2006-07-31 07:06:19 · 12 answers · asked by Splishy 7 in Food & Drink ➔ Vegetarian & Vegan
It's a question that does cause a certain ethical paradox. Many animals eat meat, many only meat, and yet it isn't considered wrong. Hyenas eat wildebeest without bothering to kill them first, and there is no doubt that that is cruel, so why shouldn't we eat meat, considering we don't rip it's flesh off and eat it when it is still alive.
I don't want to go into the ethics of those sadists who feed their dogs and cats only veggie food.
One argument is that it is natural to them; well it is to us as well, so that's a bit of a rubbish argument. Others that we no longer need to eat meat, unlike the animals; I still don't think this is a very good argument, but each to his own and all that.
I think they probably do, they like all animal life. What they'd do if their house got infested with rats I don't know.
2006-07-31 07:37:20 · answer #1 · answered by AndyB 5 · 4⤊ 5⤋
Vegans don't necessarily 'love' any animal; you don't have to love something to not want to kill it.
@AndyB:
There's no "ethical paradox" involved. Without conditioning, almost all non-human animals are incapable of making that kind of ethical decision. It doesn't seem a very difficult concept to grasp. It's quite similar to holding a human infant accountable for not knowing that it shouldn't pick up a bottle of poison as a drink.
"The thought here may be that if a being treats others in a particular way, then humans are entitled to treat that being in an equivalent way. However, this does not follow as a matter of logic or ethics. Quite rightly, we do not normally take the behavior of animals as a model for how we may treat them. We would not, for example, justify tearing a cat to pieces because we had observed the cat tearing a mouse to pieces. Carnivorous fish don't have a choice about whether to kill other fish or not. They kill as a matter of instinct. Meanwhile, humans can choose to abstain from killing or eating fish and other animals.
Althernatively, the argument could be made that it is part of the natural order that there are predators and prey, and so it cannot be wrong for us to play our part in this order. But this 'argument from nature' can justify all kinds of inequities, including the rule of men over women and leaving the weak and sick to fall by the wayside. Even if the argument were sound, however, it would work only for those of us still living in a hunter-gatherer society, for there is nothing at all 'natural' about our current ways of raising animals."
Sadists? Buying a companion animal food made from other animals is supporting the exact same conditions that would be supported from buying food made for human consumption--it would be hypocritical at the least. And, since you obviously didn't know, dogs (and most cats, provided they are supplemented with taurine) can do just fine on a vegan diet: the dog thought to be one of the oldest in the world was fed solely on plants ( http://dogsinthenews.com/issues/0209/articles/020918a.htm ).
2006-07-31 14:35:32 · answer #2 · answered by Kyle 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Animals in the wild kill and eat other animals to survive. I would think that vegans would realize this and not hold it against the animal. They don't exactly have vegetarian options; they would die if they didn't.
2006-07-31 09:12:30 · answer #3 · answered by kygirl 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
To clarify, vegans love animals that kill/eat others of their kind but do not eat them. Except for "born enemies" like snakes that attack, the idea of non-harming is one of the fundamental universal principles that set as guidelines for conduct in the world.
2006-07-31 07:43:24 · answer #4 · answered by consciousnessrevo 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Probably not, since vegans are opposed to eating any animals or animal products.
2006-07-31 09:20:13 · answer #5 · answered by nobodyd 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
That's nature, animals acting instinctively. If humans could run an animal down, kill it and eat it with their bare hands I would say they are carnivores. As they can't I will say we are herbivores.
2006-08-01 01:13:27 · answer #6 · answered by Gone 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Yes, because the anatomy of those animals are made for that, where as the anatomy of man is made to be a vegetarian..No blame for poor animals.., they do not have the discriminative power which we have got..(at least as we boast about)
2006-08-02 01:58:11 · answer #7 · answered by Newme 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
yea many of them do, and thats the kind of vegans i consider hypocrites, any vegan or vegeterain that owns a cat and dosent feed them a vegan or vegetarian diet is not really vegan.
2016-08-22 06:12:04 · answer #8 · answered by susan pevensie 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Sure..why wouldn't they? Wild animals cant shop at the supermarket and many are carnivores by nature.
2006-07-31 07:42:00 · answer #9 · answered by KathyS 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I loved my cat and bought her canned dead animals. For me, the answer would be yes.
2006-07-31 08:48:08 · answer #10 · answered by Joyce T 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