But would it be instant? Or might they live for a minute or so, bleeding to death? (Which would ruin the meat)
Perhaps a bovine guillotine would be better? 
I’d just like to comment here (no idea whether this is relevant to anyone engaging in this current “How to kill a cow” discussion), that another old tactic used is to start talking about the bloody meat of the (ewwwwww) Dead Cow, in hopes of getting us poor, delicate, sensitive vegetarians the vapors, or something.
Well, sorry if anyone is doing this (I’m not specifically accusing any of you here of doing that—it’s appears to be a perfectly valid conversation you’re having here). But in case anyone has that in their mind, I just want to tell you, it’s not gonna work. Most vegetarians are old veterans of this sort of tactic, and it’s just about as tired and worn out as the “Plants have feelings too!” argument, or the “You’re judging me!” complaint, or the, “But you’ve gotta eat meat!” cry.
It’s been done. to. death.
Besides, a lot of us do prepare meat dishes, which isn’t the same as putting a bullet to a cow’s head, but does involve dealing with that (oooh, I think I feel the vapors coming on), raw animal muscle, bone, and blood. Some of us prepare such food every day. We just don’t eat it ourselves. I used to cook my dad’s dinners, which had meat in them. I used to prepare meat dishes pretty much daily at my previous job. I never had a problem with it—it was part of the job and to not do so would have made me a big pain in the ass.
Of course, it didn’t stop a whole lot of idiots from assuming that I had a problem with it, and assuming (even though they had no evidence), that I wasn’t really cooking the meat dishes that I was supposed to, even though I told them over and over and over and over again that it wasn’t a problem for me.
But of course, some people are idiots, and will assume whatever they are determined to assume, no matter how much evidence you repeatedly give them that proves otherwise.
Anyway, just thought I’d add that, just in case it was of interest. Now, carry on with your ongoing discussion. 
Oh, I fucking give up. I don’t think I’m better than you, and I never would have even asked the damn question if you hadn’t insisted everybody who contributes to the death of animals is a hypocrite for trying to reduce that amount.
catsix, just lay off. You’re making a fool of yourself and contributing precisely nothing. Vegetarians were asked what the reasoning was behind their vegetarianism and they answered. You took it personally, started projecting the viewpoints of other, completely unrelated, people you’ve met/heard of some time in your life on to the participants in this thread and since, you’ve been turning the thread to shit. Just leave the thread if you have nothing interesting to say.
As for me personally, I really don’t see how the question can ever be “why are you a vegetarian?” since the term “vegetarian” is negatively defined; it is someone who does not eat meat. The question, as I see it, is “why eat meat?”.
I, personally, have no problem with eating dead animals per se, but I do have a problem with promoting suffering, be it human or animal. I’ll happily eat animals who lived out in the wild and fell to a bullet, or animals who lived on farms where they weren’t kept in concentration camps. I’m sure the slaughter itself is pretty painless as these things go, but the lives of many farm animals are simply one long stretch of pain and suffering.
So vegetables are fertilised with animal manure from these “bad” farms. That’s sad. Unfortunately, I simply don’t have the means (nor the know-how) to grow my own food and I won’t for quite some time. I still contribute considerably less to those farms than I did when I ate indiscriminately.
As for the health aspects, a “modern Western” diet without animal fat but with all essential amino acids (which can be found in, for example, soy) is generally accepted to be healthier than the standard diet. I didn’t know this was even in contention. Cecil agrees.
Heh heh. “Where would wild chimpanzees get relish?”
You don’t like my opinion of people who aren’t content to just live with their own choices but have to bitch about the ‘innocent animals’ that die so I can eat? Too bad.
This is, far as I can tell, a free country in which we’re both stuck hearing the opinions of people we don’t agree with.
This argument presupposes that the offer of meat on the supermarket shelf is a one-time only affair and that no more cows will be slaughtered to satisfy an obvious demand.
To address the OP first:
Soapbox Monkey: You are using a rationale that justifies supporting a morally distasteful act on the grounds that the act has already been performed and there is nothing you can do about it now. Has it occurred to you that there are many other examples where such a rationale has been tried and found wanting? For example, it is illegal to look at child pornography despite the fact that the actual child abuse has already occurred. And, as mentioned, it is illegal to handle stolen goods, despute the fact that the theft has already occurred.
