- cross-posted to:
- cyanideandhappiness@lemm.ee
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Crazy that some seem to suggest you can’t care about whales heading towards extinction without being a level 6 Vegan.
Yup. I’m very opposed to whaling - they’re magnificent creatures - but I’m not giving up my hamburger any time soon.
It’s for scientific research though.
Those Japanese bruh they savage.
Hahahahahhahah look bruh we are all gonna die in a nuclear war so justice will be served…omgawd this is hilarious
If there were fish artists, do you think they would draw depressing pictures of whales obliterating entire colonies just to feed themselves, or humans doing the same for entire ecosystems?
I’m all for taking better care of our ecosystems, but let’s face it, a lot of animals are assholes whose lives literally depends on preying on other animals. I also don’t like to hear plants scream: https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/24473/20191218/a-group-of-scientists-suggest-that-plants-feel-pain.htm
Here’s the difference: humans are unique in our understanding of these systems and have the empathy and ability to make better choices.
I wouldn’t expect a whale to track the ethical and environmental impacts of its pod’s consumption, not because it shouldn’t, but because it literally does not have the intellectual capacity to do so.
The environment has been shaped by countless extinctions over millennia. The environment does not need white knights, it simply is. Another entirely is what we would like it to be. A whale “tracking the ethical and environmental impacts of its pod’s consumption” would be at a competitive disadvantage to those who don’t. specially given that they are carnivores who don’t have the privilege of omnivore white knighting. Not eating meat is them dying en masse unless one of them is able to survive off of plants somehow, if at all. Bulls will skewer anyone who go near their territory, and they are herbivores, nature does not share your concerns not because of intellectual capacity but because they don’t need to.
We can track the ethical and environmental impacts, but we only do so within our own perspective. It is a trait of any animal to show empathy for that which they do care about, and ignorance and even disdain for that which they do not. People who care about the feelings of animals, feelings they do have, do so because they have the luxury of not becoming fodder. Not only people, but animals in captivity who are fed and need not worry about where their food or if they are food have been shown to express this notion as well.
Life exists to survive. Don’t think your ethical and environmental concerns will afford you likewise considerations from other animals, from humans to whales alike. Just because you feel and because they feel does not mean they will care. You pick your fights, you want to care about whales, you might end up caring too much about everything before ever finding yourself getting kicked to the ground because of a dystopian hellscape that was too out of focus for you coming from your own species. Will you ask if the concerns you chose to erect walls around helped you out then?
Our ecosystems are doomed to change just as we are, but we should not accelerate their change unless we are ready to change ourselves. Unfortunately, the entire ocean is changing now, and if anything major governments driven by profits have made sure we are not ready to change. F-ing whaling is the least of my worries nowadays because so much more has become concerning.
If you eat basically any form of meat, I have some bad news for you…
I do give deer hunting a pass because they’re overpopulated in places (because humans wiped out their native predators).
Feel free to try and change my mind so I can wipe that off my ever-shrinking personal “ethically ok to eat meats” list. For all I know this is one of those lies I was raised with that I’ve not examined since childhood. Edit: context is in Kentucky, USA 20 years ago. I don’t know about deer populations elsewhere and elsewhen.
Former vegan, current pescatarian here.
Dont stop hunting, please. Humans did a phenomenal job of ensuring a required hunting season for deer by wiping out all the natural predators, now without them we have to have culls. If you participate in said culls, PLEASE eat the meat, use the pelt, give the antlers to your dog. We’ve forced ourselves into a position where some of us MUST take up the mantle of predator. If you choose to, just be responsible with the carcass so it didn’t die for no good reason.
Edit: accidentally lied, I’m not a vegetarian I’m a pescatarian who outside of her 6 shrimp a week is vegan.
To add a wrinkle: there’s now “farmed deer”. It’s supposedly more environmentally friendly than farmed cow, but I don’t like it because •vague feelings I’ve not fully examined•.
So don’t assume any venison you find in the grocery store was hunted.
Vague feelings? I think your feelings are pretty spot-on, farming an animal whose population is already excessive in the wild is bizarre.
Wild deer are more environmentally friendly than farmed deer.
The feelings are vague because I can’t put them confidently into words, but your explanation resonates.
Wow, thanks, I hate it!
