Thread 5066947

This can be shown both by evidence and by basic economics

Part 1: Explaining the causal inefficacy objection

It is very difficult for anyone of sense and decency to defend factory farms that’s why the odious task of defending them is left to dishonest industry shills and Timothy Hsiao https://benthams.substack.com/p/hsiaos-defense-of-animal-cruelty . However, lots of smart and sane people like Danny Shahar https://www.amazon.com/Why-Its-OK-Eat-Meat/dp/0367172763 think that it’s fine to eat factory-farmed meat because you’ll have no effect on the industry. The industry is so complicated, or so they claim, that one individual consumer won’t have any impact. Thus, if you abstain from meat, you won’t have any effect.

My preferred argument against eating meat is the following.

0. Eating meat causes vast amounts of suffering for the sake of trivial gains
1. It’s wrong to cause vast amounts of suffering for the sake of trivial gains

Therefore, eating meat is wrong.

Premise 2 is very obvious. But premise 1 is the one that this argument contests even factory farms cause tons of suffering, the argument claims that the industry is too complex for you to have any effect.

Here, I will explain why the causal inefficacy objection is utterly unpersuasive it is provably wrong. I will go on to provide various other reasons to doubt the causal inefficacy objection, before explaining why even if it’s probably true you still shouldn’t eat meat, before explaining why even if you think it’s definitely true, you still shouldn’t eat meat. With a sophisticated understanding of economics, the objection can be refuted purely from the armchair and here, I’ll explain how. I will try to explain the economic logic as simply and clearly as possible; by the end of this, you should have a clear picture of why the causal inefficacy objection not merely does not work, but cannot work, in a much deeper sense.

>>5066947 (OP)
This article may be long and a bit dry sorry about that but I can promise you one thing: by the end of it, the causal inefficacy objection will be totally debunked. While causal inefficacy sounds plausible at first, it is easy to prove that it’s wrong.


# Part 2: The basic reason that it’s false

Why? But it’s totally sound. I’m going to go and kill an antelope. And every time I plunge my knife into its heart, I shall scream, with blood dripping from my face, “No single person can affect the supply chain!”

-Amos Wollen

0. On average, if a consumer has no special reason to think that their action will not trigger any thresholds, a consumer should expect to have the average marginal impact of consumers.
1. The average marginal impact of consumers consuming one chicken is increasing chicken production by more than one, multiplied by the value of the cumulative elasticity factor.
2. Therefore, on average, if a consumer has no special reason to think that their action will not trigger any thresholds, a consumer who consumes one extra chicken should expect to increase chicken production by more than one, multiplied by the value of the cumulative elasticity factor
3. The cumulative elasticity factor of chicken consumption is around .75
4. Therefore, on average, if a consumer has no special reason to think that their action will not trigger any thresholds, a consumer who consumes one extra chicken should expect to increase chicken production by more than .75 chickens.

>>5066948
This is, as stated, quite a confusing mess that will be hard to understand for most people. In the next section, I’ll clarify what it means. Here, I talk about chicken in the example, but it generalizes to all animal products. Thus, here I take what’s called the expected value response while it’s true that most times people eat chicken it has no effect, sometimes it has a huge effect, such that the average effect is roughly the same as it would be if one extra chicken was produced each time a person consumed chicken.

# 1

On average, if a consumer has no special reason to think that their action will not trigger any thresholds, a consumer should expect to have the average marginal impact of consumers.

The average marginal effect is the average amount of change that an increase of consumption of chicken by 1 will have on the production of chicken. The claim is the following: if you have no knowledge about where the thresholds are, you should expect, on average, for an increase in chicken consumption of 1 to have the average marginal impact of an extra chicken consumption.

Let’s imagine that you know that, on average, each of ten people who consume chicken will result in one extra chicken being produced. You don’t know if there’s some specific threshold maybe it’s the case that at particular points you trigger a threshold, maybe it’s just a smooth continuum. The claim is that if you have no extra information beyond what the average impact will be from one extra chicken consumed, you should expect to have the average impact.

This is a pretty general logical principle if you have no specific information beyond the average impact, and no reason to think either your contribution will be more or less than average, you should expect to have the average impact.

>>5066950
If you know that the average person rides 10 trains in their life, and you are assigned a random person who you have no information about beyond that they exist, on average, you should expect them to ride 10 trains.

If you have no special information about an event, beyond the fact that they are a member of a set which has an average impact of N, you should expect them, on average, to have an impact of N. This principle is very obvious.

# 2

The average marginal impact of consumers consuming one chicken is increasing chicken production by more than one, multiplied by the value of the cumulative elasticity factor.

The claim here is the following: on average, people who consume an extra chicken increase the amount of chicken produced by a value that’s some number greater than one multiplied by the value of the cumulative elasticity factor. Let me start by explaining the cumulative elasticity factor, and then I’ll explain why the number that you multiply it by is greater than 1.

If you decrease consumption of chicken by 1, that can have two effects. The first one is that it will lower the price of something. The second is that it will lower production of that thing. To illustrate this, let’s imagine that I’m producing one cart an hour and selling them for fifteen dollars. If more people are buying them, I’ll expand my operations, and raise the price, because they’re more profitable. If no one is buying them, I’ll lower the price, in order to be able to sell them. Thus, when one fewer person consumes chicken, it will decrease price by some amount and also decrease production by some amount. Thus, you might worry that if you don’t have chicken someone else will and thus you’ll have no effect.

>>5066951
The cumulative elasticity factor https://animalcharityevaluators.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/cef.pdf is a measure of how much chicken consumption will decrease if one marginal person consumes one less chicken. For example, if the cumulative elasticity factor is .5, then for every two people who decide to stop eating chicken, the number of chickens consumed will decrease by 1. It’s unlikely that the cumulative elasticity factor will be 1, for example, because they’ll just lower the price and still sell some chickens, though probably less than the ones sold. Well, it turns out that very sophisticated studies have been done and have concluded that the cumulative elasticity factor for meat tends to be around .75 https://www.amazon.com/Compassion-Pound-Economics-Animal-Welfare/dp/0199551162 so for every chicken you don’t eat, you are reducing the number of chickens sold by around .75. Thus, this means your impact is roughly 75% of what it would be if each chicken you didn’t consume reduced total chicken consumption by about 1.

