Very cute story. It's a shame my cynic brain is telling me "but wolves can't survive off of berries and nuts". Also, I guess fish are fair game in the forest hierarchy. Should have user an omnivore.
Wolves (and all dogs) could be vegetarians as they aren't obligate omnivores - and in certain conditions where pray is sparse they do eat berries to surviven. Cats on the other hand are obligate carnivores and can't produce taurine amino acids, so they have to eat meat to survive.
I don't think it's only from a cynic point of view - the question "if meat is murder, am I a bad person if I literally can't survive without it?" is a fair and interesting one.
Of course that's not the point of the ad and I don't blame them for not making it a philosophical discussion, but it's the same approach that Madagascar uses (spoiler for a 20yo movie) to resolve their main conflict and both feel like cheating - if the penguins can think, I always thought, then so should the fishes.
> I don't think it's only from a cynic point of view - the question "if meat is murder, am I a bad person if I literally can't survive without it?" is a fair and interesting one.
I think the argument is “meat is murder because you can survive without it”. Maybe that doesn’t work for the wolf, but I mean, it’s literally a story being made up for a child, and animals in those are allegories for humans.
I can choose to not eat meat and live healthily, but I’m not going to feed only vegetables to a pet cat, who needs something different. To each what they need, as ethically as possible. When you can minimise harm, do.
Extremely debatable and seems very dependent on your personal genetics/ethnicity.
Just because you don't drop dead doesn't mean it's ideal; people can live underground too…
You can survive without a lot of things. Some people survived eating dead bodies on a mountain in the Andes. When people reference life quality they generally don't talk in terms of "survival."
Cats doesn't need more beef kibbles than vegan kebbles! It's a common fallacy but cats do thrive with vegetables if selected and cooked right! Sure they're meat eater in the wild but if we accept modern (ultra processed) meat keebles as suitable for a cat, the vegan options definitely also check the healthy and nutricious points.
Now we can debate if it's "natural" but that would open the horizon to other aspects of cat's modern live.
What parts of my message you think is misinformation? Beside multiple anecdotal evidence, heres a paper on the subject:
> No differences in reported lifespan were detected between diet types. Fewer cats fed plant-based diets reported to have gastrointestinal and hepatic disorders. Cats fed plant-based diets were reported to have more ideal body condition scores than cats fed a meat-based diet.
> Cat owner perception of the health and wellness of cats does not appear to be adversely affected by being fed a plant-based diet. Contrary to expectations, owners perceived no body system or disorder to be at particular risk when feeding a plant-based diet to cats.
He is eating fish because Intermarché has a fishing business.
Yes, I watched it, and I'm not reading into things. This is just the popular ideology at the moment. For now, fish is ok, but for how long?
I like the ad (it's really cute) and I'm a big fan of the old Claude Francois song used (Le Mal aimé) but...
There's nothing cynic about it: he who spares the wolf sacrifices the sheep. My kid loves plushies: but when she's playing with a white tiger I'm reminding her that in real-life the tiger would shred her to tear and eat her without any afterthought.
Plushies of dangerous animals, just like that ad, are a way to cope with the brutality of nature, not a way to make nature not brutal.
> Also, I guess fish are fair game in the forest hierarchy
Fish don't appear to have the ability to speak or engage in social relationship with other animals in the story, so it makes sense to eat them. Like vegan find it OK eating mushrooms even though they are closer to us than they are to plants.
So, although it's difficult to generalize because exactly where the line is drawn varies from one vegan to another, it's generally not enough that the animal wasn't directly harmed.
For example the honey bees make honey for a reason, just as apple trees make apples for a reason and maple trees make a sugary sap for a reason. "So that humans can eat it" isn't the reason in either case. The apples and maple syrup are categorised differently by vegans because the trees aren't animals. That's still an arbitrary line, but so are most things.
For themselves. To eat. So it’s easy to understand the argument that you’re harming them directly by stealing their honey, which is the result of their labour.
But surely there’s nuance there. I don’t doubt there are ethical growers who provide bees with an extra nice and controlled environment, plus care for them and help them fight pests, and thus feel like taking a share of the produced honey is a fair trade. The bees might agree.
