Joey himself appears a nice enough person, engaging in formal debates without drowning out the opposition, which is admirable to see in such a combative field. However I do find his debating approach slightly pompous, and Joey's claims that his channel is primarily educational is a slightly arrogant thing to say for a channel that's purposely designed to push a singular agenda. In any case, let's have a look at what Joey describes as his 'best ever debate', and analyse the points he puts forward to crush the meat eating tyranny of the modern world:
Oh what a battle we have here. I can instantly see why this is going to be the best of Joey's debates. How can you not be excited by the prospect of a YouTube 'celebrity' facing off against some northern bloke, who as well as being against veganism, is also against shaving? You may be wondering what the venue is for this classic matchup. Well, it's only the world famous clearing at the side of the B122, near the national speed limit signpost. Maybe we will find some educational value out of Mr. Carbstrong's channel with this clash for the ages.
Unfortunately the debate begins with a stupid remark from the northerner that being against something makes you a bit of a fascist, which Carbstrong agrees with for some reason. Maybe he didn't want to be seen as a fascist. Funnily enough being against something doesn't mean you're automatically a fascist, and in fact being against a particular opinion is a critical element in any debate. Remember guys, this debate is educational. I've already learnt so much, just like how those against the ethnic cleansing in Germany were actually the fascists in that scenario. Another famous fascist that I can now call out was that evil Mohandas Gandhi, who dared to take a position against British rule in India. I'm so glad that Carbstrong and The Northerner don't let anyone else interject, as their opinions would be worthless against the intellectual might of Carbstrong. Only Carbstrong has the keys to veganism, which of course doesn't revolve around fascist disagreements at all, so interject disapproval at your peril pitiful vegan fascists.
The first serious point in the debate is actually a very valid one. Plant agriculture in general is far less resource intensive than producing meat, although there's plenty of variation depending on the scenario. As such Mr. Northerner is correct in saying that resource needs depend on a whole host of reasons, and he certainly has a point that veganism would simply be unreasonable for many rural and poorer areas of the planet. Joey then gives us some statistics on the proportion of animals that are factory farmed. These figures are completely overblown, with even the most biased sources providing a drastically differing statistic. The accepted estimate in the scientific community for the global percentage of animals that are factory farmed is 40%, which is less than half of what Carbstrong cited. Here we have the first obvious example that Joey is simply regurgitating rhetoric instead of actually engaging in a serious debate. The rest of the discussion on this point is hardly accurate either. It's just some vague statements with a northerner claiming meat farming is globally sustainable, which it certainly fucking isn't, and then going on about having to kill all insects and animals eating the crops if dramatic shifts happen in agriculture, which is again just nonsense.
Mr. Northerner certainly has a point that pastoral farming can be as equally destructive as arable farming in certain scenarios, although whether this occurs on a global scale is up for serious debate. Joey isn't having this and tries to demonstrate the scale of global livestock populations, although where he gets this '70 billion animals' statistic from is a complete mystery. I certainly couldn't find it cited by the UN, but despite statistics varying greatly this figure does seems to be a fairly accurate estimate. In any case, Mr. Carbstrong then claims that none of these agricultural animals should exist, which as Mr. Northerner points out is a hypocritical statement if you're approaching this argument with the intent that all animals have equal rights. Mr. Carbstrong bypasses this important logical flaw, and instead retorts with a sensible point that a switch to veganism isn't going to happen overnight. That's certainly true, but he then goes on to claim that the whole world will eventually go vegan. Here a sensible point has just been mooted by a ridiculous prediction that as Nostradamus Northerner points out aint gonna happen. Meat consumption is rapidly increasing in the drastically expanding developing world, so I'm not quite sure what planet Joey's on. A friendly reminder that just because you think something should happen doesn't mean it will happen. The rest of this point is just arguing over semantics, apart from a brief pause where Mr. Northerner claims he likes to eat a lot of meat. No gay jokes to be made there.
It's at this point the debate takes a sharp detour into the convoluted world of morality. Moral value is certainly a very archaic method of viewing animal conservation, chiefly because moral value is highly subjective and difficult to define. To demonstrate how convoluted this argument is on a global scale we could look at that moronic poster that vegan is holding up in the background. That poster poses the question of why Britons find disgust in the idea of eating dog meat, but not pig meat. This conundrum can be easily answered by the fact that dogs have been a prevalent part of British culture for centuries, hence why we place more moral value on them. This is not so in Korea where dog meat is happily chowed on, so already we're running into fundamental flaws in why the world cannot convert to veganism based on a subjective view of morality. The fact is that even if an animal has moral value it doesn't instantly mean this value trumps any form of desire for it to be eaten. This notion that people actually enjoy the freedom to eat factory farmed meat is what Mr. Carbstrong just can't get into his head. I'm sorry to say that contrary to Joey's beliefs veganism is not a definitive future for mankind, and it's not even vaguely on the horizon, so how the fuck he can make the argument that the majority of people care for animals enough not to consume them is a ridiculous notion when veganism is a huge minority throughout the world.
