Philosophical Vegan Forum

So I like to watch Vox from time to time. They sometimes have interesting things to say and well this is definitely "interesting". They are stating that since it takes more chicken deaths than cow deaths to get the same amount of food. Then if you only eat beef you save more lives.

url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS8Fzy3tGBo

Not more than going vegan, but for a meat eater to switch to just beef that's almost certainly true.

One step has the same premise:
http://philosophicalvegan.com/viewtopic.php?t=2962

This article has a comparison:
http://www.animalvisuals.org/projects/data/1mc

If the plugin doesn't load for you, here's a readable image from Matt Ball's blog:

(http://www.mattball.org/2015/08/understanding-numbers-for-better.html)

Replacing chicken with beef does reduce total food related deaths because with beef you get more meat per animal. You also reduce total suffering even more because chickens generally live worse lives.

As a philosophical point that doesn't really affect any decision, you aren't saving any lives since by eating beef instead of chicken you are causing less chickens to be brought into existence (it's not like chickens will be released into the wild if you decide to eat beef).

The real problem with replacing eating chickens with beef is that beef is much worse than chickens environmentally for two specific reasons 1) cow farts - much more methane per unit food = global warming 2) the feed ratio of plants fed to cow vs amount of beef is worse than for chickens, so all the bad environmental effects of producing meat are scaled to the max with beef.

Jamie in Chile wrote: ↑Mon May 29, 2017 7:24 pm As a philosophical point that doesn't really affect any decision,

Reducing suffering and death is philosophically relevant.

Jamie in Chile wrote: ↑Mon May 29, 2017 7:24 pm you aren't saving any lives since by eating beef instead of chicken you are causing less chickens to be brought into existence (it's not like chickens will be released into the wild if you decide to eat beef).

You can "save" (as in prevent) a being from a life of suffering by preventing it from coming into existence.

Jamie in Chile wrote: ↑Mon May 29, 2017 7:24 pm so all the bad environmental effects of producing meat are scaled to the max with beef.

That's an important consideration.
Due to the increased amount of feed a cow needs, deaths from wild animals are also higher with beef, so that compensates slightly for the difference.

I understand that it is lowering total death, even if you increase the production of cows, but just like Jamie in Chile and brimstoneSalad said the environmental effects will worsen.

Also, Mic. the Vegan made a video in response to this. Talks a bit more about the effects it would cause.

url:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgxIVHye_OU