Something I don't see mentioned is biomagnification. One reason we eat herbivores instead of carnivores is because the higher up the food chain you go, the more you are exposed to a concentration of heavy metals, pesticides, etc.
It's a good argument for eating less meat overall, one vegetarians seem to never make. In a world full of unprecedented levels of relatively new toxic compounds, eating less meat is a good defensive move, especially so if you have health problems.
I'm really picky about meat quality. In situations where my choice is something with low quality/highly questionable meat or a vegetarian option, I typically go with the vegetarian option.
Though be forewarned: It's a dietary path that gets you equally harassed by vegetarians and the meat-and-potatoes crowd, which can be incredibly aggravating and feel like the harassment is unceasing.
> One reason we eat herbivores instead of carnivores is because the higher up the food chain you go, the more you are exposed to a concentration of heavy metals, pesticides, etc.
Whilst it's true that these concentrate in carnivores this is not a reason why we eat mostly herbivores.
Herbivores were plentiful and less dangerous to hunt. Then, herbivores are much easier and more economical to breed (you would need to breed herbivores first if you wanted to breed carnivores...)
You'll note that these decisions were made long before people even knew about heavy metals or had pesticides.
Religious texts/traditions often suggest that we should limit meat consumption. These suggestions generally predate modern science, yet seem to fairly frequently be rooted in the idea that meat -- or certain meats -- are "unclean."
They're also really big on fasting, which, given the popularity of intermittent fasting and the like these days, seems an odd coincidence.
Matthew 5:6 -- "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled."
Matthew 6:16 -- “When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 17 But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, 18 so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you."
It doesn't strike me as odd coincidence at all. I tend to see religion as an attempt to codify a combination of group wisdom and brilliant insights from charismatic individuals.
Fasting has been beneficial to my incurable medical condition. I'm quite encouraged by the association between fasting and religion. To me, it suggests there is something fundamentally wise about the practice and important to human health.
If there's one thing you should absorb from the Bible it's to learn some basic principles about kindness and love. Because nearly all your comments are tainted with hostility, snark, and utter rudeness. No wonder you can't hold down a job. Who would hire someone like you?
I can’t speak for other faiths, but Judaism doesn’t really give or need a reason for dietary restrictions. It’s simply what the law is, and some laws can’t be understood by us on Earth.
As a vegan this is an argument that I’ve made before unsuccessfully. When I start talking about trophic levels people’s eyes gloss over and they behave confused and disinterested. I think the reason for this is that most people don’t remember high school biology.
Now if you were to talk about ethics THAT gets a strong reaction simply because it’s much more intuitive and relatable. People’s responses can be receptive, antagonist, dismissive etc. but they certainly won’t be falling asleep in front of you.
As a non-vegan* that has in the past greatly enjoyed calimari (and octopus), I've long felt that it presents me with an ethical dilemma because of how intelligent octopus, and to a lesser degree, squid, are. However, birds have incredibly dense brain matter compared to most other land animals, so if I start worrying too much about ethics in eating meat, I know I'd have to cut out far more than just the intelligent molluscs, and the whole thing is awkward.
Most people don't like that awkwardness, so it's not surprising that you get pushback.
You sound a lot like me before I went vegetarian a few years back. I was always aware of the cognitive dissonance, knowing that I couldn't reconcile eating meat with my other values.
>I know I'd have to cut out far more than just the intelligent molluscs, and the whole thing is awkward.
I ended up just cutting out farmed meat in the end. As far as meat goes, I can eat what I kill. Apart from if someone has already got me food and didn't know, as to turn that down seems both a waste and kind of rude.
> I ended up just cutting out farmed meat in the end. As far as meat goes, I can eat what I kill. Apart from if someone has already got me food and didn't know, as to turn that down seems both a waste and kind of rude.
Pretty common rule for mendicant Buddhists, as I understand it. No meat is the general rule, but if you go a-begging and someone gives you meat, and you don't have reason to believe they killed something (or had someone else kill something) specifically for you, then you're good to eat it (or even obligated to).
There's an old joke: "How do you know if someone is vegan? Don't worry, he'll tell you."
My eyes would be glossing over in both cases. I've been confronted with this information many times in the past; often against my wishes despite the social cues I'm giving. It's not that you're wrong, or I don't care, or I don't get it. In the moment, I might even be interested. But the evangelists have burnt me out.
Getting a rise out of people for short-term gratification is usually not the best way to convince others to actually change their behavior, especially on loaded topics.
Given the choice between bored disinterest and confrontation I would say confrontation is the better tactic, at least it's memorable. Now maybe it's not the ideal method, but of the two presented here it seems the more reasonable.
Was your argument about biomagnification or energy? Because the latter is a less convincing argument: Plants are inefficient energy converters already.
There is nothing less convincing about that. It takes a lot of plants to get some meat. So a little 'inefficient energy converters' are better than a ton of them.
Efficiency of solar conversion is only important in so far as where solar energy is a limiting factor. In our case, it is not. There is plenty solar energy that reaches the earth and that we are not using.
Serious question: is this actually a concern for land animals like cows or chickens? They tend to be fed an exclusively vegetarian diet, so any bio-accumulation of heavy metals or similar should be minimal - the chain is pretty simple: sun -> plants -> meat animal. I can't say I'm aware of people getting mercury poisoning from beef, for example.
Seafood is different, since the food chain can be significantly longer and more complex.
> so any bio-accumulation of heavy metals or similar should be minimal
What is "minimal"? Bioaccumulation isn't a magic meter that says "everyting below this trophic level is safe to eat." It depends on the persistent toxin ( I choose the word toxin because bioaccumulation can occur for chemicals beyond heavy metals, like organochlorine pesticides ) that you're looking at, and what is the safe dose for humans.
