Fsh diet V plant based diet?

[silva]

I don't see the big issue as being animals lost to farming. I understand eating plants requires more volume on the people side of eating, but eating animals require more deaths on the animal feed side. Even when you argue animals can graze, they require constant rotations of growth. If you argue for free range, pasture grazing, you need to equate that side with a comparable produce farming, which could as easily be verticle growth, home gardens, or greenhouses.
Actually, it isn't farming that impacts animals as much as the decimation of their homes and food sources. Know what is a huge impact? Animal farming as well as factories that produce products for new technology

Humans are the only animals that have sought to live outside of the natural world in a world of their own creation
I remember when I first went vegan with the thought that everyone should turn vegan. I then realized it was going against nature that is the main cause for people to become vegan.
Sure, there are places where eating only plants could be the default, but those who choose to live in the woods, build there houses, plant their gardens, and live amongst the animals. I know many who have grown up hunting and fishing, and would defend their love of animals and nature as deeper than most vegans I'd ever known-because they know their lives. they know their families, their foods, where they drink, where they sleep, the old and the young. they hunt them with intent, in the way animals hunt. they have spent more time ensuring the animal families prosperity far more than they do hunting them for food

I have no need to hunt--no one in my city in the US does. We are fat, exercise intentionally, and a vegan diet is by far the best for our health and environment.

While I don't have too much of an opinion on eating eggs, I don't believe the eggs that replace beans or grains are saving any more lives than if you declined

 

[Graeme M]

I remember when I first went vegan with the thought that everyone should turn vegan. I then realized it was going against nature that is the main cause for people to become vegan.
Sure, there are places where eating only plants could be the default, but those who choose to live in the woods, build there houses, plant their gardens, and live amongst the animals. I know many who have grown up hunting and fishing, and would defend their love of animals and nature as deeper than most vegans I'd ever known-because they know their lives. they know their families, their foods, where they drink, where they sleep, the old and the young. they hunt them with intent, in the way animals hunt. they have spent more time ensuring the animal families prosperity far more than they do hunting them for food

I hope I'm not misunderstanding what you are saying here. I think you are saying the same thing I believe, which is that veganism is a response to our modern condition. Ancient hunter/gatherers were essentially vegan, and a more honest veganism than most of us today. Of course they didn't know about veganism because it was unnecessary, whereas veganism today is trying to restore something of the balance of those times. We can't go back to that way of living now, but we *can* try to restore some balance. And I don't think hunting for food is wrong. thought of in that context.

Although this thread is about fish, I tend to think that eating eggs should "save" more lives than eating beans/grains, IF someone is getting them for free from non-commercial sources. Whether that means anything or not, who knows...

 

[silva]

I hope I'm not misunderstanding what you are saying here. I think you are saying the same thing I believe, which is that veganism is a response to our modern condition. Ancient hunter/gatherers were essentially vegan, and a more honest veganism than most of us today. Of course they didn't know about veganism because it was unnecessary, whereas veganism today is trying to restore something of the balance of those times. We can't go back to that way of living now, but we *can* try to restore some balance. And I don't think hunting for food is wrong. thought of in that context.

Although this thread is about fish, I tend to think that eating eggs should "save" more lives than eating beans/grains, IF someone is getting them for free from non-commercial sources. Whether that means anything or not, who knows...

I do agree that we should evolve as vegans. Those who argue that our ancestors were meat eaters, therefore we should continue, never seen to advocate living in caves, taking turns watching for predators, without heating or cooling, or any means of transport!

What I disagree with you on is accepting animal products in a belief that they assuage some aspect of accidental deaths. How is trading a half cup of cooked beans less ethical than your friends hens eggs? If that's your MO why not roadkill?

 

[Graeme M]

What I disagree with you on is accepting animal products in a belief that they assuage some aspect of accidental deaths. How is trading a half cup of cooked beans less ethical than your friends hens eggs? If that's your MO why not roadkill?

Sure, roadkill would be fine ethically, I'm just not that keen on eating an animal that's been killed on the roads. Besides, all I'd find around here would be kangaroos and wombats. Probably good eating but I'm too squeamish and I suspect there are laws against it anyway. The road toll on native wildlife here is often awful to contemplate.

