https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-03/fake-meat-industry-eyes-crickets-beetles-mealworms-maggots-for-burgers
faux meat
still made from animals
It's still meat just different animals
Ummm bugs are animals...
they're meat...
I don't eat shrimp as a vegan so why would I eat bugs?
I've worked in pet stores, I know how those crickets you feed lizards are bred and transported, shit is dystopian.
Okay, but like, are we maybe overempathizing at a certain point? I think that Vegans absolutely have the moral high ground in regards to mammals. Their internal systems and chemistry is similar enough to our own that we can reasonably assume they feel sensations and emotions much like our own. Factory farming is industrialized torture of thinking feeling beings. Poultry birds are most likely not quite on a similar level, though surely still have some degree of subjective consciousness and sensation, so I'm still staunchly against the abhorrent treatment they receive today.
But now we get to (commonly consumed) creatures I'm not so sure about at all.
Fish? Most fish, especially shrimp, probably aren't having complex emotions, sensations, or thoughts whatsoever. Their brains are simply too small. Can I project empathy onto a fish? Sure - but that's a result of having a (relatively) stupid large brain and being a social Animal that's both naturally ingrained and socially enculturated to experience empathy. It can be a false positive to surreptitiously experience emotions and sensations of an animal that doesn't actually experience them. (See the philosophy of AI - there's a concern that people will mistakenly value a virtual intelligence over a living and feeling being by mistakenly empathizing with it) We make cognitive errors as a rule all the time - why would our capability for empathy be any different?
Bugs/creepy crawlies - if ever there were a living thing I was positive did not experience emotions or have a subjective cognitive experience worth consideration it's bugs.* Isn't it possible that they're basically 'meat' machines? Just multi-cellular versions of bacteria or fungus? Vegans don't have a problem with nutritional yeast last I checked. There is clearly a level of consciousness/sensation where we draw the line and say it's okay to remoselessly eat/farm something. Bugs* seem to unequivocally fall on the right side of that line to me.
I'm not trying to fight here. Nothing but love and solidarity, of course. I'm just really baffled on this one.
*with a few notable exceptions. Like, I'm not so sure Spiders are entirely qualia free, especially tarantulas, they and a few others might deserve special consideration as well.
Insects have something going on. It's not anything massive, but they have individual preferences and those can change.
They have likes and dislikes and trauma and favourite spots and many can recognise to some extent different humans, certainly Mantises which have complex visual processing but even stick insects seem to recognise individuals by smell and they're not exactly smart.
As an anecdote, one male hated me, absolutely would not me happily held by me. Went into threat pose and flew away at first opportunity. One day he got sick, and I nursed him back to health by holding him in my hand and drip feeding him watered down honey.
After that, he would willingly crawl out onto my hand, and would vibrate his mandibles in the way they do when something to eat is next to them.
Now, maybe that's not "you saved me and you're not a threat and you are warm and feed me things so this is actually nice." maybe it's an entirely simple mechanical response to the association of food and a smell and there's nothing going on inside.
But that's an awfully complex set of behavioural changes cascading from that, which are similar to more complex animals, and I'm inclined to think the simplest answer is that experiential pain and pleasure is extremely basal in motile animals.
Thanks for your contribution. I've posted a comment elsewhere in the thread that touches upon what I think about this. It may be that what makes 'pain' and 'suffering,' and perhaps then their corollary positives like 'pleasure' important is the subjective and conscious experience of those things. Those are fundamental to the way that we as humans understand them, but if you remove that element of it, it may be that we are observing something like 'pseudo-pain' or 'pseudo-pleasure.' It looks like that from the outside, and certainly our first intuition as an empathetic species is to assume it is, but maybe it's just not a comparable experience? Or if it is, to what degree? Does it outweigh other competing interests when not considered in isolation?
Really though, thank you for sharing. As I was drafting my longer comment I had this one in mind as well.
As a fishkeeper, I've gotta disagree. Maybe it is just projection, but it would take some significant evidence to convince me that cichlids don't have the capacity to experience profound emotion. They can experience depression, at least physiologically, and this tends to manifest most obviously when a monogamous fish loses its mate. Sometimes the remaining fish will isolate itself, stop eating and lose color, and less often they will attach themselves to a small mixed species group instead. It's wild to witness these intricate social behaviors on a daily basis, and for me personally, it has made me reevaluate most of my beliefs about animal intelligence and their emotional experiences.