E.g. let's say you have pesticide A and pesticide B. Cattle eat a certain amount of feed per day. At time of slaughter, pesticide A and B have a certain amount of concentration in fat tissue. It doesn't matter which has the highest concentration, it matters which is less safe to humans and at what concentration it harms us when it accumulates in our own tissues.
It may be the case for the chickens you buy in the supermarket, but backyard chickens are not exclusively vegetarian -- I have personally witnessed one eat a frog and they are really happy if they get the chance to eat a worm.
I second that. Chickens are omnivores. My mum keeps a few chickens for eggs and when she gives them meal-worms for a treat sometimes they go absolutely crazy for them.
Chickens naturally peck about for worms, insects, seeds, etc...
Chickens and/or pigs used to be how one dealt with food scraps that couldn't go back into the field/garden. After first using them to make broth or whatever, if possible. A recycling system that turns garbage into food.
American beef is often grain fed, not grass fed. There's also the issue of cannibalistic feed. A quick google got me this video, which I only watched partway through (it indicates fish is the worst, followed by chicken and cheese):
"grain" and "grass" are both plants. The food chain isn't any more complex in either case: sun -> grain/grass -> food animal.
Plants definitely do have different rate of heavy metal accumulation, and presumably other toxins, though I'm not aware of any evidence that a typical feedlot diet of corn+soy is better than all grass with regards to potential toxin bio-accumulation. This isn't to say that there may not be other health benefits to raising pasture animals on 100% grass.
Animal-based animal feed is certainly a thing, though in my experience "100% vegetarian" diet is often the the cheapest type of meat. Organic meat, while more expensive, guarantees it will be raised "without antibiotics, added growth hormones, mammalian or avian byproducts" [0]. This does seem to exclude fish-meal type feed, which presumably is allowed to be used in organic meat production - though I'd assume its more economical to use a plant based feed in almost all cases.
I'm a bit confused because you've switched from asking my opinion, apparently in earnest, to shooting me down. But for the record:
Grass fed beef is more nutritious than grain fed (easily googled).
Grass fed beef is leaner and has a noticeably different fat composition (easily googled). This is pertinent to bioaccumulation because fat is usually where stores of toxic chemicals are at their worst, iirc.
Grain fed beef is typically fattened up in feed lots which can be vectors for disease (easily googled).
Grass fed is typically exposed to fewer pesticides. Sources:
I'm not a stickler for only eating grass fed beef. However, I have gone through periods where I was extremely ill and found that it was very worthwhile to only get meat labeled "grass fed." I was much more able to tolerate it and it didn't severely acidify my system the way meat sometimes can, which is consistent with the fact that grass fed beef is much higher in Omega 3 fats.
I'm not trying to lecture anyone, dictate how they should eat, etc. I was just making the observation that if the point of the article is to persuade, then they missed a potentially big detail in terms of arguing from a position of enlightened self interest rather than morality. It's a detail that's often overlooked by people trying to persuade others to "do the right thing, eat less meat!" and another reply to me cast a bit of light on possibly why it is so often overlooked.
This is not exactly correct. The "grain" that is fed to animals in feed lots (or most other places) is typically not straight corn or whatever. It's an engineered pellet ration or a milled grain ration. In both cases it has additives in it - added nutritional components, and often also low-level antibiotics, just depending on what the folks running the feed lot prefer.
I have a sheep farm. We have to be very careful not to confuse the sheep grain ration with the chicken feed. They look exactly the same, but chicken pellet has copper in it, and sheep can't metabolize copper. We also have to be careful not to accidentally buy or feed goat ration for the same reason.
That said, "grass fed" is complicated too. In a lot of places the cattle are grazing on unimproved rangeland. It isn't even fertilized. But in some places the farmers will explicitly plant forage crops such as wheatgrass; these will typically be fertilized, and possibly treated with herbicide or pesticide. Fertilizer is usually an industrial nitrogen fertilizer, but it can also be composted manure. I know of at least some farms near where I grew up that were at points treated with concentrated sludge from sewage treatment plants, in which case you would definitely expect to get heavy metal accumulation, even in straight grass fed animals. Happily my family never went that route.
All beef is grass fed until a short period before slaughter, where American ranchers fatten them up with a diet of corn-based feed. What we call "grass-fed" beef is just "grass-finished" instead of "corn-finished."
Aside from mother-in-law wanting to know why I’m not eating her (dish), I don’t think anyone in real life has ever inquired about what is on my plate and why. And who the hell really would, beyond “that looks good, what are you having?”
Exactly, there are so many people with dietary restrictions in my admittedly blue/progressive circles that no one really bats an eye at anyone else's diet.
Same here, only inverted! There are so many people without dietary restrictions in my admittedly red/conservative circles that no one really bats an eye at anyone else's diet.
Same thing in my golden libertarian circles. So many people here are trying some weird biohacking thing with their diet, no one is asking in order to not get a 15-minute talk about it.
Just did a quick search and it looks like plants can absorb heavy metals/toxins and are sometimes used for cleaning them up. Is there a reason that this wouldn't apply to the plants that people eat?
With biomagnification, if you're eating the plant you'll get some exposure to said toxin - and it's unlikely you're eating just that plant, but if you eat a herbivore that eats that plant - and a herbivore can eat a lot of a specific kind of plant, you'll be exposed to a higher concentration and then if you eat the predator of the herbivore you'll get an even more concentrated dose.
> In a world full of unprecedented levels of relatively new toxic compounds, eating less meat is a good defensive move, especially so if you have health problems.
If you are asking about toxic compounds, we have a lot of newly created man-made chemicals in the past 100 years. We aren't sure what they do to human health and they are found all over the place.
I mean, I tend to give all of my friends a hard time about sweets and sugary drinks, and expect the same. Most everyone I know understands that it’s best to avoid sugar, but it is both truly ubiquitous and extremely addictive so it’s essential impossible. Trying to not get into an icecream/chocolate habit is a never ending battle.
