On 4/3/2012 10:04 PM, Rupert wrote:
> Ball has been talking a lot lately about how it could conceivably be
> that some people would not reduce suffering by going vegan or would
> possibly even increase suffering.
>
> [snip remaining self-serving wheeze]

The first problem is "vegans" - all of them - always claim too much
merely by virtue of not putting animal bits in their mouths. Most claim
to be living "cruelty free" lifestyles. Those few who are aware of
animal CDs in agriculture abandon the silly "cruelty free" claim, but
fall back on something equally untenable such as "minimizing" or "doing
the best I can", when in fact they're doing neither. In the end, as we
have always seen, they can do *no* better than to claim, "At least I'm
doing better than meat eaters", and as we have shown, even that is not
*necessarily* true. So, the "vegan" claim to virtue is baseless.

The second problem is that refraining from putting animal bits in their
mouths is *all* that the vast majority of "vegans" do. If they really
were interested in trying to achieve the greatest reduction in harm to
animals they could, we'd expect to see some investigation into which
vegetable and fruit crops are relatively lower in terms of harm to
animals, and a substitution of those in place of higher-harm produce,
but *NO* such investigation has ever been done...nor does any "vegan"
care to do it. Yet they *all* engage in what I long ago dubbed the
"irrational search for micrograms (of animal parts)." They'll expend an
absurd amount of time looking for the micrograms of squid ink in brined
black olives, or the milligram of anchovy in a bottle of Worcestershire
sauce, but not a bit of time getting high-CD produce out of their diets.
The irrational search for micrograms, in which *ALL* "vegans" engage,
is the proof of the bankruptcy of their moral pose - and it *is* nothing
more than a pose.

This leads to the sound conclusion that "vegans" aren't really
interested in harm reduction nor in respecting animals' "rights". All
they're interested in is a moral stance, one in which they can flatter
themselves with the belief they're "better" than others.