I think that's a very reasonable observation. Thank you for sharing. I would ask then are other species different? Are there less social/cognizant fish? Certainly shellfish in general seem less 'there' than a cichlid does. Would that make a difference?
I guess it's partly hard for me to articulate my criteria because it's a fuzzy concept to begin with, but I find myself concerned with whether a living creature has reached a high enough level of cognition that its 'pain' or 'depression' (I use these words very loosely here - whether or not what they experience can be said to constitute pain as we understand it is at issue here) is worthy of moral consideration, and if it does, to what level? We are not considering these things in isolation, we are weighing their interest among a host of others.
Part of what I think makes pain and suffering what they are is a subjective experience of it - some conscious recognition of what it is - and that's also what makes it so bad. If a creature does not have that conscious recognition then I 'm not sure if it can rightfully be called pain or suffering at all. It might be more like a pseudo-pain. The creature experiences stimuli that causes it to react in such a way to avoid more stimuli, and it may indeed be subjectively unpleasant for the creature, but that does not automatically mean it's equivalent to the kind of pain we know to exist in humans (and likely many other mammals at the very least). It might just be that we don't have the right concept for what's going on here and are anthropomorphizing the experiences of other animals given the lack of our conceptual clarity.
Next we have to think about whether or not that 'pain,' if it can be called as much, outweighs the considerations of a creature with higher cognitive function and more complex reasons and experiences? The thread starts by talking about bugs, and @Dirt_Owl considerately comes in and clarifies further their rationale (thank you comrade). We presume that feed crickets are being used as feed for other animals being kept as pets. If those animals are of a higher cognitive function, do they not deserve/need to be fed? Is the happiness and bonding brought to them and their respective humans not worthy of preservation in its own right? This kind of goes for cats and dogs too. While humans can and have bonded with MANY animals, those two have a special evolutionary history with our species. Both are obligate carnivores. To sustain pet relationships, then, we need to find a way to get them the nutrition they need to survive. Hopefully vat grown meat comes around very soon - I'll be the first to get in line when it's available to someone hovering just above the poverty level - but until then, are we wrong to prioritize these animals and relationships of a higher cognitive quality than others? It seems to me that when weighing these considerations, the creatures with a higher cognitive order deserve more the consideration. Maybe I'm just being chauvinistic and haven't considered the experience more broadly - but it doesn't seem as if we unilaterally have an obligation not to cause any 'pain' or 'suffering.' It seems to greatly depend on the nature of that 'pain,' and any other competing interests.
I'm by no means definitively decided on the matter. Thanks for contributing to the discussion and giving me more to think about.
This is a difficult conversation because it borders on the religious. Seeing sentience in a being that you can't communicate with takes a leap of faith. I've discussed this topic to death with my vegan partner and ultimately, I do think that attempting to establish the value of one life over another is inherently chauvinistic. I don't have any moral answers, though - I really just know about keeping and breeding fish.
Regarding fish intelligence, it definitely varies by species. Sharks have similar brain-to-body mass ratios to mammals and birds, for instance, and are known to exhibit curiosity and play behaviors. Watch enough diving footage and you'll begin to recognize the ways that they communicate and establish social structures.
Shellfish are actually invertebrates, and some of them - cephalopods, in particular - are incredibly intelligent. Cuttlefish and octopuses fall into the mollusk family, but they've developed their own unique form of intelligence that is both alien and immediately recognizable. How do you measure something like that? To me, this is evidence that our theory of mind is not well developed enough to make these sort of judgment calls.
It is difficult, and you're right, it does border on religious. I respect and appreciate your input and I get why you would come to that conclusion. I myself have not taken that leap but for what might be considered a similarly religious (perhaps ontological?) reasons. Another time, perhaps, it's okay to disagree in good faith and struggle against capitalism together in the meantime.
Are there less social/cognizant fish? Certainly shellfish in general seem less ‘there’ than a cichlid does. Would that make a difference?