This article is partially about the impact on marine ecosystems, so don't avoid reading it if you think it is all about ethics, which is what the majority of the comments here mention.
If you put a sentence like this in such an article you beg to be bashed on your ethics:
"Given their exceptional abilities, one might ask whether humans should be eating octopus at all, but here we want to raise a different ethical question."
So we can eat stupid animals, but not the more intelligent ones, right? That's absolutely logically and ethically bonkers to just write this down as if it were a common piece of shared knowledge and give it for granted.
You're being downvoted, but I agree. If you search the word "intelligent" in this page, it is used as a reason not to eat things. It's fine if one makes this a foundation for one's ethics of death, but one must be clear that it is and that it's only one way to look at things. Moreover, one should be clear that using intelligence as a reason to justify or avoid eating an organism leads to the problem that then an assessment of intelligence is vital for decision-making -- and if we happen not to understand an organism's intelligence, then we risk making the "wrong" decision out of ignorance. It can also lead to an essentially eugenicist view in which people as well as other organisms of lesser intelligence are viewed as less valuable. To be clear I'm not saying anyone here is a eugenicist: I'm saying that in history, eugenicists have taken this view.
Ranking animals by intelligence is not the only way to decide your ethics of consumption. If I want to look close to home, I can consider the ethics of the First Nations people who have lived in the area I now live in. They have a sophisticated ethic of consumption that does not rely on intelligence-ranking. Or we can look at other points of view that privilege the land and its health, and direct decisions from there.
Blindness about our assumptions and hypotheses doesn't help the conversation. Let's set out our axioms.
I think people tend either see the world primarily through existence or experience.
For those who see the world through the experience frame, they will be more worried about the negative impacts toward an individual octopus, seeing it as an intelligent creature that shouldn’t need to endure our fishing practices.
For those that see the world through the existence frame, the potential genocidal and even eco-system crashing impact of overfishing or various fishing practices is more vital than what happens to any individual creature.
Maybe this would be better as two articles, one that appeals to each type.
> This article is partially about the impact on marine ecosystems, so don't avoid reading it if you think it is all about ethics, which is what the majority of the comments here mention.
You should point out the issue for all the tl;dr people.
The issue is that farming carnivorous seafood is a net ecosystem loss. This applies to more than just octopi.
In the case of an octopus, the conversion rate is about 3:1--you have to feed an octopus about 3 times it's weight in "other fish". Similar ratios are true for other carnivorous fish--none are less than 1.
Consequently, aquaculture farming of carnivorous species causes more overfishing and ecosystem strain and contributes nothing to food security.
> In the case of an octopus, the conversion rate is about 3:1
(Yawn) and this is a terrific, good, not bad, conversion rate. Better than rabbit, broilers, pork and much better than "holy herbivorous cattle" beef. And the same food gave to a human would have a conversion rate of 10:0, because the stuff would never be approved as human-grade food.
But can be still feed to another animal and used to make excellent food. Octopus is a high quality human food, healthy and more expensive than the tasteless Tilapia or swimming-in-poo-nd carp for a reason. Iron scraps are cheaper than titanium also.
Maybe the problem could be that some people dislike octopus by "put random reason here" (religion, virtue signaling, fear to slimy creatures, not included in tyrolean tradition or classified as alien life form in Nuevo Mexico?...) and lobby to discourage its use as human food.
This people (at least many of them) are hypocritical. Most wouldn't have any problem saying that whereas munching their fried broiler chicken wings, made of young birds 100 days old. Most wouldn't have any ethical problem with the idea of killing and eating a delicious and pray-safe 20 days old lamb.
... but to eat a 3Yo adult octopus in the end of its life cycle (that will die by natural processes in a few months in any case)... this is unethical?. Nonsense
and now lets take a loot to the inaccuracies in the article
> If octopuses of some species can be kept together in moderate numbers and in larger enclosures with significant enrichment, this might mitigate some, though not all, of the welfare problems.
"Octopuses must be smart as chimps so they must be treated the same".
Wrong, they are solitary animals. All of the species fished. They tolerate other sexes only in reproduction and females could ignore other females (nesting at a safe distance) when taking care of its own nest.
From a young octopus to be in the same enclosure as another octopus mean only two things: dinner or imminent and stressful risk of death. To suggest that this would put more emotion in its sad lifes is like suggesting to improve the life of a zebra putting a lion in the same enclosure to play.
> Such efforts are occurring despite the fact that octopus farming has the same environmental consequences as other types of carnivorous aquaculture.
Consequences that include for example more small fishes using the area as nursery and sanctuary because there are not trawls anymore in the area. Or most ship noise and human activity concentrated now in a single point of the coast. The author suggests that all consequences are bad for biodiversity but this is false. Some are bad and other positive. Biodiversity around tuna enclosures is surprisingly high for example.
> And, like other carnivorous aquaculture, octopus farming would increase, not alleviate, pressure on wild aquatic animals
Same product. Indistinguisable taste. Two different prices. What the people will buy?
Pressure will increase in the same way as having a cheap alternative of phone will made everybody buy only the model of my-phone encrusted with diamonds. Why to eat cheap and available sheep meat all the year, when you could sell your house and eat wild himalayan blue sheep meat (only in november) instead?
Nine of each 10 sea breams that you can eat in your restaurant are domesticated, and you can find gilthead sea bream all the months of the year now, in all restaurants, because this fact.
> Wrong, they are solitary animals. All of the species fished
I don't see how this is an inaccuracy in the article. The part just before your quote says octopus farming will be either uneconomical or we'll have to put each of them into a tiny solitary confinement cell, far from being species-appropriate. The article then leaves some escape hatch to be less absolutist, that you apparently didn't like. I don't see much of a problem with a sentence like that... after all, trained wolf's are used to guard sheep's. That comes quite close to your example.
