Cam and Dogchild, do you guys worry about the millions of animals killed by wheat and soy bean combines during harvesting season?
I feel bad for those animals… they’re not used for anything.
Renegade Dragon:
Are millions of animals really killed during combine season? How does that occur?
In general, I think there are a few ways to see animal rights.
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Animals are analogous to people in that they feel pain, and thus we ought to extend (at least some) rights to them.
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Animals are disanalogous to people in that they don’t have rational thought. Insofar as animals cannot think rationally, they cannot be considered moral agents. (You can’t imprison a shark for killing a surfer.) Thus it seems strange to consider animals as having rights, or at least the full rights of a human being.
I think that my view lies somewhere between the two extremes: I think it’s okay to eat animals, but I don’t think that we should make them suffer unduly. In addition, by eating animals that we hunt or are free-range, I believe we choose a healthy, natural option that is more nutritious than that which comes out of the prepackaged “meat factories”. Honestly, I can’t always afford free-range buffalo and venison, but I try.
I think if you’re going to eat meat, you should know what it’s like to kill something. This isn’t a “psycho” point or anything, but you should know what it is that’s happening when you eat your food.
One of the problems with this view is that it takes much greater resources to have free-range cattle than it does to have agriculture. You can feed a lot more people for cheaper with corn and rice than beef and chicken. People are starving in the world and I’m bitching about HAVING to eat six times a day so I can get a six pack. People could drink my urine and improve their nutritional lot, in a lot of places.
Eating meat is clearly bad for the animal you kill, but it’s also bad for the people that can’t afford it, insofar as it’s taking up the resources that would be helping to feed them. Strangely, famine doesn’t kill people because there’s not enough food, it kills people because distribution is bad and the people who are starving can’t afford it.
This isn’t even starting to go into how substenance farming is endangered by globalization so we can have more sugar for Godsakes.
Ideally, the human race would be small enough that we could all eat free range meats of all kinds and every person could eat an ideally nutritious diet. Since there are way too many of us for that to be possible (IMHO)… it’s better that at least one person, or a few people can do it than no one.
Because it’s either that, or feel guilty about the way I do things constantly, and I can’t live with myself like that.
Sorry for the OT rant.
d/c
“Well spoken” dogchild, did I mention “right on”.
I assume you’ve hunted game or at least approve of the practice. I don’t enjoy animal suffering but believe we(humans) are to be stewards of creation. This includes using animals, trees, oceans, etc. as resources, but not abusing them.
I live in the flatlands of Indiana. We “Hoosiers” have an aboundance of deer, and small game which I enjoy hunting and using for food. A group of relatives and friends have also hunted areas in Colorado for 15 years. I love the mountains and wildlife, just don’t approve of the non-resident license fees. Makes the price of free-range elk and mule deer pretty high grin.
'Nuff said! -LW
I agree that you shouldn’t mistreat animals, but still you have to remember they are ANIMALS. Besides, as dogchild pointed out, PETA isn’t very consistant in their beliefs. For example, they recently sent Yasser Arafat a letter asking him to stop the homicide bombings in Isreal because a donkey was killed. It was OK to blow up kids and civilians, but heaven forbid we kill an animal.
Also, I heard an interview with the woman that heads PETA and it turns out she’s an insulin dependant diabetic. When she was asked about where the insulin came from, she said, “It’s ok for some sheep to die to keep me alive, so I can protect the other animals.”
I think it means That hormones given in animal food are the contributing factor to the bich tits.
Dogchild, millions of rats, rabbits, snakes, birds and other small animals are killed by the machines used to harvest the wheat, and soy. It’s just a fun fact when a vegetarian that has no idea about nutrition is spouting their propaganda about killing animals for food, when in fact their chosen food is still killing animals.
I was simply putting the fact out there for people to think about.
However I’m with you on the whole animal suffering thing. I hate that it happens, unfortunately I can’t afford to buy free range meat.
It is great to support animal rights. I believe that animals should be treated humanely, and when used as a food source, should be killed in as quick and painless a way as possible.
If a person does not eat animals for moral reasons, I support their position for themselves. When they state health reasons, it is often just pointing out how little they know. I have no respect for PETA. They ignorantly place the lives of animals above people. They have financially backed animal rights terrorists, and some members were reported to have actually abused and killed animals to stage false instances to place blame on others. (I cannot recall what article I got that from, sorry.)
There is also the pet food industry. If we are to keep cats as pets, we have to realize that they cannot live without animal protein. So we have to keep supplying animals for slaughter just to feed cats, or get rid of all the cats.
I accept the fact that I am an animal myself. (Animal ? Mammal ? Primate ? Sex God) And along those lines, I will give up meat as soon as the PETA people sit down and talk the cheetahs out of chasing down and tearing apart other living animals. I myself refuse to eat veal, but that is about it.
I find it very satisfying when i eat roast duck or stir-fried goat, that was made from meat i had hunted and shot myself.