Have you followed the recent threads between Blake and myself Crazy?  I think we've discussed this three times in as many months, so if you've read those I don't want to cover the same ground.

Yea, but I'm not going to write another twenty page batch of bullshit if he just read the last twenty page batch of bullshit.

I disagree on the slaughter thing though, people would get used to it very quickly.  It isn't as if humans in general have any innate aversion to getting blood on their hands, it's almost purely upbringing...most people would get over it very quickly.

Now, they might not kill the critters if given a choice between pre-made non-meat food in a box and on the hoof animal food, but that is just laziness.

Actually, it is because they stink.

It's those damn empathy-generating mirror neurons firing off when we see something which we think of as having some form of self-awareness.

The really frightening thing about humans is just how readily we can get habituated to bad stuff, as in the infamous Stanford Prison Experiments.

Or Nazi prison camp guards.

And as we've mentioned before, the animal doesn't care how you feel.  I'm not sure why that makes you feel better about it.

If animals are 'screaming' during the slaughter process, someone is fucking something up.  The zoning stuff is accurate though, but a bit beyond the point anyone was getting at.

You can add soy, tofu, meal replacements, etc. to make up for the protein and fat.  Or just do vegetarian and eat the egg but skip the sausage.

Those debates changed my eating habits too, well, provisionally.  I'm...well, so far today I've been about 40% Vegetarian, lol.  Yesterday was 100% vegetarian.  I've got some stuff ordered that is more vegan.

If it turns into too much of a pain in the ass though I'm giving it up and damn the morality.  We'll see.

You guys should try using more RICE in dishes.  Did you know rice is the staple food for 2/3 of the planet? 2/3!!

Try eating Indian food, Chinese food, and Mexican food and learing how to cook it.  Indian food has the number one cancer fighting agent in Turmeric according to many cancer researchers. Of course you can order out too.

It's really NOT as hard as you think. After all what can you do with 3 or 4 corpses??  I mean you have the same 3 or 4 dead animals that are the most popular ones, chicken, beef, and pork.

If you just look into Indian and Chinese food you'll see they have great foods for breakfast, lunch, and dinner PLUS you have plenty of American vegetarian/vegan food like pastas, American rice dishes, tofu, wraps, veggie burgers , veggie dogs, Mexican food, veggie pizza, etc.

I've not even gotten into Mexican food and they have TONS of great vegetarian dishes with beans, sour cream, and guacamole being staples in the Mexican diet!

I get your point! Sheesh! You didn't need to say it SIX times!

Actually I like all those foods you mentioned (SIX times)... I just don't like to cook - or, grocery shop. I look for fast and easy.

I did make black-eyed peas for New Years with the honey glazed ham.

 Coming in really late in here, but I have 2 slaughter houses about 5 minute car drive where I live, and I live in Toronto, these 2 slaughter houses are actually 1 block away from a home depot and a few blocks away from a walmart.......yeah the smell can be strong on a hot summer day if you pass by there, but really not overwhelming like china town in the dead heat of summer. As for the adversion to killing animals...well what do you mean most people, because I can say it really depends on the culture of the people your talking about, killing chickens for the most part most people I know don't have an issue. Some may not want to get their hands dirty per say. Lobsters is another one most don't have an issue boiling alive either.

Sandycane,

Some people live in Northern Russia, some people live in Sudan.  It is so bad and unhealthy to live there especially compared to San Francisco.  Do you really think that all people living in other parts of the planet want to move to San Francisco?  Of course not (I hope).  Many of those people LOVE their places and about everything about their places.   First of all, they got used to live there from their childhood, and they are adopted to living there.  There are so many things humans can get used to .... like killing animals for food, or eating no animals at all.  It does not really matter what you or me think people would or wouldn't do if they watch slaughtering  animals, or watch how tofu is made.  People get used to vegetarian or meet eating without considerable harm to their health.  If you try to eat exclusively New York Times newspaper, you may get used to it too after a few weeks ... before you die.  The difference from vegetarian or heavy meet "diet" is that newspapers do not work. 

Also, Sandicane, do you fly?  I mean on airplanes?  Or would you ride a car with leather interior?  Or would you wear leather shoes?

Until your answer is 'no' to all such and similar questions, you will by a hypocrite if you say that you want to be a vegetarian because of some moral principles about animals.

Sorry, I'm pretty much fed up with discussions of the type of "Couch potato" vs. "Couch steak".  Get real, eat tofu and kill a cow.

For your health.

100%

It's all mostly subjective.

