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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: 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.