Some Observations...(all are welcomed)

[Renegade 13]

Good point. I think I'd estimate the number closer to 90% wouldn't survive, but that's just me.

I for one wouldn't have lived past 17 if deprived of "civilization". Appendicitis would have killed me. One of my three sisters would have died at about 12 from whooping cough.

That's just medical reasons why people don't die today, I hate to think about how many would die simply from malnutrition, not knowing how to survive, etc. if our civilization fell.

[PvK]

Imperator Fyron said:
PvK said:
...people who care about the treatment of animals.

Why should I care about them? They only exist to become food, afterall. I don't want to see excessive production waste just because it makes the animals "happier."

You should care about them because you are compassionate and would like to reduce suffering.

[Renegade 13]

PvK said:
Oh... right... never trust vegetarians... or people who care about the treatment of animals.

Note I didn't say that vegetarians are untrustworthy, I said the website was obviously biased. Big distinction.

I'd also like to point out that I absolutely resent the implication that I don't care about the well-being of animals. I have never once in my life mistreated an animal, no animal. We raise cattle here and they have never been subjected to any inhumane practices. Never. Being a vegetarian doesn't make you superior to us savages who eat meat. And just because people eat meat it doesn't mean they don't care about how animals are treated. It's really too bad typing doesn't allow for emphasis to be applied, or facial expression to be expressed. I think the look on my face and tone of my "voice" would say a lot...

As for what some PETA loving animal hugger from "Compassion over Killing" says, I really don't give a [censored]. In any industry there are bad apples. It doesn't make the entire industry cruel and unjust. And given the way "animal rights activists" act, I wouldn't doubt they did that to the chickens themselves.

Note the word "trimming" when referring to beaks, not burning as has been said. Think of it this way; we castrate animals. That could be said to be akin to "trimming". Yet it is painless and harmless. I can guarantee they aren't yanking the entire beak out of the chicken. It would stress the animal which would cause it to lose weight and not perform as well as it would otherwise.

I would also like to know the definition of "starve". I'd bet it means feeding them a certain diet, not refusing to feed them for days on end. Be reasonable.



As is probably evident, I get a little worked up about stuff like this. Let me tell you something:

Vegetarians are primarily people who have lived in cities all their life, and not been in touch with the real world, outside of cities.

Vegetarians have been raised watching Walt Disney movies, and think that all animals are harmless and nearly the equal to people. They're not, never will be.

Vegetarians would not stand a chance at survival if they were deprived of their "civilized" comforts. If you couldn't go to the grocery store and buy all your organic, non-meat products and you actually had to grow and kill what you eat rather than go buy it, you would eat meat. If you didn't, you'd die. You'd also see that animals are just that; animals. They are not on the same level as a person. That doesn't excuse mistreatment, don't for a minute think that I believe it does. However, death is part of life (bit of an oxymoron there, but hey...). Killing and eating animals does not make people 'evil'. They've lived their life, and don't know there's any other way to live. However they live, as long as they don't live in pain, that's what they're used to. They think it's natural. It is not cruel.

[capnq]

Renegade 13 said:
Vegetarians would not stand a chance at survival if they were deprived of their "civilized" comforts.

Neither would, at a guess, about 5/6 of humanity.

I think a pretty good measure of how "advanced" a civilization is, is the percentage of the population that would not survive its collapse.

[PvK]

How about the New York Times for a corporate-compliant news organ? Carnivore enough? http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/04/national/04CHIC.html

The henhouse raid in November was the second for Ms. Park, 32, and an animal advocacy group called Compassion Over Killing. Members of the group court arrest by entering chicken sheds at night and filming the rows of hens crammed 10 to a cage the size of a file-drawer cabinet. They get close-ups of swollen eyes, infected skin and shattered wings entangled in cage wire.

Earlier this year the United Egg Producers, a trade group representing 85 percent of the country’s egg producers, issued revised guidelines in response to the complaints of animal welfare groups. The industry promised to increase gradually the size of the enclosed wire cages it uses, known as battery cages, by 30 to 40 percent; improve procedures for trimming chickens’ beaks; and figure out how to force chickens to molt, which induces them to lay more eggs, without starving them for several days.

McDonald’s has agreed to buy eggs only from producers who do not starve their chickens to force molting and who raise them in cages of at least 72 square inches for each bird, nearly double the current United States average of 40 square inches.

Gee, that matches what those untrustworthy vegetarians said... except the vegetarians said the smallest space per chicken was 48 inches.

[StarShadow]

It's not that the vegetarians are untrustworthy. It's the perception of bias. It's akin to getting your information on the negative effects of smoking, from the tobacco industry.

[PvK]

StarShadow said:
It's not that the vegetarians are untrustworthy. It's the perception of bias. It's akin to getting your information on the negative effects of smoking, from the tobacco industry.

No, it would be like getting info on the negative effects of smoking, from nonsmokers.com.

[PvK]

This discussion has been interesting to me, not just for the topic and to hear people's reactions, but also as an example of the effects of overstatement. Particularly when I think others are overstating a case or writing something that seems ridiculous to me, I am often tempted to respond with overstated sarcastic and ironic humor that only I (or those on my rarified wavelength, but not often those I'm responding to) am likely to get, and that can lead to misunderstandings getting out of control.

Anyway, Renegade 13, I'd like not to upset you with miscommunication, so I'll try to respond as clearly as I can and maybe explain better than I have been.

I was making sarcastic remarks about not trusting vegetarians because the replies from you and Fyron seemed to say you wouldn't trust any information from a URL with "vegetarian" in the domain name. I thought that was pretty remarkable, and was trying to express it with sarcastic humor. Perhaps I was responding unclearly to something I somewhat misunderstood, just getting us circling each other.

