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Zeusthecat

Is It Wrong To Eat Meat?

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Well, start cutting out meat a few times a week and see what happens. Noodles with peanut sauce and lots of vegetables is a gooooood start.

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I don't like peanut sauce or most vegetables.

 

Love noodles, though!

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Brb. I have an idea.

 

I seriously thought about making oatmeal this morning with sausage and maple syrup stirred into it, but then I didn't want to take the time to fry up the sausage, so I just stirred in some yogurt and orange marmalade.

Even though I'm on the pro-meat side here, I do love a well made vegetarian dinner. We actually like having vegetarian/vegan friends out for dinner, because it challenges us to come up with new things to try. 

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One thing I'll say for certain that it's definitely a kind of privilege. I'm not the earthiest vegan, and I'll buy Beyond Meat strips and junk like that to cook with on the regular. It's probably a LOT more expensive than if I ate meat. I think if I took a serious interest in farm to table kind of cooking it could be cheaper, but that gets time consuming. 

 

My favorite side dish is this (it's a little bitter):

 

Brocoli Rabe w/Orzo & Sun Dried Tomato: 

1) cut off the tips of the stems and blanch in boiling salted water for about 5ish minutes to soften the stems and cut the bitterness a little. drain and set aside.

2) in a small pot boil 1/3 cup orzo in 1 cup vegetable stock (that might be wrong, maybe more stock), until absorbed or drain extra stock

3) saute garlic in some olive oil, add diced sun dried tomato and simmer a bit

4) add rabe, salt, and continue to saute for a minute or two until tender. 

5) turn off heat, and stir in drained orzo.

6) yum

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Because some people are bad at feeding themselves? I know people who eat everything, meat included, who have gotten scurvy, iron deficiency, vitamin D deficiency, etc. Some people just aren't good food eaters. Meanwhile I've been a vegan since forever and I'm perfectly healthy.Would you say the same thing about human sacrifice?

:/ Nope of course not. Human sacrifice is not comparable at all, it would only be comparable if it served a real function that wasn't imaginary(to please god/usher in summer or whatever). I wish you would address my point with more than rhetorical questions, I might agree with you. Also I wish I didn't have to talk about human sacrifice. 

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I thought we could conduct this conversation respectfully.

 

It's a pretty smarmy response to be calling for respect right after you've decided that everyone who disagrees with you can't have a good reason for doing so.

 

I don't think this thread was a good idea - this is a topic that requires friendship and trust, and that's hard to build in a text-based medium. I'd far prefer to have this discussion with my vegetarian friends, in part because I can trust that when I'm talking about how the kinds of things people can digest is different for everyone, they won't try and argue that this is analogous to human sacrifice.

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One thing I'll say for certain that it's definitely a kind of privilege. I'm not the earthiest vegan, and I'll buy Beyond Meat strips and junk like that to cook with on the regular. It's probably a LOT more expensive than if I ate meat. I think if I took a serious interest in farm to table kind of cooking it could be cheaper, but that gets time consuming. 

 

Being a vegan is actually very cheap if you rely on fresh, in-season produce and use beans/tofu/tempeh for protein rather than processed fake meat products. Vegetables are generally less expensive than meat.

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On 1/16/2015 at 0:51 PM, Akidu said:

:/ Nope of course not. Human sacrifice is not comparable at all, it would only be comparable if it served a real function that wasn't imaginary(to please god/usher in summer or whatever). I wish you would address my point with more than rhetorical questions, I might agree with you. Also I wish I didn't have to talk about human sacrifice.

I don't understand how eating animals serves a "real function" that human sacrifice doesn't. I mean, sure, it tastes better (I assume...) but either way it's unnecessarily killing something for no reason other than "eh I think my life would be better if I killed this thing."

