Animal Rights Meat eaters responsible for animal cruelty in factory farming

Mischief said:
Of course not. We are each ultimately responsible for what we choose to use/consume and how it was obtained.

I would ask you this:

Do you, as a user of computers and mobile telephones, believe yourself to be *as bad as* the people who kidnap people from villages to use them as slave labor in the mines that produce some of the metals used in those electronic devices?
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I do, but my road to hell was paved long ago.
 
Indian Summer said:
I disagree. Direct abusers are more morally corrupt because they have no scruples about the abuse. Regular meat eaters still have an inner voice that tells them it's wrong, it's just that they pretend not to hear it, and that the animals live happy lives in lovely green meadows etc. Direct abusers in many cases also make a profit from their abuse.
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It is one thing to do wrong when you don't know right from wrong.

Quite another thing to know right from wrong and choose to do wrong anyway.

One is ignorance the other is evil.
 
Most of the omnis I know are either completely naive and think animal farming has high standards of animal welfare, or they think that eating animals is a necessary evil as we need meat and dairy to survive or a few that really believe that farm animals are unintelligent and have no feelings. I have had people say that the second one to me with a straight face and seem to ignore that they are talking to a vegan.

Mischief said:
Face it, almost everyone compartmentalizes to some extent. If you've ever bought anything produced in an overseas sweatshop, you've turned a blind eye to what goes on there. Heck, none of us here is giving a whole lot of thought to the abuses inflicted on the people who mine some of the metals used in our electronics.
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I agree with you. I think humans have to compartmentalise to survive as the amount of selfishness and cruelty that goes on in the world is overwhelming.
 
with some people it is like a coin spinning in the air; on the one side is their concern for animals, and on the other their desire for animal products. I can see it spinning sometimes.
 
Clueless Git said:
Those who boycott sweatshop goods are blind to what goes on outside of sweatshops in some countries.
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This reminds me of an argument I've heard omnis make...now what was it?

Aw, yes ... if no one ate meat, those animals wouldn't have had a chance to be alive in the first place, so we're actually doing them a favor.
 
Mischief said:
This reminds me of an argument I've heard omnis make...now what was it?

Aw, yes ... if no one ate meat, those animals wouldn't have had a chance to be alive in the first place, so we're actually doing them a favor.
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Not the same thing since sweatshop workers aren't literally forced to work there. They just may have no better options. Farm animals have no choice.
 
how are they not literally forced to work there? You mean they have the option of starving to death?
 
Blobbenstein said:
how are they not literally forced to work there? You mean they have the option of starving to death?
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Yes two options; Sweatshop and eat or no sweatshop and death by starvation.

Boycotting sweatshop goods simply takes one of those options away.

The idea that boycotting sweatshop goods is much other than serving a sentence of agonising death on sweatshop workers is 'idiot compassion' at close to it's worse.
 
Oh, I understand the difference.

The similarity is that both use the excuse "It would be worse for them if we didn't exploit them", rather than say, buying goods only from companies that provide some basic safety standards and working conditions for their workers.

Another similarity is that yours is a handy excuse for both meat eaters to feel good about eating meat and consumers of sweatshop labor to feel good about buying goods from places that lock their workers in so that they burn to death by the hundreds when there's a fire.
 
cornsail said:
So were slavers in the US south morally equivalent to all those who bought cotton from Southern plantations? And (assuming one believes "sweatshops" are immoral) are people who buy things made in sweatshops morally equivalent to people who run the sweatshops?

I realize there is less of a disconnect with animals than the above examples because products of animal exploitation are often the bodies of the animals themselves. But there is still some level of disconnect.