There is not a "welfare problem" when a solitary species is keeping isolated, well feed, protected from predators and left alone in clean water. In the wild the same animal would look actively for tiny crevices and small spaces under the rocks to hide all day.
Their place can be adjusted to its size. Tiny animals can be very comfortable sitting in tiny cages with all their sides protected.
I think you've missed a step in the chain. If the octopus has to eat 3:1 of other fish, those fish probably had to eat a lot more stuff. It's at least 2 steps of concentration, not one step like rabbit etc.
The variable is not intended to measure that. In fact shouldn't be used to compare very different kind of species probably.
To produce a Kg of cow meat you'll need to provide about ``X'' Kg of cow food with an economic value of ``Y'' dollars. Is useful to do logistics and make a guess of what could be your benefits and loses. Is more about economy than about ecology or energy flux.
There are sustainable and unsustainable sources. The same is true of all seafood.
The life expectancy of octopus is generally between 3-5 years, some live as little as 6 months. The extent of their intelligence is unclear. At most we have evidence that they have the capacity for long and short term memory. Given the standard of intelligence for animals cultures otherwise consume, this doesn't seem remarkable at all. To chase the ethical argument to it's logical end, as one of intelligence is purported, the only ethical animal then to consume is a non-sentient one.
Hypothetically, it could get to the point where it is more ethical to eat meat than not to, ESPECIALLY if they are sentient in the way activists say they are.
Lets say aliens came and offered you a deal. You can either not exist or live a life of luxury with all delicious food and mates you want, then after 1000 years or so you'd peacefully pass away just like a natural death and you are informed that they'd eat your body. I'm pretty sure quite a few people would be open to this.The choice is even simpler with animals since from all evidence they lack the capacity for existential dread.
Now tell, me what would be the most moral choice assuming chickens are sentient? To indulge them to a pampered existence several times their natural lifespan...and yes, at the end disposing of their bodies in the most practical and beneficial way, its not like a chicken cares what happens to its mortal shell in whatever poultry afterlife may exist. Or leave chicken minds to the terror of being torn up by a fox in the wilderness or to never know the joys of existence in the paradise future ethical meat farms may offer?
I'm not quite sure which of the two you're suggesting we do now. They neither live in luxury nor their lifespan. Instead, they're basically tortured all their short life before we kill them.
You don't have to torture animals to eat them. Assuming advances in technology and energy we could get to the point where a hypothetical farmer could raise animals in luxury. As tech increases the luxury will increase. If animals are indeed sentient, farms would essentially transform into happiness factories generating and funneling new minds into earthly paradise.
If your ethical code is a variation of 'reducing pain and increasing pleasure for all sentient life' this would be orders of magnitude more good then the Peta option of turning them loose to die in the wild or never exist. It would be far more ethical than even artificial meat.
Heck from a strict cost/benefit analysis it may be one of the greatest moral triumphs mankind has ever given the universe.
Animals that have lived a full lifespan are not delicious to eat. Meat from old animals is tough and often contains tumors. So you're still stuck with killing them in early maturity.
As mentioned by zerofries, the only way this would happen is by consumer pressure. Otherwise there’s no way it would ever make sense to raise chickens in the way you’ve said. There’s not enough ROI on ensuring really happy chickens for anything other than boycotting normal chicken meat to make it probably. At least in the near future (next 100 years) I would say not existing is far preferable to the hell theyre put through in factory farming.
> Assuming advances in technology and energy we could get to the point where a hypothetical farmer could raise animals in luxury. As tech increases the luxury will increase.
Why would an industrial food processor care about how luxurious the sentient inventory finds the warehouse?
In the glorious future when we can synthesize all the delicious cruelty-free artificial meat we desire, should we nevertheless, on ethical grounds, farm chickens so that we can strap them into VR sims of a life of chicken-luxury?
Not VR, the chickens live a real life as fulfilled and self actualized as a chicken could be. At any rate it doesn't even really matter (from the chicken pov) whether its real or not because as I said, from all the available evidence chickens don't have the innate capacity for existential dread. A chicken doesn't and can't care what happens to it's corpse after its dead or the evolutionary arc of its species. The only ones who care are a few humans projecting anthropomorphic traits on to them.
I think you're on fairly complicated ground here, ethically speaking. This is not a question that ethicists have left unaddressed, and it requires a bit more thought than simply the "existence vs non-existence" dichotomy you've presented here. If you want to look into it further, I know Christine Korsgaard among others has discussed this exact question in her papers.
I'm in the middle of work and lost interest after doing a cursory dig through the links. If she actually has a counterargument you can boil down for me I'd be happy to consider it.
If some alien offers me this deal, I would rather not make a deal at all. I will fight and they have to kill me. But I will die knowing that I was free.
There is some chance that I will accept the deal, just to buy more time and find weaknesses in the aliens. Anyway, I would prefer to die free on my own, and I would prefer that my family gets to take my body and cremate it, or give it to earthly elements.
Not having been born is neutral from the position of the being not getting born. It is neither good nor bad, because the being does not exist.
If a woman dies, we don't feel sorrow for any children (or their children, or their children's children, etc, etc) that will never be born. I am not a murderer for denying life to the billions and billions of people that will not be born if I've chosen not to have kids. Neither am I a hero for saving billions and billions of people if I choose to have kids (and good God, make sure my kids have kids and their kids have kids, etc, etc).
The question just comes down to: is it OK to keep animals to be farmed and eaten. If the answer is "no", then you gain nothing by bringing new lives into the world to subject them to it. If the answer is "yes", then there isn't a dilemma.
Or maybe, by having kids you are subjecting yet another generation of creatures to the existential dread and guaranteed pain of their mortality and it is therefore an unethical thing to do?
