’Unwashed, your granny’s probably old and stringy and not marbled enough to taste good.
Killing for the purpose of eating is OK. Killing for ‘sport’ (whatever that may mean) or out of malice is cruel and horrid.
All things being equal, I’m in favor of the current cultural ban on cannibalism. It would be inconvenient to have to worry about being preyed upon by my own species.
But I do think that if you’re going to kill people, you should eat them.
First, I’m omnivorous, so there isn’t much I don’t (or won’t) eat.
Herb crusted rack of lamb? Oh my, what a delight. So, Judith Prietht, how you doin?
I’m with LindyH, there is plenty of good veal to be had if you know where to look.
Bye the way, beef, veal, and pork, mixed together (Grandma Toad’s recipe) make the best meatballs ever. Braised lamb with portabella mushrooms in wine sauce…
The Great Unwashed:
Well your last post was fairly incoherent, but at least we seem to be making some progress.
Other people can answer for themselves about hypocrisy or whether they want to add something to “yummy”. But in mentioning ranting, I was referring to this remark of yours:
As far as “topical observations” are concerned – where are they?
Of course there’s no law stopping an atheist quoting Genesis as a work of literature, but if I was quoting it in a thread about ethics I’d do it for one of two reasons: 1. because I considered it to be the authoritative word of God (and therefore a worthwhile ethical source) and because it supported my case or 2. because I knew that the people on the opposite side of the argument trusted Genesis, and yet my quotation undermined their case.
You’re an atheist, so reason 1 is a non-starter, and you’ve got no reason to assume that anybody else here is relying on Genesis for their ethical position, so reason 2 falls down too. Your quoting Genesis was not a topical observation, or even “an aside”, it was a waste of time. You then offered the point of view that eating meat is “a consequence of delusional thinking”, which doesn’t even make any sense. Perhaps you’d like to qualify what you meant by it?
And now you’re drawing a moral equivalence between a cow and your granny. Maybe she’d be OK with that, but it’s an unsustainable argument unless you’re prepared to consider a similar moral equivalence between your granny and a rat, a fish, a worm, a leech etc. There’d come a point at which you’d have to draw the line, and that’s the same dilemma faced by anyone who considers eating animal flesh.
Human society does not generally consider humans and animals to be morally equivalent. If it did the courts would be full of cats being tried for murdering mice. Instead we take it upon ourselves to decide what responsibility we have towards animals, and act according to our conscience.
I don’t notice many people – even militant vegans – adopting the Jainist practice of wearing a gauze mask to avoid breathing in tiny creatures. We all have a place to draw the line.
Personally I have no problem with the fact that an animal might die to feed me, but I do have a problem with the fact that the animal may have suffered during its life. I calculate the degree of suffering (insofar as I’m aware of it) and make a judgement about whether it’s acceptable or not. Your judgement puts a line in a different place, and of course that’s fine – there’s no need to boil up about it.
Personally, I wouldn’t go deer hunting or work in an abattoir for the same reason I wouldn’t be a vet or a dentist – it’s a matter of squeamishness, not morality. When it comes to drawing the line, I suppose there are two considerations: I wouldn’t kill an animal that I considered to be “too much like a human” (so that would exclude dolphins and dogs) and I wouldn’t force an animal to live a miserable life (so that scuppers battery poultry and crated veal). Additionally, as you’ve said yourself, you have to modify your ethics according to your circumstances, and starvation would be less preferable to eating human flesh, as some aeroplane passengers have discovered to their dismay. But starvation or not is not the only reason to make that choice.
This is a serious enough topic, and I know from conversations with vegetarian friends of mine that there are religious, ethical and health-related reasons why people might choose not to eat meat. But petulant remarks about rottweilers and the like just make you seem childish and are going to convince nobody.
I won’t buy veal- mom does sometimes, because I mentioned that venison is available at Wild Oats and no matter how many times I explain to her that venison is dear and veal is a calf that has been tortured, she can’t grok the difference between the two meats. I do go ahead and cook and eat it, but it definitely is not my first choice of meat. I would buy it if weren’t for the aforementioned inhumane conditons the calves are raised under.