So this explains the whole multiplying by the cumulative elasticity factor effect. But what of the claim that “The average marginal impact of consumers consuming one chicken is increasing chicken production by more than one.” Well, we know that it must be at least one, because if you add together all of the marginal effects of chicken consumption, it has to be at least as great, in total, as chicken production. If no one ate chicken there would obviously be no chickens produced for food. Thus, somewhere along the consumption of chickens, people’s collective marginal consumption triggers the total number of chickens that are produced.

>>5066952
Let’s illustrate this with one chart. Ignoring the cumulative elasticity factor which must be taken into account, but which we already have taken into account let’s look at a simple situation in which ten people consume chickens. We know that there must be at least ten chickens produced, and if no one was consuming chicken, there would be no chickens produced. Thus, together their marginal impacts have to add up to resulting in ten extra chickens being produced, because the total production, which is entirely a function of the amount consumed, is just equal to the added values of all of the marginal effects of consumption.

Let’s illustrate this with a chart. It doesn’t matter what the marginal effects are at the individual points we know that, the total amount produced is a function of the added effects of all of the marginal effects of consumption. If 10 units are consumed, the marginal effect of each unit of production on consumption is 1 because as the consumption increased by 10, so too did production.

Given that each increase in chicken consumption of 1 requires at least one extra chicken produced, we know that chicken production must be at least chicken consumption, and so the average marginal impact of chicken consumers on consumption, and thus production, must be at least 1.

But it’s going to be greater than 1. Remember, the average marginal impact will be the total amount of production divided by the total amount of consumption. Thus, if production is greater than consumption which it must be the marginal impact on the marginal number of animals bred into existence and given horrific lives as a result of a 1 unit increase in consumption will be greater than 1.

Let’s start by just giving an intuition pump for this. Ancient kings used to have hundreds of meals prepared and they’d pick one of them to eat.

>>5066953
It’s obvious that in this case, their consumption causes more than just the number of animals that they eat to be killed, because their consumption requires, as a means to facilitate it, lots of other animals to be killed.

Remember, the average marginal effect of an increase in consumption by 1 will be production/consumption. If the number of animals produced is greater than the number of animals consumed, then the average marginal effect of an increase in consumption by 1 will be an increase in production by greater than 1. If production is twice as great as consumption, then the average marginal impact on production of an increase in consumption of 1 will be 2.

Now, we don’t know exactly what production divided by consumption is, but we know that it’s greater than one by quite a bit. I’ll just describe a few mechanisms.

0. Even after meat is produced https://www.fao.org/3/i4807e/i4807e.pdf , a decent portion of it is lots or wasted before it gets sold. All of that must be taken into account. As Torella https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22890292/food-waste-meat-dairy-eggs-milk-animal-welfare says

Harish Sethu, a data scientist and author of the blog Counting Animals https://countinganimals.com/animals-we-use-and-abuse-for-food-we-do-not-eat/ , says America’s meat waste problem means we’re raising about a billion chickens, more than 100 million other land animals mostly turkeys, pigs, and cows , as well as capturing around 25 billion fish and 15 billion shellfish mostly shrimp , only to have them wind up in a landfill.


This chart from Torella shows that a significant amount is wasted at the retail level.

>>5066954
0. Lots of animals die before they are sold. These animals are part of the animals produced on the supply side, and thus factor into the average impact of the marginal consumer. This effect is very significant. For farmed fish, for example, around 40% of them die before they are sent to slaughter https://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-food/factory-farming/fish/aquafarming/ , meaning that an increase in consumption of 6 fish will result in an increase in production of around 10. The number is more like 9% https://www.animalmatters.org/facts/farm/#:~:text=Approximately%20nine%20percent%20%E2%80%94%20more%20than,stress%2Dinduced%20disease%20or%20injury. for animals in general. I don’t think this takes into account transport, because, once you do, the situation becomes even starker. As one source https://www.animal-ethics.org/journey-slaughterhouse/ notes “The poor living conditions results in a 26% death rate among hens 5 https://www.animal-ethics.org/journey-slaughterhouse/#sdendnote5sym and a 15% among male chickens during the transport to the slaughterhouse.”

There are other ways in which production outstrips consumption that I can’t get into like the grinding up of billions of baby male chicks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEJSWDuAiF8 but the basic idea is clear: a decrease in consumption by 1 decreases production of animals by considerably more than 1. In fact, this effect is sufficiently dramatic to almost certainly outstrip the cumulative elasticity factor. Thus, if you consume one extra chicken, you are causing, on average, more than one extra chicken to be bred into existence and tortured. This effect generalizes to all animal products.

>>5066955
# 3

Therefore, on average, if a consumer has no special reason to think that their action will not trigger any thresholds, a consumer who consumes one extra chicken should expect to increase chicken production by more than one, multiplied by the value of the cumulative elasticity factor

This follows from the previous two premises. Remember, the first premise established that your expected effect is the average marginal effect of an increase in consumption of 1, and the second established that the average marginal effect of an increase in consumption of 1 is an increase in chicken production of more than one, multiplied by the value of the cumulative elasticity factor.

# 4

The cumulative elasticity factor of chicken consumption is around .75

I mentioned this briefly before https://www.amazon.com/Compassion-Pound-Economics-Animal-Welfare/dp/0199551162 this claim is empirical and has been backed up by rigorous studies.

# 5

Therefore, on average, if a consumer has no special reason to think that their action will not trigger any thresholds, a consumer who consumes one extra chicken should expect to increase chicken production by more than .75 chickens.

This follows from the previous premises. In fact, was we discussed before, you should probably expect that, for every chicken you consume, on average, you’re causing more than one chicken to be bred into existence in horrible conditions.

>>5066957
# Concluding thoughts

It doesn’t matter how complicated and interconnected the industry is: the basic idea is the same. As long as you have no special information about the thresholds and producers wouldn’t just produce animal products to sell to no one, for no reason, the objection cannot work.