I don't feel like any of these points of view actually anwser the question "is it better to not exist or to exist and suffer", they're just different ways of framing the question.
There is no position from the perspective of beings that don't exist, let alone a neutral one. It's always the beings that exist that make decisions, and it's always their perspective that counts.
Really, it doesn't matter if an animal that doesn't exist would 'prefer' to exist in suffering, because that's a purely counter-factual fantasy to begin with. All that matters is whether we should prefer such an animal to exist. Anyone who prefers they wouldn't based on vague moral arguments has to reconcile that with the fact that killing those animals for food is right in line with correcting the 'error' of their birth.
A better way to make the argument is to appeal to things we do actually care about in an ethically consistent manner: how inefficient and wasteful it is to raise animals for food. If you have something that is more efficient, tastes better, and is healthier, then it becomes harder to justify that waste, regardless of anyone's moral position on suffering. Anything else is just an reasonless appeal to emotion.
That is an interesting question - and I think the answer is "it depends very much on how you farm them," which is why I prefer to eat free-range chicken over factory farmed, and don't eat sentient animals / red meat at all - but thanks for your parenthetical, because yeah, we cannot do so yet with octopi.
If you were the animal in question, what would you think? I'd choose the latter, but your answer may differ. The answer may be different for animals that can conceive of the question than for those who can't, and that's probably a less decidable point.
It depends on what you mean by better. Is it better from the perspective of the universe? Or according to your individual personal guidelines that define "better"? Or better as how your society thinks it is? Or better as how Socrates would've define it?
Quite impossible to answer generic questions and better/worse without defining boundaries.
> given that octopuses are carnivorous and live on fish oils and protein, rearing them risks putting further pressure on an already over-exploited marine ecoystem.
Inherently it’s no less ethical for us to eat them than it is for them to eat fish. The conditions we keep them in and the impact on the wider environment is seperate
Did you intentionally remove the first part of the paragraph ? They are talking about the environmental impact of octopus farming which creates artificial strain on the environment.
> The amount of feed needed to sustain and grow an octpus is three times the weight of the animal itself and, given that octopuses are carnivorous and live on fish oils and protein, rearing them risks putting further pressure on an already over-exploited marine ecoystem.
The calories spent on raising and consuming animals higher in the food chain is exponentially more than consuming those lower in the food chain. This is the point they are trying to make. It wasnt about the ethics of eating Octopus itself, but the means in which they are being raised / procured.
> Did you intentionally remove the first part of the paragraph?
Yes, it seemed a little superfluous given the last third of the paragraph makes the point that farming them is putting undue stress (in comparison to alternative food sources) on the environment.
> They are talking about the environmental impact of octopus
They're talking about both the environmental impact and the ethics of carnivores.
> Farming octopuses is not only unethical but deeply damaging to the environment, scientists say.
>There is already a wealth of research that suggests octopuses are one of the most complex and intelligent animals in the ocean. They can recognise individual human faces, solve problems (and remember the answers for months) and there is some evidence they experience pain and suffering. Numerous videos on the internet of octopuses escaping from their tanks or stealing fishermen's catches have fuelled a human fascination with the only invertebrate that the 2012 Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness considers sentient alongside mammals and birds.
> Inherently it’s no less ethical for us to eat them than it is for them to eat fish
Ignoring the farming and catching practices used to get most octopuses from the sea to the plate, which most certainly are unethical since they are unnecessary and cruel, and only look at "eating another being", I still think you are missing the point that octopuses has to eat the fish to survive since they are mostly carnivore's and don't have modern farming practices and supermarkets available, whereas we are omnivores and have those things available where we can get all the things we need from non-animal products.
I say that makes a big difference between us and octopuses eating fish, not to mention the fact that as far as we know, octopuses are not capable of understanding ethics like us, which also makes a big difference (if it were unethical for the octopus to eat fish, which it isn't since it needs it to survive). Just like we don't blame a human baby for unethical behaviour, but still hold ourself up to ethical scrutiny.
We eat cows not wolves in large part because carnivores require vastly more land for the same protean. This argument is about efficiency, though we also eat carnivorous fish.
To simplify The amount of feed needed to sustain and grow an octpus is three times the weight of the animal itself where feed is delicious protein.
I'm with you, but it seems that the article & many in the comments are more concerned with the ethical implications of killing a thinking creature for sustenance than they are the environmental impacts of farming a carnivore.
Trust me. We, sea farmers, would love to breed only strictly herbivorous fishes. Would made our life much, much easier and exponentially increase the benefits. Feeding fishes is really expensive.
The small problem is that the taste of this fishes is plain awful and _nobody_wants_to_buy_it_.
There are plenty of cow breams in the wild, but you rarely will find it in your fish shop. And if you eventually find it, will be a really cheap product. Try it. Most people will not buy it twice.
Investors aren't stupid. They risk a lot of their money and put incredible efforts to breed carnivorous fishes for a logical reason. Everybody loves its taste and are willing to pay good money for it!.
So, in practice it’s more a question of feed stock ratios. Salmon for example can be fed a low percentage of soybeans to lower costs. However, as you can’t replace even 50% of the feed stock with plants the overall argument is still valid.
What makes you say it's a "one size fits all" solution? Should the author not write their own opinion from their own ethical context, but rather keep it to themselves, since other cultures might disagree?
The issue OP seems to have is that while “X damages the environment” is a claim that science is reasonably well equipped to answer, “X is unethical” is not.
While scientists claiming that farming octopuses is damaging to the environment falls within reasonable scope of their work and expertise, them claiming that it is unethical may not be so, yet the author is lumping both together in the same introductory sentence.
>Should the author not write their own opinion from their own ethical context, but rather keep it to themselves, since other cultures might disagree?
Yes.
At a minimum, they shouldn't state their "own opinion from their own ethical context" as some kind of universal fact: "it's not only deeply unethical (...) scientists say".