I do love lamb- I like to cook it in a sauce made of Foster’s Lager, soy sauce, garlic, rosemary, basil and sage. Yummy. I like it a bit on the rare side, mom likes hers well done.
Most of the objections I hear to eating venison, lamb and rabbit (which I am also fond of, but don’t eat very often) are purely emotional (How can you eat Bambi?) I have no such qualms. I’d have to be pretty desparately starving to actually kill a cute animal, but once it’s out of the fluffy wrapper, it’s game ball.
Of course, once I’ve verified that a particular food is not something I’m allergic to, I’ll eat just about anything as long as it’s been killed and properly cooked. I seldom eat prime rib because the first time I had it, (at a very expensive restaraunt) it was served up so rare that I wanted to send it back and ask them to pleas kill the cow, and I still have kind of an “eeewwww factor” about it, even if it has actually been cooked.
Sole exception- I love raw oysters.
That’s one thing I forgot in my post - my husband hunts deer (for meat only, not trophies), but won’t hunt rabbit. He’s heard a wounded rabbit before, and says it screams more like a human child rather than what you think a rabbit might sound like.
I see something wrong in not eating it
I’ll eat veal if it is being served at someone else’s house, but at home or at restaurants I usually get something else.
I love lamb and order it whenever I go to an Indian, Greek, Turkish or Morrocan restaurant. I don’t eat it at home a lot since it is rather difficult to properly prepare it.
Oh, now you’re just making me salivate. You’re right; that’s the best mixture, not only for meatballs, but for Italian meat sauce in general. But you should add some sausage too…
MMMMM…MEAT!
Veal and Lamb are both very, very tasty if cooked properly…
You patronizing arse Everton!
He is not incorrect, however.
Wow, this is turnign into aPit thread really fast. You still have not justitified your position, Unwashed
Please do not post direct insults in forums other than the Pit.
Thenk yew.
– Uke, Special Guest IMHO Moderator
This thread feels like it can be all things at once:
I lost my post on lamb and veal–why?: ATMB
How do lamb and veal get to the dinner table?: General Questions
Morality of raising and eating lamb and veal: Great Debates
Recipes for lamb and veal: Cafe Society
Do you eat lamb or veal?: IMHO
The last time I ate lamb or veal: MPSIMS
You suck for eating lamb or veal!: The Pit
Hubby likes lamb, I do not. I enjoy the flovor of veal parmagiana or veal carbonara, but find the meat too expensive to actually buy. A rather amusing aside: I was at least 20 before I realized that veal were baby cows. For way too many years, I thought “veal” was an entirely separate animal
A friend once said, “I always thought mutton was uber beef.” I just had to share that.
I like veal and only eat it when my parents serve it, but I prefer not to think about what I’m actually eating…
I love both veal and lamb. I do try to get free range veal when I can though for the same reason that I try to by most of my meats kosher or as kosher like as possible. (Kind of hard to find kosher pork yaknow. 
) The animals suffering should be as minimal as possible before it is slaughtered. That said, I have no problem with slaughtering an animal and eating it…mother nature is a bitch, and I’m not much nicer.
Irish cattle are kept outdoors in the summer months. Sheep are kept outdoors pretty much all year round. But unless you’re buying pork which is specifically labelled as being produced from free range pigs (for the want of a better phrase), the overwhelming likelihood is that your dinner was produced in an intensive piggery, with little or no outdoor access for the animals.
I do find something wrong. Lamb chops are too damn expensive, that’s whats wrong!
Not in the least, although I am careful about meat consumption because I suffer from gout.
As mentioned, veal is good and tasty. Never had veal that was without much flavor. Although the mistreatment of animals is not cool, I will continue to eat veal. - go ahead and bust my chops.
Hunting dear just means that the animal has had the best possible free life available for that animal. Then in a blink of an eye… seems like a better way to go. It was not just born and bred for slaughter.
Since God stuff was mentioned: A friend told me that the bible says animals were put on Earth for our use. I personally don’t know, or try to keep up, about them God type things.