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Comment by anigbrowl | Hacker News Reader

I totally get ethical vegetarianism, and appreciate that much animal abuse can occur within the dairy industry, but I don't think that's inherent. Of course, believing that and shopping ethically requires a great deal more selectivity and research (and willingness to pay more for food whose provenance can be trusted).

Not to pick a fight, but I don't get the basic argument that 'all animal husbandry = unnatural exploitation' given the symbiosis between species like ants and aphids etc. which I can just go and observe in my yard at this time of year.

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I've not really encountered the idea that it's unnatural exploitation, to be honest, and I completely agree with your point there. The core ethical argument that I generally see presented for veganism is that once you've advanced past the point of requiring animal products to live a healthy life, consuming them becomes entirely a matter of convenience, taste, and preference. The argument follows, then, that it may not be ethical to subject animals to the realities of modern husbandry simply on account of these reasons.

The question of whether abuse is inherent is largely academic at this point. The fact of the matter is that almost all of the animal products we consume are the result of optimized industrial processes that result in shortened, low-quality lives for those put through them. Whether an animal could, under the right circumstances, be humanely raised for resource extraction or slaughter doesn't really apply in modern consumption.

> I totally get ethical vegetarianism, and appreciate that much animal abuse can occur within the dairy industry, but I don't think that's inherent.

It's inherent. Cows, like all mammals, need to have given birth to produce milk. This means dairy cows are impregnated and give birth roughly yearly. It's entirely uneconomical to raise all of the calves, since it would effectively triple or more the cost of producing milk, which is already barely profitable, even with government subsidies. So the calves are killed and sold as veal.

Not a vegan or vegetarian but it's very hard to get past this point. It's definitely insane that we have to impregnate cows over and over to keep them producing milk.

>...all mammals, need to have given birth to produce milk.

Wrong. Humans don't need to be pregnant or give birth to produce milk. Lactation can happen with medication or stimulation, which becomes easier as women age. If a woman is not inducing lactation with hormones, she must stimulate the breasts several times a day using hand compression or a breast pump. This is how adoptive and foster mothers breastfeed their babies. Lactation can also occur in men because they have milk glands, which is the reason they too can get breast cancer.

How, then, do you consider forcing medication or stimulation on a sentient being, without their consent? Obviously if this took place with a human, it’d violate several kinds of rights.

Now extend that train of thought towards other beings.

Where in my reply did I mention forcing lactation on people? That is right, nowhere.

Perhaps you need some remedial reading comprehension.

Perhaps... but I was talking about cows.

Where in my reply did I mention forcing lactation on cows? My comments were directed at the statement that all mammals need to give birth to lactate, which is incorrect.

If you are having difficulty ascertaining this point, you definitely need remedial reading comprehension.

That's an interesting aside about humans; I didn't know. I think the simplification is justifiable for the explanation in this case, though.

Using an example of something that exists in nature like aphids/ants to justify human behavior is a fundamentally flawed argument because quite simply: ants aren't humans, we're quite a bit more sophisticated and have far more reach/impact which comes with greater responsibility and consequences.

Putting that aside for the moment because it is a rabbit hole, there is a continuum of what people think constitutes animal abuse.

One the worst side of the spectrum (IMHO), are CAFOs: Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations. These are the first things you read about when you research animal cruelty. They're the videos of hundreds of thousands of cows standing kneed deep in their shit their whole lives and pumped full of antibiotics. And yet, some people look at this and go, "Yeah, I'm cool with that."

On the other side of the spectrum, we have vegans who do not use any products derived from animals.

In between we see efforts to mitigate the cruelty, such as: free range vs. constricted cages where movement is impossible; feeding them diets of foods they would find in nature (instead of feeding cows ground up chickens); not forcing them to grow so much meat they cannot move (chicken breasts; growth hormones in cows); not forcing them to produce so much milk their udders tear and become infected so they are injected with antibiotics, etc.

For example, there is a cattle farm 10 miles from my house that has about 20 head of cattle, and you can purchase one as part of a co-op a year in advance. You can go visit the cow. You can see how it is raised and its conditions. This makes me feel a lot better than buying plastic-wrapped package from a Save-Rite supermarket. But that's me: some people might laugh at me for being "fancy pants liberal simp" other's think I'm still keeping animals from doing what they would do in nature if we weren't harvesting them.

My point is: this is not an easy answer, and in my opinion how we treat animals that we capture and cage matters. Why? Since reason is a social construct, I can go deeper if you push, but it is my choice to not make animals suffer more than they have to.

> animal abuse can occur within the dairy industry, but I don't think that's inherent

There is no economical way to do it otherwise. I honestly don't care that much about animal abuse (I do think that animal agriculture is often environmentally unsustainable), but you can't really play pretend about "some milk not involving abuse"

In the very next sentence I observed that purchasing dairy without supporting abuse involves paying more in both time and money.

From where can you purchase such dairy, I would love a source.

Milk production involves separating calves from their mothers on a yearly basis. Most are slaughtered shortly after, their stomach lining is taken as it contains an enzyme used for cheese production.

Personally, I am fine with it as long as no extra, unnecessary suffering is caused, but some activists may call it inherent animal abuse.

Abuse is only one among several other arguments presented for ethical vegetarianism. For example see https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/bts/vol19/iss1/1/

But I'm not questioning ethical vegetarianism, I'm talking about veganism's opposition to any kind of dairy farming over and above that.

Oh I see. The linked paper uses vegetarianism in a wider sense that covers that too.

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