My view about the eggs - and self-caught fish - is that if it helps to offset demand for crops then that's a good thing. I don't think growing crops is good at all. Yes, a vegan world might reduce the scale of crops, though I'm not sure it would by much, but that still leaves a lot of the world covered in plants that prevent native animals from flourishing. As to the deaths in croplands, it's mostly the pests that are the concern. An awful lot of all sorts of animals are killed and it's hard to see why this is not more of a concern for vegans. We should be at least as concerned by that as animal farming, and MORE concerned about that than some forms of animal farming.

But here's the calculation for the eggs I am given. Zero deaths (OK, not quite because I kill insects driving the 1.5 hours to get them). Plant foods I buy instead would require some non-zero number of animals to be killed.

 

[Deleted member 20918]

Other animals are not people....

Other animals are not people. If we were to address every matter of animal harm and use in exactly the same way we do with people we would very soon have quite a mess. Whether we are vegan or not, we kill animals and treat them unfairly in huge numbers every day, something we don't so with people. So yours is something of an irrational analogy. It cannot possibly guide us sensibly.

How can you say it's not a good analogy. It shows the difference between the killings. Is accidentally running over a dog with a car the same as intentionally killing it after several days of planning? In both the instance the dog is killed. Are they the same? Even in legal terms the first is an accident while the second is animal cruelty. Just because animals die in different circumstances doesn't make them all equal morally.

OK. I agree. But where do YOU draw the line? Fish are lower in the sentience hierarchy than cows.

The line is drawn at the moving away from the idea that animals are food, least intentional killing, most efficient, least harm, and least ecosystem area disruption, of food production.

I think now you are not making rational statements. Do you really want to argue that cropping - especially the crops we need to grow to feed people a vegan-friendly diet - are biodiverse ecosystems in balance, minimising ecosystem disruption?

Yes they are the least in terms of ecosystem distruption per square area. The amount of food grown in a small area dwarfs the amount of sea you need to cover to catch fish. You are messing up a larger area of ecosystem if you are fishing.

I know you exclude insects, but if we accept insects are animals and they are killed to grow crops, then no - the number of animals killed to grow crops absolutely dwarfs the number of fish killed. However, I am not defending commercial fishing. It's a very bad thing. In the context of the OP's question, if all we were worried about is the scale of killing animals then I have no idea which is better - eat commercially caught fish or commercially grown crops. Both also come with broad related harms. I think on balance from what little I know that commercial fishing is a lot worse though.

Crop farms
#Smaller area of human induced distruption/destruction
#Efficient food generation per square area
#Lesser number of higher sentient animals(boars, rats etc) killed as side effect of protecting the crops. Can be addressed by farm regulations.
#Large number of lower sentient animals(insects) killed as side effect of protecting the crops. Can be addressed by farm regulations.
#The psychological impact. Would take the human appetite away from flesh and into less cruel plant based food. Would make the thought grow that animals aren't food.



Fishing
#Very large area of marine ecosystem getting disrupted by human activity.
#Inefficient food catch/generation per square area.
#Medium sentient animals(fish) killed in large numbers, as the PRIMARY INTENT of killing them and eating them.
#Other higher, medium and lower sentient animals killed due to ecosystem distruption.
#Would de-sensitise humans seeing dead animals on their plate. Not the way forward.

I think Silva is right, at least while few people in the West hunt their own food. Particularly if hunters are helping manage ecosystems by hunting feral/introduced species.

The main invasive species here is the hunter. It's bad enough the ecosystem is rebalancing itself with new species being introduced, but to correct it by doing another bad thing, that is killing it is cruel, and on top of calling it 'caring for the animals' is rubbing salt on the. wound. It's not the fault of the animals which were introduced by humans in those ecosystems. If you really don't want the ecosystem rebalancing and want things to return back to the way they were, then trap them and move them away, or do a trap-neuter-release. This is the reason why humans should allocate a set land for themselves and stay there, and not intrude into others ecosystems, like going out into the sea, catching fish, and messing the marine ecosystem up.