Just to illustrate that this is the correct way of thinking about the industry, let’s imagine an industry where the causal inefficacy objection holds and we’ll see that the various assumptions have to be false. Here’s one example of an industry. Let’s imagine there’s a machine that costs a lot but will create 200 billion chicken sandwiches. It’s only worth using it if there are at least 5 billion things of chicken ordered. In this case, you know that you have no significant effect, because you know that no matter what you do, the extra chickens will be produced, because you’ll be above the threshold. In this case, 1,2,3,4 and 5 would hold so isn’t this a counterexample? No, it’s not. While all of those would hold, remember, 5 just talks about your expected impact if you don’t know where the thresholds are, and thus don’t have any special reason to think that you won’t affect thresholds. In this case, you do have special knowledge, so this wouldn’t apply.

>>5066958
# Part 3: Even if you didn’t understand economics based knock-down argument against the causal inefficacy objection, you should still think it’s false, based on the empirical evidence

The previous section established that the causal inefficacy objection not only does not but cannot work. Thinking it does is bad economics. But even if you didn’t follow the last section and think that it must be more complicated than that, you should still think that the objection doesn’t work.

Halteman and McMullen produced the most comprehensive and systematic report https://philarchive.org/archive/MCMAIO on the way that actual markets work and conclude the following.

The picture that emerges from economic studies of these types of markets is one in which, despite the scale involved, individual consumer actions are reliably, if probabilistically, translated into changes in the quantity supplied to the market.

While it’s true that the individual consumer will probably have no effect, they will have a significant average effect. The authors conclude that each time you consume chicken there’s about a 1/900 chance of leading to 900 extra chickens being consumed.

# Part 4: Responding to objections

There are lots of things that people say about why individual consumers won’t have any effect. There are two main claims about why consumers won’t have an effect. The first is to claim that markets are very complicated, the second is to claim that there are buffers.

>>5066959
Let’s start with the complexity claim. It’s certainly true that the market is very complicated. But even though it is complicated, as the arguments above show, there must be buffers of some sort, and these mean that the expected effects turn out to be a wash. There is no way to design the system so that collectively consumers have a significant effect but no one has any significant effect. The early analysis explains why.

The second main claim is that there are thresholds. Again, I could just respond to this by pointing out that this contradicts none of the premises and thus the conclusion would thus necessarily be true. But there’s a separate problem: even if there are thresholds, you still have an expected effect.

The basic idea of thresholds is that the companies want to produce more meat than they think will be consumed, because the cost of running out is greater than the costs of overproducing and wasting some animals. So, if they think that there will be 1 billion chickens consumed, they’ll produce maybe a billion extra chickens.

Now, as I explained before, this actually increases one’s marginal effect it means that the average marginal effect is greater, because they collectively comprise overall production. But even setting that aside, if they want to remain a billion chickens above the total number of chickens consumed, then they’ll increase chicken production when there are more chicken producers the threshold rises as the thing that the threshold is supposed to be greater than rises.

>>5066960
# Part 5: Explaining Michael Huemer’s Argument

Michael Huemer has a debate https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_OYx88qPuM with Danny Shahar about the causal inefficacy objection to eating meat. I think that Huemer wins the debate quite decisively. Here, I’ll reproduce Huemer’s argument, explaining why one does have a significant effect, in expectation.

Huemer starts out by noting that one can’t believe the following three things.

0. A major change to X will have a huge effect on Y.
1. Small changes of X will never have a huge effect on Y.
2. Big changes are comprised of lots of small changes.

In this case, X can be number of individual meat purchases, and Y can be meat production. Huemer’s argument is the following.

0. If 1 million people gave up meat, meat production will decrease by roughly 1 million.
1. The average impact of one person giving up meat is a reduction in meat production by 1 million portions/1 million people=1 portion per person.
2. You’re not special you’re not more or less likely to trigger a change in meat production than any other person.
3. Therefore, from 2 and 3 , your expected impact from giving up meat is a reduction of 1 meat portion produced.

Remember, all of the million productions added together collectively result in all meat consumption, so the marginal meat consumption of a million people is greater than increasing production by 1 million. Thus, all of the premises are on quite firm foundation largely for the reasons I described.

>>5066962
# Part 6: Even if this is probably wrong, you should still go vegan

Remember, eating meat plausibly causes thousands of times more suffering than the benefits that it produces for you, if the causal inefficacy objection is unsuccessful. Thus, even if you think that the causal inefficacy objection is probably wrong, even if there’s a 1% chance that it’s right, you still should abstain from eating meat. As Huemer shows in the debate, eating meat causes, assuming the causal inefficacy objection is wrong, about 245 years worth of suffering https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_OYx88qPuM . Suppose you think that animal pain is 10% as bad as human pain and there’s a 10% chance that eating meat is wrong. Well, then eating meat over the course of your life is still equivalent in wrongness to torturing someone for two years . If it’s 1% as bad, then it’s still equivalent to torturing someone for .245 years, so only torturing someone for several months. Thus, even by conservative estimates, assuming the causal inefficacy is probably right, eating meat is still the worst thing you’ll ever do unless you torture people for more than two years.

# Part 7: Even if the causal inefficacy objection is wrong, it’s still probably wrong to eat meat

Let’s imagine that a bunch of soldiers are going to go into a town and burn everyone’s home down, causing everyone to burn to death. Let’s imagine that they’ll do it if more than 50 people agree to set some people on fire. There have already been 60 people that have agreed to do it, so everyone in the village will be burned to death either way. It still seems wrong to agree to do it.

>>5066963
Here’s a plausible ethical principle: it’s wrong to engage in a collective practice that is severely wrong, where it would be better if everyone abstained from it, even if you engaging in the practice will not be wrong. There are some rule utilitarian justifications for it, as well as act utilitarian justifications based on heuristics, as well as clear deontological judgments. The intuition is supported by lots of cases.

0. The case I gave above about burning down a village.
1. Your friends have agreed that they’ll set a homeless man on fire. You think it would be fun to do it, and you know that even if you don’t do it, your friends still would. It still seems wrong to do it. You cannot get help or prevent it.
2. Your spouse will cut your child’s arm off with a steak knife unless you do it. You cannot get help or prevent it. It still seems wrong to cut off your child’s arm.

There are enormous numbers of cases like this cases which support this fundamental intuition.

# Part 8: Even if the causal inefficacy objection has a 100% chance of being wrong and the previous objection does not succeed, you still shouldn’t eat meat

Credit to Huemer for this argument.

