Until you come up with some evidence, though, this is just so much idle speculation, when the fact remains that there are lots of vegetarians right here that we can ask.
People become vegetarians for a thousand and one different reasons:
Religious reasons–People convert to a religion whose tenets require or encourage vegetarianism; Moral reasons–People who are not opposed to the eating of meat per se, but oppose the cruelty inherent in large-scale factory farming; Practical reasons–Some people start phasing meat out of their diet because it’s cheaper to shop for other things, and end up giving it up; Health reasons–People who, because of cardiovascular or other health problems, eliminate or significantly reduce meat in their diet; or people who are worried about Mad Cow, E. coli, and other meat-related health concerns; Philosophical/ethical reasons–People who adopt an animal rights philosophy that would personally preclude them from eating meat.
There are as many different reasons for becoming vegetarians as there are vegetarians. If I got pissed off at you (and I certainly did), it’s because I’ve sat here for three years watching people take cheap shots at vegetarians for no good reason, and I simply refuse to sit still for it. “Vegetarianism” = “sex is evil”? Come on. Grow up.
The fundemental fact is that SOME animals must die in order to feed the carnivores. Even mostly herbivorous animals like Chimps benefit from an occasional bit of meat.
Whether humans should or should not eat animals is irrelevant. I think even the most committed vegetarian would agree that, if carnivores are to be kept in zoos, they must be fed meat.
Any disagreements so far? Carnivores in zoos must be fed meat.
So. Where do we get the meat? In order to get meat to feed the carnivores in the zoo, we must kill other animals. One source of meat would be baby chicks.
Some might argue that baby chicks should not be killed for animal food. But if we spare the chicks, some other animals must be killed. If the baby chicks at the petting zoo weren’t killed, some other baby chicks from some other place, or their moral equivalent in adult birds or cows or pigs or what have you, would have to be killed.
Bottom line, in case someone missed it, is that animals must be killed, no getting around it if we are to keep carnivores in zoos.
What is the moral difference between chicks that have spent time on display at a petting zoo and chicks that are kept out of sight in a hatchery? One of the chicks must die, we’ve established that. What is the difference between the two?
In my view, there is no difference. A chick that has been on display is no more deserving of protection than one that has not. Therefore, killing the chicks and feeding them to the carnivores is no more immoral than killing any other common animal and feeding them to the carnivores.
Well, there are those stats showing that there are half as many vegetarians (proportionally) in a region of the U.S. that has a larger rural population (therefore being closer to food production in many cases). There’s the fact that there were less vegetarians in the days before meat was prepackaged and sold in supermarkets, when grocery shopping with Mom would make the fact that meat=animals much more obvious (butchers shops frequently have diagrams showing what part of the cow the different cuts come from, old open-air markets frequently had whole unplucked birds hung up).
Badtz Mary, do those statistics also show that the cause of the lesser number of vegetarians was due to the fact that people were living in rural areas and the meat was not pre-packaged? I assume your statistics refer to the population in the USA.
I could think of a number of other reasons, e.g. the fact that in recent times there has been more exposure to alternative lifestyles and eastern religions, which might explain the larger number of vegetarians.
Or to take another tack, there are rural regions in India where many people are vegetarians (for religious reasons).