 

[FredVegrox]

Crops providing the only food for all people in the planet would take significantly less land, water, and resources. That information is easily found. There is the problem with human people still even in that case. The human population will still grow with all being fed, and then more land will still be taken for more crops and the population will keep growing. We do not have a great solution but we will need a way for human population to not keep growing, it is already far past what the world would naturally sustain. It would be better for the human population to decrease, but I do not mean eugenics or ethnic cleansing. The western culture we are in is being unsustainable far further.

 

[Graeme M]

I am doubtful that a crops only agriculture would require less land, especially as population increases. Something that I don't see mentioned when people talk about the amount of land needed is that most such estimates appear not to consider pet food or how to deal with crop losses. Most crop farms do not always produce maximum yields - crops often fail or don't make food grade. The livestock feed market gives farmers a buffer in that they can afford to take the risk of planting because even if crop yields are poor they can sell to feed. In conversation with some farmers recently, we concluded that it's likely we'd really need about 1.6 times the area estimated, if losses aren't factored in (and it doesn't look like they are). That suggests we'd exceed the easily cultivated arable land available.

 

[ThomasBrown123]

I dont think people understand the OP's point critically enough. I am a vegan for a while and is also struggling with this issue. This problem is worth discussing, because it is simple math.
The amount of fish we get from the fishing industry is ard a trillion, or 10^12. The amount of farm animals we kill from the meat and animal product industry is ard 100 billion, or 10^11. The amount of land animals killed accidentially and pests killed DELIBERATELY by pesticides is a billion for land animals and HUNDRED TRILLION to TEN QUADRILLION for pests, or 10^14 to 10^16. Lets say it causes 10^14 pests killed for the sake of being generous. If you account for the farm land required to feed farm animals livestock, 80% to farm land animals, 10% to aquaculture farms (I dont have data for this so Im being generous), and 10% to human consumption, then the numbers becomes
seafood: 10^12 + 0.1 (10^14) ~1.1*10^13 killed
farm animals: 10^11 +0.8(10^14) ~ 1*10^14 killed
plant based living: 10^9 +0.1(10^14) ~10^13 killed
by looking at these numbers, yes if you live in a country where you dont know if your fishes are farmed or not, then statistically speaking, plant based living is still the most ethical. But if you live in a country where you know for sure that all fish are caught and not farmed, it is mathematically more ethical to eat fish than plants.
People say "oh plant farming has no intention to kill pests". You gotta understand then, how large ten QUADRILLION is. Would you rather purposefully kill a single child, or accidentially kill 100 children? Which one of them lands you a larger prison sentence? And we dont accidentially kill pests, we deliberately add pesticides to kill pests. Theres no accident in that. Its like you building a house where it shoots all intruders on sight, but have your house be built in a place surrounded by babies that walk around without knowing the consequences.
People say overfishing destroys marine life. I could say the same about agriculture. Again, tens of TRILLIONS insects are killed, even after factoring in that we only eat 10% of the plants produced. I can say the same for agriculture too. Agriculture is not BETTER than overfishing in that aspect.
If someone says "insects have a lower moral value than fish". First off, I think it's hypocritical for a vegan to suggest that some animal life is more important that others, as vegans are opposed to speciesism. But then again, the amount of pests killed is between hundred trillion and ten quadrillion. That is a super large number. I was just assuming that we killed hundred trillion only for being generous. If in the worst case we do kill ten quadrillion insects, and lets say I grant the notion that insects have a lesser moral worth (lets assume its moral worth is 10% that of a land or marine animal), then instead of killing ten quadrillion insects, we are killing 0.1 times ten quadrillion =1 quadrillion morally equivalent creatures, which is still A LOT, and its still worse than eating only caught fish. I am assuming the worst case here, but I hope you guys understand the point Im making here.
Vegans also care about insect life, thats why vegans dont eat honey. So please someone explain to me why plant based living is still more ethical. I want to be vegan and reduce animal cruelty but math is math.

The scale of direct human impact on invertebrates

Currently, estimates of the number of invertebrates used or killed by humans are very poor. Summing the rigorous estimates that exist, at least 7.2 trillion to 26 trillion invertebrates annually are…

rethinkpriorities.org

Also if my statistics are wrong, feel free to correct them. Again, I WISH to stay vegan. So try your best to convince me.
~Thomas

 

[g0rph]

If someone says "insects have a lower moral value than fish". First off, I think it's hypocritical for a vegan to suggest that some animal life is more important that others, as vegans are opposed to speciesism.

