Vegetarians, I don't get it

In My Humble Opinion
61

It isn’t the slaughterhouse conditions I (and most vegetarians) have a problem with so much as it is the conditions in the factory farms the animals are raised in. The “horror stories” are not “B.S.”.

Caps lock is your friend. Several vegetarians, including myself, that have responded to this thread have said that we do not wear/use leather. If you just want to amuse yourself by winding up the veggies, there are pit threads going. Trust me, we’ve heard it all before, but hey, might be a slow day.

62

A question for the veggies… DO YOU WEAR LEATHER SHOES?

No. I buy my shoes from http://www.veganstore.com and so does my husband.

DO YOU WEAR A LEATHER BELT?

I don’t even own a belt, but if I needed one, I’d buy a synthetic one.

DRIVE A CAR WITH LEATHER SEATS?

Ewww! No. I hate leather seats anyway, they’re so uncomfortable and they smell funny. I wouldn’t drive a car with vinyl seats either.

CARY A LEATHER WALLET OR PURSE?

No. My purse and wallet are both synthetic.

WEAR MAKEUP?

On very rare occassions, and there are vegan cosmetics easily available.

TAKE VITIAMINS?

Check out Pangea’s VeganLife Multivitamin at http://www.veganstore.com

By the way you were shouting your questions, I assume you thought “Aha!! I have got them now!!” sorry to disappoint you.

I’ll leave the rest of the post alone, because you really don’t want to hear my view on hunters.

63

I’m not sure what your point here is. Time isn’t the point here, if somehow you thought that it was. Many people wouldn’t kill their own food even if it wasn’t a time issue. If you went to a restaurant and had to go in the back and slaughter a pig yourself to get your ham sandwich… well some people would still do it but a lot of people wouldn’t. I’m inclined to think that you are trying to throw up a straw man, though, rather than actually make a point.

64

Opal Cat, I already know you hate me,( from the mouse thread) so im not going to ask about your view on hunters.

Heres my question for the Vegans/veggies.
With all the animals we now have on farms to be used as food, if the whole world suddenly went vegan, what do you suppose we would do with all of them? Domesticated cows MUST be milked, no way around it. What do you suppose we do with all of the milk?

I never thought it possible to live life without any animal products whatsoever, but i guess it can happen. However, I still find it hard to belive.

My problem is not with vegans or veggies, my problem is those who feel that everyone who uses/eats animal producs is evil to the core and is going to hell.
I use CAPS as an attention getter, not as shouting.

I think that people that adhere too much to one particular diet or lifestyle are doing themselves harm in the long run.
I know somone that in their quest to learn about the best health food and veggie diets, came to belive that milk was the WORST thing you could feed to a baby. They also felt that they were supplying their body with vitamins by drinking their own urine. (thank God I talked them out of this) I asked them, “If urine is so healthy, why does your body dispose of it? I dont think you are actualy helping yourself by consuming a by-product of your on body?”

Also somthing for the vegans. Do you have to take any special vitamins or suppliments to maintain your health?
If you must do this, doesnt that seem to say that your lifestyle is unnatural? I dont know much about vegans so this info will be appreciated.

And for the people that think we are all naturaly vegaterian and humans were never intended to be omnivores from the begining, im afraid your wrong.
The types of teeth we have, and the legnth of our large intestine in relation to the legnth of our small intestine point to an omnivorious diet.

Also, here at college, i have noticed that nearly all of the Vegan foods offered at the Dining Hall are made to resemble meat. Whats up with that?

65

What’s up with that is that a lot of people want to be able to eat the things they are used to but without the guilt or heath issues. I love garden burgers. I like them more than I ever liked hamburgers before I was a vegetarian, actually. Why should someone give something up for their beliefs if they don’t have to? The ‘fake meat’ products out there are getting better all the time and some of them are really good. Morningstar Farms makes a vegetarian sausage patty that is just awesome. Sausage patties were one of the few meat foods that I ever missed, and now I don’t have to miss them.

As for the vitamins, most vegans I know don’t take supplements on a regular basis, but then, some do. Actually the people I know who are the most into vitamin/supplement are people who eat meat. As a vegetarian, I’ve never felt any negative heath effect from not eating meat.

