When vegetarianism hurts animals

Sometimes you have to eat an animal to save it. That paradox may disturb vegetarians, but consider the bison: 500 years ago, perhaps 30 million of these enormous mammals inhabited North America. By the late 1800s, several forces--natural climate changes and Buffalo Bill--style mass killings among them--had slashed the bison population to something like 1,000. And yet today North America is home to roughly 450,000 bison, a species recovery that has a lot to do with our having developed an appetite for them.

PointBlank said:
Bison-eating might have helped the bison comeback, but there is no way that you can make an argument that vegetarianism ever HURT the bison.

PointBlank said:
Bison-eating might have helped the bison comeback, but there is no way that you can make an argument that vegetarianism ever HURT the bison.

RaphaelAdidas said:

Just because I'm anal about these things:

I'M not say vegetarianism has hurt bison, but the article rather strongly implies that if we were all vegetarians the bison would have gone extinct. Personally, I wish everyone in the world was a vegetarian as the benefits would far outweigh any costs.

RaphaelAdidas said:

Just because I'm anal about these things:

I'M not say vegetarianism has hurt bison, but the article rather strongly implies that if we were all vegetarians the bison would have gone extinct. Personally, I wish everyone in the world was a vegetarian as the benefits would far outweigh any costs.

chainlink said:

Isn't that a kind of converse logic ? If everyone were vegetarian the Bison would probably not have been hunted to near extinction eh ?

MschfMayhemSoap said:

Oh hell, that reminds me of the Popplers episode of Futurama.

Hippie: Eating animals is wrong!
Leela: But Animals eat other animals!
Hippie: nuh-UHH... We taught a Lion to eat tofu!

*Skeletal Lion gives a sick cough*

I SO wish i could have found the video for that

PointBlank said:
Bison-eating might have helped the bison comeback, but there is no way that you can make an argument that vegetarianism ever HURT the bison.

RaphaelAdidas said:
Personally, I wish everyone in the world was a vegetarian as the benefits would far outweigh any costs.

Roethke said:

I don't see how. The amount of farmland required to feed livestock would be somewhat greater than the amount needed to directly feed humans. Cows gotta' eat stuff, too.

Roethke said:

I don't see how. The amount of farmland required to feed livestock would be somewhat greater than the amount needed to directly feed humans. Cows gotta' eat stuff, too.

RaphaelAdidas said:

. . . And bison weren't killed primarily for food anyway.

Eating bison may have helped save the animals, but it does raise the danger that managed herds will become domesticated and lose their distinct bison-ness. Ranchers have a financial incentive to cull herd members who are cantankerous (as older bulls are), who break fences, who fight other bulls. But removing these animals is a form of unnatural selection: it will eventually remove wild traits from the bison gene pool, making them docile like cattle.

chainlink said:

mmmm, primarily because they were someone elses food ?

RaphaelAdidas said:

A good part of it, sure, but there was big, big money in bison hides.

Westley said:

Which brings us full circle back to the obvious truth that bison were endangered because vegetarians would not eat them. I guess.

RaphaelAdidas said:
I guess I should have been more explicit about the kind of debate I thought this would spark. No, I definitely should have since I wasn't even obviously implicit about it.

Forget the bison qua bison and consider this: is it okay to compromise your values for the greater good? If the hypothesis that bison would have gone totally extinct were there not demand for its meat had strong support, should a vegetarian support eating bison? If you're anti-abortion and a time traveller proves that Jane Doe's baby will be a politician who secures abortion rights for the next hundred years do you find an abortion provider for Jane (assuming she wants one)?