You have completely misunderstood speciesism.

First, yes, all living beings deserve moral consideration.
But all living beings are not equal...

• Capacity to suffer
• Degree of sentience
• Emotional complexity
• Ability to have preferences, relationships, and a sense of self

Are all measures.
Eg.
A pig or a dog:

• Has a complex nervous system
• Experiences pain, fear, joy, attachment
• Has ongoing preferences and social bonds

An ant

• Likely has extremely limited or no conscious experience
• Has minimal capacity for suffering (as far as we can tell)
• Functions largely through instinct and colony-level behaviour

So if it comes down to a pig or an ant, sorry, a pig has more moral worth.
i.e. You have to either
1. Kill a colony of 10000 ants
2. Kill a dog or a pig.

The ants get it every time.

Where speciesism is relevant is between the dog and pig as they have very similar traits. The pig is almost certainly more sentient in fact.
So the fact we farm pigs then suffocate them to death in their billions and actually have laws in place to protect dogs...is speciesist.

As for honey. Indeed, I don't eat honey. But it is about the least important thing I worry about.
Insects may well feel pain, they have nocireceptors, but their awareness of life is negligible.

So whilst I give moral consiideration...I avoid stepping on them where I can, but no, they are not morally equal to mammals, birds or fish, all of whom have a far more complex system and understanding of the world around them.

 

[allindogecoin]

I think the OP raises an interesting point, but something to consider is that nowadays about 50% of fish is farmed, so when buying fish, you are 50% likely to be creating demand for their slaughter. This would push up the expected suffering of eating fish.

There is also another concern with fish in that the oceans are heavily polluted, so high fish consumption risks consuming pollutants such as mercury, cadmium, as well as persistent organic pollutants such as dioxins, furans, and PFAS. Persistent organic pollutants bioaccumulate in fish. Furthermore, there is a lot of microplastics now in fish with a recent 2025 study finding microplastics in about 60% of fish. Microplastics also cause inflammation in humans contributing to health issues such as osteoarthritis and CVD.

 

[Lou]

I dont think people understand the OP's point critically enough. I am a vegan for a while and is also struggling with this issue. This problem is worth discussing, because it is simple math.

yes, I agree that the issue is worth discussing (up to a point) but the issue is not simple math. The math part may be considered Utilitarianism - thats the philosophy of the Greater Good. Many vegans have adopted the philosphy of Utilitariansm. However many pages have been devoted to the flaws within Utilitarianism. Especially in regard to veganism. You may want to do a little googling, some of the pertinent arguments are both short and easy to understand. But I don't want or need to get into it here.

There is a debate technique, I'm not sure what it's called. Maybe "false dichotomy fallacy"? Anyway I just call it "What Aboutism". I say eat plant based. you say What About the insects. It's a logical fallacy, used to avoid accountability, shift blame, or muddy the waters, rather than addressing the original point. We are too savvy a group to fall for it.

Anyway if you have read the numerous comments to the OP, you will see most of us are not even concerned with the numbers or the utilitarian aspect.

As I pointed out back in 2021, "But if your mortal mathematics include all the side effects or plant agriculture it would only be fair to include all the side effects of the fishing industry. Besides overfishing, there is habitat destruction, derelict fishing gear, and bycatch."

 

[allindogecoin]

I have thought about this topic more and I believe there is something very different between actually killing a living being (or enslaving them) and purchasing something whose production results in death (or enslavement). The best way to understand this is to think of modern human slavery. A good example is chocolate. There are significant and ongoing modern slavery and child labour concerns within the cocoa industry, particularly in West Africa where most of the world's cocoa supply originate. We can conclude from this that if you buy a certain amount of chocolate, you have statistically enslaved a child for one day. From this analysis you argue therefore that if you kidnap a random child from the street and force him or her to work on a cocoa farm in your backyard, you are doing less harm. So this kind of argument, if taken seriously, means we are justified in kidnapping and enslaving random children on the streets.

