The thing is it doesn't even make sense from a resource use perspective.
Like any farmed animal, you need to farm many multiples of the energy you'll get from them in the form of plant feed. Might as well just grow plants in the first place and eat those.
In theory you could feed them garbage, but guess what we don't have a way to make garbage-feeding insects food safe.
The thing is it doesn’t even make sense from a resource use perspective.
It absolutely does. If I grow vegetable protein every season the soil loses its nutrients. So I throw on a forage crop that lets the soil regain nutrients. While I can't eat it, my farmed insects can. Then I can eat the insects, thus indirectly eating the forage crop while keeping the soil fertile.
The other option is just throw the forage crop away or alternatively just use extra fertilizer which has its own environmental downsides.
Oh shit, I didn't realize that all land has the exact same fertility. The principle model of animal agriculture for the past 100 years has been to put the location on farmland that isn't productive anymore.
You're giving up land filled with lake sized puddles of toxic hog shit and you expect to grow beans there?
This. We can't just lay out in the sun and photosynthesize. We've got to kill stuff that can process more basic forms of energy and nutrients and eat them.
If insects are off the table then so are fruits and vegetables tbh. Mushrooms are extremely complex organisms that rival lower-level animals but no one cares if you eat those.
After you get to fish, the entire argument for not eating certain animals just falls apart. Let alone things like insects.
The distinction between plants and animals does seem more and more arbitrary as we learn more about how plants interact with the world. Like I'm willing to entertain arguments that some plants are capable of communication and problem solving but do it in a way that is so alien to us, and on a much slower time scale, so we don't recognize any kinship with them.
Well, I suppose like all things it is a topic of debate. Fish intelligence is still very contested afaik, since it's difficult to evaluate the intelligence of organisms who sense and interact with the world in such a different way from us. Honestly I think cephalopod research has only gotten as far as it has because manual dexterity and color are some of the easiest things for humans to understand. For a fish that doesn't have prehensile appendages and doesn't interact with color in an obviously complex way? It's hard to think of where to start.
Most fruits literally are designed to be eaten as a part of the plant's life cycle.
If you're going to make this argument, at least do what the Jains do and make a distinction between plant foods that you can eat without killing the plant, and ones for which you cannot.
Bugs are animals too and I think it would be cool if we didn't kill them unnecessarily. Plants have protein too.
The thing is it doesn't even make sense from a resource use perspective.
Like any farmed animal, you need to farm many multiples of the energy you'll get from them in the form of plant feed. Might as well just grow plants in the first place and eat those.
In theory you could feed them garbage, but guess what we don't have a way to make garbage-feeding insects food safe.
It absolutely does. If I grow vegetable protein every season the soil loses its nutrients. So I throw on a forage crop that lets the soil regain nutrients. While I can't eat it, my farmed insects can. Then I can eat the insects, thus indirectly eating the forage crop while keeping the soil fertile.
The other option is just throw the forage crop away or alternatively just use extra fertilizer which has its own environmental downsides.
deleted by creator
Oh shit, I didn't realize that all land has the exact same fertility. The principle model of animal agriculture for the past 100 years has been to put the location on farmland that isn't productive anymore.
You're giving up land filled with lake sized puddles of toxic hog shit and you expect to grow beans there?
deleted by creator
This. We can't just lay out in the sun and photosynthesize. We've got to kill stuff that can process more basic forms of energy and nutrients and eat them.
Nutrition isn't just calories. Insects have B12 and might be useful for other nutrients that are harder to get from plants.
deleted by creator
I don't think they are able to feel in the manner that even less intelligent lizards probably can.
If insects are off the table then so are fruits and vegetables tbh. Mushrooms are extremely complex organisms that rival lower-level animals but no one cares if you eat those.
After you get to fish, the entire argument for not eating certain animals just falls apart. Let alone things like insects.
deleted by creator
Removed by mod
deleted by creator
Grass does not feel pain dummy
Cant believe this nonsense gets propagated on hexbear.net
The distinction between plants and animals does seem more and more arbitrary as we learn more about how plants interact with the world. Like I'm willing to entertain arguments that some plants are capable of communication and problem solving but do it in a way that is so alien to us, and on a much slower time scale, so we don't recognize any kinship with them.
Well, I suppose like all things it is a topic of debate. Fish intelligence is still very contested afaik, since it's difficult to evaluate the intelligence of organisms who sense and interact with the world in such a different way from us. Honestly I think cephalopod research has only gotten as far as it has because manual dexterity and color are some of the easiest things for humans to understand. For a fish that doesn't have prehensile appendages and doesn't interact with color in an obviously complex way? It's hard to think of where to start.
Most fruits literally are designed to be eaten as a part of the plant's life cycle.
If you're going to make this argument, at least do what the Jains do and make a distinction between plant foods that you can eat without killing the plant, and ones for which you cannot.
god i cant fucking stand carnists. the mental gymnastics surely must be as exhausting for you as they are for normal people?