I sometimes meet people who claim to be vegetarians (don’t eat meat but consume milk and eggs) out of the desire to help the animals. If appropriate, I show them the http://ethical.diet/ website and explain that the production of eggs likely requires more suffering per calorie than most of the commonly consumed meat products. Hence, if they care about animals, avoiding eggs should be a priority. If they say that this is too many food products to give up, I suggest that perhaps instead of eating eggs, they could occasionally consume some beef (although that is bad for the environment). I think that the production of beef requires less suffering per calorie, even though I’m unsure how to compare suffering between different animals. In general, I’m skeptical about dietary change advocacy, but my intuition is that talking about this with vegetarians in situations where it feels appropriate is worth the effort. But I’m uncertain and either way, I don’t think this is very important.
I sometimes meet people who claim to be vegetarians (don’t eat meat but consume milk and eggs) out of the desire to help the animals. If appropriate, I show them the http://ethical.diet/ website and explain that the production of eggs likely requires more suffering per calorie than most of the commonly consumed meat products. Hence, if they care about animals, avoiding eggs should be a priority. If they say that this is too many food products to give up, I suggest that perhaps instead of eating eggs, they could occasionally consume some beef (although that is bad for the environment). I think that the production of beef requires less suffering per calorie, even though I’m unsure how to compare suffering between different animals. In general, I’m skeptical about dietary change advocacy, but my intuition is that talking about this with vegetarians in situations where it feels appropriate is worth the effort. But I’m uncertain and either way, I don’t think this is very important.