Tag: 2013

This is a reblog of a 2013 blog from Sentientist.org. 

I’m very often sent news stories that come out showing that meat (or other calorie dense foods seldom mentioned), helped expand human brain growth and reduce the interbirth interval in our species (enabling us to outcompete other nonhuman primates) or that the skeleton of a boy was found who died of apparent b-12 deficiency (because his mama was feeding him vegan, obviously). If eating meat is something humans evolved to do how can I argue against it from an evolutionary perspective? Here’s are my abbreviated arguments for being vegan.

Continue reading “Understanding Evolution made me Vegan”

This is a reblog of a post I first published in  2013. 

In the last blog, I made the case that there really wasn’t a good ethical reason not to eat mussels and oysters. As an astute commenter noted, I wasn’t really making a case FOR eating mussels and oysters so much as saying that the argument against lacked sufficient evidence from the perspective of reducing suffering. In this blog, I’m going to remedy that by outlining some positive effects that might result from the acceptance of oysters and mussels as ethical to eat if not defined as “vegan”. Specifically, I think that eating oysters and mussels 1) undermines the case that vegans are motivated by disgust and purity 2) offers some nutritional benefits that might make people more likely to eat (or continue eating) in a way that causes the least suffering.

Continue reading “The Ethical Case for Eating Oysters and Mussels- Part 2”

This is a post I first wrote in May of 2013. This was the most popular post on Sentientist.org.

In May of 2008 I became vegan or…well, ostrovegan. In this blog I officially come out of the closet, err, shell.  I am almost sure that cultivated mussels and oysters are ethical to eat. I argue eating these animals is completely consistent with the spirit if not the letter of ethical veganism and the tenet of causing less harm with our consumer choices¹. This blog is on bivalve sentience/ability to suffer; for further arguments, including nutrition arguments, see this second blog.

Continue reading “The Ethical Case for Eating Oysters and Mussels- Part 1”