What earthly purpose would that serve? They're scientists; they subscribe to a moral system. Subscribing to an ethical system involves arguing it through rhetoric and reasoning. Scientists are only expected to be politically neutral; they're not Uatu the Watcher.
Don't the vast majority of people think there is a singular set of correct ethics? Why do you think otherwise?
The mere fact that there is wide disagreement about some ethical questions doesn't help the argument (as some people think), because there are all sorts of very controversial questions where it's still commonly accepted that these questions have a correct answer.
>Don't the vast majority of people think there is a singular set of correct ethics? Why do you think otherwise?
No, the vast majority of people don't think there's a singular set of correct ethics, and especially not one where "eating octopus is unethical" is a tenet.
> Don't the vast majority of people think there is a singular set of correct ethics?
I agree that maybe most people believe in objective morality, but moral relativism exists and I don't think that it's so unpopular that it's insignificant.
>What earthly purpose would that serve? They're scientists; they subscribe to a moral system.
The moral system is unrelated to their scientific advice.
It also doesn't cover the "don't eat X animals" part, as even for their society (e.g. USA) that's debatable ethically, and not something the generally acceptable moral system holds.
Well... ethics in the wild definitely does vary wildly by time, place and person. But, ethics in the wild usually gets applied to everyone too. When we think sexist legislation (say, women can't vote) is wrong, we usually think it's wrong for everyone and that the people/places that do it should stop.
Pluralism is unstoppable, but so is our instinct to create/defend/assemble a common ethic.
>When we think sexist legislation (say, women can't vote) is wrong, we usually think it's wrong for everyone and that the people/places that do it should stop.
Yes, but we ourselves think it -- e.g. we extend our ethics to everybody.
Others think such legislation is ethical, and consider us unethical, corrupt, etc (e.g. Saudi Arabia).
At some point, ethics comes down to "whose suffering/well-being do you prioritise when you're presented with a bunch of shitty options", and that's where everyone eventually disagrees.
I don't think this is actually true in the vast majority of day-to-day ethical decisions, although there are cases where it's certainly true.
I'm fairly confident that many more unethical actions, even subjectively defined (i.e. from each individual observer's pov), are the result of ignorance and apathy than actual differences of opinion regarding ethics.
Ethics isn't based on what causes suffering / well-being.
At best, it takes those things, along with many others, into account (and usually from the side of a specific community, not across the board).
Specific ethics have been adhered that caused tons of suffering to people (The Spanish Inquisition was a protector and enforcer of certain ethics, for example. Homophobia was also based on ethics, and when slavery was a thing in the US, it was totally compatible with the Southern ethics at the time -- you could be a well respected gentleman considered totally ethical and own 1000s of slaves -- that you also beat to work and so on).
|Ethics isn't based on what causes suffering / well-being.
Ehh, where we've landed in contemporary, normative-esque based ethics, it kind of is. Where you think ethics gets its imperative force depends largely (as you mentioned) on your community and environment. Western philosophy has however been shaped enough by utilitarianism, consequentialism, deontology, virtue ethics, etc., to the point that they all to a degree recognize suffering and/or the need to reduce it.
Peter Singer's summary of WH Leckly's 'ever expanding circle of responsibility' is a good example of this.
'"...Lecky wrote of human concern as an expanding circle which begins with the individual, then embraces the family and ‘soon the circle... includes first a class, then a nation, then a coalition of nations, then all humanity, and finally, its influence is felt in the dealings of man [sic] with the animal world."' -- https://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/199704--.htm
Singer suggests that "Our century is the first in which it has been possible to speak of global responsibility and a global community." If an ever expanding circle of responsibility includes reducing suffering on a global level-- and sentience being the compelling criteria that it is-- including animal suffering vs. human culinary pleasure/preference will definitely continue to be relevant in any ethical/philosophic discussions moving forward.
It's interesting that one of the logical ends to reducing suffering as much as possible ultimately leads to expanding the circle of responsibility to future generation and those not yet alive to even suffer. This is where environmentalism and regard for those ahead of our decisions comes into play.
Maybe you're right that ethics isn't entirely based on suffering / well-being, but that's largely where it is headed.
To say ethics are arbitrary is to say that there is no reasoning behind them, which is basically the opposite of what ethics truly are.
Ethics are commonly a "system of moral principles", said system and principles being the reasoning behind ethics.
I'm assuming what you are trying to say is that "ethics are not absolute", which has strong arguments; however, I think the critique of the use of "unethical" is partially in agreement with my assumption of your first point ("ethics are not absolute").
Assuming ethics are not absolute, then labeling something as unethical in a blanket statement would not always hold true.
I would suggest simply prefacing the statement with "I/many believe" would sit more comfortably.
Well, I'd say adjusted/evolved culturally/historically to help steer communities, improve/constrain certain societal aspects, but yes, it's not like they are physical laws.
I’m more worried about the genocide of species via chemical and plastic contamination. There are apparently rivers so flooded with estrogenics that fish can’t reproduce at a replacement rate, and need to be re-stocked by fish farms. This is not sustainable.
I eat Octopus because they are delicious, not because I think they are dumb. I know they are very smart, but this fact doesn’t makes them less delicious to me. Also, the fact that I —and millions of other people— don’t feel any affection towards these cephalopods makes the argument of “farming octopuses is unethical […]” less agreeable.
Many people in America eat cows, while they are considered sacred in Hinduism.
> […] Numerous videos on the internet of octopuses escaping from their tanks or stealing fishermen's catches have fuelled a human fascination with the only invertebrate that the 2012 Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness considers sentient alongside mammals and birds.
Mammals and birds, I hope everyone read that.
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People are going against my comment thinking I am on the wrong side of the argument. And I feel like explaining my point of view even further will just increase the anger in the people that already expressed their counter arguments below. We will see if the public agrees with the thesis in this article and changes their eating habits to protect one of the hundreds of animals that are also considered sentient.