Even if it’s fine to engage in bad collective actions and the causal inefficacy objection fails, eating meat is still wrong. The following principle is plausible and supported by lots of specific cases.

It’s wrong to support an evil industry even if supporting them has no marginal effect.

>>5066964
This is supported by lots of specific intuitions

0. ISIS is holding a bake sale to fund their WMD program However, you know that you buying their cookies will give you enjoyment and will also not help ISIS, because they already have enough money Still, it seems wrong
1. You can purchase a baby from the worst industry in history that slaughters 78 billion babies. However, it would be tasty and you think for causal inefficacy reasons that you’ll have no effect on baby production. Should you?
2. You can pay to eat a slice of a trafficked child prostitute who was killed by the cartel. She would taste good. Should you?

The answer is, intuitively, of course not. But this would also apply to eating meat, at least, if you buy the basic case against eating meat https://benthams.substack.com/p/factory-farming-delenda-est

Now, I’m a consequentialist, so I think that it’s plausible that if you really have no effect the act wouldn’t be intrinsically bad. But it is plausible that, even for a consequentialist, one should have a disposition that would prevent them from doing it. Additionally, we should all have moral uncertainty I only think there’s like a 70% chance that consequentialism is correct; thus, based on the offchance of it being seriously immoral, there’s still a good reason not to do it

# Conclusion

The causal inefficacy objection fails for lots of different reasons Fundamentally, supply and demand works when more people want meat, more is produced There are powerful systematic arguments that show beyond a shadow of a doubt that the argument is empirically wrong There are many such arguments However, even if there were not, the moral claims behind the objection are dubious Those who raise the objection are inadvertently peddling bad philosophy and even worse economics

Full article here https://benthams.substack.com/p/the-causal-inefficacy-objection-is?utm_source=publication-search&utm_campaign=posts-open-in-app&triedRedirect=true

Too long and irrelevant, did not read.

All vegan diets are nutrient deficient and livestock have no moral relevance. Automatons THEORETICAL suffering is of no consequence, even if real. It is a non-thing and fully irrelevant before the benefit of man.

Ethical naturalism reigns supreme.

You have already been told that you have two options

You can have a religion
Or you can be an ethical naturalist

For without faith, there is naught but nature. Without faith, there is no such thing as ought. Without god, without metaphysics, should be is an opinion.

Unfortunately for you, God agrees. Livestock shall be eaten.

You keep losing this argument
>>5062562
>>5066088

Starting it with a different strawman and spam won't change the outcome, bot. The conclusion is always the same.

You are not a human being.
You are incapable of reasoning out morality.

>>5066966
>All vegan diets are nutrient deficient

No
>livestock have no moral relevance.

No one has given a definition of human to establish the difference between human and non human just as no one has given a definition of puddle that establishes the difference between puddles and lakes.
>Automatons THEORETICAL suffering is of no consequence, even if real.

There's good evidence mammals and birds can suffer like Cambridge declaration of consciousness. I can't know other humans are conscious and can suffer I must assume they can.

>It is a non-thing and fully irrelevant before the benefit of man.
>Human suffering is a non thing and fully irrelevant before the benefit of super intelligent non human aliens who invaded earth and factory farmed human beings for their benefit.

>Without faith, there is no such thing as ought.

Define murder
Explain why it would be immoral for someone to kill a mohel who mutilates babies
Cross the is ought gap by creating a syllogism with 2 premises that have is statements and a conclusion that has an ought statement that successfully crosses the is ought gap

For example
That man is a judge
That judge is a liar

The judge ought not lie

And no judge's shouldn't inherently be truthful. It's my preference that judges should be as truthful as possible yes but that's me creating a sperate premise it doesn't cross the is ought gap

Is statements will never be able to deduce into an ought statement unless you're defining ought as some kind of is.

All this talk about chicken is making me quite hungry. Think I'll have some chicken for dinner.

>>5066967
>You keep losing this argument
>>5062562 (Cross-thread)

This ^ is not my thread and I haven't posted in it once
>>5066088 (Cross-thread)

Quote a specific post?

>Starting it with a different strawman and spam won't change the outcome, bot. The conclusion is always the same.

it's not a strawman. This thread is NOT about establishing animals are moral patients. It is clearly for people who already believe they are moral patients but aren't sure if buying meat makes any difference.

>>5066908
>>5066766
>>5066626
No serious response given. The error should be obvious

>the bot that can't accept a definition of human has evaded its ban
the scary part is, despite having all the tells of a non-human program, it still acts exactly like a normal vegan because both are fully detached from reality, neither is self aware, both are somewhat psychopathic, and both are programmed by sheltered marxist pseudointellectuals
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10027313/

when you see an immediately obvious ban evader select "violates US law"
the mod will be angery and probably ban you but delete the post anyways *resets router*

>>5066427
Default to what instead? Moral anti realism? Natural law? No better alternative named

In contrast to the above study, subsequent cross-sectional studies showed that vegetarian and/or vegan children had a lower bone mineral density (BMD) [41,42]. Desmond et al. observed that vegetarians and vegans were shorter than omnivores (-0.32 and -0.57 height z scores, respectively), but the difference was non-significant in vegetarians [42]. The research showed that after controlling for body size, vegan children had substantially lower vitamin D levels and BMD than omnivores. It is suggested to maximize childhood BMD to promote peak BMD and therefore reduce the risk of osteoporosis and fracture in adulthood. The authors concluded that vegans had lower BMDs even when body and bone size were taken into consideration. It does not seem to be ideal to start puberty, a period when bone-specific nutrition requirements are greater, with an already established BMD deficiency. If such deficiencies continue throughout adolescence as a result of a diet, they may raise the likelihood of poor bone outcomes later in life. Prospective longitudinal studies are required to better understand the consequences of VD on children and adolescents.

>>5066424
Many vegans feed their cats and dogs a vegan diet and believe it's wrong to let them go outside unsupervised because they'll hurt other animals or themselves

Ethical naturalism is a self evident fact. Things that are good, do good, in the context of humanity, which is ultimately all that matters.

Suicidal niceness is evil. Livestock will not reciprocate your "kindness". You will ONLY suffer, and proselytize this suffering unto others. You are evil. Suicide is wrong, and encouraging suicide is wrong, for the same reasons.