One alternative is to simply buy a different product. Why buy chocolate? Why not simply abstain from chocolate or grow cocoa in your own backyard and pick it yourself? Similarly, rather than eat fish or eat tofu, why not grow soybeans in your own backyard and pick the soybeans yourself? If you're going to go through all the effort of kidnapping a child just to enslave them and get them to pick cocoa in your backyard, why not just pick it yourself? Analogously, if you're going to go through the effort of capturing and killing your own fish, why not just plant soybeans in your backyard and pick it yourself when it's done?

I believe this example illustrates how there is a difference between actually enslaving/killing a human or animal directly vs if the killing or enslavement is a product of purchasing something.

 

[g0rph]

yes, I agree that the issue is worth discussing (up to a point) but the issue is not simple math. The math part may be considered Utilitarianism - thats the philosophy of the Greater Good. Many vegans have adopted the philosphy of Utilitariansm. However many pages have been devoted to the flaws within Utilitarianism. Especially in regard to veganism. You may want to do a little googling, some of the pertinent arguments are both short and easy to understand. But I don't want or need to get into it here.

There is a debate technique, I'm not sure what it's called. Maybe "false dichotomy fallacy"? Anyway I just call it "What Aboutism". I say eat plant based. you say What About the insects. It's a logical fallacy, used to avoid accountability, shift blame, or muddy the waters, rather than addressing the original point. We are too savvy a group to fall for it.

Anyway if you have read the numerous comments to the OP, you will see most of us are not even concerned with the numbers or the utilitarian aspect.

As I pointed out back in 2021, "But if your mortal mathematics include all the side effects or plant agriculture it would only be fair to include all the side effects of the fishing industry. Besides overfishing, there is habitat destruction, derelict fishing gear, and bycatch."

Utilitarianism works well...in very specific cases. Deontology works in others.
No philosophic system of rules works all the time.
The best example is the basic "Trolley problem"
In case you have been living under a rock, there is a train track, and a train is heading toward a junction...currently it is heading toward 5 people on the track who cannot get out of the way.
You are stood next to the lever that will re-route the train to the other track where there is one person, who also cannot move.
Your option...do nothing...5 people die. Pull the lever...1 person dies.

Most people would choose to pull the lever. It's classic utiltarianism.

Change it to... You are stood next to a very fat person on a bridge. The train is heading toward 5 people. The lever will be pressed if the fat person falls on it and then only that person will die. Do you push the fat person over the edge to save 5 people?

Most people choose not to pull the lever. It would still be a utilitarian act to pull the lever, but it would directly go against the deontalogical rule not to directly harm someone.

 

[allindogecoin]

Utilitarianism works well...in very specific cases. Deontology works in others.
No philosophic system of rules works all the time.
The best example is the basic "Trolley problem"
In case you have been living under a rock, there is a train track, and a train is heading toward a junction...currently it is heading toward 5 people on the track who cannot get out of the way.
You are stood next to the lever that will re-route the train to the other track where there is one person, who also cannot move.
Your option...do nothing...5 people die. Pull the lever...1 person dies.

Most people would choose to pull the lever. It's classic utiltarianism.

Change it to... You are stood next to a very fat person on a bridge. The train is heading toward 5 people. The lever will be pressed if the fat person falls on it and then only that person will die. Do you push the fat person over the edge to save 5 people?

Most people choose not to pull the lever. It would still be a utilitarian act to pull the lever, but it would directly go against the deontalogical rule not to directly harm someone.

I'd like to point out there seems to be a false dilemma fallacy here.

In the trolley example you gave, pushing the fat man onto the lever diverts the trolley away from five people. However, one could argue that instead of pushing the fat man on the lever, one can simply walk to the lever and press against it thereby saving both the five people and the fat man.

Analogously, instead of sacrificing a fish in order to save some rats from being run over by a harvester, one can simply grow the plants in their backyard and harvest the plants themselves to eat thereby saving both the rats and the fish.

As I mentioned previously, one can use this line of reasoning to justify any atrocity e.g. buying five kilograms of chocolate enslaves five children hence exploiting one child via sex tourism is justified because it enslaves just one child. This is the false dilemma fallacy because we don't have a binary choice of exploiting one child via sex tourism vs enslave five children via chocolate consumption. We can simply not engage in any sex tourism and not have any chocolate.