could just not bother.
        I don’t need a perfect moral framework, I just want to steer clear from immoral shit.

    • antlion@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
      46·
      11 hours ago

      Not talking about eating meat, that’s vegetarianism. Many animals eat grass or waste products, like chickens and pigs.

      Veganism as a rejection of all animal products and services, is a full embrace of petroleum.