 

If you don't want to talk about human sacrifice you're welcome to offer another example where someone is killing human beings when they have the option not to. The point that I'm trying to make is "we can't judge other people for killing non-human animals" makes as much sense to me as "we can't judge other people for killing humans." Unless you can explain to me what the relevant difference between humans and non-human animals is, I'm up in the air as to why you think one thing is something that we ought not to judge others for but the other thing is something that it's totally find to judge others for.

 

To maybe make a bit more progress on the "what's the relevant difference" question (since you don't like the Socratic "ask questions" method), this article would be a good one to read. It's one of the classic pieces of philosophy addressing this very issue.

 

On 1/16/2015 at 9:47 AM, feelthedarkness said:

One thing I'll say for certain that it's definitely a kind of privilege. I'm not the earthiest vegan, and I'll buy Beyond Meat strips and junk like that to cook with on the regular. It's probably a LOT more expensive than if I ate meat. I think if I took a serious interest in farm to table kind of cooking it could be cheaper, but that gets time consuming.

If you're sensible about it, being vegan can be much cheaper than eating meat. I feed myself healthily and heartily (I eat a LOT of food) on $2 a day.

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If you're sensible about it, being vegan can be much cheaper than eating meat. I feed myself healthily and heartily (I eat a LOT of food) on $2 a day.

 

I dated a vegan for half a decade and lived with two vegans, so I don't think I'm too out of hand saying your living situation, in terms of location, transportation, and access, must be much more fortunate than most vegans I've known. It's also good for the purposes of a productive and bilateral discussion if you don't assume that your body and metabolism are representative of the entirety of all people in this thread, vegan or not.

 

In general, I'm fine debating the morality of the decision not to eat meat. I think the utility of the decision not to eat meat is a different question and one that has been handled horribly by most people here, myself included. "Works for me" and "Doesn't work for me" seem to be a good stopping point, if we can't progress beyond anecdote.

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I don't understand how eating animals serves a "real function" that human sacrifice doesn't. I mean, sure, it tastes better (I assume...) but either way it's unnecessarily killing something for no reason other than "eh I think my life would be better if I killed this thing."

If you don't want to talk about human sacrifice you're welcome to offer another example where someone is killing human beings when they have the option not to. The point that I'm trying to make is "we can't judge other people for killing non-human animals" makes as much sense to me as "we can't judge other people for killing humans." Unless you can explain to me what the relevant difference between humans and non-human animals is, I'm up in the air as to why you think one thing is something that we ought not to judge others for but the other thing is something that it's totally find to judge others for.

To maybe make a bit more progress on the "what's the relevant difference" question (since you don't like the Socratic "ask questions" method), this article would be a good one to read. It's one of the classic pieces of philosophy addressing this very issue.If you're sensible about it, being vegan can be much cheaper than eating meat. I feed myself healthily and heartily (I eat a LOT of food) on $2 a day.

Yeah ok fair enough I think you've swayed me. In particular "Unless you can explain to me what the relevant difference between humans and non-human animals is". I can't.

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I dated a vegan for half a decade and lived with two vegans, so I don't think I'm too out of hand saying your living situation, in terms of location, transportation, and access, must be much more fortunate than most vegans I've known. It's also good for the purposes of a productive and bilateral discussion if you don't assume that your body and metabolism are representative of the entirety of all people in this thread, vegan or not.

 

In general, I'm fine debating the morality of the decision not to eat meat. I think the utility of the decision not to eat meat is a different question and one that has been handled horribly by most people here, myself included. "Works for me" and "Doesn't work for me" seem to be a good stopping point, if we can't progress beyond anecdote.

 

Despite being vegan I loathe to get into these discussions most of the time, especially on the internet. However I think it's important to remind ourselves how heavily our economy is structured around animal products, and that because  vegetarianism/veganism is a niche market it is not always economical for the consumer. So instead I advocate foremost that people try to minimise harm as best they can, rather than trying to meet ultimate rules. Even being vegan you can't expect to be 100% ethical 100% of the time. Doing the best you can is all that you can do.

