Debate Over Animals Killed in Crop Harvesting
Steven Davis, a professor of animal science at Oregon State University, argues that the least harm principle does not require giving up all meat. Davis states that a diet containing beef from grass-fed ruminants such as cattle would kill fewer animals than a vegetarian diet, particularly when one takes into account animals killed by agriculture. This conclusion has been criticized by Jason Gaverick Matheny (founder of in vitro meat organization New Harvest) because it calculates the number of animals killed per acre (instead of per consumer). He claims that when the numbers are adjusted, Davis' argument shows veganism as perpetrating the least harm. Davis' argument has also been criticized by Andy Lamey for being based on only two studies that may not represent commercial agricultural practices. When differentiating between animals killed by farm machinery and those killed by other animals, he claims the studies again show veganism to do the "least harm".
Read more about this topic: Ethics Of Eating Meat
Famous quotes containing the words debate, animals, killed and/or crop:
“Like man and wife who nightly keep
Inconsequent debate in sleep
As they dream side by side.”
—Robert Graves (1895–1985)
“The struggle alone pleases us, not the victory. We love to see animals fighting, not the victor raving over the vanquished.... It is the same in gambling, and the same in the search for truth.... We never seek things for themselves—what we seek is the very seeking of things.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“Squats on a toad-stool under a tree
A bodiless childfull of life in the gloom,
Crying with frog voice, “What shall I be?
Poor unborn ghost, for my mother killed me
Scarcely alive in her wicked womb.”
—Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803–1849)
“And, by the way, who estimates the value of the crop which nature yields in the still wilder fields unimproved by man? The crop of English hay is carefully weighed, the moisture calculated, the silicates and the potash; but in all dells and pond-holes in the woods and pastures and swamps grows a rich and various crop only unreaped by man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)