So become a warrior-shaman vegetarian. Only eat meat if you’ve watched it die in person (or even better, you’ve killed it yourself.)
At the very least you could avoid buying meat from giant conglomerates. As with sneakers made in sweatshops, cease dealing with any company with suspicious past practices or companies which you haven’t checked out. Or at least buy the more expensive “free range” chicken!
And remember, carrot juice is MURDER! Have you heard of the class of vegetarians called frutarians? Fruits and seeds only, no mutilated plant bodies.
I prefer eating animals that died from natural causes, like the ones that didn’t run away from me fast enough.
In any case, I have no problem with eating meat because I enjoy the taste and I don’t mind the idea of killing things to achieve that taste. Even if they were herded around in efficient deathtraps with Industrial Age-efficiency, even if they weren’t always treated absolutely humanely. After all, they’re animals. Humans have done a lot worse, both to other creatures and to ourselves.
I eat meat, and have no qualms about it. But I do think the logic that many here espouse – nature does this, therefore it’s ok – is not really relevant. Just because the world can be cold and dark doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to make it better. In a natural state, humans are free to kill other humans without fear of retribution by the law, but we’re better than that.
Also, the comparison of PETA to the NRA was pretty silly.
I have been a vegetarian for years and originally got into the practice as part of yoga. I had not eaten red meat for years before that point in my life because of the very negative effects it had on my digestive system. Even though I don’t do yoga now, I am still a vegetarian. My SO is a meat eater and that is fine. Sometimes he has a steak, ,sometimes a veggie burger but it is his personal choice and I wouldn’t try to convince him otherwise (nor does he do so to me). When we have kids they can eat whichever way the choose also. If it involves more than putting the raw meat into the oven from a package, this lady won’t be cooking it though. The smell makes me feel ill and the site of blood/organs (even if it is in a movie) will have me gagging. Even if you decide to raise your kids vegetarian, as soon as they go to a friend’s home or school they will get to choose what they like either way.
I just watched a show on the National Geographic channel about walruses. I am fond of all pinnipeds and it was interesting. BUT there was a part where a polar bear snuck up on the herd and grabbed a baby walrus from its mother then proceeded to tear it apart and eat it.
Ugly, yes. But also natural.
Does that mean we can do the same with domestic animals? Of course not, but let’s not get carried away. We, as humans have a duty to inflict as little pain as possible on our prey (yes, thats what cows, pigs and chickens are), but that doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t eat meat.
I am a full fledged carivore, and have no qualms about it. I think that in nature, if all I could catch was a plant, I would be a vegetarian.
Human beings, being hunters for the past thousands of years, are, by our very nature, omnivores. We eat whatever we get, whenever we get it, meat being the ultimate prize.
Be a vegetarian, if thats the last resort.
Also, take into consideration, that a low caloric intake actually increases life span.
The Love of my life works at a pork fabrication plant( they kill and process pigs) He told me that they use some kind of gas to euthenize the pigs. The Usda shuts them down, if there are too many pigs that die outside of this process. They can only process so many pigs per shift.(8500 I think) There are all kinds of rules, and if they get broken the USDA shuts them down for a period of time (3-60 days) My SO tells me that the pigs are treated like royalty until they get gassed, because if the USDA thinks they are being treated inhumanley, they shut the whole works down.
I recall reading a really interesting article in the New York Times Magazine a while back about a guy who bought a beef cow and reported on all the stuff that happened to it during its lifetime. One of the most interesting things he mentioned was an autistic lady who designed the latest squeeze chutes for the animals to be killed in. In fact, Google is a wonderful thing –here’s the article I read. It’s rather long, but fascinating.
You may not be eating dead animals, but you are surely consuming by-products from live animals.
Well, the thing about PETA and others that really ticks me off is that they claim that by being vegan, you are not consuming any animal products AT ALL. That is simply NOT true. Even organically grown produce contains animal by products. Click here for only one site regarding the content of fertilizers http://reference.allrefer.com/encyclopedia/F/fertilizr.html .
I live in the midst of farm country. You can tell when the farmers have spread fertilizer on their crops, and you can also tell what it IS.
If you want to be a vegan/vegetarian for health reasons or you simply don’t like meat, that’s okay by me. But DO NOT claim that your diet is totally “animal free.”
DegantheWolf is right on the money with his post. I’ve ranched my entire life and have yet to drag an able bodied animal out of a trailer.
Lets use a little logic here. I have an angry critter in my trailer and it doesn’t see the need to vacate said trailer, thats the premise in the original post.
Cows are big and many of them have horns.
Big angry horned cows can hurt you.
An enclosed trailer is a pretty small space with no means of escape .
Does anyone in their right mind think that I’m gonna tie a rope to a post, walk into a small enclosed area and try to snag the angry critter’s leg with it? Hell no. Chances are if I attempted this move the angry cow, feeling cornered, would quite literally meet me head on and pretty much stomp me into the trailer floor. Any cow man would have sense enough to just tie the gate open and go to the house for a cup of coffee and let the cow find their own way out.
I’d guess that the PETA propaganda that you are referring to is the case of an injured/down animal which could have been caused by a variety of reasons. Dragging an animal out of a trailer is far from a common practice.
I’m in this business to make a living. I or anyone else earning a living from ranching cannot stay in business by abusing their land or cattle. Grass and cows are factors of production. If I graze land to the bare dirt I’m out of business next year and if I abuse my cows to the point that they are injured or die I am also out of business and deservedly so.
