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Some crops can harm animals indirectly while grown/harvested.

Researcher Brian Tomasik has tried to do some rough estimates: for example, legumes appears to inflict less accidental suffering than cereals. Sunflower seeds may sometimes be protected by poisoning birds. Etc.

What crops generally cause the least accidental harm?? Which ones kill and/or harm the biggest number of animals?

Nic
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Nil
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    While answer to this question would certainly interest me, I feel that it is rather off-topic in it's current form. – Alexander Rossa Feb 03 '17 at 15:20
  • @AlexanderRossa in its current form it looks ok to me. – James Jenkins Feb 03 '17 at 16:15
  • To elaborate, I see no clear connection to vegetarianism/veganism. Minimisation of needless suffering is an important part of someone's dietary choices, it is however, as suggested by many threads on this site, hardly the only reason, or the most important one. Moreover, the suffering induced by processes described in the question is not caused directly by humans, but by the very nature of given plants. These things may play part in the bigger scheme of things and be responsible for natural regulation of one specie or another. I believe this question would fare better on agricultural Q&A. – Alexander Rossa Feb 03 '17 at 18:14
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    @AlexanderRossa to a suffering non-human animal it doesn't matter whether the cause is humans or not. IMO, whenever harm can be avoided, it should be. Agricultural practices (as well as 'nature' of a given crop, for that matter) are changeable. And veganism is all about preventing or at least minimising suffering -- human-caused or not. – Nil Feb 03 '17 at 19:17
  • There are two points in your post I do not agree with and which I tried to express earlier. First one is, "whenever harm can be avoided, it should be", the second is "veganism is all about preventing or minimising suffering". I argued that harm has its regulatory (and evolutionary) function in ecosystems and to a certain degree, it is necessary. I also pointed out that animal suffering is only one of numerous reasons for why people follow certain diets. As I said before, it is interesting question but I believe it is a better fit for ethics/agriculture than vegetarianism Q&A. – Alexander Rossa Feb 03 '17 at 19:29
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    @AlexanderRossa I strongly disagree with you. If suffering caused to animals in agriculture is not a veg*n issue, then, I don't know what is! – Zanna Feb 03 '17 at 20:45
  • However, this question appears to be too broad to me, so I'm voting to leave closed – Zanna Feb 03 '17 at 20:46
  • @Zanna While I see your and OP's point, I see difference between different agriculture related suffering. I would be the first to advocate for improvements to agricultural machines, so that they do not destroy rodent populations in fields for example, but not planting cereals because of their purposed infliction of accidental suffering or trying to genetically engineer/cultivate them to fit the norms is a separate topic for me. I vote for reopening though, because I do not think broadness is an issue here and after all the comments, I am interested in learning more about this. – Alexander Rossa Feb 03 '17 at 21:53

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