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I'm on a phone so I can't say nearly as much as I'd like, but in response to the question of price

Definitely your nutritional requirements and local shop availability will highly impact what you spend. But I caution people to actually think about what vegetarian food is available. I can buy a 20c tin of kidney beans in Tesco to replace meat. Obviously that's the lowest end, and will be poor quality food but compared to the cheapest meat it's no competition. And there's a range of protein sources available at varying prices here that are overall just cheaper when I'm not buying vegetarian sausages or veggie mince (which are always expensive).

If you're not sure whether or not your shops contain this stuff, take a look and find out for yourself. If you have none of them, my condolences, but I suspect people would be surprised what's available (I know I was when I turned vegan)

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I don't know a distinct answer. But what I do know is that whenever I think about this kind of issue it's these things that run through my mind.

Plus I think these add variety to the discussion in a pretty hearty way. If you guys take to this stuff I might go over my old ecology and botany papers to see what a freshened memory can also add.

I don't really wish to read the entire thread right now but personally I don't have a problem with eating meat.

I do have a problem with inhumane treatment of animals. Which obviously does go into the dish I eat especially I suspect if I buy cheaper meats which I do by choice and economic necessity.

I've eaten vegan dishes, I have no problem doing so. In fact I positively love many of the ones I tried which were often Indian in temperament.

But I suppose I don't really have a problem with the death of an animal if it makes ecological sense.

I'm not trying to make the argument that if animal consumption stopped then many of the staple animals would be left without a solid economic reason to care or mis-care for them by humans. Although I would draw attention to it.

I'll also draw attention to the idea that many highly specialised products come from animals including ingredients used in biochemistry, serology is the field I have the most (not a lot) of experience with. For those that don't know serology is a big part of the agricultural business as plant crops have to be routinely tested for viruses.

Another use of animals in and of themselves is possibly in prevention of erosion. Now I don't know a whole lot of this either but the idea is that they trample the dead plant mats which opens up new spaces for growth to take hold of thereby preventing the soil from cracking and life from choked out of the soil.

I can't really talk about ecological effects of animals without talking about the masses of CO2 being released through their belching and such. I couldn't not talk about transport costs in terms of oil for animals, feed, equipment, and plants, although from what I understand one of the biggest oil costs besides transport and storage of meat and vege produce is fertilizer. Most feed in NZ is grass based but I hear other countries largely use things like corn.

Another problem with horizontal farming, particularly crop growing is that more fertilizer is required because of course a soil only retains its nutrients for so long and only replenishes those after many hundreds if not thousands of years.

Because of this in addition to fertilizer land clearing is often necessary when the market for crops opens up further which can end up with reduced biodiversity as virgin lands are re-purposed for agriculture.

The other part of agriculture is pesticide which does often directly result in the mass killing of animals, particularly rodents, lagomorphs, birds, and of course insects (these things can be prevented humanely but not everyone is convinced to take that route).

The last thing I want to draw attention to with agriculture is that when you change the plant makeup of a biosphere you also change the insect makeup which can be heavily detrimental to both the land and the producer's economic interests.

I don't know much about hydroponics so I'll leave that off the table for now.

Edit: So I guess with all I've said the question I wrestle with isn't 'is it wrong?' or 'Is it doable?' But 'Is not eating meat a better use of Ecosystem Services?'.

I think that's the question I'd really like to see a discussion about.

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On 1/16/2015 at 10:47 PM, Gormongous said:

I dated a vegan for half a decade and lived with two vegans, so I don't think I'm too out of hand saying your living situation, in terms of location, transportation, and access, must be much more fortunate than most vegans I've known. It's also good for the purposes of a productive and bilateral discussion if you don't assume that your body and metabolism are representative of the entirety of all people in this thread, vegan or not.

 

In general, I'm fine debating the morality of the decision not to eat meat. I think the utility of the decision not to eat meat is a different question and one that has been handled horribly by most people here, myself included. "Works for me" and "Doesn't work for me" seem to be a good stopping point, if we can't progress beyond anecdote.