The main issue that hasn't been mentioned yet is how everyone is different biologically. Some people require special diets while others don't. Some are more sensitive to certain foods and some have allergies. I think it's more important to know your own body and what is good for you and what is not than to try to imitate a popular trend.

I also think it's important to eat foods in season and what is grown in your local area.

Interesting... what country did you migrate to canada from?

Romania, I grew up in the country and we emigrated here in '92 shortly after the 'revolution'.  I want to add that even people in cities were and probably still are growing chickens and pigs in small farms besides apartment buildings.  It's a way of life that nobody in the western world can truly comprehend.  

It really is ultimately subjective, just what relative 'value' you put on the life of an animal, or its living conditions and 'right' to live out a 'normal' life.

I do not put those at zero, especially for animals with more apparent self-awareness, but how could you really make it an objective quantity? Which is where I had a real problem in that other thread with Blake. I appreciate his sentiment, but I can't see how you can take out the subjective, personal assessment aspect.

The other factor is that I think it ultimately makes no sense to not put some value on our own personal survival and enjoyment of life.

On the need to eat meat, that has now been way reduced, and the factor that has become important globally, which really did not arise in the time when man was just another creature in a big ecosystem, is the resource issue and sustainability. It does take far more land, and more food resources to rear a cow than we get out of it. It is still sort-of defensible in places where the lower level food resources are sparse and/or not so easily harvested directly and converted into nutritious food for ourselves, so letting some animal which can use them graze and convert them into animal flesh which we can use makes sense. So grass-fed is far more defensible than grain-fed, assuming there are no other competing uses for the land required.

And finally we have the issue of methane production and the climate impact.

Romania is a developing country? Well, since it's 92 that may actually be the case...

To a large extent, I value my taste for chicken more than the welfare of the chicken. Ergo, I eat chicken.

OK, as a kid, I used to work on a farm. I am well aware of the difference between carnivores and herbivores. Let's do a quick check here: What manner of teeth to humans have?

If you go for carnivores you are almost right. The fact is that we are omnivores. We have the front teeth of carnivores and the back teeth of herbivores.

OK, I am game, what do you consider to be a lesser species? Basically every animal that has ever been eaten is at the current pinnacle of evolution for that particular clade.

Past that, I have a friend who actually worked for several years as a cowboy. Here is what happens when you kill a cow:

First, the cow is taken out to some place farily far away from the rest of the herd. Then someone stands in front of it and a couple of yards away. A single rifle shot between the eyes and the cow just falls over. There is no magical “cow scream”.

After that, someone brings in a pickup truck with a small crane on the back. The back legs are hobbled and the cow is hoisted up. Then the throat is cut and everyone waits until the cow bleeds out. Then the “autopsy cut” is made in the abdomen and the digestive track is carefully removed (because that is where all the e, coli is found).

Next, they remove all of the edible organs, including the brain and after that, the cow is quartered. The quarters are lifted onto the truck and it is driven back to the main area where the various buildings are located. They have a sort of “root cellar” type of building where the quarters are stored in a cold underground area for a few weeks while the meat tenderizes. While the quarters are aging, the organ meat is consumed along with the usual diet of various grain products, eggs and whatever else.

Later, the quarters are properly butchered. By this time, it is the end of November, so fresh meat is a big deal for thankgiving through xmas. After that, the remaining meat is turned into jerky so that there will be a source of meat all the rest of the year until the process is repeated.

As far as slaughter houses go, the actual killing is similar except that the shot is probably from a pneumatic gun that fires a huge steel rod through the cow's brain. The cow still has to be bled out and aged (did you think that fresh meant meant killed yesterday?).

 In that case, I say that we are evolved to eat meat. There is no moral question here.

Don't get me wrong on this. As I said the the vegan food thread, I don't really see the need to make meat into the only thing that we eat. We can eat pretty much whatever we like. Personally, I eat lots of stuff that would be acceptable under a strict vegan diet. I just fail to see how it is a greater morality to eat plants only.

If there is a moral condition here, it lies in the fact that modern people are removed from the real ancestral deal that produces meat. When we had to hunt our meals and we had to kill stuff that we wanted to eat, well, then we were doing as we were evolved to do.

When we go to the supermarket, we are removed from the bits that we might get squeamish about.

I don't know where you live but if the opportunity obtains, go out in the woods with a bow and arrows and find dinner. If you can do that, then I don't see a problem. On the other hand, if you go to a supermarket and don't mind that plenty of other people did the things that brought the food to your table, then you are accepting the vicarious benefit of other people doing the things that you are not willing to do for yourself.

