Does being a pescetarian still help animals?

Note: You assistance is still needed in this question.

I also suspect that we will be unable to answer this question without more explanation. What do you mean by “help animals”?

It helps all but sea animals.

Choosing not to eat an animal probably does promote its health and well-being.

The best way to help animals is to actually rescue them.
Sure, not eating meat helps a tiny bit, but the meat industry/factory farming industry is never going to be eliminated.
If you really want to help, sponsor a farm animal rescue of adopt a chicken or goose or lamb or cow or a captive salmon. haha

When you eat fish, you still eat animals, and you still eat meat. The popular distinction between meat and fish is a lie. Fish is meat.
So no, it does not help animals. All it is is self deception.

I don’t believe there is any moral difference between killing an animal or killing a fish after all even aquatic creatures suffer pain.

@ragingloli just doesn’t want you to eat anything with tentacles.

They are all living creatures, so there isn’t a big jump between eating meat and only eating fish.
Even if there were, we could fish the oceans dry, and the result would be killing off a lot of animals that depend on fish for food.

If you are going to become a pescatarian, it would be good to eat only sustainable fish. That will help sea-life.

@filmfan goes without saying!

Depends on what you mean by help.

Certainly, beef production has a huge impact on our global ecology. Industrial farming also has a huge impact, as well as creating an entire society that turns a blind eye to incredible cruelty and pain. But the fishing industry also has a long history of over harvesting and a clear lack of sustainability.

If you want to add meat back into your diet, probably the best thing that you can do is buy locally from small farms that practice sustainable agriculture.

The best way to help animals or anything in this world is to do what is in your heart. If you make a decision or act from that place, it cannot be wrong for anyone or anything.

I have a personal understanding of karma and reincarnation (by that I mean maybe different from a version that thinks about it too logically). From that, I’ll say that beings are incarnated for the sake of experience in the world, and that it’s not about collecting good experiences and shunning bad experiences, but about tasting all experience. A factory farmed animal suffers through experience, but as a “spirit” this is okay. The spirit is not harmed and it tastes of earthly living. When an animal dies, it’s spirit is liberated and moves on to the next incarnation. (Even this is a little concrete for what I actually mean, but it’ll do.) There’s no harm in liberating a spirit from a body. It happens around us all the time. The real question is what experience does your spirit get in your body? This is why acting from the heart is worth your attention. Even if you do the opposite of that, you still collect experience, but acting from your heart is the path to liberation while you are still in the body.

I’m guessing the fish would say no.

Look at it this way. What if some superior alien beings arrived on earth and said, we like bunnies and kittens and cows and chickens and fish, so we’re not going to eat them and we’re not going to kill them. Those humans, though, are ugly and selfish and don’t really deserve to live (and we don’t care whether they do or not, because we are superior) but they taste very good, so we’re only going to eat humans.

Do you think that idea would help humans?

@Kardamom Well, didn’t you see the episode of Twilight Zone where the Aliens came down to earth with a book titled “To Serve Mankind”? They couldn’t translate it at first, but then one guy figured out it was a cookbook. I think it works the same with fish.

^^ Ha : P

@kevbo “The best way to help animals or anything in this world is to do what is in your heart. If you make a decision or act from that place, it cannot be wrong for anyone or anything.”
You could be right but I’m more inclined to think it depends how dark one’s heart is.

@kevbo Animals do not collect “karma”. They are innocent beings, and to apply human spirituality to them and believe they are here to suffer through experiences as you may believe humans are is just more human egoic assumption, period, end of story.
The ultimate truth is we know nothing for certain and I find it offensive to imply animals, that suffer at the hands of us supposedly more evolved beings get to suffer because, after all, it’s their karma. What a load of cock and bull!

Pun intended.

@Coloma So you think all animals lack karma? I don’t know about that.

@Adirondackwannabe I do. How can any non-human creature without ego, or ability to act from ego and contrived evil have karma? Nope, balderdash.