In general, society does not and never has accepted the viewpoint that you may enjoy the fruits of a dispicable act as there is nothing that can be done to prevent the act after the event. Society has historically taken this path precisely because taking advantage of the effects of the dispicable act encourage further similar behaviour in the future. So it comes down to what you view as “dispicable”. If you don’t view the killing of animals for food in this category, well and good. But your rationalisation has now become an acceptance of animal slaughter and not one of helplessness in that slaughter.
Another relevant consideration is good old Kantian “the means don’t justify the ends.” If you don’t agree with an act, you cannot engage in, support or otherwise justify that act regardless of any beneficial effects it may have down the road. If you view the killing of animals for food as wrong, don’t kill animals for food or pay anyone else to kill animals for food. The fact that you may be a lone and impotent voice is irrelevant. Do not kill for food means do not kill for food.
Which brings me to where catsix (who is making the vegetarians look reeeeal good) begins to go wrong. She is arguing that our society even produces its arable crops by exploiting animals in one form or another. But this misses two very important considerations:
- If everybody was vegetarian, there would be no cattle farms to obtain manure from. As a consequence, arable farmers would be forced to find other sources of fertiliser. And, all else being equal, the greater the proportion of vegetarians, the less cattle and the more arable land there will be so the closer we will be to the day where arable farmers don’t use byproducts of the meat industry. This is because the use of manure is a proximate cause of the meat industry and not the focus of it.
2)… and this brings me to the second point: catsix is focussing on secondary as opposed to primary effects of one’s food choices generally. The world is, indeed, a complex holistic web. But just because one cannot eliminate all forms of suffering does not mean one wants to be the direct cause of that suffering. By eating meat, it is certain that an animal must die to satisfy your want. By not eating meat, you are aiming for the ideal – however unobtainable – that no animals will die to satisfy your want. There is a distinct difference in intent, and since morality is all about intent, this is key.
In short, if the world only consisted of vegetarians, it is a certainty that there would be less animal suffering as a consequence. As such, even though a particular individual vegetarian may not be able to reduce suffering by one jot, they are helping to bring that nirvana one step closer.
So who am I? Is this where catsix finally gets her example of a militant vegetarian to castigate? No, sadly not. I am an omnivore. I do my best to only eat organic free-range meat where possible but I don’t even always manage this. I do, however, recognise that in this one way, from a moral perspective that believes that the less suffering in the world the better (a view to which I subscribe), vegetarians are morally “better” than me. Shock horror! What a confession! However, people aren’t perfect and I am pretty confident that if you were to put a vegetarian in front of me then in other ways, I would be morally better than him. As such, I am not particularly threatened by my admission.
To sum up: being a vegetarian is less of a destination than it is a journey. The goal might be an unobtainable “do no harm” but the path can be its own reward.
pan
Can all the land that is currently used to house cattle even be used for growing of food crops?
I’m sorry, you’ll have to explain the relevance.
Are you concerned as to the practicality of the world being vegetarian? If so, you should know that it takes far more land to rear a pound of meat for consumption than it does to grow a pound of crop for consumption. There is more than sufficient arable land available to grow enough crops to feed the world many, many times over.
Other than that, I don’t see the point of the question. Nor do I see how it relates to my copious points above.
pan
Well the question was one of practicality. Can that land actually be used to grow plants that humans can eat, and where will we get amino acids that are not found in plant matter?
Would hunting also have to be allowed? Currently, where I live, deer populations are extremely damaging to vegetable crops when their populations grow too large for their habitat (which urban sprawl and farming drastically reduce) and they eat the crops that people would need to consume. So there’s also that to consider; what to do about the wildlife that can, in large enough numbers, decimate food crops.
Do we hunt them and then not eat the meat? Do we hunt them and eat only that meat? Do we try to fence the crops (deer can jump 8 foot fences) and keep them out? If so, what do we do about widespread disease and deer all over the highways?
I guess I see it as a ripple effect, wherein the idea that vegetarianism would reduce animal suffering directly if everyone were vegetarian has ‘unintended consequences’ that although you could argue are more moral, and then there are alot of other things to communicate.
