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Clearly Veg reports:
Barbara Hendricks, Germany's environment minister, has banned meat in all official functions and called for only vegetarian food to be served. The ban became clear through an email "to department heads from a senior civil servant in the environment ministry", according to The Telegraph . The e-mail noted that the ministry had a responsibility and should set an example to combat the "negative effects of meat consumption", with a statement by the ministry reading:
"We're not telling anyone what they should eat. But we want to set a good example for climate protection, because vegetarian food is more climate-friendly than meat and fish."
Unsurprisingly, the ban has caused a lot of controversy. Minister of food and agriculture Christian Schmidt, who has previously stated that he will push for a ban on "misleading" vegan labels such as vegan curry sausages, stated that he will not be having this "Veggie Day through the back door", and that "meat and fish are also part of a balanced diet".
[Ed Note: This submission vandalized by cmn32480.]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Friday February 24 2017, @08:32AM
As a (meat eating) member of the literati, I initially thought this is great - a politician acting on idealism, trying to do the right thing, without really overreaching too much. I'm not a vegetarian, but I don't mind veggies either.
But I tried to cast myself into the mind set of someone who would find this really annoying. So, for example, for me what would happen if said environment minister did something I strongly disagreed with, for example banning men (or women) from working in her department. Then I would be decrying this as horribly sexist and generally out of order. So what's the difference between the two situations? Why would banning meat be okay, but banning men be immoral?
Does it just come down to my own subjective preferences as to acceptable behaviour, or is there some objective difference between the two?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 24 2017, @08:48AM
You're way overthinking this. The real reason is that the bratwurst munchers are tired of their sterotype.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday February 25 2017, @12:47AM
They're Schisse eaters much more than they are Bratwurst eaters and as a way to atone for their sins of the past, they shall not only not eat animals but they eat their own human byproduct. The most valued guests get the plates spiced with undigested corn (or, as the Indians call it, Maize) kernels for more texture with Merkel herself eating the freshest bit drizzled over her face direct from the source.
(Score: 2) by mth on Friday February 24 2017, @09:11AM
This is not a ban on eating meat at the ministry, it's about purchase decisions made by the ministry. If you want bring your own bacon sandwich for lunch, no problem. So it's not restricting anyone's personal freedoms, it is restricting the way of working at the ministry.
Second difference is that eating meat is something you can easily suspend: not having meat at a lunch table or reception is at worst a minor inconvenience. Similarly, a workplace banning alcohol (banning consumption even, not just serving) does not prevent people from having a drink after work.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Friday February 24 2017, @07:02PM
It's a cost savings, like when they cook liver or tongue with lentils in school...
It's cheaper per kg, and you can cook a lot less of it because almost nobody will eat.
(Score: 1) by Chillgamesh on Friday February 24 2017, @08:39PM
Agreed. It's cost savings justified with by some sort of message of environmentalism
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 24 2017, @10:21AM
yes, it comes down to your subjective preferences.
you can think of "morality" as being generated by people's subjective desires.
objectivity does come in, but only to the extent that people actually care about it.
an "objective source of morality" must, in the end, be seen as a religion of some sort, since it places value on actions based on whether or not some abstract entity ("god", "society", "future historians") likes or dislikes those actions.
it would be objective because it would not be a single person's views, but in practice it's some sort of average of subjective preferences.
personally, I agree with you, in case that matters. public funds, government says there's a climate problem we need to solve, let's lead by example. they are putting their mouths where their mouths are.
(Score: 3, Informative) by bd on Friday February 24 2017, @10:57AM
To take a less extreme example, the moral difference is the difference between forcing everyone who works for her to wear a campaign slogan hat and
giving out free campaign slogan hats at an event.
It is not a ban on employee behaviour or what is on the lunch menu on ministry cafeterias. This is about catering for official ministry receptions.
Her reasoning was that when the ministry gives out free food, she, being the host of the event, gets to decide the menu.
An exception was even done for events that specifically are about meat (such as low environmental impact meat production).
(Score: 4, Insightful) by TheRaven on Friday February 24 2017, @12:44PM
As a vegetarian, I think this measure is a bit nonsense. It is absolutely true that meat has a higher area land usage impact per calorie than vegetables. Extrapolating from there to meat has a higher environmental impact than any vegetarian alternative is pure nonsense. Meat animals farmed on land that is not suitable for cultivation (because they can eat things that humans can't) and without mass-produced feed has a lower environmental impact than clearing forest land to provide space for growing crops, for example. A lot of meat substitutes are very energy intensive to produce and some have a higher environmental impact than dead animal as a result.
This kind of 'broad category X is always better than broad category Y' thinking very rarely leads to an improvement.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by TheGratefulNet on Friday February 24 2017, @01:15PM
"if people are not supposed to eat animals, how come they're all made of meat??"
