On Mon, 27 Dec 2004 19:50:10 GMT, Jay Santos > wrote:

>If you believe that something is absolutely morally
>wrong, then the ONLY coherently explicable amount of it
>you may do, and remain consistent with your belief, is
>zero. If you do any of it, then you clearly do not
>believe it to be absolutely wrong.

Then why do you continue to buy meat, coal, coffee,
chocolate and other such items while knowing of the
harms and deaths they cause to humans, often under
slave-like conditions?

[According to the National Safety Council, agriculture
and mining are the two most hazardous occupations in
the country. In 1996, 21 accidental deaths occurred per
100,000 agricultural workers, compared with a national
average of 4 deaths per 100,000 workers for all industries.
A recent survey of 2,000 Kentucky farmers found that
each year one of every eight farm families experiences
an accident requiring medical attention.]
http://www.ext.nodak.edu/extpubs/yf/famsci/he282.htm

According to your logic, people who don't seek out zero-
human death foods are guilty of showing a contempt for
their belief in human rights. How much coal are you
directly and indirectly responsible for, Jon? And there's
the meat packers to consider as well. The harms accrued
in this industry are a direct result of your diet, yet you do
nothing to stop them. In fact, you reward the meat packing
industry for the harms you intentionally cause.

[In 1999, more than one-quarter of America's nearly
150,000 meat packing workers suffered a job-related
injury or illness. The meat packing industry not only has
the highest injury rate, but also has by far the highest
rate of serious injury-more than five times the national
average, as measured in lost workdays.]
http://www.motherjones.com/magazine/...atpacking.html

Those numbers might be even greater than those given
in that example, but if you go to this link
http://146.142.4.24/labjava/outside.jsp?survey=sh
and add up all the injuries in the meat, poultry and dairy
trades you'll find that the numbers of human collateral
harms in the meat trade exceed all others.

Being that you hold all vegans responsible, in fact causal
to the collateral deaths accrued during the production of
their food, it is only reasonable to insist that you take full
responsibility for the collateral harms you cause to humans
by your diet and conclude that you are showing a contempt
for the rights of humans. How much coffee and chocolate
do you buy from child slave labour?

>If you genuinely believe it to be absolutely wrong to
>kill animals other than in provable self defense, then
>you may not morally participate in any activity or
>process that kills animals. If you do so participate,
>then clearly you do not believe killing animals to be
>absolutely wrong.

So when are you going to stop buying products which are
known to kill and violate the rights of humans? If your rule
is to be consistent, you cannot even use certain bridges
and buildings if humans were killed during their construction.