> "So that humans can eat it" isn't the reason in either case.
But it is. In the case of many fruits, the goal is for an animal (humans included) to eat them, seeds and all, then poop them out (bonus fertiliser) somewhere else.
> That's still an arbitrary line, but so are most things.
No disagreement there, but I don’t see how any of that is relevant to my comment. I was correcting a misconception about mushrooms, not debating the nuances of vegan opinions. I don’t care for the label and don’t think it’s helpful to fight about what it means. It’s much more important to strive to be progressively better than to aim for perfection and fail.
Essentially all modern honey farming is what you're calling "ethical". It's too expensive to replace the colony each year now that we have an alternative, and a winter - even a relatively mild winter in most parts of the world - will kill the bees if you've stolen all their food.
Unlike the maple tree, we do know how to substitute the valuable honey for nutritionally similar but cheaper alternatives - you can buy suitable food commercially because this is a whole industry, nevertheless, vegans object to our intervention, the bees didn't make nutritionally equivalent bee food, they made honey. Even farmers who choose to calibrate and remove only some honey, judging what will be enough for their colony to survive, are considered not to meet vegan requirements for the same reason.
To the extent there's a shared definition it really is as simple as originally explained, animal: not OK, non-animal: fine.
One of my professors (who is now vegan) had an ethical rule prohibiting eating things which, like him, had backbones. Same idea, it's more similar to me, therefore don't eat it. All such lines in the sand are somewhat arbitrary.
Many might, but many don’t. This is a prime example of why fighting over the label is counterproductive. You’re putting a bunch of different people in the same sack and criticising them for something which the group is not consensual on.
Again, I have no desire to nitpick over what makes one a vegan or not. That’s a waste of everyone’s time and only generates unnecessary conflict. It is not only detrimental but unbearably boring.
> For themselves. To eat. So it’s easy to understand the argument that you’re harming them directly by stealing their honey, which is the result of their labour.
On the other hand the bee social structure (not sure what the right word to use here) is so brutal that taking their honey seems to be just keeping pace. :)
> it’s easy to understand the argument that you’re harming them directly by stealing their honey
Do you think no physical arm is done to an Apple tree for it to give fruits? You should read about fruit tree pruning then…
> But it is. In the case of many fruits, the goal is for an animal (humans included) to eat them, seeds and all, then poop them out (bonus fertiliser) somewhere else.
Which we don't. So we're doing exactly the same thing to tree as we are doing to cow: abusing a natural process that's designed to help their babies.
> I was correcting a misconception about mushrooms, not debating the nuances of vegan opinions.
There's no misconception about mushrooms.
> It’s much more important to strive to be progressively better than to aim for perfection and fail.
The problem is that there isn't an objective definition of “better”. As heterotrophs we can only survive by destroying other living thing. This is a curse we must live with.
Which living thing is fair game is fundamentally an arbitrary position driven by our subjective moral values. You have to draw a line, but there's no valid reason to say that the line must be drawn at the Animalia border rather than at the Tetrapod (which means fish are OK to eat). Most of the arguments that apply to the whole order of animals also apply to most multicellular beings anyway (including the existence of a pain-like mechanism).
You are free to have stronger emotional bonds with a fish or a bee than with a mushroom or a plant, but it's in no way more rational or objectively better than when most people refuse to eat dogs and horses but are fine with cows.
Well the reason apple trees make apples is actually that someone can eat them, and then ideally poop out the seeds so that a new tree can grow. But that is literally their purpose.
> Mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of fungus. Complaining about eating those is akin to complaining about eating apples; you’re not harming the tree.
Why are eggs a problem for vegans then? They are quite literally the “fruit body” of birds. Milk and honey should be even less problematic, as it's not even made of parts of cow or bees.
Each have his own reason, but I refer you to the definition of veganism by the Vegan Society (whose founder "invented" the world vegan):
> [...] exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, [..]
While ecology and health are cited by some vegans, many (if not most) of them are interested in avoiding unnecessary cruelty. That's why there's a discussion where some people define themselves as vegan but do eat musles and other "nerveless" animals they don't considered sentient. On the other hand bees, cows and chicken are sentient and most of they don't have a lot of fun at the farm.