Farmed cervids are why CWD (Chronic Wasting Disease) is a thing. It’s a prion disease. Farmed venison has a high probability of being CWD positive.
It’s called a high fence operation. Rich fucks actually pay for a canned hunt inside the fence so they get a big antlered wall hanger.
Myself and my family like to eat does. Curbs population faster and tends to be better meat. We live in a county that is overpopulated with white tail.
sorry but former vegan? what happened?
Stopped eating a vegan diet I would imagine
yea I figured thanks for the insight lol
I opened up my diet to the occasional fish (scrimps) because I hadn’t managed to force enough flax into my diet to have all the omegas I need.
are there supplements that could achieve the same?
Probably? Idk I’ve never managed to remember to take supplements, I’ve got some gnarly adhd. I’ve been working on the same bottle of Vitamins for like 6 years, YaKnow?
So like, yeah I’m sure there’s a supplement, but I also don’t think it’s that big a deal to eat 6 oceanic mud bugs a week.
(For reference the reason I ever went vegan at all was in response to driving past an overcrowded slaughterhouse and seeking the conditions the animals were kept in, it was horrific. I avoid farmed animal products like the plague, and I try to be responsible in the amount of hunted animal products I use, like I said, just 6 scrimps a week.
Makes sense. Taking supplements is hard. My doctor wants me taking krill oil for the omegas and it’s 1. hard to find any that doesn’t come in cow (or mystery) gelatin and 2. hard to actually take the things.
My B12 is a tad easier because it tastes like candy and is fun to melt under the tongue, but I still don’t take it regularly.
This applies boars as well
Only time I’ve eaten meat in the past ~30 years was when I ate some invasive fish that had been caught in a killathon to restore native habitat. Not that it’s my role to “give you a pass,” but I certainly do in this case!
Apparently there’s spear fisherfolk in Florida that kill invasive lionfish and provide them to local restaurants. I’m all for killing and eating invasive species.
That’s exactly what I ate :)
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Pretty sure you can hunt nursing deer in most places.
Edit: can’t! You can’t hunt while the babies are babies.
The hunting season is timed such that most fans are weaned before un-antlered adults may be shot. Source: Kentucky department of fish & wildlife summer camp in the 90s. Unfortunately, deer aren’t always born or weaned according to statistics, but the law tries to prevent it.
This article on the ethics of shooting a doe with fawn from the hunter’s view corroborates this. CW: bloodless photo of a dead deer
CAN’T!
Ducking autocarrot.
But I think fin whales nurse for 2+ years making seasons a bit tricky (with some of the big whales the bulls have a quite ungentlemanly behaviour towards calfs iirc).
No worries! Sometimes the fingers don’t type what the brain wants them to, and then the eyes skip the typo when you proofread. Thanks for clarifying 💜
Yeah, and now my new comment about bull whales is a bit of a non sequiturs. I’m just tired man.
There’s whale meat in my steak!?
Whales are the farmers of the sea. They fertilize the open oceans and produce more food than they eat. Especially the biggest ones, like the fin whales Japan has decided to hunt again. So if you like sea food, maybe don’t kill the whales.
I get your point, but let’s not compare them to one of the biggest polluters in the world. Farmers fucking destroy our planet.
Tried making a joke here before reading more about it and now I regret the joke so I edited this out.
The human experience is built on cruelty.
The human experience is built on cruelty.
Well, almost. The human experience of the imperial core is built on cruelty. I’m pretty sure the Native Americans weren’t slaughtering animals on an industrial scale.
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✍︎ arscyni.cc: modernity ∝ nature.Depending on which Native Americans we’re taking about, some of them drove entire herds of bison over cliffs. Our European ancestors hunted the mastodon to extinction, I think? In Australia and New Zealand a bunch of reptiles and the moa birds were wiped out by humans.
I don’t think most humans are ever thinking about genocide exactly (probably some are/were), but that they’re focused on feeding and defending their communities and not considering the balance of the ecosystem.
It’s okay, it’s for scientific research !
I know it’s not, it’s just the garbage excuse they’ve been using for decades
This is why “/s” exists
Used to be there, now I just keep sharing the above link 🤷♂️
Poor whales. It’s better to eat the children, that’s why civilized people eat lamb and chicken.