Another big issue with Mr. Carbstrong's umbrella attitude to morality is that he gives each animal equal value. He claims that everything that feels pain and suffering, and has a desire to live, has moral value. Firstly, you can't possibly conclude that all animals have the desire to live because as humans we have no way of knowing this. We barely understand animal cognition, yet alone complex emotions, so we can't even conclude an individual species has a universal desire to live, yet alone a whole fucking kingdom. Secondly, this broad definition that anything that feels pain or suffering deserves to live drives us into a wealth of problems. Should eating plants be therefore immoral considering they produce comparable abioitc reactions to undesirable stimuli despite lacking pain receptors. You could make the argument that plants don't in fact experience pain or suffering at all as they lack this sensory capacity, but then surely coral would fall into this category, and under Joey's idea of moral value coral is treated equally to dolphins. Not only is this argument based around morality ridiculous from a biological perspective, but also one that's simply unrealistic to be applied on such a general scale. I must ask Mr. Carbstrong if he shows this sort of support to mosquitoes, guinea worm, or the tsetse fly. Remember, denying these organisms that kill millions of people every year a right to life is immoral, and should therefore be shunned.
Continuing on from this point that any sentient being killed unnecessarily is immoral, I would argue that necessity is an incredibly vague parameter, and runs into the same problems as those morality arguments. I would personally view Mr. Carbstrong's choice to live in a house, wear clothes, and travel to other nations on the planet as unnecessary actions that cause the immoral suffering of animals across the globe. Carbstrong also puts across this idea that all animals held in agricultural systems are suffering. Of course the use of the term suffering in this argument is completely irrelevant considering suffering is an emotion derived by humans, and Mr. Carbstrong has absolutely no evidence that the drastically different neural networks of agricultural animals show comparable emotions. Suffering is also very hard to quantify Mr. Carbstrong, and one could easily argue that crop farming causes comparable suffering to local animal populations. If we're approaching this issue from a moral perspective then at some point Carbstrong has to admit that veganism does harm the environment as well, and so by his own parameters is an immoral solution. Just because an organism is sentient does not give it the right to live. That's a cheap philosophical point that has no place in this biological argument.
Just in case you thought this morality argument couldn't get any worse, we then get the quite astonishing revelation that all animals are murdered and raped. Apparently now we can just assign terms from a human court of law on animal populations. Then Joey makes a really scummy argument. It's the old 'let's conflate slavery and agriculture' argument, because you know how ethnic minorities love being compared to livestock just for the sake of a revisionist argument. Slavery and agriculture are two totally different systems, and using attitudes towards the slave trade as evidence against farming is a fucking cheap ploy that aims to paint this man as a supporter of human trafficking. That's one of the most scummy debating tactics you'll ever see. Equally poor debating tactics are constant uses of the word 'innocent' and 'slavery', that instantly make me reject this guy's arguments. These are human derived terms that have no business convoluting an argument about animal sentience. Later we go onto comparing pigs with terrorists in Syria, which is just a baffling line of argument. Killing terrorists affiliated with the Islamic State is apparently perfectly moral, whereas doing the same to pigs is evil. You know let's forget about the numerous cases of peccaries and boars attacking humans in the wild, even if they're now being subjected to human derived parameters.
The argument then goes on to talk about health, in which Mr. Carbstrong correctly points out there are a number of health conditions associated with the consumption of animal meats. Of course the reality is nowhere near as cut and dry as Joey makes it seem, and a balanced diet that includes meat is perfectly healthy, and in fact diets rich in foods such as fish are often linked with good health due to their positive influence on the cardiovascular system. The only negative aspect of eating meat that Joey cites that's supported by science is an abundance of processed meat leading to the increased possibility of getting cancer. The idea that cholesterol can never be included in a balanced diet is just bogus, considering cholesterol naturally occurs in many different formations, with high density lipoproteins in particular actually transporting fat away from your arteries. Mr. Carbstrong is very keen to point out the idea that just because you can eat meat doesn't mean you should, but then forgets that this point could be used against him. Yes Joey, it's great we have all these vegan alternatives, but why does that mean I should eat them? Oh yeah, because in your subjective opinion this is a more moral alternative. Funnily enough Joey there's more to decision making than choosing the most moral option.
I will happily accept that a vegan diet may be a more moral diet than one that includes slaughtered meat, but why is that enough justification to prevent people from choosing to eat meat? The thing is that people could just as easily pick apart your stance with the piss poor argument that 'my way is the moral way'. I tell you what else is immoral Joey: Dictating what people are allowed to eat. Just because something appears more moral to an individual, which doesn't necessarily mean it's a correct or rational decision, doesn't give you the right to incur the freedom of others. To me breaching the liberty of others is far more immoral than anything the meat industry could ever possibly conceive. I'd hate to see what dystopian madness the world would fall into if we started recklessly banning things that are considered subjectively immoral without actually critically analysing the situation. Now I personally do believe that the process of farming meat is immoral, especially when viewing the current system, but that's a burden I'm happy to accept as long as I know the animal doesn't go through intense suffering.