Optimal fetal growth requires balanced maternal nutrition during pregnancy. Mothers on rigorous VD are at risk of vitamin insufficiency, which can lead to poor fetal outcomes. A recent study included 273 women, including 112 omnivores, 37 fish eaters, 64 lacto-ovo-vegetarians, and 60 vegans, respectively [43]. In comparison to an omnivorous diet, the vegan diet was substantially linked with an elevated risk of small-for-gestational-age infants (RR = 5.9, 95 percent CI, 1.2-21.8). All the groups had a similar incidence of preterm births. Birthweight in vegans was lower compared to lacto-ovo-vegetarians (3015 ± 420 g vs. 3285 ± 482 g, P = 0.004) and to omnivores (3328 ± 495 g, P < 0.001) but not to fish-eaters. Vegans also had a lower mean gestational weight gain compared only to omnivores (11.6 ± 4.2 kg vs. 14.3 ± 4.6 kg, P = 0.001). A review of 13 low and middle-income nations found low docosahexaenoic acid levels in breast milk in mothers on plant-based diets but greater in the fish-eating population [44].

Maternal B12 status influences their offspring’s B12 levels and is an independent risk factor for neural tube defects (NTD) [45]. Studies have shown an association between low B12, low birth weight, and pre-term delivery [46]. A Chinese study associated increased maternal pickled vegetable consumption with NTD due to excessive nitrate, nitrite, and N-nitroso compound content [47]. They found that eating pickled vegetables more frequently (>6 meals/week) increased the risk of NTD. The investigators also found that maternal consumption of meat, eggs, or milk (>1 meal/week) reduced the risk of NTD. Vegan mothers may have poor prenatal nutritional status, resulting in low maternal fat reserves for breastfeeding. The postpartum nutritional profile of vegetarian mothers declines without sufficient energy intake, thus maternal nutritional reserves are lost to promote infant normal development.

>BUT MUH HEART HEALTH?
is only better *ON AVERAGE* compared to people eating salted preserved pork fat and candy bars for breakfast, you fucking idiot.

>A farmer is about to press a button resulting in the deaths of 1000 cattle. Every single one will feel a brief moment of pain before expiration. In your hand is a .44 magnum revolver that will blow the farmers head clean off, causing a painless death, and behind you is a pig pen that will dispose of the evidence. What do you do? -human

>I'd shoot the farmer -veganbot

>>5066974
>25.Vitamin B12 deficiency is prevalent among Czech vegans who do not use vitamin B12 supplements

No shit Sherlocks? As a vegan you must supplement B12 unless you eat things like oysters. Most meat eaters who don't supplement vitamin D and live in non sunny places are deficient in vitamin D

>>5066268

Meat eater justifies Gaza genocide. If to justify eating meat you must also justify Gaza obviously meat eating is wrong.

>>5066982
There was no gaza genocide. Arabs are not going extinct because their illegal antisemitic counter-colony of civilian-militants finally got put down after decades of rocket attacks and terrorist raids. Israel’s terms were simple - stop firing rockets at our people.

Arabs lost their territory because they lost the wars of aggression leveled against israel upon the jews return to their ancestral homeland and could have simply left or integrated instead of migrating and staying to attack jews. Many arabs DID integrate and israeli arabs are wealthier and have more rights than any other arabs in the middle east excepting the oil barons. How can palestinian arabs genocide palestinian arabs? Is hamas a unique ethnicity?

Or they could have at least worn uniforms and maintained demarcated military targets instead of housing soldiers with families and storing munitions in hospitals and refugee camps.

You’re just antisemitic. Otherwise you’d care more about ongoing actual genocides like those in sudan.

Anyways i will now feed my dog a steak

>>5066986
>pilpul

>>5066987
21% of israel is arab. How is putting down a violent terrorist antisemitic a genocide?

Why don’t you care about the ACTUAL genocide in sudan? Because its black people dying and islam is the bad guy?

>>5066980
Figures an antisemite would.

>>5066988
>*antisemitic enclave
Remember, gaza ELECTED hamas. It is no different from berlin being razed for electing hitler. Was there a germicide? There are still germans.

>arab matuonalist muslims committing the darfur genocide: misanthropic vegan schizo sleeps
>jews and arabs working together dismantling a terrorist state, sharing arms and intelligence and fighting side by side: this is an arab genocide!!! kill all jews! -vegan schizo
Curious!

>>5066990
Yes https://odysee.com/@Wotan:6/mr-bond-alles-genommen:6

>>5066992
Nope. There are 84 million germans.

Gaza was not a genocide. It was a terrorist state being dismantled by israelis and their arab allies. You are just antisemitic. Why don’t you care about darfur? Ah yes, arab nationlist muslims are the enemies of jews.

>>5066993
>pilpul
>It was a terrorist(fake and gay word invented a couple decades ago) state being dismantled by israelis and their arab allies.
>USA and Israel blackmails, overthrows and bribes all of Israels neighbors
>Allies

>>5066996
>no true arab would support the jews!!!
Yeah you’re just an antisemite. Again your heart never bled for darfur.

>>5066997
They call you an antisemite but they don't call you a liar https://youtube.com/watch?v=FhlUFPpXIVo

>antisemite
>misanthrope
>wants to kill farmers and torture retarded children
>supports terrorism
>ignores actual genocides so long as the perpetuators also hate jews
Ah yes the ethics and kindness of the vegan

For some reason a logical moral concern for all life on earth stands just in front of burning hatred. Every single time. People who transform the domain of the soul (morality) into cold logical rules are just like this I guess. It takes a real piece or shit to reason out morals when a human can just feel them (which is all that they are, innate g-d given feelings, the sensation of g-d’s will). They are disconnected from the divine.

>>5066999
>uhm, israelis aren’t indigenous to israel because they picked up non-canaanite DNA during exile!
Now you are denying israel’s legitimacy. Behold, the compassion of the vegan! The sheer logical compassion!

Why did gaza not simply stop attacking israel?

>>5066999
Israelis are indigenous to Israel
Germans are indigenous to Germany
Japanese are indigenous to Japan
Indians are indigenous to India

Anyone can live anywhere, but denying who is native is absurd.

Oh no, the british allowed jews to colonize their own land. The horror. The indians were finally given their reservation back. They aren’t indigenous!

