# Eating meat that died of natural causes. **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 21, 2004, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-meat-that-died-of-natural-causes/235497 "2004-03-21T02:41:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2004, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-meat-that-died-of-natural-causes/235497/21 "2004-03-21T19:16:32Z")
> [@Speaker for the Dead](#): > > Hey, I don’t want to be rude, but if you and **OfBlinkingThings** are going to fight about what seems to be a matter of faith, shouldn’t that be somewhere other than GQ? Absolutely. And if he can offer any reasonable proof of his assertions, I’ll be glad to debate him in GD. However, I’m not going to allow such assertions to remain unchallenged in _this_ forum. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Kentzel-Griffin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ccd318/32.png) [@John\_Kentzel-Griffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Kentzel-Griffin)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2004, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-meat-that-died-of-natural-causes/235497/22 "2004-03-21T19:47:49Z")
> [@Colinmarshall](#): > > Two-parter: > > (a) Vegetarians out there, would you eat meat if the animal died of natural causes? (Not counting, presumably, diseases that would make the meat dangerous to consume.) > > and… > > (b) What would such meat _taste_ like? > > I know the first one is a little IMHO. Can you work with me? Neither question has a factual answer. Off to IMHO. **DrMatrix** - GQ Moderator ---
**Author:** ![vanilla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/f19dbf/32.png) [@vanilla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vanilla)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2004, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-meat-that-died-of-natural-causes/235497/23 "2004-03-21T20:16:25Z")
I have dead broccoli in me. I usually rid myself of negative plant energy by farting. It brings my body to peace. 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![Hyperelastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Hyperelastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hyperelastic)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2004, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-meat-that-died-of-natural-causes/235497/24 "2004-03-21T20:50:07Z")
> [@OfBlinkingThings](#): > > Read my post again. I stated an animal that dies of natural cause WOULD have the chi of death and thats why I wouldnt eat it. And if you dont believe in the chi of death, stop eating meat for a month and if you meditate deeply you will feel the wieght of ingesting death lifted from you. I am not preaching or saying everyone should be a vegan, just offering a way to see my point of view. Actually, I used to be a strict vegetarian myself, and nowadays, I eat very little meat. I find that the less meat I eat, the cleaner my conscience is, but I don’t see the need to resort to pseudo-materialistic theories like chi to explain why I feel better. I feel that the evidence for chi is so scanty that you could easily be convinced that chi doesn’t exist. It would be a shame if you gave up on vegetarianism just because you stopped believing in chi. ---
**Author:** ![Futile\_Gesture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f05b48/32.png) [@Futile\_Gesture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Futile_Gesture)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2004, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-meat-that-died-of-natural-causes/235497/25 "2004-03-21T21:46:37Z")
> [@Colinmarshall](#): > > (a) Vegetarians out there, would you eat meat if the animal died of natural causes? (Not counting, presumably, diseases that would make the meat dangerous to consume.) There are other reasons for being vegetarian that have little or nothing to do with the nature of the animal’s death. Two of them being; - the nature of the animal’s life. - the nature of a meat diet. And ‘natural causes’ very much includes a sudden and violent death. So what you really mean to ask is; would you only eat an animal that had faded away in a protected old age, with a spent and sick body. There’s not much natural in that. And I would imagine that it would taste just about the worse it can do. ---
**Author:** ![flamingbananas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f4b2a3/32.png) [@flamingbananas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flamingbananas)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2004, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-meat-that-died-of-natural-causes/235497/26 "2004-03-21T23:07:46Z")
> [@Boyo Jim](#): > > I don’t know about cows, but I for one would rather die from a spike driven into my brain than being pulled down by a pack of wolves. But that’s just me. Here here. I would want a quick and painless death. Not a slow and painful death. Anyway, im not eating meat after wolves have gotton to it. Have you ever seen a wolf brush its teeth or wash its paws? I certainly haven’t. ---
**Author:** ![NeutronJack](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/neutronjack/32/4134_2.png) [@NeutronJack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NeutronJack)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2004, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-meat-that-died-of-natural-causes/235497/27 "2004-03-22T02:20:05Z")
> [@](#): > > Vegetarians out there, would you eat meat if the animal died of natural causes? As an “ethical vegetarian” (I’m in it for reasons of ethics, as opposed to health reasons) I suppose that it would be technically OK, but really disgusting. I wouldn’t do it unless it were a life-and-death situation. To me, it’s equivalent to asking a non-vegetarian in the USA if it’s ok to eat the family dog if it died of natural causes. Also, you’d have a tough time convincing me that it _really_ died of natural causes, and that you didn’t just hit one of your cows over the head with a hammer. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Magickly\_Delicious](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magickly\_Delicious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magickly_Delicious)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2004, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-meat-that-died-of-natural-causes/235497/28 "2004-03-22T02:44:36Z")