If you click on my avatar not only can you see happy Marwyn enjoying being “up” but you can see his happy hen friends in the background, everyone living the good life, no worries. Love in action. This is one lucky goose, 16 years of a happy, healthy life and counting with no fears of being plucked, roasted or having his liver spread on a cracker. :-)

In the strictest sense, eating animals has actually made them more successful. There wouldn’t be a fraction as many cows on this planet if we didn’t raise them for food. Well, come to think of it, there wouldn’t be cows at all.

@dappled leaves There would still be cows in India. They have never been eaten there. :-)

@Coloma, who (or what) among us does not suffer at the hands of others?

Lucky goose? For the love of God, please tell me who is applying human-egoic-assumptions-period-end-of-story.

@Coloma Cows are eaten in India. Not everyone who lives there is Hindu.

Eating meat can be humane. Kulling deer populations in the US is essential for the health of the herds there. This whole, don’t eat animals fashion is unfortunate. Our problem as a species is that there are too many of us and our impact on the environment is crazy awful in many areas of the world. We can’t all eat Capybara and expect there to be enough to go around next Lent.

If it weren’t for free range pig farms or organic dairy farms or beef farms, those cows or pigs wouldn’t have had a life at all. They get to live happy lives until they are slaughtered. I’d rather eat that than a farm raised salmon.

@kevbo wins my daily crackpot answer award.

@cazzie ” Kulling deer populations in the US is essential for the health of the herds there.”
I agree but that’s only because we killed off the wolves.

“If it weren’t for free range pig farms or organic dairy farms or beef farms, those cows or pigs wouldn’t have had a life at all.”

Except most livestock raised in the US isn’t even remotely close to humane. Given the choice between no life and this, I’d go ahead and chose non-existence.

@El_Cadejo industrially grown food is bad, be it meat or grain.

@cazzie, don’t bother. I already have the lifetime achievement.

and @Coloma, your application of karma is different from mine, so your offense is your own. It’s not “get to.” It’s “desire to.” And it’s not the physical form that I’m talking about but the consciousness behind it.

@kevbo “Lucky” as in cause and effect, not “karma.”
My goose was “lucky” that he was rescued by an animal nut and given a great home, not because he willed some sort of karmic destiny to be the one out thousands to not end up on a dinner plate. I called your assumptive claim of ultimate truth in that animals choose their karmic destiny, egoic, because it is. We know no-thing for certain and it is egoic to claim you hold some sort of monopoly on ultimate truth.

I do not believe in cosmic karmic destiny, nor do I believe that animals choose their karma.
I choose to volunteer for a wildlife rescue group and hence, ended up rescuing my goose, had I not volunteered he would have been placed with someone else. Cause and effect, not karma.
I do not believe innocent children choose to be raped and murdered or to be born into abusive families because they choose their karma, or that innocent animals choose to be maimed and mutilated and abused.

What a tidy little ideology to explain away and take no responsibility for ones actions. Pffft!

@cazzie I stand corrected, you are right. I should have said ” most” cows in India are not killed and consumed.

@Coloma I’m not sure I’d agree that “most cows in India are not killed and consumed”. It’s probably true that most people in India don’t eat cows. But that doesn’t mean that most of the cows in India are free to traipse through the town streets. And it doesn’t address my larger point that there would not be cows in India at all if they hadn’t been bred for our food. Also… even Hindus eat dairy products.

@dappled_leaves You’re right, perhaps I am coming from a place of assumption, mea culpa.

@Coloma, Uhh… no… you use “lucky” in an egoic human assumption that a domesticated life that is replete with pleasure and absent of pain is best for a goose.

I never claimed to have a monopoly on truth. I’m just expressing my understanding. Your off-the-rails need to take offense is your own bag, dear.

@kevbo Of course a life absent of pain and infused with pleasure is the preference of all organisms if given a choice. Kinda a no-brainer. Since animals do not have the ability to communicate their choices their human stewards are graced with that ability/responsibility to intervene on suffering and to preserve and protect when ever possible.
This horse is now dead, pun intended I shall take my saddle bags and hit the trail, no offense taken nor given. Happy trails!