>>5067001
>Why did gaza not simply stop attacking israel?
>more pilpul

Israel doesn't respect cease fires and can't be trusted. They just want to rearm and divide and conquer picking off their enemies (Hezbollah, Iran, Hamas) one at a time rather than all at once.
They violated their recent ceasefire because Hamas was executing Palestinian criminals and not handing over dead bodies stuck under ruble Israel created with it's bombing campaigns even though they had already given over all living hostages. The Israeli government can never be trusted.
>America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction. They won’t get in the way
>Benjamin Netanyahu

He was riffing on steering U.S. policy toward Israeli priorities—think dialing up congressional support or nudging the White House on settlements and security aid—without much pushback. In the same convo, he bragged about sabotaging the Oslo Accords (the 1990s peace framework) by slow-walking Palestinian autonomy while publicly blaming them for the breakdowns. It paints a picture of realpolitik cynicism: Israel as the savvy puppeteer, America as the pliable golden retriever.

>>5067003
So you’ve gone from it was a genocide to israel has the gall to fight back against the people who follow religious doctrine that says they must kill jews!

Do you know how to earn israel’s trust so they stop fighting back?

Disarm and renounce antisemitism. Disarm means disarm, not keep shooting whoever you dislike.

>>5066982
>genocide
>they’re both the same people
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/epiphenom/2009/01/shared-genetic-heritage-of-jews-and.html
HAMASian is not an ethnicity

>>5067004
>disarm completely immediately
>No
>They rejected our peace plan so we must bomb them in self defense

Israel is a rogue state. They refuse to extradite their citizens who have arrest warrants for violating international law. They have illegal nuclear weapons they stole from America and refuse to officially declare.
https://odysee.com/@WahrheitMachtFrei:c/Jew-Namin'---Mr-Bond_Little-GqGQZVjVZVHo:0
https://archive.org/details/img-0347
>Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.

>>5066947 (OP)
>vast amounts of suffering
killing doesn't cause much suffering.
You think a hydraulic stake to the head is that painful? Hell I wouldn't mind going out that way.

>>5067006
You know israel didnt violate the ceasefire right? HAMAS refused to return bodies while piddling manpower away on public spectacle and, most importantly, killed several israeli soldiers. And still they put military targets next to and even inside civilian infrastructure expecting immunity.

>israel bad!
Antisemites bad. Stop attacking israel and you’ll stop getting btfo. The 2/10
Israelis that are arab (and effectively the same people, genetically) are doing fine as are arab states that are on good terms with israel. It’s just iran (which legalized bestiality so long as the animal is killed upon orgasm… you’re vegan right???), and their terrorist puppets hamanus and hezbullshit.

And still your heart does not bleed for darfur or the kurds or anyone else, just whoever you can side with in hating jews. Antisemite is not an ethnicity. Sorry!

>>5067009
LOL. How dare you use my dogs likeness without written consent? The veganschizo is going to think I'm the one arguing with him. I don't need anymore 4chan branded schizos obsessed with me plz, ty.

>>5067008
Some intensife farms cause suffering, but necessarily given the demand for this necessary food humans require and limited space. And also due to low IQ illegal immigrant employees treating animals poorly.

A good man would eat more meat to afford them the funding to expand to a less cruel operation and demand that they do so. Most chicken farms I visit treat the birds well.

veganism is morally wrong because depriving an apex predator of a meat-based diet is speciesist discrimination

>>5067011
But he’s a chewish soldier (ashkenazi shepherd dog) fucking around in a tunnel. It’s too perfect.

Vegan schizo showed his true colors again award

Add one to the list
>would murder ranchers if he could
>wants to torture disabled children to death
>equates eating cattle with cannibalism
>believes bestiality is morally neutral
>[NEW!] raging antisemite and hamas sympathizer

>>5067015
I cannot deny that. Have another. Haha

>mfw a literal hamas terrorist has a problem with me eating meat even tho i spare the only livestock worth half a shit (pigs) already, buy cattle from a free range rancher with well cared for stock, raise my own egg laying hens and meat chickens, and buy from responsible farmers when not eating my own birds
yes bad factory farms are bad and farming something as bright as a pig is questionable but meat is fine

>>5067009
>And still they put military targets next to and even inside civilian infrastructure expecting immunity.

Ukraine and Russia are putting their weapons near nuclear power plants. Only Jewish supremacists expect their enemies to be like fish in a barrel

>>5067030
>stop firing rockets at tel aviv or we’ll shoot back
>*does an oct 7th*
>ok we’re shooting back
>HELP! JEWISH SUPREMACISTS!
THEY KILLED CIVILIANS! THEY EXPECT US TO BE LIKE FISH IN A BARREL AND NOT HIDE BEHIND CIVILIANS? JEWISH SUPREMACY!

>>5067032
>>5067015
>>5067009
>1 John 2:22-23 (King James Version)
>22 Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son.
>23 Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father: [but] he that acknowledgeth the Son hath the Father also.

>>5067034
>i’m just an antisemite. i hate jews. that’s it.
We already knew you’re retarded, veganschizo. Don’t waste your breath.

>>5066947 (OP)
### Applying the Causal Inefficacy Logic to Crop Deaths from Buying Corn Flakes

Yes, the core economic reasoning from the article—"The Causal Inefficacy Objection is Provably Wrong"—applies similarly to your individual purchase of corn flakes (or any plant-based product like grains): it *does* causally contribute to incidental animal deaths in crop production, but the expected impact is minuscule compared to meat, and the moral calculus often favors plant foods due to necessity and scale. I'll break this down step-by-step, mirroring the article's structure (e.g., expected marginal effects, thresholds, buffers), then compare to animal agriculture. This draws on empirical estimates of "crop deaths" (unintentional killings of small animals like rodents, birds, amphibians, and insects during planting, pesticides, or harvesting).

>>5067039
#### 1. What Are "Crop Deaths," and Do They Happen with Corn Flakes?
Corn flakes are made from corn (a grain crop), so buying them increases demand for corn production. Crop deaths occur incidentally:
- **Mechanisms**: Combine harvesters crush small animals (~1-2 mice per acre); pesticides poison insects/birds (~billions annually); fertilizer runoff kills fish/amphibians; plowing displaces burrowing species.
- **Scale**: A cautious 2018 estimate projects ~7.3 billion wild animals killed yearly in U.S. croplands alone (excluding insects, whose numbers could add trillions). Globally, it's higher, but data is sparse and likely overstated due to unreliable field studies.

