My meat-eating ethic is a combination of **Johnny LA’s ** and Spatial Rift’s.
I have no moral problem with killing animals, as we have to kill *something * to eat, and animals can’t really fear death since they can’t concieve of death - or so I suppose.
At the same time, just as we have a responsibility to treat dogs and cats and horses right, we have a responsibility to treat cows and pigs and chickens right. For me, that means I get free range meat whenever possible. (I suppose it should be free range or nothing, but I’m not as consistent as I would like.)
I don’t have an ethical issue with eating animals myself. But I find the ethical growth of my children to be an interesting thing - and I think my role as a parent is to guide them toward good ethics and morals. There isn’t anything inethical in being a vegetarian (unless its in making you Mom do more cooking, but since we are “veggie friendly” to start with, fixing a peanut butter sandwich on the two nights a week we eat meat isn’t a big deal) - and while I don’t find carnavores to the inethical either, there is no reason for me to impose my ethics on her.
We will see how long it lasts. As was said, a lot of kids from meat eating families give this a try. Few stay lifelong vegetarians, but then again, few are from families who have six pounds of shelf stable tofu and three pounds of lentils in their cupboard before the kid decides to not eat meat.
My mom is a classic allergic in regard to peanuts. Only peanuts scare her enough to carry a syringe of antihystamines in her purse. A few kinds of nuts can have some kind of effect, but it’s the peanuts that got her close to being in the hospital a few years ago. If she hadn’t been with her pediatrician cousin, and close to his clinic, she probably would have been.
Poor rodents, always getting the ethical shaft. My understanding is that the flora consumed by vegetarians is grown on land where countless “pest” animals are killed. I never understood why that is ethically okay, when actually eating the dead animals (cows, for example) is ethically bad.
Because it’s impossible to live without harming something, but harming the least possible is preferable. Also, it causes many more rodent deaths via growing the foods for meat-producing animals to eat (due to the sheer volume required to feed each animal to maturity) than it does to grow the grains and vegetables that a vegetarian would eat.
FTR, I’m a non-proselytizing vegetarian who happily cooks meat for her omnivore husband. If you find a vegan who claims to never harm animals, either they hand-till their own garden and live solely off that (or via bartering with others who do similarly), or they’re stupid/ignorant. (The latter’s possible - I ran into people in an upper level anthropology class in high school who thought we got all the cattle we have because they just kind of mate freely. Heh.)
Nope. You still need to grow a lot of grain to feed those chickens, more than if you’d just fed some grain to humans. “Free range” doesn’t mean they graze, just that they get to run around.
Oh yeah - another point of ethical vegetarianism might be the relative morality of various animal deaths. You could make a convincing argument that it is worse to “enslave” animals for your own use and consumption than it is to accidentally kill an animal via a farming accident (like if plowing kills mice/rabbits).
See, what always puzzles me is the meat-eaters - admittedly, only a small percentage of the total - who seem bound and determined to try to invent some sort of ethical inconsistency in vegetarianism. Fortunately, simple facts are enough to prove you wrong here, since livestock in the U.S. is fed grain, and that’s an enormously inefficient process; much more grain must be grown to feed an omnivorous human population than a vegetarian one. (For myself, the issue would be considerably different if we lived in a society that practiced more natural animal herding - but the basis of my vegetarianism is complicated.)
My vegetarianism is for complex personal and ethical issues, and since I’m not out to convert others, I feel no need to question the way anyone eats, as long as they chew with their mouth shut. Thank goodness that in this day and age, as long as you’re not a vegan, it’s hard to find many places that won’t accomodate vegetarianism, and most people I know are either semivegetarians or have enough veggie friends that there’s never much of a problem.
Anyway, I think it’s excellent to let the child explore their own ethical principles. Whether or not the kid sticks to it is a lot less important then that she be given the freedom to consider things from an ethical perspective and make decisions based upon that. More people thinking and making decisions would fix a lot of problems in the modern world. Kudos to Dangerosa.
I have a question about the day care place, Dangerosa.
Can’t they/don’t they ask the parents what their kids are allergic to and then post the allergies for future reference?
At our co-op, admittedly private, they did this and we never had any issues. At my son’s school, if a child has a peanut allergy, (depending on what kind of level) the child leaves the classroom to go into another classroom and do a fun project or something similar.
