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ex-PFC Wintergreen[_2_] ex-PFC Wintergreen[_2_] is offline
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Default "veganism" isn't what it purports to be

Rupert wrote:
> On Dec 29, 7:30 am, ex-PFC Wintergreen >
> wrote:
>> Rupert wrote:
>>> On Dec 27, 7:50 am, ex-PFC Wintergreen >
>>> wrote:
>>>> Despite all the fancy pseudo-philosophical rhetoric, "veganism" isn't
>>>> really about ethics. It's about smug self-satisfaction and sanctimony.
>>>> There is no valid ethics in "veganism" at all. It isn't at all about
>>>> identifying a moral and right course of action and then following it;
>>>> it's only about self-exaltation over a completely phony issue.
>>>> "vegans" have never shown, and never will be able to show, that it is
>>>> unethical for humans to consume animal-derived products.
>>> What's the fallacy in this argument?
>>> http://www.uta.edu/philosophy/facult...ngel,%20The%20...

>> The fallacy is non sequitur: he builds what he thinks is a compelling
>> case against factory farming, then makes the unwarranted leap that *all*
>> meat consumption is immoral.
>>

>
> He does make some remarks about how to make the further
> generalisation,


Unpersuasive. He wants to show that *all* meat is immoral, but his case
is fundamentally predicated on an overwrought caricature of "factory
farming".


>> Along the way, he belabors the same old, tired, inapplicable garbage
>> about resource "inefficiency", which, as we have seen, is nonsense.
>>

>
> No, that paper does not contain the economic misconceptions which you
> criticise.


Absolutely it does: pages 870-872 of his Section 3 include five
environmental/economic points that are intended to cement the claim that
meat consumption is immoral:

1. allegedly extremely energy intensive
2. allegedly inefficient use of water
3. alleged nutrient inefficiency
4. soil erosion
5. hazardous waste production

*All* of these are offered as *further evidence* that meat consumption
is immoral.

The whole thing falls to pieces, because of economic and environmental
illiteracy, along with the basic, inescapable fact that killing animals
to eat them is not inherently immoral.