Plants aren’t sentient though, that’s a pretty good reason to put them lower on the hierarchy of living beings that are morally ok to eat. And it’s quite likely that fewer plants die for a vegan diet than for a standard diet, as animals need a lot of feed to produce meat, eggs and dairy. Some percentage of the plant protein, fats, and carbs will always be lost along the way when we feed them to animals, so eating those plants directly is more efficient.
Sentience is hard to measure though. Also I had a weird discussion with my neighbour once who argued that in order to kill fewer sentient beings, we should eat the bigger ones as the ratio of meat per sentience was better, so we should really eat whales. Which made it pretty obvious to me that a) he was nuts and b) sentience might not be the best indicator for ethic food consumption.
/edit
That doesn’t mean that I oppose the idea that eating plants is better. I’m just arguing against sentience as a good indicator.
Except his argument is flawed on its own grounds, because the bigger the animal the more food it takes to support it before you come along and kill it. Assuming we had an objective measure of sentience, it’s pretty likely most non-herbivores are costing more sentience than your save by eating them.
At which point we should just cause the extinction of all animals except humans and the few plants needed to support humans. See how that’s a horrible metric?
Plants aren’t sentient though, that’s a pretty good reason to put them lower on the hierarchy of living beings that are morally ok to eat. And it’s quite likely that fewer plants die for a vegan diet than for a standard diet, as animals need a lot of feed to produce meat, eggs and dairy. Some percentage of the plant protein, fats, and carbs will always be lost along the way when we feed them to animals, so eating those plants directly is more efficient.
Sentience is hard to measure though. Also I had a weird discussion with my neighbour once who argued that in order to kill fewer sentient beings, we should eat the bigger ones as the ratio of meat per sentience was better, so we should really eat whales. Which made it pretty obvious to me that a) he was nuts and b) sentience might not be the best indicator for ethic food consumption.
/edit That doesn’t mean that I oppose the idea that eating plants is better. I’m just arguing against sentience as a good indicator.
Except his argument is flawed on its own grounds, because the bigger the animal the more food it takes to support it before you come along and kill it. Assuming we had an objective measure of sentience, it’s pretty likely most non-herbivores are costing more sentience than your save by eating them.
At which point we should just cause the extinction of all animals except humans and the few plants needed to support humans. See how that’s a horrible metric?
What would be a good indicator then if not sentience?