Maybe it’s a topic for another thread, but would global vegetarianism be trading the intentional deaths of some types of animals (cows, pigs, chickens) for the unintentional deaths of many others through starvation or herd culling?
Your opinion is a perfectly valid one for a thread in which those type of people are being discussed; people are just wondering why, exactly, you stated it in this thread, seeing as how none of the vegetarians who have posted to this thread have said anything even remotely like it.
Because vegetarians are a rather broad topic and when taking on such a large topic, it’s important to look at more facets of it than just the very narrow ‘facets represented only by posters in this thread’ type?
To some vegetarians, exact percentage unknown, there is a certain moral superiority in their attitude regarding their choice not to eat meat. And in a subset of those, exact percentage unknown, there is a desire to push this believed moral superiority upon others (e.g. Ingrid Newkirk).
My question then becomes: Is it actually a reasonable, practical goal that will have a net positive effect if such a thing should happen?
If more people become vegetarian, and more land is used to grow vegetables, what will be done about things like crop devastation by deer? This is why it is important, currently, to consider and not ignore the (albiet unintended) consequence that animals still die as a result of growing vegetable crops for human consumption. If we stop raising and killing cattle, pigs, chickens and lambs for the consumption of humans but then have to increasingly (as more areas are used for vegetable crops) contend with animals that eat those vegetable crops such as deer, birds, raccoons, groundhogs, rabbits, etc, what then?
It stands to reason that the more fields of vegetable crops around, the more these herbivorous animals will have to be guarded against. In what manner will this be accomplished, and what suffering (whether unintentional or intentional) will result from this?
I just think this is one aspect that is often overlooked entirely, specifically by that subset (exact percentage unknown) of vegetarians who do not consider that unintentional deaths of animals resulting from crop growing are actual ‘suffering’ or that the deaths of these animals is more moral because it’s unintentional.
What would have to happen to substantially increase vegetable crop production, and would we essentially be trading the intentional or direct deaths of cows, pigs, chickens and lambs for the unintentional or indirect deaths of deer, birds, raccoons, groundhogs, and rabbits?
Is it really a positive to trade the direct deaths for the indirect? I do think that’s a fair question.
A fair question. A fair reply: maybe.
It comes down to the means not justifying the ends. Suppose you start from a default position of not eating meat instead of vice versa. Crops are damaged by herbivorous animals. Do you think that it is a reasonable step to stop this damage by using the land to rear animals for food instead? That just seems illogical. And what about when in order to satiate human appetites, that rearing becomes factory farming, with the associated suffering of the animals?
Many, if not most, vegetarians actually have far more problem with the evils associated with farm rearing and slaughter than they do with deaths of animals per se. It would not be inconsistent for these vegetarians to eat game. It would certainly not be inconsistent for them to accept a certain level of culling of animals that otherwise live their natural lives.
But a truly vegetarian world would be so different to this one that it is extraordinarily hard to predict how they would deal with certain problems. For example, given how much more efficiently land can be used for crops than rearing, it would be entirely possible for them to accept a certain level of crop loss if that is what their morality dictates. Who knows? We’re not talking about any kind of state that will be reached in the foreseeable future, after all.
To sum up: to eliminate suffering that comes about as a direct result of your wants is not to claim that suffering can be eliminated altogether. It’s just that you don’t see that the ends justify the means.
This is a far tougher statement than it might first appear, incidentally. It isn’t inconceivable that you end with more objective suffering as a consequence of refusing those means. But in the same way that we don’t accept nazi-style medical experimentation on humans in the hope of finding a cure that will benefit millions, vegetarians cannot accept direct killing in their name in the nebulous hope that this will reduce the need for a deer cull in some theoretical future.
pan
I don’t really think that’s the way it works though. I think there are beef farms and pork farms and lamb farms because there’s a market for the product.
If it was a matter of ‘I can either have my radishes eaten by groundhogs or raise some cattle, so I’ll raise cattle and kill them.’ that would be kind of weird.