I don’t know if you would consider this a _natural_ cause per se, but I’ve eaten meat from a deer a relative hit with her car. It tasted very good, probably because I think it was pretty young. ---
**Author:** ![meyer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ccd318/32.png) [@meyer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/meyer)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2004, 8:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-meat-that-died-of-natural-causes/235497/29 "2004-03-22T08:03:09Z")
> [@Magickly Delicious](#): > > I don’t know if you would consider this a _natural_ cause per se, but I’ve eaten meat from a deer a relative hit with her car. It tasted very good, probably because I think it was pretty young. Hey! Me too! I ate roadkill once - deer a neighbour hit with his car. You know what, it was DAMN good, chi or no chi! Of course, he didn’t tell us it was roadkill until after we ate it. ---
**Author:** ![Already\_in\_Use](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a9adbd/32.png) [@Already\_in\_Use](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Already_in_Use)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2004, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-meat-that-died-of-natural-causes/235497/30 "2004-03-22T12:42:16Z")
> [@OfBlinkingThings](#): > > The energy of death. It is my belief that when an animal dies the feelings that it has remain in the body, therefore when we eat meat we are also ingesting the fear and pain of the animal. This is a personal belief that I discovered while studying Taoism and hinduism. So does the chi of death transfer to the bacteria that decompose the body, and the plants that feed on the resulting soil? Holy crap, this Chi of Death is everywhere! And what does this have to do with Taoism? It was my impression from studying classical Taoist texts like the _Tao Te Ching_ and the _Chuang Tzu_ that meat-eating was not frowned upon by the great Taoist philosophers, as evidenced by all the descriptions of fishing, butchering, etc. I have no idea if that’s changed for religious Taoists in the two thousand-odd years since then. If people want to be vegetarians, that’s their prerogative, but half-baked pseudoscience doesn’t help matters. After all, every other carnivorous and omnivorous animal seems to deal just fine with the chi of death. Or are humans unique in lacking certain chi-digesting enzymes? ---
**Author:** ![Ilsa\_Lund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/a6a055/32.png) [@Ilsa\_Lund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ilsa_Lund)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2004, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-meat-that-died-of-natural-causes/235497/31 "2004-03-22T13:42:26Z")
> [@](#): > > if you meditate deeply you will feel the wieght of ingesting death lifted from you. Uh, no. That’s the weight of five pounds of beef being lifted from your colon. Fells kinda like the Chi Of Death, though. **Q.E.D.** , you are indeed correct. [http://www.bvra.org/intelligence.html](http://www.bvra.org/intelligence.html) That’s the best cite I could find on short notice. ---
**Author:** ![lieu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c2a13f/32.png) [@lieu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lieu)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2004, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-meat-that-died-of-natural-causes/235497/32 "2004-03-22T19:30:49Z")
_Eat More Geriatric Beef_ is going to be one tough sell. The Chi of Death… not to be confused with the Feng Shui of Death ---
**Author:** ![myrnajean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c57346/32.png) [@myrnajean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/myrnajean)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2004, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-meat-that-died-of-natural-causes/235497/33 "2004-03-22T23:29:36Z")
Not a vegetarian, but no, couldn’t eat meat that died of natural causes, if only because there would be too much clotted blood it in. Gross! Ever notice that you don’t see any (or at least Hardly Any) veins in chicken? They have to be there, they’re just empty or something. I guess if it fell off a cliff and you got to it right away, you could field dress it and it would be okay. (visualizing chicken stampede running over cliff edge) hmmm… On the subject of veggies having feelings, or a fear of death, I think I’ve seen it myself in my garden. Reach for a nice ripe tomato and it instincually throws itself into the dirt and tries to roll away. The asparagus only sprouts one or two shoots at a time, not enough to pick for a meal. Its the opposite of the herding effect. The cherry tree maintains a crew of protective ants, and each cherry that ripens is sure to have at least one little critter embedded. The greenpeppers make sure that each fruit is twisted in some strange fashion, just enough to make you suspicious about it. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![DMark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@DMark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DMark)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2004, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-meat-that-died-of-natural-causes/235497/34 "2004-03-23T00:35:44Z")
Interesting. How many animals eat meat that has died naturally? I know about vultures, but are there any other animals that will eat a carcass of another animal that was not freshly killed? ---
**Author:** ![LilyoftheValley](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/54ee81/32.png) [@LilyoftheValley](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LilyoftheValley)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2004, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-meat-that-died-of-natural-causes/235497/35 "2004-03-23T01:03:50Z")
**Qadgop the Mercotan** , you are my idol. Great post. :swoon: ---
**Author:** ![Fuji\_Kitakyusho](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f0a364/32.png) [@Fuji\_Kitakyusho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fuji_Kitakyusho)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2004, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-meat-that-died-of-natural-causes/235497/36 "2004-03-23T01:04:17Z")
Define exactly what you mean by “natural causes”. I mean, what’s so unnatural about killing and eating something? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-meat-that-died-of-natural-causes/235497.md?page=1)