Your single box of corn flakes (~300 calories, or 0.0003 million calories) represents a tiny fraction of this. But does *your* purchase cause any?

#### 2. The Basic Economic Argument: Expected Marginal Impact >0 (Just Like Meat)
The article's key insight—consumers should expect the *average marginal impact* without special knowledge—holds here. No one knows if your purchase tips a "threshold" (e.g., triggering an extra harvest). Instead:
- **Premises** (adapted from article):
1. Without threshold info, assume average effect: Your demand contributes probabilistically to total production.
2. Average impact >1 unit (due to waste buffers: ~20-30% of crops are lost post-harvest via spoilage/transport; pre-harvest deaths like diseased plants amplify).
3. Cumulative elasticity factor (CEF) ~0.75-1.0 for grains (demand drops reduce planting by ~75-100%, per studies on crop markets).
- **Conclusion**: Expected crop deaths from one box >0.0003 animals (e.g., a probabilistic "fraction" of a mouse). Over a lifetime (say, 10,000 boxes), that's ~3 mice-equivalents.

How pathetic is the vegan spammer? One day he spams AI slop saying the bible is fake, the next he cites the bible to support his irrational israel hate.

>>5067040
This refutes inefficacy: Markets *do* respond to demand (e.g., Kellogg's adjusts corn buys based on sales). Rare big effects (e.g., your purchase + others = new field) balance frequent zeros, per expected value.

| Factor | Meat (e.g., Chicken) | Corn Flakes (Grains) |
|--------|----------------------|----------------------|
| **Direct Deaths per Million Calories** | ~200-500 (slaughter + feed crops) | ~1.65 (harvesting only) |
| **Total incl. Feed/Waste** | ~1,000+ (80% crops for animal feed) | ~1.65 (direct human use) |
| **Expected per Individual Serving** | >0.75 animals | <0.001 animals |
| **Buffers Amplifying Impact** | High (culling, transport deaths) | Moderate (20% waste) |

#### 3. Empirical Evidence: Crop Deaths Are Real but Overstated for Anti-Vegan Claims
Studies confirm incidental deaths, but the "vegans kill more" trope fails:
- **Per-Calorie Estimates**: Plants cause the *fewest* deaths overall. A comprehensive analysis of 8 food categories found grains/fruits/veggies at 1-2.55 animals/million calories, vs. ~190 for chicken or ~2,400 for beef (factoring feed).
- **Why It Fails**: 36-55% of global crops feed livestock, not humans—meat-eaters indirectly cause 2-10x more crop deaths. A vegan diet uses 75% less land, sparing ~half of current cropland (and deaths). U.S. diets (high meat) drive 3x global average crop use.

No thresholds negate this: Corn markets are efficient; small demand shifts (e.g., via apps tracking vegan trends) prompt planting adjustments.

>>5067039
>>5067040
Animal deaths are not necessarily morally relevant. Please fix your bot.

>>5067042
#### 4. Responding to Objections (Mirroring the Article)
- **Complexity/Buffers**: Crop waste (e.g., 20% corn lost) means production > consumption, so your buy boosts output >1 unit—amplifying deaths slightly.
- **Thresholds**: Unknown to you; expect average. Counterexample: If pre-threshold, you'd need insider info (e.g., exact farm quotas)—which consumers lack.
- **"It's Necessary"**: A key twist not in the meat article. Industrial plant farming's harms may be *morally necessary* to feed billions cheaply (e.g., preventing starvation; 828M hungry in 2021). Unlike factory farming (unnecessary, as plants suffice), crop deaths lack feasible zero-harm alternatives *yet* (though vertical/veganic farming could eliminate them soon). Thus, your purchase isn't "wrong" under unnecessary-harm principles, even if causal.
- **Collective Action**: Joining crop systems is less blameworthy than meat (no direct exploitation), but still, aggregate demand matters—go local/organic to minimize.

#### 5. Moral Math: Even If Causal, Why It Doesn't Excuse Meat
Per the article's trilemma/Huemer: Small changes = average effect; you're not special. For corn flakes: Lifetime expected deaths ~3-7 small animals (low sentience/pain). For equivalent meat calories: ~1,000+ (chickens + feed deaths). Even if crop deaths "count fully," veganism saves ~90%+ lives.

>>5067044

| Lifetime Diet (80 Years, 2,500 cal/day) | Expected Animal Deaths |
|-----------------------------------------|------------------------|
| **Vegan (Mostly Grains/Veggies)** | ~100-300 (crop only) |
| **Omnivore (Avg. U.S.)** | ~10,000-50,000 (slaughter + 10x crops) |

#### Conclusion: Causally Yes, But Morally Trivial—and Still Go (Mostly) Plant-Based
The inefficacy objection is *provably wrong* for corn flakes too: Your buy causes probabilistic deaths via market links. But unlike meat's vast, unnecessary suffering, crop impacts are tiny, necessary for now, and dwarfed by animal ag's toll. The article's logic strengthens veganism—demand drives everything, so choose the low-harm option. If concerned, support precision ag (drones reduce pesticides) or wild foraging. Politically incorrect truth: Most "crop deaths" trace to feeding factory-farmed animals, making meat the real killer.

Lol he’s spamming more AI generated posts to try and get the brutal smackdown off the front page

It’s too late. Everyone saw it.

>>5067045
>animals die so this supports veganism
Humans are so much more important that an improvement in birth weight is worth a trillion cattle.

>>5067047
goyim are so much more important than Judaism even a tiny flap of skin is worth more than that entire religion.