My location definitely makes produce cheaper - South California is a nice place to live! - but you can eat cheaply as a vegan anywhere you can buy beans, rice, fruits, and vegetables for less than meat, cheese, dairy, and eggs, which is basically everywhere in America, as far as I know. I definitely don't assume that my body and metabolism are representative of the entirety of all people in this thread. I eat a massive amount of food every day but I never gain any weight. I am six feet tall and I weigh 127 pounds. The most I have ever weighed is 128 pounds. I have been like this since I was a teenager, and back then I ate tons of meat, dairy, eggs, etc. in an effort to gain weight. No dice - my dad was like this too when he was a teenager and in his 20s. So I definitely don't think I'm some sort of archetype. I do think that unless something is very fucked up about your metabolism or you have some special health problem, you can surely be a healthy vegan if I can manage it with my metabolism. I'm not just talking out of my ass here. And it's not like I'm the only vegan in the world.

 

On 1/16/2015 at 10:47 PM, Gormongous said:

In general, I'm fine debating the morality of the decision not to eat meat. I think the utility of the decision not to eat meat is a different question and one that has been handled horribly by most people here, myself included. "Works for me" and "Doesn't work for me" seem to be a good stopping point, if we can't progress beyond anecdote.

I think we obviously can progress beyond anecdote - as far as anyone knows, a vegan diet done right is at least as healthy (and for some people, potentially even more healthy!) than a carnivorous diet. This isn't just some wacky theory I thought up myself in my cave. There are vegans all over the world! We've yet to die!

 

On 1/16/2015 at 10:55 PM, Bolegium said:

$2 a day? Could you share your secrets please. I'm broke and starving most of the time :sad:

This thread on Something Awful is a great place to start, especially all of dino's posts. This cookbook is also another great place to start. In general, basic tips for eating cheaply include: eat lots of rice and beans, buy vegetables and fruits that are on sale, shop at ethnic markets, be vegan (my food expenditures dropped drastically once I stopped eating cheese - that shit's expensive!), and look to cultures where people have had to feed themselves cheaply for hundreds/thousands of years, like all over India, much of Africa, etc. These cuisines often have meals that are very cheap to make because they haven't had much of a choice.

 

I'm also not sure quite how helpful this will be, since it's somewhat specific to me, but I once posted a spreadsheet online of my food purchases: there are two tabs (in the bottom left). The first tab is nine months worth of food, averaging $47 per month, and the second tab is a year's worth of food. It's not a perfect way to see how this works because you don't get to see what I cooked and because when I'm only cooking for myself I tolerate a more boring diet than I would cook if I were feeding other people, but it might help you get a basic idea for what kind of things to go shopping for.

 

On 1/17/2015 at 4:47 AM, SuperBiasedMan said:

Definitely your nutritional requirements and local shop availability will highly impact what you spend. But I caution people to actually think about what vegetarian food is available. I can buy a 20c tin of kidney beans in Tesco to replace meat. Obviously that's the lowest end, and will be poor quality food but compared to the cheapest meat it's no competition. And there's a range of protein sources available at varying prices here that are overall just cheaper when I'm not buying vegetarian sausages or veggie mince (which are always expensive).

Definitely a huge part of eating cheaply, whether it's vegan/vegetarian or just cheaply as a carnivore, is learning how to make what you call "poor quality food" taste good. Kidney beans are not "poor quality food," and in fact they're probably a lot better in terms of "how good can a kidney bean get" compared to the sort of meat you'd buy if you buy cheap meat. Moreover, a 20c tin of kidney beans is not "the lowest end" - canned beans are expensive (relatively). Dry beans are cheap. If you want to eat cheaply, you want to buy dry beans and cook them, rather than buy cans of things. Buying dry beans in bulk turns out to be pennies on the dollar compared to cans, depending on where you buy your stuff. As you point out, vegetarian sausages/veggie mince are pretty awful, cost-wise (I also think they taste like shit, but your mileage will vary). The way to eat cheaply is to cook cheap food, not to buy vegetarian versions of expensive food, which is typically even MORE expensive.