> I know they are very smart, but this fact doesn’t makes them less delicious to me.
There are lots of experiences that feel "delicious," but that doesn't make it moral to rip that experience for yourself out of the flesh of a sentient being. Maybe you consider cephalopods potentially sentient or maybe you don't, but the argument is "It's immoral to eat them because they can have thoughts and an internal experience, just like us," and "But they taste good" is not a counterargument.
> and millions of other people
That is also not any kind of an ethical defense of one's behavior.
> don’t feel any affection towards these cephalopods makes the argument of “farming octopuses is unethical […]” less agreeable.
One thing about logical reasoning - it doesn't really matter how "agreeable" its conclusion feels.
> "It's immoral to eat them because they can have thoughts and an internal experience, just like us," and "But they taste good" is not a counterargument.
There is an implied "We are on top of the food chain" along with "they taste good".
There is some legitimacy to the idea that we should eat whatever we please because we are the apex predator. Ultimately market forces should align the price to equal the cost of framing / hunting. Additionally we have huge ethical problems in how humans treat each other we should work on before even worrying about an invertebrate's problems.
I don't actually hold those worldviews, but they are implied with the sentence "but they taste good"
> Additionally we have huge ethical problems in how humans treat each other we should work on before even worrying about an invertebrate's problems.
The deep patterns of thinking underlying the mistreatment of humans and the mistreatment of other animals are the same to a large extent. It just needs contemplation to get to that.
> There is some legitimacy to the idea that we should eat whatever we please because we are the apex predator.
Many men are strong enough to forcibly overpower many women and therefore there is some legitimacy to the idea that they should rape whoever they please.
Regarding the bit about "millions of other people", it's not an entirely unfounded argument. We are social beings and the vast majority of our behavior is driven by leaning on the thoughts and experiences and pressures of others. It is impossible for an individual to logically reason about everything, and even if it were, it's a bit self centered to always consider your own reasoning to be supreme and that anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool. Unfortunately politicians and marketers take advantage of this social dynamic to mislead people but that doesn't mean that the wisdom of the group should be entirely thrown out.
To be specific to this particular issue, an example narrative to counter yours would be that the view of a single life and suffering is not taking into context the greater cycle of life in which we will be eaten by bacteria and in which a Jainist might find being eaten by a tiger a beautiful thing. We are base primates and are not so separate from the ecosystem and our drives as we'd like to believe. Now this is just an example of a reasoned counter argument that could possible underlie the collective subconsciously of the "millions", and isn't necessarily my own reasoning.
No it does not make more agreeable. We had slavery back in the day, in some instances we still have it, but just because we have enough ppl doing something does not make it more “agreeable”. Ethics is not something dictated by a number of ppl sharing a belief.
My argument is that a higher number of believers doesn’t make something more ethically correct.
My personal belief is that we have a responsibility for all species on our planet (as the most intelligent, evolved, smart, etc of them). Even if everyone believes except 1 person that does not make their argument less or our argument more valid. Purely from an ethical perspective.
I understand your perspective, but as the GP said, ethics is exactly whatever the collective Haas decided it is. Unless we're involving God or some kind of external divine guidelines on ethics, it's pretty much something we've collectively agreed to.
Let's at least be honest about our moral/ethical frameworks. They are useful for social cohesiveness, peace and order. But they're still just made up.
> I understand your perspective, but as the GP said, ethics is exactly whatever the collective Haas decided it is. Unless we're involving God or some kind of external divine guidelines on ethics, it's pretty much something we've collectively agreed to.
I don't have time for a complete response, but as an expert in this field (ethics) I feel compelled to let you know that nearly every professional philosopher (particularly in ethics) disagrees with this position.
Ethics is not simply whatever the majority says it is. You're not going to get anyone in ethics (including those who think ethics are in some sense "made up") to sign off on that.
> that nearly every professional philosopher (particularly in ethics) disagrees with this position.
So you are (at least partially) defining ethics by the consensus of people (in your case professional philosophers).
Even in pure mathematics, which is considered to be among the most rigorous of fields, a whole lot depends on consensus about axioms and consensus about what is a valid proof.
Yes, I agree there are logical principles for determining ethical actions given a set of ethical axioms, but however, the ethical axioms themselves, and indeed the logical principles, are determined by consensus.
> So you are (at least partially) defining ethics by the consensus of people (in your case professional philosophers).
I am not. I'm saying that people on HN make some very hasty assumptions about ethics (e.g. the claim made in the parent comment) that ethicists broadly agree are deeply misguided. I'm hoping to encourage a little more caution. Ethics are not defined by what professional philosophers agree on, but professional philosophers are in a good position to point out when lay comments are making simple mistakes in their reasoning. This is such a case.
I dont care who or what is dictating them, as long as they are consistent. If someone is making the claim that it is OK to eat anything as long as they are delicious, I want to know what their stand on cannibalism is.
How about if someone makes the claim that their ethical framework is to try to maximize pleasure and minimize suffering for humans. Therefore since eating delicious animals brings pleasure to many humans, and does not cause suffering for humans, it is a good thing.
I think then the discussion would be around why only minimizing suffering for humans. If minimizing suffering is a good thing, why is there not also value in minimizing suffering for all beings that can suffer?
Of course that becomes wrong if many humans embrace the idea that minimizing suffering for animals is a good thing. At that point you would also be increasing the humans' "moral/ethical pleasure" in a kind of self fulfilling way. But there's no reason for this to happen except human hubris.
My ethical framework is ethical egoism. Therefore I consider eating octopus is good but cannibalism is bad. Because cannibalism, even if it delicious, is not practical, and maybe illegal thus will cause me trouble.