Here’s the thing, really – humans and their wants and needs cannot have NO impact on the planet, and in truth, it doesn’t matter on a planetary scale what diet or lifestyle you choose. You can be a vegan, but your faux leather shoes were likely constructed of petroleum products, the collection and processing of which creates an environmental impact that will eventually affect the animals you choose not to eat. You can recycle almost anything, but at some point your recyclables will be transported (by a petroleum-run vehicle) to a processing plant that will create some pollution.
You have to make choices YOU are comfortable with, and there are some things you just can’t fix and have to tolerate. I think if we make reasonable, well-thought out choices MOST of the time, we can live with a few boneheaded choices. So, if eating meat grosses you out, fine - don’t eat it. If it doesn’t bother you, have a burger.
I’ve been vegetarian for years, but I’m starting to ease off now. I adopted the practice because I decided that eating meat has a very bad ethical effect on modern humankind; most of us can’t stand to kill animals, or even to think about meat as being living beings like pet dogs and cats… so we pay others to do the dirty work for us. It’s a mild version of Nazi death camps. In my mind, such ethical garbage is to be strenuously avoided no matter how mild it is.
If someone wants to eat meat, have them raise a chicken as a pet for a few years, then kill it themselves and eat it. THAT’S what eating meat truely entails. Is eating your own pets something too horrible to contemplate? Then you damn well better be vegetarian. Just because you didn’t raise a cow as a pet personally, that doesn’t mean cows don’t have complex minds and ‘meaningful’ personal cow-lives. However, this is not a reason to avoid eating meat.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with eating your own pets, and chickens/pigs are easily on the mental level of dogs and cats (if not even higher.) Just confront what it really means to kill an animal; rub your nose in the important sacrifice every single animal makes, and don’t be a coward who pays others to raise them and slaughter them because you cannot stand to do it yourself. Pay them to do it for honorable reasons: because you’ve delegated the task to them because of their expertise.
bbeaty , , An emphatic YES- my sentiments exactly. Hunting a wild deer, turkey, fish, or fill-in-the-blank-with-your-favorite-wild-game who (or which) has been living life uninterrupted by antibiotics, steroids, cattle prods, anti-septic baths, tight quarters, forced-feed, or any other of the myriad inhumane and unnatural methods of raising flesh for industry is the most natural reward of evolution for those of us who reign over the food chain.
Impractical for some, yes. But possible for many . Find a small family farm and ask to buy a butchered calf, and eggs and pasteurized dairy from farmers’ markets. Hunt or fish if you can; develop skill in order to kill quickly and mercifully.
Healthier for you, safer for your children.
There is not a perfect answer that fits us all- (hard to find deer in the middle of Times Square)- and though I live close enough to farm land to feed an army with healthy, natural meat, my cats and my dogs are quite used to the ease of kibble and would probably refuse the raw chunks of caribou that their brothers in Alaska enjoy.
It is nearly impossible (even for die-hard Vegans) to survive a single day without benefitting from the misfortune of lower animals, but trying to find kinder alternatives is better than ignoring the cruelty of industry. No one who eats meat is too weak to consider killing their own, or at least researching the industry to find more humane sources for meat.
Please read any research by Dr. Temple Grandin - she is a fascinating person for many reasons, but most of all because of the strides she has made in reversing the inhumane methods of slaughter in the beef and pork industry. She is a hero to both livestock and carnivores- I am a veggie and would lay roses at her feet to commend her accomplishments.
Don’t feel bad about eating pigs. If they were in a position to eat you, they would. I’ve heard quite a few stories about elderly farmers having heart attacks, falling into the pig pen, and then being devoured by the hogs. And when my family raised feeder pigs, I once saw a sow eat one of her babies. That was pretty darn gross. Cats would routinely disappear, too, though they could have just run away, not have been eaten by pigs.
I have no problem eating meat. People are omnivores. I could eat bugs, but they tend to taper off in the winter in Wisconsin.
bbeaty: What gives you the right to politicise anyone’s dinner? What makes your morality' any more worthy of injecting into my meals than my morality’ is of being injected into yours?
If you want to compare the modern farms to Nazi death camps, look at how many lives the abundance of good food has saved. Look at all of the people employed by those farms, and tell them to their faces that they work in places no morally different from Bergen-Belsen. I bet you wouldn’t dare, if only because you, deep in your heart of hearts, know that to do such a thing would be blatantly and obviously amoral.
You talk of being brave and facing up to the reality of eating meat. Well, I’d like you to do the same as regards your philosophy: If you truly think that working at an industrial slaughterhouse is no different from working at a Nazi death camp, say that in precise words to someone whose very livelihood depends on a slaughterhouse.
One argument I heard somewhere (Can’t remember where, maybe it was even on these boards.)
Say you are morally opposed to the killing of animals. What should your diet be then. Answer: Meat!
The number of animals killed in the meat industry is trivial compared to the number of field mice, moles, birds, and other small animals killed by various machines in growing grain. These small animals can peacefull co-exist with cattle on ranch lands. Thus a meat based diet is responsible for fewer animal deaths than a grain based diet.
(But really you should eat a balanced diet. The point is that you affect other lives regardless of what you do, and sometimes well meaning courses of action have unintended consequences.)
Have you heard of the class of vegetarians called frutarians? Fruits and seeds only, no mutilated plant bodies.