Why do people turn vegetarian for "moral" and "ethical" reasons?!

Plants lack sentience. Animals do not. I believe that it is wrong to treat a sentient being as though it is property and to confine and kill it for your own benefit. The possible exception would be if you actually needed to in order to survive. This is obviously not an issue for those of us who have access to a huge variety of different kinds of foods.

Even if plants and animals were equally sentient (which you seem to be implying), it would make more ethical sense to avoid eating meat for the cumulative effect. Animals, unlike plants, do not get nutrients through the soil and photosynthesis. They need to synthesize nutrients by eating things. For most of the animals that humans consume, this means eating plants. An animal will always consume more calories in plants than it produces in flesh. In short, more plants die to feed an animal that would eventually feed you than would if you just ate the plants yourself. Switching to eat carnivorous animals also does not help with this problem, as they eat multiple animals to grow (and the animals that they eat would have all eaten a lot of plants).

Clarke, I am sure, was not suggesting that it is okay to kill anything that does not feel pain. He was suggesting that making choices that do not cause pain and suffering is more ethical than making choices that do. He also was answering the question that you asked, which pertained specifically to why eating plants was more ethical than eating animals. I am not sure why you thought he was referring to a different context than the one you set up.

Yes, the thought of eating something else's body parts and tissues is gross to me. However, I am also disturbed at the thought of supporting an industry that does not treat sentient beings as such during their lives.

Well I turned vegan because I found out how animals are treated in factory farms/CAFOS. Its terrible and no animals should be subjected to that kind of horrible life. Not to mentioned factory farms are really bad for the environment and don't really produce healthy food the way animals are injected with all kinds of stuff and fed things they shouldn't be eating.

For me personally, if animals were given a happy and healthy life and killed painlessly....I wouldn't make such a big deal about it. I probably would be advocating for something else. But the reality is different and its like a horror movie.

I am just trying to do the best I can to minimize the damage I do in this earth. One can argue that omnivores kill MORE plants AND animals than a vegetarian.

This argument is brought up a lot.
Plants don't have a nervous system, so they cannot feel pain. Yes, they are technically alive. But their structure is extremely simple. Plants don't have a heart, lungs, ect like humans and animals. That's why you don't hear screaming when you pick an apple from a tree.
But when you cut open a living cow, obviously that cow is going to show some sort of expression that it's in pain. Cows and other animals are closer to humans (intelligence wise), so they suffer more when they are killed.
And along with that, the plants are going to be eaten anyway. Plants are the basic food source for every living animal on earth. Humans have a choice; eat plants or eat the animals who have already eaten the plants. Why not spare the animals' lives and just eat the plants like everyone else?

plants don't have feelings and they're not living beings that have a heartbeat and feel pain. im a vegetarian but i don't do it for moral or ethical reasons. i do it because of all the hormones and crap they put in the meat and because of the nasty and unsanitary conditions they "raise" the animals in. you're basically eating poop when you eat meat, and a large quantity of the meat you eat is actually corn. if you don't believe me, watch the movie Food Inc. its very interesting and it may change your whole entire view on this subject and the food industry. it's disturbing.

plants don't feel pain.
no, i didn't say that you added that but if you want another answer here
the fruit (in the biological sense) of the plant is designed to draw animals in to eat the fruit. this is because fruit contains seeds and seeds are plant's means of reproducing.
also animals fear fear and are sentient, plants are not.


yeah i guess i can see how you could get that but that makes me thing of humans and how no one would agree the same for a person.
i guess it's because the fruit's whole purpose is to make sure the seeds are eaten. it is not capable of anything else, while an animal can continue to live after having children (which probably need some outside force to raise them anyways).

plants don't feel pain, they don't have a central nervous system.

Thought experiment:

Do you see an ethical difference between stabbing your dog versus a potato?

If not, you need to educate yourself in ethics.

I'll break it down for you. Plants are not consciously-sentient. Without consciousness, there can be no preferences. With no preferences, there can be no interest in having those preferences satisfied. Without interests, there can be no ethical RIGHTS to have those interests protected.

it's easier to identify with an animal who has eyes, more so then a plant.

we need to eat, and so if you dont feel right eating animals, then what's left?


Plants also are not self aware, animals are very self aware. Animals are alot closer to the makeup of a human then plants are.

No idea. I don't care what I eat either way as long as it tastes good.

Vegetarians just don't like the idea of eating something that can think.

gull·ible adj \?g?-l?-b?l\
Definition of GULLIBLE
: easily duped or cheated
— gull·ibil·i·ty\?g?-l?-?bi-l?-tē\ noun
— gull·ibly\?g?-l?-blē\ adverb
See gullible defined for English-language learners ?
Variants of GULLIBLE
gull·ible also gull·able \?g?-l?-b?l\
Examples of GULLIBLE
I'm not gullible enough to believe something that outrageous.
They sell overpriced souvenirs to gullible tourists.
First Known Use of GULLIBLE
1818
Related to GULLIBLE
Synonyms: dewy-eyed, exploitable, easy (also gullable), naive (or na?ve), susceptible, trusting, unwary, wide-eyed
Related Words: vegetarian, credulous, overcredulous, trustful, uncritical, unsuspecting, unsuspicious; artless, genuine, guileless, innocent, simple, unsophisticated, unworldly; fictile, malleable, pliable, pliant; deceivable; acquiescent, agreeable, amiable, obliging; yieldingNear Antonyms: critical, cynical, mistrustful, skeptical, suspicious, wary; sophisticated; clear-eyed, clear-sighted, hardheaded; shrewd, street-smart, streetwise

Nothing "deserves to live". Vegetarians are just peta crack pots who have nothing better to do than take bulets for deer.

great question
Apparently plants do feel pain they just cant scream like humans do, cos they dont have mouths