Octopi, squid and cuttlefish are molluscs and are very closely related to shellfish (cuttlefish even still have an internal shell) and they're some of the smartest animals on the planet.
It seems silly, I know, my problem with bug farming is a little hard for me to describe but I'll try.
I think that that processing trillions of creatures that move, flail, have missing limbs from being roughly treated etc I mean these are being poured into a bucket ffs even if they probably aren't sentient is still weird. They're still animals and we see them move, make sounds, limp when hurt, and part of me wonders if it's healthy for us to see animals this way from our actions, for our benefit.
I'm not against swatting a fly in your house, it's the mass production of millions of tiny bodies being poured into a container to be used like objects that triggers something in my brain that says "This is fucked up." Maybe I'm being irrational, idk. I'm probably sounding like a crazy person.
I have this weird thing in my brain that dislikes being disrespectful to life, if that makes sense.
As for fish, they feel pain and are definitely capable of thought (goldfish can solve puzzles) so that's a no-brainer for me.
idk man, even before i went vegan i would feel really bad if i saw an insect with a missing limb or something like that. it's just being needlessly cruel i guess.
Yeah, I don't think it's good to inflict unnecessary cruelty even if it's towards something that we're unsure is sentient.
I don't want to normalise cruelty is probably what my thoughts come down to.
I guess it's for the same reason someone quickly squashing a bug isn't disturbing, but someone pulling its legs off one by one for fun is disgusting.
Let's say you're watching a spider in its web in the corner of your window, and a fly gets stuck in the web. The spider starts to clamber over to wrap up the fly, while the fly is struggling in vain with all its might to escape.
Do you let the spider have it, and let the fly have a slow death as it is paralyzed and digested alive, or do you save the fly and potentially cause the spider to have a slow death by starvation?
I think that this reply is perfectly cogent, and hits the nail on the head in a way that pretzeling ourselves into debating the ethics of nerve cells and pheromones and what have you doesn't. If plants would squiggle and move around when cut or would avoid blades or being picked or w/e nobody would care if it's technically a vegetative response (like heliotropism). It looks like you're doing something obviously wrong to another living thing.
Thanks for responding and helping me better understand your thought process and engage my own.
Plants though... Act a lot like simple animals when you watch a time lapse. They react to stimuli, seek nutrients, and physically move just more slowly. They even chemically communicate. They don't seem any less advanced or aware than a clam.
I've responded to this idea at length elsewhere in the thread, but thanks for your contribution. I had this comment in mind as I was drafting the larger one. It may be that what makes ‘pain’ and ‘suffering,’ and perhaps then their corollary positives like ‘pleasure’ important is the subjective and conscious experience of those things. Those are fundamental to the way that we as humans understand them, but if you remove that element of it, it may be that we are observing something like ‘pseudo-pain’ or ‘pseudo-pleasure.’ It looks like 'pain' from the outside, and certainly our first intuition as an empathetic species is to assume it is, but maybe it’s just not a comparable experience? Or if it is, to what degree? Does it outweigh other competing interests when not considered in isolation?
there's literally nothing different about a bee and a fly/ant. it's just that bees are helpful pollinators, that doesn't give them magical vertebrate-consciousness status
Hoverflies are helpful pollinators too. Nature is wild, flies are a huge category of insects that is very diverse.
Who is to say. Humans have been known to exibit that exact same behavior. And if I found myself coverned with the sent of my rotting family I might not hang out around the dinner table. Especially if I live in a society without antibiotics
I will have to look up the name of the delusion but there are fairly rare cases of people becoming convinced they are dead. Usually as the result of some kid of brain damage. I have, seen some people have a similar episodes during amphetamine psychosis but I think the two are unrelated.
However in this case also, we must consider another analogous behavior. We would find being coated with a goop that smelled like rotting flesh highly traumatic and avoid people as well. Either out of mortal terror or politeness.
It is hard to say which if these two situations is the closest analogue.
You are welcome to. I won't understand it. My study of insect cognitive science is lacking but shoot your shot. I'd appreciate to learn some more about their cortisol response or whatver mechanism you postulate is at play in those behaviors.
I mean you are right. In a real sense any guess is just as likely to be true based on our knowlege.
