“The human health gains are small relative to the harms to animals”
I’d argue further that even if the human health benefits are large in the space of human health outcomes, they are so tiny in comparison to the harm an omnivorous diet causes to animals that they are scarcely worth discussing.
It takes a few seconds to taste a bite of a dish. Let’s assume that a portion of chicken is eaten in 24 bites. If, in order for us to eat such a portion, there is a chicken that has had to suffer 9 days, and has been deprived of 2 years of life, how much harm is inflicted on the chicken for each of those 24 bites? Doing the math, the result is as follows. In exchange for each brief moment of tasting its flesh, the chicken has had to suffer on average for about 9 hours on a farm. And it has been deprived of a month’s life. That’s just for every single bite. Every second of our taste pleasure is very expensive for the animal that is eaten.
Oscar Horta, Making a Stand for Animals (2022)
This isn’t hyperbole. Here’s a description of the experiences of the chickens most people eat:
Broiler chickens are the chickens raised for meat, rather than the ones raised to lay eggs. Chickens are endure cruel transport right from the moment of birth, in small crates. They’re sent to overcrowded sheds where they have no space to turn around. They have nothing interesting to do, and not enough space to do it. They express none of their natural behaviors and are subject to constant horrifying disease, injury, and artificial lighting that leads to torturous sleep deprivation. They spend their days unable to move much, living in feces and ammonia, subject to constant violence, and with horrifying diseases. Then, they’re cruelly slaughtered, wherein they’re crammed into small crates, leading to many chickens dying, and many more enduring bone-breaking injuries and weather extremes. Then, those that haven’t died yet are brutally slaughtered, some stunned, some with their throats slit while they’re conscious, and some boiled alive while fully conscious.
The idea that the potential human health benefits of meat consumption could possibly be decisive on the question of whether it’s ethical to eat meat is a fantasy.
If we found out that torturing a baby for 9 hours created a cup’s worth of baby tears which, when drank regularly, extended the human lifespan by 20 years, we would obviously not do it.
Thankfully, we can eat chicken and cause the same harm to a being of similar intelligence, with far less positive impact on our health.
You saw the counterarguments section “The human health gains are small relative to the harms of animals”, but presumably missed that the next section was titled “The health costs don’t matter, no benefit justifies the horror of farming animals”, and made that exact counterargument rather than responding to Elizabeth’s preemptive response.
I did read Elizabeth’s preemptive response to the counterargument. However, her preemptive response doesn’t seem to actually argue against the counterargument, so I didn’t see any need to address it. I wrote my earlier comment to highlight that the counterargument is decisively strong—the health costs of veganism are scarcely worth discussing.
If you’d like to volunteer a consideration I may have missed, I’m all ears! However, Elizabeth’s preemptive response you mentioned doesn’t try to rebut the counterargument at all. Instead, it calls the counterargument a “fair argument for veganism”, and lists some tangential considerations which I didn’t find relevant enough to address in my earlier comment:
But it’s not grounds to declare the health costs to be zero.
The argument doesn’t do that. It just says they’re so small relative to the harms causes to animals that they’re scarcely worth discussing.
It’s also not grounds to ignore nutrition within a plant-based diet.
The argument isn’t about that at all, and I think most people would agree that nutrition is important.
The argument isn’t about that at all, and I think most people would agree that nutrition is important.
It sounds like you’re misreading the point of the article.
The entire point of this article is that there are vegan EA leaders who downplay or dismiss the idea that veganism requires extra attention and effort. It doesn’t at all say “there are some tradeoffs, therefore don’t be vegan.” (it goes out of the way to say almost the opposite)
Whether costs are worth discussing doesn’t depend on how large one cost is vs the other – it depends on whether the health costs are large enough to hurt people, destroy trust, and (from an animal welfare perspective), whether the human health costs directly cause more animal suffering via causing ~30% of vegans to relapse.
I’d argue further that even if the human health benefits are large in the space of human health outcomes, they are so tiny in comparison to the harm an omnivorous diet causes to animals that they are scarcely worth discussing.
Oscar Horta, Making a Stand for Animals (2022)
This isn’t hyperbole. Here’s a description of the experiences of the chickens most people eat:
Source
The idea that the potential human health benefits of meat consumption could possibly be decisive on the question of whether it’s ethical to eat meat is a fantasy.
If we found out that torturing a baby for 9 hours created a cup’s worth of baby tears which, when drank regularly, extended the human lifespan by 20 years, we would obviously not do it.
Thankfully, we can eat chicken and cause the same harm to a being of similar intelligence, with far less positive impact on our health.
You saw the counterarguments section “The human health gains are small relative to the harms of animals”, but presumably missed that the next section was titled “The health costs don’t matter, no benefit justifies the horror of farming animals”, and made that exact counterargument rather than responding to Elizabeth’s preemptive response.
I did read Elizabeth’s preemptive response to the counterargument. However, her preemptive response doesn’t seem to actually argue against the counterargument, so I didn’t see any need to address it. I wrote my earlier comment to highlight that the counterargument is decisively strong—the health costs of veganism are scarcely worth discussing.
If you’d like to volunteer a consideration I may have missed, I’m all ears! However, Elizabeth’s preemptive response you mentioned doesn’t try to rebut the counterargument at all. Instead, it calls the counterargument a “fair argument for veganism”, and lists some tangential considerations which I didn’t find relevant enough to address in my earlier comment:
The argument doesn’t do that. It just says they’re so small relative to the harms causes to animals that they’re scarcely worth discussing.
The argument isn’t about that at all, and I think most people would agree that nutrition is important.
It sounds like you’re misreading the point of the article.
The entire point of this article is that there are vegan EA leaders who downplay or dismiss the idea that veganism requires extra attention and effort. It doesn’t at all say “there are some tradeoffs, therefore don’t be vegan.” (it goes out of the way to say almost the opposite)
Whether costs are worth discussing doesn’t depend on how large one cost is vs the other – it depends on whether the health costs are large enough to hurt people, destroy trust, and (from an animal welfare perspective), whether the human health costs directly cause more animal suffering via causing ~30% of vegans to relapse.
this sounds like you believe the health costs of veganism are unfixable without animal products. Is that the case?