As to your question about if the world suddenly went vegan… well that would never happen, so it’s sort of a stupid question. Any global change like that would be gradual, and supply would decrease over time as demand decreased.

66

About “fake meat”… There’s a social aspect to eating too. Gardenburgers and the like provide a way for vegetarians and non-vegetarians to share in a cookout, for example. Some of the other fake meat products are convenience food. It’s very easy to adapt a recipe that calls for ground beef to veggie burger crumbles, and the end result is a lot better than trying to substitute lentils or beans. Not every vegetarian is a kitchen chemist, nor wants to be :wink:

As for me, I love Gardenburgers too. I like the taste of the traditional burger toppings, and just lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and pickles on a bun doesn’t cut it.

67

Opal - first things first, just in case you are unaware of it, I tend to be a pretty vigorous defender of vegetarianism despite not being one myself. My partner is a veggie (well, a pescinarian), a reasonable number of family are veggies and I personally have a deep respect for those who take what I see as a difficult decision.

So don’t feel as if I’m questioning your vegetarianism!

But I don’t agree with your general thrust of “if you had to do X yourself, you wouldn’t do X”. Modern society simply doesn’t work that way. We all have specialised in our chosen fields simply so that we don’t have to be a jack of all trades. So this has led to a distancing of ourselves from the food production process. So what? Of course many of us would find it icky. But I tell you this - I find the idea of vegetables coming out of the ground just as icky (which is to say, just a little bit). This is because I am simply removed from the reality.

Just because, to quote Blur, “modern life is rubbish”, this is not a reason to assume that the fundamental idea of eating meat is hypocritical.

pan

68

I think you’re right, kabbes, the argument isn’t really valid. Most of us wouldn’t want to see everything that goes into the making of the things we use in our daily lives.

When I was fifteen I started getting interested in cooking. I accompanied my mother to the local butcher one day, followed by the place she buys chicken (where you choose the chicken yourself and watch as its neck is wringed and it is prepared for you). I felt sickened and disgusted. I didn’t want to handle raw meat, so I wouldn’t cook anything which involved this. Now it began to seem hypocritical to me to be able to eat meat which other people had killed and cooked when I was too sickened by this to do it myself.

As a result, even though I think the argument is not entirely valid, I find it slightly hypocritical when people eat things which would sicken or disgust them if they had to assist in the preparation. But of course we do all rely on other people doing the dirty work necessary to keep our modern lives running smoothly. So I think it’s just a matter of one’s personal limits as far as the hypocrisy of it is concerned.

69

:eek:

70

Yep, OpalCat, that’s the Third World for you. :slight_smile:

71

I’d kind of like to hear it, since my husband went hunting this past weekend and brought home a 70-pound deer. Isn’t it more humane for him to kill it quickly, rather than letting it starve (Maryland is over-populated with deer) or let it get hit by a car?

72

It has been proven that deer herds that are not thinned by hunters are more prone to disease and starvation(At least, the ones here in Ohio, anyway). And as far as the whole If-you-had-to-kill-them-you-wouldn’t-do-it argument, if that were true, then this country would have died out about two hundred-odd years ago. I think it speaks more to the laziness of our culture that people don’t want to kill for their meat. Can anyone find me an example of vegetarians from colonial times?

Chris W

73

Here is a site that has a lot of historical vegetarian information:
http://www.ivu.org/history/

The only one I can think of off the top of my head is Benjamin Franklin.

74

Did your husband go after the weakest, the oldest, the sickly? Just curious.

As for overpopulation, that is humanity’s fault for killing the natural predators of the deer. If we were to restore the balance, there wouldn’t be nearly such a problem.

And since you asked… my personal opinion is that anyone who enjoys taking the life of an animal is sick in the head.

75

Hey, sometimes the animals get even.

Just curious, Opal, but wouldn’t humans be one of the “natural” predators of deer? If not, why aren’t we?

76

deer never realy had a large group of natural predators. Where i live, the only ones they have are the red wolf and the panther. In all my years of hunting, ive only seen one panther, and no red wolves. I havent heard about anybody killing them either. Before the white and black man came to America and hunted deer, the Native Americans did. For thousands of years, man has been a natural predator of deer.