So I looked it up. The last estimated common ancestor between us and ants was 510 million years ago. It was after the cambrain explosion so complex survival systems would likely have been well established in the population. However that is far enough back I wouldn't expext to see strongly analogous neuroanatomy.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnana.2014.00166/full
As a datapoint. This one seems to indicate that consenus of ant neuroanatomy is that is is fully complex enough to contain a rich inner life. However the organization is alien enough that I couldn't speculate about the analogy of structures especially given the noted variability across a population. I am gonna say it would be surprising if ants didn't have complex metacognition as that seems a prerequisite for eusociality and their close relatives seem to posses that.
"This large body of knowledge on honeybee behavior has been complemented by the identification of many behaviorally relevant neurons. Integrating this information in a standardized 3D atlas provides an important tool to understand brain circuits (Brandt et al., 2005). This approach has further been pursued by Menzel, Rybak and colleagues who developed the “The honeybee standard brain” (HSB) database, an interactive tool to integrate morphologies and the reference atlas of neurons in the honeybee brain (Brandt et al., 2005; Rybak et al., 2010). The approach to develop a 3D standard brain has also been used for other insects"
That is just rad as shit and I am gonna read up on that.
Pretty different to have like brain damage and hallucinations vs. a normal person sniffing something on their hand and reliability wandering into a pile of other people who also smelled their hand and just laid down to die
Unless one of us gets real friendly with a prank youtuber we will likely never be able to run the experements of covering people with corpse juice and observing their reactions.
I think the wording you used in perhaps intresting. As tiktok tells me the urge tonjust lay down and die among the teens is a pretty common responce to plenty of situations.
That's the thing, humans react to the stimuli and then feel pain. The reaction is subconscious. What if that's all 'pain' was? Subconscious and automatic withdrawal from a source of stimuli? That's not really pain as we conceive of it, and that brings on the question of whether or not it deserves the same moral consideration? If that's all certain animals experience, lets say bugs, then should we consider that tantamount to the consciously felt and misery inducing pain humans have?
Infact pain is the perception of that signal. Some kinds of brian damage render unable to feel pain despite the signal reaching the brain just fine. So, we say that despite having a clear pain responce signal plants do not feel pain as they cannot process it.
The line is shellfish. Most bugs have an interior life of consequence. Maybe some don't. But they would be the exception. If you consider our basal emotional systems are among our oldest it makes sense they would be recapitulated like that. Even a simple neocortext a few ganglions across seems fo be sufficient. The problem in testing is thst they are so small it is hard for usbto symbolicly internalize what inputs might be meaningful to them. For example due to the size of it's eyes an ant could probably never really perceive us. In a fully lovecraftian sense we would be a giant blurry mass with strange apendages and unknowable drives.
However shellfish, even our close cousin cordate ones like the tunicates seem to lack even the basic neocortex found on simple insects. So they are effectively plants made out of meat. So have at them
So they are effectively plants made out of meat.
I hate this universe and it's weirdness.
Everything in the universe is made from the same shit from the big bang just arranged in different configurations.
We all drink dinosaur piss
https://youtube.com/watch?v=7tScAyNaRdQ
Some plants eat animals. Some fungi prey on animals, too, eating them alive from the inside because nature is metal.
Fucking finally. I've been saying we need to abolish clocks. At least someone gets it.
Why are want entitled to eating plants though? Jainism is the only veganism that makes sense to me
For the majority of plants we eat it is kinda their kink. They have this vore/breeding thing they have been about for a few million years now, ever since the evolution of angiosperms really, and they largely seem quite well pleased
They can live a better life than in the wild. Not all of them do, but many do. It depends on how efficient and careful the company is, and some companies can be quite careless in their shipping and handling, as @Dirt_Owl said.
I'm not sure what the survival-to-adulthood rate is in the wild but I would guess that it is not very high.
I am posting this on break at my bug farming job
You’re handling this convo hella well, so thanks for that.
In terms of fish and other sea life, check out the documentary Seaspiracy. The systemic and ecological affects of fishing are disastrous. If you can avoid eating it, then you really should.
I personally view fish as feeling pain to be enough of a reason to not eat them, which is why :im-vegan: 👍
Thanks for the recommendation. I'll try to do so and explore the topic more.
In a shell"fish" sense of the word, yes.
