On Fri, 24 Jun 2005 07:39:23 -0400, "Renco" > wrote:
>"Rudy Canoza" > wrote:

>> >>...(edited)...If you buy a bag of rice that comes from paddies where
>> >>thousands of animals were killed, every person eating
>> >>rice from those paddies shares in the moral
>> >>responsibility for all of the thousands of deaths. The
>> >>deaths are not divisible.
>
>====================
>Wow, I guess that means when I buy some beef or chicken I'm not only
>responsible for the death of that animal, but also the deaths of all the
>other animals killed in the slaughterhouse. Just like, as you say, when
>someone buys a bag of rice they are responsible for ALL of the deaths in the
>rice paddies, not just the ones in the area it took to grow their rice in.
>As you point out, "The deaths are not divisible". And also, when I buy my
>meat I'm of course responsible for every single one of the cds in the fields
>that produced any grain which may have been fed to the animals to fatten
>them up. Ugh, I just never realized of that before!
>
>And even if I eat just one measly little (commercially caught) fish, I'm
>responsible for the deaths of all of the other fish (and whatever else) that
>was caught / killed along with it in the net.

[About 2.3 billion pounds of sea life were discarded in
the U.S. in 2000 alone, and thousands of the ocean's
most charismatic species - including sea turtles, marine
mammals, sharks and seabirds - are killed each year
by fishing nets, lines and hooks. These deaths have
implications for both marine populations and marine
food webs.

"Considering the documented decline in global fisheries,
this kind of waste is unacceptable. But because this
travesty is unseen by most people, it continues," said
Dr. Crowder.

Experts agree that bottom trawls are one of the worst
offenders, entrapping

**vast numbers of non-targeted animals.**

"The first time I was on a trawler, I was appalled to see
that for every pound of shrimp caught there were 20
pounds of sharks, rays, crabs, and starfish killed. The
shrimpers called this bycatch 'trawl trash' - I call it
'biodiversity'," noted Elliott Norse of the Marine
Conservation Biology Institute. "Of course I recognize
in some trawls it could be only one pound - in others
100 pounds for every pound of shrimp."

**This bycatch is not the only collateral damage**

associated with fishing. Many experts agreed that habitat
destruction that some fishing gears cause is even more
ecologically damaging than the harm caused by bycatch.]
http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/*innews/destfish2003.htm

Jon will most likely find a way of blaming vegans for
bycatches as well if you give him enough time.

> Man this stuff really adds up!

And Rudy (Jonathan Ball) knows it;

"If you insist on playing a stupid counting game, you'll
lose. "vegans" and a few sensible meat eaters alike
have pointed out that the overwhelming majority of
grain is grown to feed livestock. That means if you
eat meat that you bought at a store, you cause more
deaths: the deaths of the animals you eat, plus the
CDs of the animals killed in the course of producing
feed for the animals you eat.

The counting game is doubly stupid to be offered by
meat eaters: the moral issue isn't about counting, and
the meat eater will always lose the game, unless he
hunts or raises and slaughters his own meat."
Jonathan Ball 22 May 2003 http://tinyurl.com/664t2

Not only has he given vegans a valid reason to
continue abstaining from meat on the basis that less
collateral deaths will occur, he's also given them
valid environmental and economic grounds to abstain
from it as well.

"What I mean is that in terms of the resources
expended for the amount of nutrition yielded, the
U.S. could easily substitute sufficient vegetable
products to come up with the "missing" protein and
calories if we suddenly stopped raising livestock.

Meat is expensive relative to vegetable produce. All
of the major meats consumed in the American diet -
beef, pork and poultry; lamb barely registers - are fed
cultivated agriculture products as animal feed, and the
resources that produce that animal feed could instead
produce vegetable food for direct human consumption.

There is a loss of energy in feeding livestock feed to
animals. It takes anywhere from 6 to 8 pounds of feed
to yield one additional *gross* pound of beef, for
example; the feed conversion ratio for broiler chickens
is a little under 2. Note that these ratios are gross; they
do not take into account that some of the weight gain
in the animal is not edible to humans. If you adjust for
that, the ratios are higher.

If Americans suddenly stopped eating meat entirely, and
all the animals were gone, no land or other productive
resources would be devoted to producing feed and other
materials for animals. It would take only a fraction of
those resources to produce the "missing" protein and
calories."
Jonathan Ball as Rudy Canoza 31 Mar 2005
http://tinyurl.com/5xs3b

>I'm much more of a killer than I'd ever imagined! Rudy my friend, I
>certainly don't have any desire to become a vegan, or a hunter (to reduce
>the cds caused by my diet that way). But I do have to hand it to you - you
>certainly have made me seriously consider becoming some kind of vegetarian
>to help reduce all of the slaughterhouse collateral killing I'm responsible
>for because of my meat eating. Thank you very much for opening up my eyes to
>this. You da man! I've really learned something here today...
>
>Sincerely,
>Renco
>================
> Even more proof here, thanks Rudy!:
>"Rudy Canoza" > wrote:
>> ...(edited)....The death is not divisible. If "vegans" know
>> about the collateral deaths, as they call claim to
>> know, then they all know _ex ante_ that the rice
>> production causes some multiple deaths. By choosing to
>> buy rice from that source, rather than growing their
>> own "death-free" rice, they share in the responsibility
>> for all of the deaths. The deaths are not divisible.
>>
>