My whole point is that necessity is entirely moot if consuming certain animal products actually reduces harm to animals when compared to consuming exclusively plants.
Let's start here.
First, although I am a utilitarian I have found that many people don't accept utilitarianism. So I also tailor some of my arguments toward more typical moral systems, part of the motivation for doing this is also that you aren't necessarily the only person reading my posts. If you want to debate this solely on utilitarian grounds then I can restrict myself to only putting my arguments in terms of utilitarian calculus.
Secondly, necessity is salient even in the context of utilitarianism. If an individual is deprived of something necessary, this is likely to cause a large negative effect on their utility. So for example, if someone that doesn't need to eat meat does so, they generate a small amount of utility by satisfying a flavor preference at the expense of a much large amount of negative utility due to death/suffering for another individual. On the other hand, if they genuinely need it to survive, it could well be that the suffering/death they'd cause to an animal causes less of a negative effect on utility overall than if they were deprived of what they need.
Seems like you haven't actually taken the time to read or understand it.
That's pretty harsh. I did read it, and as far as I know I understood it. If you want to accuse me of this, I think you need to be more specific.
In order for this to constitute a counter-argument, it would have to contain what those concessions are, at least in theory.
So you can't even begin to imagine ways of harvesting plants that could result in less animal death/harm? As a preamble, as some random person on the internet and just typing solutions off the top of my head is bound to be less effective at solving the problem than experts who actually put meaningful work into it. It seems like if I can come up with potential solutions under those conditions then much better ones likely exist.
If the problem is harvesting machinery crushing burrows and such, then creating solid tracks for farm equipment to drive over could mitigate this considerably.
If the problem is deliberate pest control, then the use of lethal pest control could be eliminated or scaled down and potentially replaced with non-lethal measures like repellent, measures to make the environment less favorable, developing stuff like immunocontraceptives to prevent the population from expanding, trapping and releasing elsewhere, etc.
If the problem is animals getting chopped up during harvesting/plowing/planting then equipment could be redesigned in ways that are less likely to catch animals in the equipment, farm equipment could possibly emit unpleasant noises, move slower, repellent measures could be deployed prior to the dangerous farm equipment to decrease the amount of animals in the area.
If the problem is animals being killed by predators when crop cover is removed, harvesting methods could be used that leave more cover for animals (ie, leave most of wheat stalks while only harvesting the grain). Of course, there would be a trade off on how this affects the predators.
I found this pretty comprehensive article on the problem of animals killed during harvesting plants. Please read it, I think it'll help clarify some of these questions.
Who cares how much protein you can produce per acre without reference to how many animals have to die in the process?
It's not the only thing that matters, but it is salient because greater use of resources like land has negative effects on animals.
I'm saying that if goods could flow more freely across borders, and land use regulations weren't so restrictive in other regions more naturally suited to raising cattle, people wouldn't be undertaking the expensive and labor-intensive exercise of destroying rainforests just to get a clear piece of land to grow grass on for cows.
Can you give some concrete examples?
I'm fairly certain that traditional pasture farming methods would have just used whatever grass or forage was available towards the end of the season in autumn to feed the animals through winter.
Cattle require quite a bit of hay: http://www.cattletoday.com/archive/1999/November/Cattle_Today15.shtml
According to that, you might need up to 4,000lb of hay per cow.
Here's a forum thread with ranchers talking about yields of hay per acre: http://www.cattletoday.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=74511
That talks about multiple cuttings per year, which wouldn't be possible if you were only cutting in the winter once all the grass had already died. It's not clear from those links whether it was talking about cattle being grazed on it simultaneously but I would assume that this is not the case.
I think you are underestimating the amount of land that would be required for this, especially since we are considering non-optimal conditions where there's no actual planting and harvesting only occurs in the winter one single time.
You are skeptical that there would be far fewer living things running around in the grass of a field toward the end of autumn when it's cold, the grass has all but died, almost no food is left, and it's time to bed down for winter?
Well, first I conceded that the insects would likely be diminished. I don't think insects are that compelling as far as moral relevance goes, though. They behavior/physiology is pretty different from, for example, mammals. More compelling than plants, obviously, since they do have a CNS.
It's not clear exactly how late in the year you were talking about. If you mean like in the middle of winter, then yes, there's a good chance there will be less animals. If you're talking about September or October before there has been much cold weather or snow then I doubt the population would have decreased much.
And if we deliberately bring them into existence, we're responsible for what they experience.
Not sure what bearing this has on the ethics of reducing overall animal deaths and suffering.
If we're restricting ourselves to purely utilitarian arguments, then that may not be relevant.
There are, however, other considerations like land usage and GHG impacts.
Again, not sure what bearing this has on the ethics of reducing overall animal deaths and suffering.
However, this absolutely is relevant to consider because increased land usage means displacing existing creatures and GHG effects on climate have the potentially to negatively affect many individuals. So even if considered by itself you could eat a cow and kill less animals, it's certainly possible that the effects of GHG output would cause suffering for more individuals and work out worse overall.
You appealed to the animal's wellbeing and happiness from a utilitarian standpoint within the context of just having referenced exposure to the elements and predators in reference to a comparison of pasture-raised animals and CAFO animals.
This is what I said: Grass fed cattle mature slower than the conventional approach, they also require more protection from predators and have more exposure to the elements.
I wasn't directly talking about the animals' wellbeing and happiness in that particular point, what I was getting at is exposure to elements and predators means lesser yields. In the case of predators, it either means lesser yields or dealing with the predators, and so utilitarian effects on the predators would have to be accounted for. Both of those things mean the food would be more expensive.
If we're talking about a food that is so expensive it can only make up a fraction of the average person's diet, then even if there are edge cases where it could be better from a utilitarian standpoint (and those edge cases likely do exist) it doesn't seem worth focusing on until the larger more easily solved problems are solved.
And of course, even if there is hypothetical way of producing meat that is good in a utilitarian context this doesn't serve to justify eating meat that was produced in other ways. In the general case in first world countries, eating high on the food chain is going to be a bad proposition in utilitarian terms.
Whew, getting dangerously close to the reddit post size limit!