Just like how a pumpkin is technically a giant berry or fruit, but if one referred to it as a vegetable in regards to culinary purposes they would be correct.
I would eat mealworm burger.
Would not eat maggot burger.
Beans: You soak them, cook them, then season them with salt, pepper, garlic. They're good. I can't imagine being so scared of grass that I contemplate eating the little shit worms.
If you have an instant pot or any other electric pressure cooker then it's even easier. I always have a container full of beans in the fridge, sometimes I'll just eat a spoonful as a snack, or warm them up and eat them with rice (which I also keep in a container, ready to go), or just add some leafy greens and you've got yourself a salad. Also, you can add some seitan to that shit and it's a crazy delicious salad packed with protein and no bugs.
I've found it difficult to sympathize with the 'they're going to make us eat bugs!!' crowd. Like, just don't eat meat. I realize it sucks. But if your move, when it's no longer economically viable to rip a chicken's beak off with burning hot pincers and throw it in a sunless cage for its entire life, is to eat bugs to try to re-capture that feeling, like what the fuck?
Do these people think they are the ones deserving of sympathy in this situation?
Also, it's a protein, who cares? If it tastes good, it meets your nutrition needs, and doesn't make you sick, what difference does it make? Like :im-vegan: and agree with your point, but I always found it bizarre that that main fear mongering thing here is that they'll make you eat gross stuff. Like if it's presented in a way that's gross, don't eat it, but it's a palpable product, what do you care if your processed slop came from a chicken or a worm?
Omnis think goose liver is a delicacy, rather eat a bug than fwa gwa
faux grass is the most overrated thing ever. shit just tastes like fatty liver. like they should just eat a fucking egg yolk if they want that so bad
I had it once at a super boogie restaurant and was so... underwhelmed. Like, why? It just tastes, mushy? Bitter?
:vegan-liberation:
shit just tastes like fatty liver.
What if I told you that this is exactly what "foie gras" translates to?
When I was introduced to it, I was told that they feed the geese a diet heavy in corn and other grains, which they're not accustomed to eating, and their liver goes into overdrive to process it all and grows really big.
I was young and didn't take a stance against it but I was very weirded out by that description, way more than the actual taste or texture.
What if I told you that this is exactly what “foie gras” translates to?
I know, I'm just saying that if you go by the way people rave about it, you'd think it tasted really good or something. Instead it just tastes like fat, and not even the good kind of animal fat, but that weirdly offal-tasting liver fat
also the idea of something's liver being beige is just disgusting as well. Imagine wanting to eat that
How about a vegan bug substitute? :vegan-seitan:
spoiler: the vegan bug substitute is just beans and they're delicious af
Time to eat my :chickpea:s with my hummus made from :chickpea:s topped off with more :bean:s.
:vegan-v:s just keep winning, folks!
Honesty if I comes down to bugs or beans to save the environment I'd rather just eat the beans
I know beans are a good source of protein for vegans, but aren’t they still a lot less protein-dense than bugs?
this
also ive eaten locusts before and they for real taste like grilled shrimp, people shouldnt knock on eating cooked up insects
So, as far as I understand the actual reason that this has never happened and will continue to not happen is that most bugs aren't actually that much more efficient than other protein sources. In fact, for the amount of feed per kg of meat produced, crickets and most beetles actually fall below chicken in terms of efficiency. Worse yet, most of the "able to eat food waste" argument also applies to existing livestock like pigs, rabbits, birds, and cattle, which are already eating that food waste.
Is it possible that there are widely available food sources that are not human edible and efficient to cultivate or repurpose for grub farming? Maybe. But the issue is that without a serious amount of care taken not to waste anything, which may in itself increase waste by way of transportation, it's unlikely that we'll see insects outperforming more traditional small livestock.
I think unless we get to a point where we have limitless clean energy thanks to the wide proliferation of fusion reactors and our focus is on eliminating the last few places that waste water and energy, it's unlikely we're going to see insects as anything more than an alternative to particularly inefficient meat sources like cattle or pigs, and another option alongside things like rabbit, poultry, or fish.
I'd eat all the bugs and like it if they'd just give me the fuckin welfare back again, how many cop cars must we burn old man