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I guess I'm immoral because I don't really find the anti-meat arguments convincing and I don't feel the need to change my behavior. Weird. I do find the science of making a diet work without meat interesting, but not enough so that I'm going to revolutionize what I do.

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I guess I'm immoral because I don't really find the anti-meat arguments convincing and I don't feel the need to change my behavior. Weird. 

What do you mean by "weird?" I think people finding anti-meat arguments unconvincing and feeling like they don't need to change their behavior is by far the norm at this point in history.

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I don't understand how eating animals serves a "real function" that human sacrifice doesn't. I mean, sure, it tastes better (I assume...) but either way it's unnecessarily killing something for no reason other than "eh I think my life would be better if I killed this thing."

 

 

You can eat them for sustenance. That's a real function. We as a society don't condone human sacrifice. We also don't condone animal sacrifice! Sacrifice and offerings are functionally, socially different than killing for food. They are non-equivalent.

 

Also I have to find out where you shop, because at the grocery store fresh vegetables are fucking expensive.

 

e: I'm looking at your spreadsheet. You have access to fresh vegetables at like a third the price I do.

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It's a pretty smarmy response to be calling for respect right after you've decided that everyone who disagrees with you can't have a good reason for doing so.

I think I've been pretty respectful towards everyone here in my posts. I'm sorry if I came off as an asshole in my attempt to correct you.

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You can eat them for sustenance. That's a real function. We as a society don't condone human sacrifice. We also don't condone animal sacrifice! Sacrifice and offerings are functionally, socially different than killing for food. They are non-equivalent.

Surely this can't be the reason it's okay to kill non-human animals, though, because you can equally derive sustenance from killing humans! So now I'm confused again.

(Incidentally, I don't think "we also don't condone animal sacrifice" is true. If you think eating the sacrificed animal changes it from "sacrifice" to "sustenance" then most societies throughout history haven't actually practiced animal sacrifice. If "animal sacrifice" instead means something like "killing a bunch of animals not because you have to but because you want to" then we totally practice animal sacrifice.")

 

Also I have to find out where you shop, because at the grocery store fresh vegetables are fucking expensive.

 

e: I'm looking at your spreadsheet. You have access to fresh vegetables at like a third the price I do.

Where do you live and where do you shop? I could buy fresh vegetables for three times the price I pay if I shopped at Vons or Ralph's. But I don't shop there.

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On 1/16/2015 at 6:29 PM, Merus said:

I don't think this thread was a good idea - this is a topic that requires friendship and trust, and that's hard to build in a text-based medium. I'd far prefer to have this discussion with my vegetarian friends, in part because I can trust that when I'm talking about how the kinds of things people can digest is different for everyone, they won't try and argue that this is analogous to human sacrifice.

To be perfectly honest, I think it's far, far more objectionable to pretend that killing animals is not analogous to human sacrifice than it is to raise the analogy. If you go back far enough in time (and not very far, mind you!) you'll find that it was perfectly obvious to people that if someone had a certain skin color, it was okay to enslave and kill them. If you tried saying something like "this is no different from enslaving and killing a white Christian male" I can easily imagine them reacting with indignation and saying something like "I prefer to discuss this with people with whom I share a certain level of friendship and trust. They would never challenge my deeply held beliefs about the inferiority of certain races by comparing black slavery to white slavery." I mean, sure, that's perhaps true - maybe your friends know you won't budge on this topic unless they treat it with kid gloves, or maybe they actually share a lot of your presuppositions and they oppose slavery because they think it retards technological progress or something - but seeking to discuss moral issues only with people who treat you a certain way strikes me as acceptable only if the position you currently hold doesn't involve the subjugation and slaughter of millions of innocent beings...