>>5067048
>my argument: our species should be well off
>your argument: durrr i hate jews
Your mind may be small but your penis is even smaller

>>5067049
>Refuses to define human or homo sapiens despite repeatedly pressed on it >>5066088
>It's obvious just use intuition you AI morality isn't pure logic
>My intuition says routine infant circumcision or infant circumcision for religious reasons is immoral. My logic says research shows there's little to no medical benefits for the vast majority of people
>My intuition says it's wrong to torture a trillion cattle or deprive a trillion cattle of potential happy lives by killing them painlessly in exchange for an improvement in one humans birth weight
>that's antisemitic

>>5067056
https://desuarchive.org/an/thread/5066088/
because janitors selectively deleted some of vegans posts

>>5067057
>I believe two non humans gave birth to a human thousands of years ago and that the humans parents deserve no rights.
>>5066239
Replying to >>5066210

>>5067058
>>5066233
>Not being able to define human and having a "adaptable" definition of human is still an issue. You can just say someone is or isn't human based on whatever criteria you make up. If people start using crispr and IVF to make humans who are only capable of breeding with and making viable offspring with other crispr and IVF humans you can just make up a definition of human that doesn't include them and give them no rights. Vegans who instead grant rights on the basis of being conscious which is binary (you are conscious or aren't conscious) would have no issue with this hypothetical, the IVF crispr humans who can't produce viable offspring with non crispr humans still deserve rights regardless of whether they're "human" or not because they're conscious.

Many more examples like this. Janitors are clearly biased.

>>5067056
Humanity is self evident. And I am an uncircumcised ethnic jew. Your religious squabbles and scriptural gotchas are below me.

Your intuition only supports pasture raised meat, not veganism, at first. And then you become anti-human, a threat to humans, and it is a greater net gain to remove you from the earth than a million mohels. One man who would murder a farmer for the non-lives of mere cattle is supremely evil.

Like it or not intuition can simultaneously be the be all end all of morality or right or wrong. You do not exist in a vacuum and your innate decision making and instinctive tendencies do affect others and factor into their own analysis of good and evil.

Intuitively you may believe, but that is merely an admission of inherent evil. And you are on the losing side. Weakest, least mighty, most stupid, least numerous, and self-exterminating. Your war was lost before it was declared this you will never wage it.

You cry now.
You will die later.

That is all your bitter, frustrated life will ever be. The pain of being a demon.

>>5067060
*AND right or wrong

>isnt this just egoism and might makes right?
It is the purest adhesion to god’s will. If your decisions facilitate your death, than no matter how right you claim to be you will perish as such. If your decisions facilitate a life in misery then so be it. Is is the natural consequence of how you chose to exist in this creation.

You have every opportunity to repent and reform yourself. That will occur only after you are done fantasizing about murdering a farmer in the name of your god "logic".

damn thats a lot of words
too bad im not reading them

>>5067063
It took you five minutes to read, seethe, and hide your head in the dirt.

Please, keep it there, and never open your mouth again.

>>5067060
>Like it or not intuition can simultaneously be the be all end all of morality or right or wrong. You do not exist in a vacuum and your innate decision making and instinctive tendencies do affect others and factor into their own analysis of good and evil.

>In the November 5, 2024, general election, Denver voters considered Initiated Ordinance 309, which aimed to prohibit the construction, maintenance, or operation of slaughterhouses within city limits starting January 1, 2026. This would have effectively closed Superior Farms, Denver's only remaining slaughterhouse and one of the nation's largest lamb processors. The measure was defeated.
>Vote Option,Votes,Percentage
Yes (Support Ban),"120,342",36.25%
No (Oppose Ban),"211,655",63.75%
Total Votes,"331,997",100%
>>5067063
>>5067066
not me. Calling all the various vegans who post on /an/ "vegan schizo" is mentally ill behavior. Projection much?
>Humanity is self evident

That's just refusing to answer. it wasn't self evident to Europeans who landed on Australia and met the aboriginals. I believe it's self evidently wrong to cause animals massive suffering for trivial human gains.
>Your intuition only supports pasture raised meat, not veganism, at first.

No it doesn't I also believe it's self evidently wrong to painlessly kill an animal that's only lived a fraction of it's potential lifespan since you're depriving it of many future potential happy healthy years of life for trivial gain.
A society which isn't vegan and still consumes pasture raised meat will not have the political will to do something about wild animal suffering. A vegan society which has completely banned animal agriculture is more likely to have more political will to do more things to reduce wild animal suffering with things like future technology. It's self evident it's bad when wild animals suffer unnecessarily for no good reason. If we can reduce lots of wild animal suffering without severe consequences we should

>>5067070
Tldr go try and murder a farmer so the world can do away with you in self defense

>>5067070
>a vegan society
will be immediately conquered, enslaved, and erased every time if they are not unseated by revolt first

your diet is deficient and you equate man with beast. that is the end of it. you are evil and a failure.

>>5067072
>>5067072
jains have existed for thousands of years and many of the billionaires in India are jains
>Jains, who make up just 0.4% of India's population
>According to 2025 Forbes data, India has 205 billionaires. Of these, approximately 40-50 are Jains, equating to roughly 22%.

>>5067073
>a few pajeets have money. starve yourselves.
appeal to mammon

>>5067072
No, the statement isn't true—it's a mix of unsubstantiated speculation, oversimplifications, and inflammatory rhetoric. I'll break it down claim by claim with evidence from reliable sources, focusing on facts rather than ideology. Veganism (and related plant-based lifestyles) has philosophical, nutritional, and historical dimensions worth examining objectively.

### 1. Would a vegan society be "immediately conquered, enslaved, and erased" or overthrown by revolt?
This is a hypothetical doomsday scenario with zero historical backing. No fully vegan society has ever existed on a large scale (the modern Vegan Society was only founded in 1944), but vegetarian or plant-heavy societies have thrived for millennia without collapse due to diet alone.

- **Historical examples of plant-based societies**: Ancient India saw widespread vegetarianism among Hindus, Jains, and Buddhists dating back to 1500 BCE, driven by ethical and religious principles—not weakness. These groups built enduring empires, philosophies, and trade networks (e.g., the Maurya Empire under Ashoka, a vegetarian advocate). Similarly, Pythagorean communities in ancient Greece (6th century BCE) and Essenes in Judea (2nd century BCE) practiced strict vegetarianism and weren't "erased" by outsiders; they influenced Western thought. Even indigenous groups like the Choctaw Nation in pre-colonial North America were largely vegetarian, sustaining complex societies without revolts over food choices.

>>5067076
AI

INVALID. And yes, all of those people were erased or have fallen into absolute inferiority. Malnutrition can only last for so long.