Right, and that choice of axiom is how two reasonable people can come to wildly different conclusions about a subject even after spending time resolving reconcilable differences.
But empirically speaking, almost all people would agree at a high-level that minimizing suffering is an agreeable axiom.
>almost all people would agree at a high-level that minimizing suffering is an agreeable axiom
Yes, they would, but there is a weighting based on the perceived status of the animal. Otherwise we would feel compelled to destroy all carnivores, since a single carnivore can kill many, many prey throughout its lifetime. We agree that the utility a lion gets from eating a dozen zebras is greater than the suffering of those zebras. Also, note that predators, do not just kill strictly what they need for food(biggest example is housecats, though other examples include wolves killing elk
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/03/160325-wolf-...).
Similarly, humans have a weighting function. Many people think that the utility/pleasure that a human gets from eating octopuses is greater than the suffering of those octopuses.
So if one morality position is animal suffering = bad then rather than arguing using animal well being/suffering, they should instead for example promote artificial meat that look and taste exactly like octopus. That I believe would be more effective approach.
Morals are not decided by a democratic majority. Nor do ethical beliefs need to stem from a higher authority. You can have consistent principles independent of either.
Moral are decided by the whoever can force other (persuasively or physically) to conform to their morality. Democratic majority often get to decided the morality because there is strength in numbers.
Nope, that's a false dichotomy. The ethical system you're proposing signs off on cannibalism of 49% of people as long as 51% of people click their heels together and really wish that cannibalism were ethical...
> not necessarily an ethical issue, but more a social norms issue.
I'm not convinced these two things are mutually exclusive. I'd even guess that social norms are most often spurred to change by people who start the conversation about the flawed "ethics" of a given social norm.
I eat Children because they are delicious, not because I think they are dumb. I know they are very smart, but this fact doesn’t makes them less delicious to me. Also, the fact that I —and millions of other people— don’t feel any affection towards these small humans makes the argument of “farming children is unethical […]” less agreeable.
Many people in America eat cows, while they are considered sacred in Hinduism.
> […] Numerous videos on the internet of children escaping from their cells or stealing guards lunches have fuelled a human fascination with the only subset of people that the 2012 Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness considers sentient alongside mammals and birds.
Mammals and birds, I hope everyone read that.
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People are going against my comment thinking I am on the wrong side of the argument. And I feel like explaining my point of view even further will just increase the anger in the people that already expressed their counter arguments below. We will see if the public agrees with the thesis in this article and changes their eating habits to protect one of the hundreds of animals that are also considered sentient.
It's amazing to me that people can make the argument that it's not right to eat something based on intelligence. We should give extra care to less intelligent feeling beings, not less.
as the article points out with intelligence usually comes complex social behaviour, which makes it much more stressful for those animals to be kept in captivity and under mass farming conditions.
The same doesn't necessarily apply to less intelligent animals which might be perfectly fine with their captive conditions and don't requrie as much attention, so I think the argument is perfectly defensible.
I don't think we should farm them due to their intelligence, but I do eat wild octopi because of their intelligence. Octopi are serious dicks, so for every one eat, I'm saving hundreds or thousands of other animals from their abuse.
I’ve always found the intelligence criteria for eating for not eating animals stupid (because I never thought of intelligence having relevance to ability to suffer) but the social metric is an interesting way of looking at it. I don’t think you can call socialness of a species something so related to the intelligence though, there are highly solitary species that are still very intelligent. Being kept in captivity would still be suffering for them, just for different reasons. I think the suffering of all animals matters but if I had to say between animals which one’s matters more I’m not sure I would differentiate by more than lifespan.
The title is misleading here. The article linked to (and the paper it references) is talking about farming octopus specifically, not eating it in general. In fact, the paper specifically states, "Given their exceptional abilities, one might ask whether humans should be eating octopus at all, but here we want to raise a different ethical question."
We should move towards killing less animal, not more. Meat is necessary but killing highly intelligent animals is not. If anything we should find a way to create animals with no conscience/intelligence. A slightly sci-fi scenario for now, but better than eating creatures that are as smart as octopuses.
From utilitarianism perspective definitely. It just depends how much you weight your happiness from eating it versus animal's suffering as lower organism.
Ignoring stupid arguments is a far better strategy. I'm replying because I don't think you're stupid, so I hope you see the wisdom of ignoring over engaging.
Or, to steal a quote (paraphrase really): never get in an argument with an idiot, he will drag you down to his level and then beat you by virtue of experience.
I wonder if since we really only eat the tentacles, which have regenerative abilites, maybe they're easier to grow in the lab than beef or something.
Like, I get the argument that the authors (who are largely white and probably didn't grow up eating cephalopods unlike in other cultures; honestly the article is a bit tone-deaf in this respect) don't care for the loss of eating octopus but their argument that this is unsustainable and counterproductive is based on assuming current levels of biotechnology. Canada has already permitted GMO salmon, and Canadian consumers seem to have have forgotten about that.
There is no single sentence right in your comment.
Your comment is so judgmental and racial biased that can only be called racist. In addition you make several race identity assumptions on the authors and food and cultures based on mere prejudices.
By the way white cultures (whatever you imagine here because there is no such thing) also have cephalopod and seafood and roots or fermented foods. And not even just occasional. And even if there weren’t it would still not invalidate the article since in the current age we eat an incredible diverse diet.
It's a good argument for eating less meat overall, one vegetarians seem to never make. In a world full of unprecedented levels of relatively new toxic compounds, eating less meat is a good defensive move, especially so if you have health problems.
I'm really picky about meat quality. In situations where my choice is something with low quality/highly questionable meat or a vegetarian option, I typically go with the vegetarian option.
Though be forewarned: It's a dietary path that gets you equally harassed by vegetarians and the meat-and-potatoes crowd, which can be incredibly aggravating and feel like the harassment is unceasing.