I don’t mean to be that guy but, whales are delicious. And you get approx 3500kg of meat (low estimate) from a minke whale, whereas you’ll get about 75kg from a commercially farmed pig. Meaning you have to kill 46 pigs to get the same amount of meat as 1 whale.
Both pigs and whales are intelligent and emotionally developed animals. Whales live free and normal lives up until the point of their harpooning, whereas pigs are kept in filthy overcrowded conditions and kept alive with antibiotics because they wouldn’t last long without them. They are of course eventually killed, but unlike cattle they don’t get a quick death from a bolt gun to the head. No pigs are asphyxiated with carbon dioxide. They spend the last moments of their tortured existence choking to death.
That doesn’t take into account the massive environmental impact of large pig farms. Because pigs eat more nitrogen rich food than other farm animals, their feces leads to over nitrification of anything downstream and eutrophication of waterways.
So if you are sitting there chomping a bacon sandwich and bitching and moaning about whaling, take a long hard look in the mirror, because the pig farming you support is immeasurably worse both ethically and environmentally.
I don’t have a problem with fishing, but shouldn’t catches be monitored and tracked to ensure we don’t catch things that are endangered? This can mean switching the things we catch from time to time as fishing stocks change.
Also regulations being more harsh on recreational fishers than commercial ones is kinda bullshit. Why are massive trawlers held to a lower standard than a guy with a rod in his hand trying to catch his own dinner? That one varies heavily by location though. Where I live is generally pretty good, if I go 50 miles east its extremely restrictive.
Quick edit: Saw your other post that minke whale isn’t endangered. Good to know. Yeah as long as they are following that I don’t really care.
I get the point you’re trying to make but if people ate whale the same way we ate pig the entire ocean ecosystem would have collapsed by now.
Not to mention almost all whale species are on their way to being endangered right now, while factory farmed pigs aren’t.
Maybe just go with the line all meat is murder rather bacon is worse then whale flesh lmao.
We did almost hunt whales to extinction, but it wasn’t meat we were hunting for, it was their oily fat.
Exactly, most people don’t actually like it that much.
I don’t have a problem with people eating meat. I eat meat. I just don’t like the way it’s farmed what I’d propose is a largely vegetarian diet punctuated by fish or wild meat every so often. Like fish twice a week and venison on Sunday or something. As for whale, it’s not really commonly eaten in many places and as long as people don’t take too many, it’s not necessarily a bad thing.
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I don’t think harm free cultured meat exists yet.
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And where does it say this is harm-free? This requires a biopsy on the animal, which is inherently not harm-free.
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It’s amazing that you can type out that novel and not once realize that whales are going towards extinction.
Probably because they were busy hunting the other ones…
Mink whales are not the only whales. But good on you for finding one that isn’t yet critically endangered
Where I am it’s the only whale species that’s legal to hunt and there are strict quotas.
I don’t eat pork, really.
But it’s not because I considered pigs that smart, it’s just a cruel practice, industrial farming. I’m fine with them being farmed if there’s proper regulation.
I do eat deer, horse and reindeer among other things as well. Less so beef, or try to at least.
So I guess if you’re talking about the whaling of the common minke whale which isn’t a threatened species at the moment, and I’d look into the regulation and practices, I guess I’d be fine with eating some.
Although I would still attribute vastly higher intelligence to whales than deer and pigs. I mean, it’s hard to measure, but pigs eat their own babies which they kill by accident. That’s why they have like a dozen. And prey animals like deer are usually kinda frantic and not seemingly that smart.
Whereas whales, we don’t even know how intelligent they are, but some species are definitely super intelligent and the communication they use is complex af.
Still, can’t say you’re wrong in your points, as I often make the same points for deer, but they breed kinda lot and they honestly have to be kept in check so they don’t ruin environments whereas I’m pretty sure whales aren’t considered pests anywhere? I mean, I’m not at all sure, but I am guessing. There’s those ship destroying ones, but that seems targeted against humans and not them generally destroying their environment.
Don’t feel so bad for the whales … we do the same to human beings too
Somewhere deeply submerged inside your comment swims a yo momma joke.
I harpooned his mama 3 times just last week.
Somewhere deeply submerged inside your momma swims the semen of 4 separate unemployed alcoholics.
*seamen
Sea-ciety
We do the same to everything. Man, humanity suck.