I dunno if there is a right answer to these questions, but I personally judge people who run factory farms more harshly than I judge consumers. I obviously believe paying for animal products is bad too or I wouldn't be vegan. I just know before I was vegan I didn't think about it that much. I had never met a vegan. After the point where I was like "okay I need to really think about this" I made the change. I also learned a lot of things I didn't know about how animals are treated. I don't think I was quite as bad as someone directly abusing animals before I was vegan, but perhaps my view is self serving. It's just that I can empathize with a consumer who maybe hasn't given the issue the proper thought and research much more than I can with someone who runs a factory farm and is actively involved in planning and deciding the things that are done to the animals.
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What bothers me the most are the people who do know/find out what is involved and still continue consuming meat with the attitude that, hey, I love my chicken and steak and I cannot give it up because ZOMG IT TASTES SO GOOD!?!?!?! :rolleyes:. This, sadly, includes my family, which requires a certain disconnect/compartmentalization on my part to still love them. :D I can empathize/forgive the unknowing consumer, though such information is readily available these days. Even when I went veg*n in the '90s, the information was there, just maybe not at my fingertips. But to me now, buying the animal food is just as bad as producing it. The only difference to me is that the consumer is paying someone else to do their dirty work. In the end, the animals still suffer and die, so I consider them equally guilty and cruel. And I also believe that buying products made in sweatshops is likely just as bad. If there wasn't a market for such products (read cheap), then they wouldn't exist. I don't profess to be perfect in this regard. I am a work in progress, but I am doing what I can to lessen the amount of animal cruelty in this world and hope to do more.
 
I can't blame people for wanting cheap products, since many people aren't in a position to pick freely.
 
Envy said:
I can't blame people for wanting cheap products, since many people aren't in a position to pick freely.
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I do realize that there are a host of complications when it comes to economics and what-not. As with most things in life, issues are rarely black-and-white.
 
Mischief said:
Oh, I understand the difference.

The similarity is that both use the excuse "It would be worse for them if we didn't exploit them", rather than say, buying goods only from companies that provide some basic safety standards and working conditions for their workers.

Another similarity is that yours is a handy excuse for both meat eaters to feel good about eating meat and consumers of sweatshop labor to feel good about buying goods from places that lock their workers in so that they burn to death by the hundreds when there's a fire.
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Sweat shops can produce cheap goods specifically because they they are run without basic safety standards and working conditions for their workers.

They are based in such areas specifically because workers have no employment protection or health and safety regulations.

Where people can choose only work or starvation you have a captive work force.

In a culture where workers are protected in the workplace by employee rights regulation and cushioned from starvation by a welfare state such abuse could not take place.

If sweatshops fell under the same regulations the overheads involved would minimise profit and they would no longer be seen as a viable buisness model.

How would that help the workers? The workers who lost their jobs and had no hope of another? No jobcentre , no hand outs?

They would starve .







,
 
Indian Summer said:
I disagree. Direct abusers are more morally corrupt because they have no scruples about the abuse. Regular meat eaters still have an inner voice that tells them it's wrong, it's just that they pretend not to hear it, and that the animals live happy lives in lovely green meadows etc. Direct abusers in many cases also make a profit from their abuse.
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Isnt it just a question of supply and demand? Doesnt everyone have blood on their hands?

The slaughterhouse owner would long since have wrung his hands in sorrow as his profits drained away had the shopper in the supermarket not continued to throw cling filmed slabs of meat in her weekly basket.

The slaughterman would have rested his knives and filed into the jobcentre long ago too had not the supermarket needed someone to turn an animal into the slab of cling filmed meat for the shoppers weekly basket.

And the shopper belives her hands are clean because she has not killed anything. But she has. Like any good murder story you never suspect her because her finger prints cannot be found on the knife.
 
Ann Chovie said:
Sweat shops can produce cheap goods specifically because they they are run without basic safety standards and working conditions for their workers.

They are based in such areas specifically because workers have no employment protection or health and safety regulations.

Where people can choose only work or starvation you have a captive work force.

In a culture where workers are protected in the workplace by employee rights regulation and cushioned from starvation by a welfare state such abuse could not take place.

If sweatshops fell under the same regulations the overheads involved would minimise profit and they would no longer be seen as a viable buisness model.

How would that help the workers? The workers who lost their jobs and had no hope of another? No jobcentre , no hand outs?

They would starve .







,
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I see. We're doing them a favor, just like omnis are doing factory farmed animals a favor.

There are other business models possible in third world countries. It's not a choice between sweatshops and starvation, even though it's a really convenient argument for those who want to justify their own choices.
 
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