 

That this position about non-human animals is unpopular and thus easy to dismiss by saying that the analogy is offensive or something is true, but that doesn't strike me as very interesting, because you can of course say the same thing about racism, sexism, etc. if you go back far enough in time to when anti-racism and anti-sexism were positions held by a slim minority of crazy people.

 

edit: to put it another way, here's how my ideal conversation goes. I say "killing non-human animals needlessly is as bad as killing humans needlessly." Someone says "that's a terrible analogy! Let me explain the relevant differences between non-human animals and humans which show why it's totally okay to kill one but not the other." Then I say "oh, that makes sense. I cant' believe I missed that all along! Thank you, I will now eat a hamburger."

 

How the conversation USUALLY goes is that I say "killing non-human animals needlessly is as bad as killing humans needlessly" and someone says "that's a terrible analogy, you've offended me so much that I don't want to talk with you anymore. I can't believe you thought that analogy was appropriate. It's obviously inappropriate and in fact it's so obvious I won't even bother to explain why. I'll just assume it. I am going to now go eat a hamburger." You can perhaps understand why I find this to be a somewhat unfortunate situation.

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I guess this is a good time to give everyone the distinct reminder that some vegetarians and vegans (myself included) value animal lives equally whether they are human or not. So calling a farm slavery or making analogies to mistreatment of certain peoples is comparing like with like to us, not an exaggerated comparison. This is genuinely how we feel even if others among you don't see it that way.

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On 1/17/2015 at 2:29 PM, SuperBiasedMan said:

I guess this is a good time to give everyone the distinct reminder that some vegetarians and vegans (myself included) value animal lives equally whether they are human or not. So calling a farm slavery or making analogies to mistreatment of certain peoples is comparing like with like to us, not an exaggerated comparison. This is genuinely how we feel even if others among you don't see it that way.

One good way to look at it is that just like people who are not racist view black individuals and white individuals as morally equal, such that it's not okay to do something bad to someone just because they're black rather than white, and people who are not sexist view men and women as morally equal, such that it's not okay to do something bad to someone just because they're a woman rather than a man, and just like people are not heterosexist view straight individuals and queer individuals as morally equal, such that it's not okay to do something bad to someone just because they're queer rather than straight, people who are not speciesist view human individuals and non-human individuals as morally equal, such that it's not okay to do something bad to someone (like kill and eat them, or raise them in an environment where they face extreme pain for their whole lives) just because they are non-human as opposed to human.

 

This is not to say that being racist, sexist, heterosexist, or speciesist is bad. Most people (on these forums at least) presumably see the first three as bad and the last one as totally fine. Lots of people out in the world only view one or two of these things as bad, and some people don't even view any of them as bad. (In fact, if you go back in time, it's quite easy to reach a point where the majority of people in America saw nothing wrong with any of these *isms.)

 

Of course, as the list of *isms I've picked probably makes clear, others (like myself) do see these sorts of *isms on a par: discriminating against someone because they're a cow makes no more sense to us than discriminating against someone because they're black. This doesn't mean you have to treat cows exactly the same as you'd treat a human being, and in fact even if you're not racist you don't have to think we need to treat all races the same. You might be very anti-racism but still endorse affirmative action programs or other sorts of preferential treatment for certain individuals of certain races. Being anti-racist does, however, entail at least a basic commitment to seeing all races as equal when it comes to whether it's okay to, for instance, enslave and kill them, and being anti-speciesist typically gets you pretty much the same thing, except instead of races, we're talking about species of animals.

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What do you mean by "weird?" I think people finding anti-meat arguments unconvincing and feeling like they don't need to change their behavior is by far the norm at this point in history.

 

It's weird because I consider myself to be moral in many other -ism situations, but it seems like I'd be wrong if I considered myself moral on this by what has been discussed in this thread.

 

Then again (and with a distinct hope that this doesn't derail this thread further), I also believe that the death penalty is not strictly immoral though certainly problematic. So if "killing humans is bad" doesn't gel with "killing animals is not bad", perhaps I'm actually being internally consistent.

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