;)
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 1, Redundant) by HiThere on Friday February 24 2017, @06:57PM
To rephrase your comment:
If people are not supposed to eat people, how come they're made of meat?
You may have been making a joke, of course, but without tone of voice and expression I can't really tell. It could have been sarcasm or even, for some people, irony.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Informative) by maxwell demon on Friday February 24 2017, @08:38PM
Well, if you look carefully, you'll find that the line with the text is followed by another, in which a semicolon is followed by a closing parenthesis. You really should learn to interpret such character sequences. Not understanding them is similar to not understanding tone of voice and facial expressions in direct communication.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by HiThere on Saturday February 25 2017, @01:11AM
Yeah, so it's some sort of humorous construction. But the difference in meaning in this case between understanding it as a joke, as sarcasm, or as irony is considerable. (Sometimes it hardly matters, but in this case it could even reverse the meaning.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday February 25 2017, @08:46AM
So is the difference between ":)" and ";)".
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by HiThere on Saturday February 25 2017, @06:52PM
OK. I don't follow emoticons, so even now I don't know which was indicated without a google search. Wikipedia reports the meaning as either a wink or a smirk...which leaves me confused, as neither seems to apply to your post.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday February 25 2017, @10:02PM
To my post? I don't have several accounts.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday February 24 2017, @06:53PM
Carrying capacity of U.S. agricultural land: Ten diet scenarios [elementascience.org]
Using a biophysical simulation model we calculated human carrying capacity under ten diet scenarios. The scenarios included two reference diets based on actual consumption and eight “Healthy Diet” scenarios that complied with nutritional recommendations but varied in the level of meat content.
...
Carrying capacity was generally higher for scenarios with less meat and highest for the lacto-vegetarian diet. However, the carrying capacity of the vegan diet was lower than two of the healthy omnivore diet scenarios.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 24 2017, @08:28PM
meat has a higher area land usage impact per calorie than vegetables
Environmental impact seems to absolutely be the focus of the German Environment Ministry.
To land use, add water use.
How Water Intensive Food Choices Impact California’s Drought [ecology.com]
The guys also add the impact of livestock shit on groundwater.
Worried About Water? Mind The Meat [eecosphere.com]
...and on top of that, add livestock farts which are a significant source of greenhouse gases.
Long story short:
They also add
Their link to Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine is paywalled and robots.txt blocks the Wayback Machine. 8-(
If you eat a grain and a legume (e.g. rice and beans), you get all the amino acids that your body needs to build proteins.
The only thing that you get by eating animal products that you don't get with a vegan diet is Vitamin B12.
A once-a-day multi-vitamin pill or a B12 pill will give you that for a lot less than buying meat.
Essentially zero impact on the environment as well.
.
Meat animals farmed on land that is not suitable for cultivation
It now sounds like you're talking about goats.
Do a lot of Soylentils eat goat meat??
...and humans have been doing terraced farming and soil enrichment for millenia.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday February 24 2017, @04:26PM
Does it just come down to my own subjective preferences as to acceptable behaviour, or is there some objective difference between the two?
Well, that gets at the heart of the ontology of ethics. Asking about "objectivity" in this context is opening a can of worms. Are there moral issues that can be decided objectively in all times and places? And how far do they go?
I think just about all of us can see obvious differences between banning an entire gender vs. not offering a particular culinary choice at a free dinner. Frankly, I'm not even going to bother listing differences because they are so obvious. There are a whole bunch of assumptions about morality today that we operate under that govern the first issue, while there are a lot fewer moral assumptions about what you can serve at a free dinner.
I think a better and more comparable moral conundrum to pose in this regard is: would it be morally okay to ONLY offer meat-based dishes at official functions? That was pretty much the standard assumption only a few decades ago. If you ordered a vegetable at a restaurant, it might be cooked in butter or even lard. It's still the norm at some restaurants and in some places. These places excluded huge segments of the world's population who are (for religious or moral reasons) either vegetarian or vegan.
Now that a lot of Western society has become better educated about these things in the past few decades, most restaurants and caterers know to offer "vegetarian" and/or "vegan" options. But would it be some sort of moral lapse if they didn't? Or merely "impolite" or "insensitive" or something? And if we now determine it is ethically REQUIRED to offer such options, can a meat-eater similarly demand an alternative?
I've mentioned some issues that arise here in another post, but I think this is a better place to target your concerns about the subjective nature of ethical distinctions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 24 2017, @05:31PM
When my father visited Germany in the 1980s, he was offered what he though was bread with butter. Nope. It was bread with lard. They also dipped vegetables in it. Lard, lard, lard, glorious lard! The fact that hostile immigrants would have a fit over it is merely a bonus. You can't be properly German without lard.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Friday February 24 2017, @06:46PM
Why would banning meat be okay, but banning men be immoral?
Humans have human-rights. Food doesn't.