On the other hand, if you really don't want to eat animals, that is fine too. Don't eat them. Feel smugh because you don't and other people do. However, if that is your won't, know that you are in the same boat as people who drive hybrid cars and feel that they are being so very 21^st century over the matter despite the fact that hybrid vehicles are world war one technology.

I have never felt a strong desire to eat meat over other kinds of food. I never really liked bacon, in particular.

When I think about it, I have a basic revulsion against eating living creatures, although I am not going to claim such a feeling is rationally defensible - conscious thought is not normally involved in such things. Altho one can eventually modify one's deeper urges and preferences, by forcing yourself to contemplate images and scenarios that invoke negative reactions that are associated with what I more consciously feel I would rather not do.

The first time I tasted freshly cooked, freshly harvested, sea-scallops, I really enjoyed them, but I did feel a slight twinge at the way they were cooked - throwing the freshly collected critters straight onto a barbecue hot-plate.... A bit like boiling lobsters I guess, but almost certainly a 'lesser' awareness, if any.

I certainly do not feel 'smug' about this.

BTW, being at the "pinnacle" of a particular clade simply means that organism is currently the most 'evolved' for that niche, has absolutely no implications as to qualities that might be relevant to assessing its 'greater' or lesser' status, let alone the qualities that someone like myself might be judging it on in this context, such as degree of 'awareness', or subtlety of response to stimuli.

It would make no logical sense to adopt a position of avoiding killing any kind of life, for many reasons, like the fact that it extends all the way down to primitive bacteria and arguably even viruses, and avoiding killing one kind may lead to more death of another, under various contexts.

I have said elsewhere that I have a very rational reason to minimize eating red meat. Sometime ago, I read of research which showed a significant correlation between heavy consumption of 'red meat' and some cancers, such as bowel cancer. As compared to people whose diet was more into vegetables such as broccoli.

No doubt there would need to be some genetic predisposition as well.

But since bowel cancer, which metastasized into liver cancer, took out my Dad, who was very much a steak eater, I don't feel I need any more justification for minimizing red meat in my diet, especially since I feel no particular deprivation in so doing that.

THIS is why I wouldn't eat a dog or, any other kind of 'pet' animal.  You wouldn't see a cow, pig or chicken, frog or sea scallop exhibit this kind of loyality.

OK, I see no merit in claiming that you agree with me on this. Still, it seems that we are probably heading in the same direction. One could justify a vegetarian diet just as easily by by claiming a general hate of plants as a love of animals.

A couple of thoughts come to mind here.

So red meat might be linked to cancer. OMG! CANCER! Does that mean that there are no cancers that might come from vegetables? Or does it mean that the matter has not been studied sufficiently enough to see what might be going on?

Really, broccoli is one of my favorite vegetables. However, it aggravates my gout.

Now gout is not something that will kill you. It just makes it suck to stand up. Really, would you like to be in your 40's and have a condition where your favorite veg makes you want to remain seated?

Against that, you could be in your 70's and have whatever is going to be the end of you. Honestly, nobody has ever died because they were too old to live. Old age is not a cause of death. Stuff that kills you is. If nothing happened that would kill you until you are 10,000 years old, well then you would be the oldest man on the planet.

Actually Sandy, you would be surprised at the loyalty a pig can display. In many respects, I don't think there is that much different between a dog and a pig except that pigs are tastier. As far as intelligence I believe that a dog and pig are pretty close and many people do keep pigs as pets. Now I wouldn't eat my dog or any other animal I had an emotional connection with, but I don't have a problem with eating or other people eating dogs or cats in general. 

I'm more a cat person than a dog person but, I love most all animals - furry or, feathered - honestly, since having this European Starling in the house talking to me all day long, I've had to elevate the status of  birds to be equal to a dog or, cat. Sweet Pea has a great personality, and that's not my imagination.

Seriously, when you spend quality time with a non-human critter and really get to 'know' them and try to communicate with them and understand them, it's hard to say that humans are the superior species - we're just different from them.

I have just as much a problem with eating an animal as I do a plant or bacteria.  They are all things I would rather do without.  However to survive I must do something.  It would be more corrupt of me to single out a specific group so I eat that which I can stomach.

None of which makes sense to me.

Which just underlines how personally subjective such reactions and judgments are.

You would rather do without having to eat animal or plant material?

What about dairy, which is a product of animals, but not part of the body of an animal? Although some cheeses often contain some bacteria.

Dairy is about the only food I can think of off-hand which is not made up of animal or plant cells.

If you were planning on eating me I would probably peck you in the eye too.