Wouldn’t most parents know if their kid had an allergy to peanuts by a specific age? Although, saying that, one of my very good friends has yet to give her 5 year old and 2 year old peanut butter, not because she is allergic to them…she is just being cautious. :rolleyes:
One of our best friends daughters is allergic to just about everything under the sun, and in a bad way. Peanuts, fish, shellfish, bee stings to name a few. All will make her throat close up. From an early age, she has learned that she cannot touch these items and it has never been an issue at all. ( smelling said items doesn’t cause a problem, it’s touching (rash) and eating ( throat swells) that are.)
And, I’m just wondering, wouldn’t an Epi-Pen work on a peanut allergy? Or is that just bee stings?
Oh, and back on topic, for a snack, how about a smoothie or a juice veggies
( which can be kept from spoiling by putting a couple drops of lemon in it.) Just put it in the fridge in a thermos to keep it from melting too much.
I’m sorta in a vegetarian phase right now. Not that I would turn down a free meal, but I’m so bored with meat and this all coincides with getting a juicer.
So they isolate the kid and make him leave his friends during lunch time? I’d have hated that.
An allergy can develop at any age, at any time, even after the child has eaten the food safely in the past.
Yes, but it’s doesn’t work 100% of the time, it’s not without it’s side effects, and day care providers are not doctors. Even with an Epi-pen on hand and making sure everyone’s trained in its use, you still have to send the child to the emergency room afterwards.
I know what you’re sayin’, and I don’t think the whole world should stop because your little dumpling can’t be trusted not to grab an apple slice with peanut butter on it from his classmate’s lunch, but I also see where the school is coming from. It’s a lot easier on the teachers and a lot safer from a lawsuit standpoint just to ban the most common allergens altogher.
Sort of a related anecdote, when my youngest was about 10, she announced on one weekend visit that she was now a vegetarian. So, I made grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner, in margarine, and told her that was fine, just that she needed to be sure to eat lots of peanut butter and things that had lots of protien in them as she was still growing up. When I took her home, she told her Mom about her new dietary plan and the first thing her Mom said was, “Well, you have to make sure you get enough protien”. To this day, she doesn’t believe I didn’t call her Mom and tip her off. :rolleyes:
They know who has peanut allergies, and while (for privacy reasons) they won’t name names, it isn’t anyone in her classroom. Its one child in the classroom next door and one in the toddler room. But, as WhyNot said, taking the allergic child out of the classroom doesn’t seem like a great idea anyway…and better safe than sorry. All I need in my life is for my daughter not to wash her hands well after lunch, move rooms (which she does, most preschoolers still nap - she moves next door during naptime), and touch the allergic child sending him/her into shock. My understanding is an epi-pen will work - I’d rather not even have to get such a thing out or risk the side effects of one. The only “bad” things about cashew butter is I need to make a special trip to get it and its darn expensive - both seem minor compared to “one of her classmates had to be hauled away in an ambulance.”
My sister-in-law has been a vegetarian since she was a teenager (she went to pesca-vegetarianism in her late 20s because she was bored with her diet but really didn’t want to make the jump to mammals.) She and her husband (an omnivore) have pretty much raised their daughter vegetarian, although she has never been “not allowed” to try meat. If she wants it, they let her have it, if she doesn’t, they don’t kick up a fuss. She’s 15 now, and generally she chooses vegetarian meals, but every now and again she dives into a hot dog with great enthusiasm.
my sister has been a vegie since age 7 when she visited a meat processing plant on a school excursion. more than a decade later, the only meat shes eaten (since that fateful day she came home and told us all she didnt like the idea of eating anything with a brain) was a hot dog, after which she was violently sick for an hour or so before we figured out she’d eaten pork instead of her lentil “not-dog”.
being vegetarian from a younger age hasn’t adversly affected astra at all, and shes only converted two friends in the whole time, though everyone who knows about her lifestyle choice respects her decision.
while she still will cook meat if its for someone else (and intends to allow her children to make an informed choice when they are old enough to do so) and respects anyone else’s choice to do so, the only thing she asks is for people to respect her choice in turn.
and no, vitamins and artificial nutrients are not necessary. you just gotta pick the right vegetables and breads. astra has never had any of these, and she has a clean bill of health each time she goes for a check up.
Thank goodness that in this day and age, as long as you’re not a vegan, it’s hard to find many places that won’t accomodate vegetarianism, and most people I know are either semivegetarians or have enough veggie friends that there’s never much of a problem.