Joey has a different perspective on how animals are slaughtered, as according to him every slaughtered animal get stabbed in the throat. We'll forget that the organisms are unconscious when this happens, because of course that doesn't make the meat industry sound as evil as possible. For starters not every animal has a throat, but in those that do I was under the impression that there were a variety of techniques involved in slaughtering, such as breaking the neck, or a bolt to the head. I've never seen fisherman stabbing fish in the throat, so again I must question Carbstrong's knowledge on the subject. Joey thinks these little issues don't matter as the principle is the same. However the context does fucking matter Joey. I know you have no clue what fucking context is, but painlessly stabbing an animal is totally different to brutally torturing it. In Mr. Carbstrong's Britain putting your critically ill dog down is now illegal, because it's all about the immoral action and not the context. Now I definitely don't agree that an animal isn't sentient when it's stunned, but even Joey would have to admit that this puts the scenario in a completely different context. If context doesn't matter then one could easily make the argument that you're equally immoral for eating a vegan lifestyle due to the negative effect that has on the environment. Carbstrong later justifies his points on the immorality of slaughterhouses with a classic 'think of the children' fallacy. It doesn't matter what point in the debate you focus on, rhetoric is always the spearhead of Carbstrong's argument.
Mr. Carbstrong then outlines the vegan world of the future. According to Joey, which is a phrase becoming synonymous with complete bullshit, we've already established that we could feed 10 billion people in the world with the food we already feed to animals. Of course we realistically couldn't feed ten billion people with this radical shift, and I'd like to see Joey growing his shit with the nomadic tribes in the Sahara Desert, or the Inuit up in North America. Then there's the numerous issues surrounding the food security of this hypothetical scenario. It may well be true that we could feed 10 billion people, but the key issue is that growing this food is an entirely different process to distributing it, maintaining a sustainable source, and then force-feeding it to those people. If people came into my remote town and told me I had to start eating certain foods I'd tell them to fuck off. Joey doesn't seem to understand that the existing problems with agriculture will also exist in his vegan future, which won't become this idyllic utopia because he claims it will. I'd like to know Joey's solution to feeding the impoverished of Africa with this new distribution system, but according to him growing it is all well and good, and these outliers are just statistics that don't apply to the vegan revolution. I'm sorry to say Joey, but you don't need to do detailed research to point out the huge fucking flaws in your global plan.
Later Mr. Carbstrong admits he knows no vegans in Africa, so how he knows the whole continent will turn vegan is beyond me, but the absence of African vegans is apparently because of the lack of information being spread. That's right, not because these people are starving, or living in inhospitable environments that have already been ravaged by poor agricultural practices, but because Joey hasn't given them a roadside pep talk. Funnily enough rural India isn't the most widely accessible place, yet you'll find a fucking ton of vegetarians there. When does the penny drop that the spread of information is just a tiny part of a hugely complex equation, with some of these parts ensuring veganism isn't viable for the whole planet in Joey's dream world? Carbstrong seems to believe that humans are inherently moral, which is complete bollocks, since we're part of the competitive natural world, and therefore naturally selfish organisms. However the biggest problem with this argument is that Carbstrong has the burden of proof completely wrong. Carbstrong is the one making the assertive point that the world could conceivably convert to veganism, therefore it's his responsibility to provide evidence that this will happen, and not make the point that The Northerner has to give evidence to support his counterargument. If you make a point without any evidence it can just as easily be dismissed without any evidence.
Joey's final idea is ludicrous point that 'all pigs get raped'. Well firstly not all pigs are in the agricultural system, and secondly it would be much appreciated if Joey would stop fucking equating human derived concepts with animal behaviour. There is no evidence that pigs can fathom the concept of consent, so quit it with this anthropomorphic approach that shows a complete lack of knowledge towards animal cognition. By this logic the majority of dogs get raped, as do cats, as does pretty much any pet. And just in case you were taking this man's arguments seriously he concludes with links to the 'What The Health' and 'Cowspiracy' films, which are some of the most manipulative and biased pieces of propaganda I've ever had the displeasure of watching. Both of these films have been destroyed by any neutral scientist worth their salt. Humorously the other source is a website plugging the book of some doctor. Great sources Joey, although maybe show some primary research if you actually want me to take you in any way seriously.
In all honesty Mr. Carbstrong if this average man is one of your most challenging debates then I'm not likely to regard you as an intellectual heavyweight. You can claim all you want that you're not a judgmental person, yet I can't identify a single point in the debate where you didn't come across as a condescending hypocrite, spewing out rhetoric for the vegan community to laud you over. You keep making the argument that your opponent hasn't done his research, but I can't see any evidence that you've researched a balanced account of a very complex issue either. There's numerous inaccuracies within your arguments, and the quality of the points being made is quite frankly pathetic. It's easy to counter this sort of argument, aside from pointing out how vague it is, because it's a two part fallacy. The core of your argument is an appeal to emotion, in that you're relentlessly trying to manipulate emotions to win the argument rather than actually using objective arguments. By using this debating technique you're also making a moralistic fallacy, in that you assume because the activity of farming meat is potentially harmful it is therefore against human nature. Quite frankly Mr. Carbstrong it's an absolute disgrace that a man with such poor discourse should be allowed to deem himself an 'educator'. Instead you should be sitting among the numerous other vegan rhetoric peddlers.
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