It seems that at some point in history some people on the "animal" side of this issue have made some people on the "meat" side (sorry if my terms are offending anyone) quite annoyed and skeptical, though this seems like a very polarizing topic. I guess I was trying to express too that I find it hard to understand how people could get to the point where they trust corporations with tons of money at stake over people who are trying to help animals, to the point that they'd just disbelieve anything with the word "vegetarian" in its name. For my part, I've gotten to the point that I distrust most corporate and corp-media messages, and expect corporations to frame animal rights activists much more readily than I'd expect activists to frame farmers. It's an extreme example of people getting upset at "the other side" and overreacting and hurting both communication and their own cause, leading to lots of mistrust and entrenched sides.

I was trying (and apparently, failing) to reflect what seemed like your illogic back to you. (I'm still surprised how rarely that approach works, but I guess I shouldn't be.) I was not really meaning to say I thought you abused or neglected or didn't care about animals. I just meant to show the same level of illogic and intolerance I seemed to be getting. All it did was make you frustrated in the same way your replies frustrated me, but without you understanding (or at least, not accepting), what I was trying to express.

I wasn't saying the whole meat industry was wicked; of course it's not. Again, my expressions tended to reflect illogical and incorrect expressions from the other side. Again, it didn't get understood. My mistake more than anyone else's.

I hope though that you would realize too that the same is true of people on the other side of the argument. There are some who do bad things and say bad things, but that doesn't make them all bad or wrong either.

I understand about beak trimming. My understanding is that sometimes it is done by burning, but that's not necessarily a significant detail if we're talking seriously. I have seen many arguments on both sides about how humane it is or isn't in different specific cases. I was guilty of overstatement in the way I expressed it, but again this was because I was reacting to overstatements to the effect that it never happened, would never happen in the USA, etc. But two wrongs don't generally make a right, nor do they reach an understanding.

I don't know the details of the "starve" comment - that was the New York Times writing that.

"Vegetarians are primarily people who have lived in cities all their life, and not been in touch with the real world, outside of cities. "
- No, vegetarians are simply people who don't eat meat, for a wide variety of reasons.

"Vegetarians have been raised watching Walt Disney movies"
- Fascinating.

"Vegetarians [...] think that all animals are harmless and nearly the equal to people. They're not, never will be."
- "Equal" in what sense?
- Some people, who may or may not actually be vegetarians, even think that they prefer animals to people in some ways.

"If you couldn't go to the grocery store and buy all your organic, non-meat products and you actually had to grow and kill what you eat rather than go buy it, you would eat meat. If you didn't, you'd die."
- Er, no. Many Asian cultures (and, see "Buddhism") have been largely or almost entirely vegetarian (in the not-animal-eating sense, not in your strange Disney-raised sense) even before significant contact with Western cultures. They did just fine, and many continue to do so.

"You'd also see that animals are just that; animals. They are not on the same level as a person."
- In what terms? I've had plenty of contact with animals, and I respect and appreciate them quite a bit, and certainly prefer many of them to many humans I've known.

"Killing and eating animals does not make people 'evil'."
- Who (on this thread) ever said it did?

I don't think we really disagree on the main issue here. Seems to me we agree that there can be humane meat farming, and there can be abusive meat farming, and there are at least some cases of abusive meat farming, and that's bad. Where we disagree is maybe what counts as abusive, how common abuse is, what should be done about it, and so on. None of which we really want to discuss in detail here.

PvK

[Renegade 13]

I understand what you're saying PvK, and actually agree with most of what you've said in your last post.

My position has (obviously!) been a little dogmatic and closed-minded. Obviously there are extremes on both sides of the arguement, and the truth is usually somewhere in the middle, as I suspect it is in this case.

And now that I actually think about it, rather than just trying to defend my position, I guess a vegetarian's choice to not eat meat is their choice to make (and their loss in my opinion ) and really doesn't affect me too much. Though I must say there are several essential nutrients found in meat that are not found in vegetable food sources. Kinda argues for an evolutionary reliance on eating meat (if you believe in evolution of course).

As for how animals are treated, I can only say what I know to be true, which is how animals are treated in my direct experience and observation. Which, of course, is how they're treated here in Canada, where we have an absolute abundance of space to allow animals to roam somewhat freely. In the States, or other countries, I dunno. As for chickens...well I don't like eggs so I don't eat them and chicken isn't my favorite food anyway (I prefer hamburger or a nice juicy steak )I really don't know how they're treated (though I'll always have my doubts about the position espoused by animal rights activists. After all, they have an agenda. As, obviously, big corporations do as well. Seems people really can't believe anything that they themselves don't have direct experience with.

As for Disney movies, where else do people get the idea's that bears are cute, cuddly, harmless animals? Bears are not in any way harmless. Yet a lot of people in cities seem to believe they are. How did that notion become so prevalent??

Around here, animals such as bears and coyotes are shot on sight. If you don't, they kill your livestock, ruin your crops. Many people without experience outside of cities (and the movies which they were raised on) don't understand what animals such as bears are really like. They'd just as soon eat you as look at your. Granted, the difference between bears and food animals is quite significant, but the principal is the same.

Kwok, you're right. I was going a little overboard on the generalizations. Also correct about how companies pump chicken full of liquid so they can sell less chicken for a greater price. A stressed animal has a much lower quality of meat than one that doesn't know anything's wrong until it dies. Which is one reason why I have my doubts that food animals are horribly mistreated.

Anyways, I think I've stated my points far too frequently recently, and doubt that anyone on any side of the arguement will change their mind, so I think it's rather pointless to continue!!

[rdouglass]

It's kinda' funny that something from the Bible might be surprisingly relevant:

Romans 14:2-3 tells us, "One man's faith allows him to eat everything, but another man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him."