Look at the eskimo…until the 1950s, when technology began seeping into the far north, meat was their only choice for food, except when they could gather some roots or berries in the short summer months.

Sure, the factory farm isnt all happiness and fun, they are quite crowded, and often get no sunlight.
Look at the US’s large citys…crowded, people exposed to above normal polutants and chemicals, inner city areas often being dirty and to some extent, disease ridden. At least the pigs on a “factory farm” clean up after them selves.

Opal, the world revolves around money, and nothing else. Thats the reason the factory farm came into being…to raise animals as quicly as possible in as little room as possible to maximise profit. If it were more profitable to grow free range meat, the factory farm would gradualy die out.

I have worked with Hispanic tenant farmers before. They are often hired during the summer to do things like pick fruit and vegetables, and crop tobacco. The conditions many of them live in is as bad or worse than that found in factory farms. I once knew of a group of aproxamately 50 who had only a small mobile home to live in. They slept in junk cars and camper tops in the front yard. Often they get no medical care, and due to their limited knoledge, STDs run rampant through their communities.

77

There is a world of difference between subsistence hunting with a bow and arrow or spear and “sport” hunting with a rifle and a scope. The reason deer have few natural predators now in many areas is because man has hunted or driven away those predators.

This somehow makes it less wrong?

This strikes me as condescending. Migrant farm workers (not all of whom are Hispanic, BTW) may be poor, and their living conditions may not be the best, but it’s a leap to imply that they’re a bunch of amoral walking disease vectors.

78

[There is a world of difference between subsistence hunting with a bow and arrow or spear and “sport” hunting with a rifle and a scope. The reason deer have few natural predators now in many areas is because man has hunted or driven away those predators.]

If you eat what you kill, then it is no different. Contrary to what greenpeace and Disney want you to belive, most hunters do not kill only for the antlers and throw the carcas away.

…And this somehow makes it less wrong?..

Welcome to the real world!!

In the name of money, there are no morals. In our quest to maximise the profit of everything, humans have done much damage and destruction. we call it “progress”. As long as the factory farm is the most profitable farm, it will continue to exist, whether it is moraly wrong or not.

Also, in our quest to maximise profitablility, you will soon be seing geneticly altered species of animals made only to supply the food market. Pigs the size of cows has already been tried, but the pigs went insane soon after achiving adulthood.

…and i would appreciate it greatly if you would use my whole sentence when quoting me…using only parts seems to change the meaning of what i said…

79

ohh, i forgot to add, about the tenant farmers.

i am not implying anything. NC has the largest tobacco production in the US, and has a large number of tenant farmers to acomplish this. I have worked along side them at many times in my life… They arent realy poor. A good tobacco cropper can earn as much as $35.00 an hour, occasionlay more. during the winter, when they have went back to their home country, i have helped clean out the rented trailers. They are nasty. ALL furniture is uasualy distroyed, urine and fecees can be found in other places than the bathroom, and often drug pariphnailia is found laying around…now not all tenant farmers are like this, i have also worked with some very nice, respectable people.
I dont live in a city where i am cut off from reality. I dont have to watch the news, and stir in a cup of political correctness to decide whats wrong and right. I see evil and corruption every day. Trust me, there are more important things to worry about than how my hamburger spent the last two weeks of its life.
…if you want to know about them, just ask…

80

I’m sorry, this just made me go “huh???”. Does the deer think, as it shuffles off this mortal coil with an arrow through it’s lungs, “Thank Goddess it wasn’t a bullet?” “Subsistance” hunting isn’t all rainbow and flowers, either, y’now. In certain parts of the country, Indian tribes would stampeed heards of prey animals off a cliff as the most efficent way of killing them. There would be plenty of waste at these times. Most hunters I know DO clean and dress their kills for meat, if I follow your arguement correctly, you are saying they shouldn’t hunt, which would mean they would buy MORE meat from grocery stores, thus supporting modern ranching methods that you seem to find so abhorant. Isn’t this a circular arguement?