I think basically there are two ways that animal damage to crops is stopped: one is by culling the animals that actually damage the crops (which is what the PA Game Commission supports by allowing more hunting on farms tagged as ‘deer damage’ areas) and another is by attempting to keep the damaging animals out of the crops by installing fences or something else.
Do you think that this meshes with groups like PETA, which tend to be the most vocal mouthpieces for animal rights and vegetarianism? I don’t know if they’re the ‘largest’ or anything like that, they’re just some of the loudest.
And I wouldn’t ask them to support meat farming themselves. What I am asking is whether or not it’s a definite fact that objectively less suffering would occur if a larger portion of the population were to be vegetarian. Again, this is only a question that I would have regarding those vegetarians who promote the belief that all people should be vegetarians. Those who adopt the ‘different strokes for different folks’ type of lifestyle in which they choose not to eat meat for their own reasons, but also respect the personal decision of others is not, IMO, the target group for my question.
I know that I am biased on this because I have dealt with some of the more vocal vegetarians and animal rights activists, mainly because I am a wild game hunter.
Of course responses from all vegetarians are welcome, because I would like to explore whether or not one scenario is objectively better than the other. However, I suppose because it is a matter of ethics and not mere objective fact, it will come down to what each individual considers to be preferable.
The only people in this thread who could possibly respond to the question, I know, are the vegetarians here who aren’t arguing that we should all be vegetarians as they are, but I’d still like to hear what they think about it.
See, if the whole world were vegetarian then the whole world would consider the issue of animal suffering to be very important. So the whole world would be taking steps to minimise that suffering. It would even be a priority. As such, who can say what form farming would take? It certainly wouldn’t be in its current “kill 'em all and let the threshing machine sort 'em out” mode.
I guess, as a kind of utopian ideal, this is what vegetarians would like. Of course, they know that it’s never going to happen. But they can start by living a lifestyle in accordance with their moral principles, not letting the ends justify the means and refusing to directly cause the suffering of an animal.
There is nothing inconsistent, illogical, unpleasant or judgmental about this and the fact they get grief for it just shows how those who have not had to face the same ethical choices tend to lack empathy for those choices.
pan
Thank you for a calm answer to my question.
From what the other people posted to this thread, it would seem to me that they themselves would feel directly responsible for the deaths of the animals they ate, and not indirectly responsible for the deaths of the animals that were killed by growing vegetables rather than cows, the important distinction being that free-range deer and raccoons have the option of running from the combine; cattle in a stockyard got nowhere to go.
That is, however, the target group for this thread.
Why do you assume that dudes who eat meat aren’t concerned about animal suffering? Why do you also assume that carnivores did/do not face the same ethical choices?
I am concerned about animal suffering- but I know the fact I eat meat has no effect on animal suffering either way.
And I have no problem with this type of vegetarian. They do as they choose and eat as they choose, and I do the same.
I just think of it as an interesting hypothetical kind of thing, that it often seems vegetarianism is debated in a vacuum in which things like crop decimation and wildlife are non-existant, but if we were trying to practically implement global vegetarianism, these issues would have to be dealt with.
I also kind of think that it’s not just vegetarians that have to face-to-face consider the ethics of killing animals for food, but that this is a very up close and personal issue for many omnivores also; specifically those who responsibly and legally hunt game animals for food.
It’s very hard to ignore the your view of the ethics of killing a prey animal when you watch it die and you field dress it.
Many people are uncomfortable with this, although I do not know the opinion of all the vegetarians in this thread. I would like to know though, if there are any vegetarians in this thread who believe that hunting a free-living animal like a deer is more or less unethical than beef farming, and why they think what they do.
Then would it be fair to ask what those in this thread think of the question in general and whether or not they feel it is ever given credit in things I don’t have much experience with (like vegetarian publications or perhaps any animal rights groups to which they might belong)?
And also I’d like to ask everyone why it seems that this aspect of the ‘wide scale vegetarianism’ debate seems to go unnoticed by folks on both sides?
Myself, I think that omnivores often overlook it because it’s not as obvious, and because we all debate in hypotheticals which means that a lot of things get drawn into a vacuum where unintended effects are just not thought of.
Why do you assume that I make those assumptions? You are making a logical fallacy along the lines of “All crows are called black so all black birds are crows”.