Wheat, not Meat is Murder?!
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/...
Answers: Read this article on the "Guiltless Grill" and tell me what you think.
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/...
Wow... that was good. Seriously. A little hostile, but good. I get the point --- basically he's saying "Animal cruelty is such a vast issue that being vegetarian is a fruitless attempt to make it better."
You see, I agree. All of us veggies are hypocrites. Just like those damn humanitarians. You know, those "Make Poverty History" and "Make Trade Fair" people. Don't they realize that those problems are so gargantuan that they'll never be solved? At least not in their lifetime. And a lot of the people that donate to those abortive organizations own a pair of $2 a day child labour sneakers anyway. And then they'll get on your back about it and act like they're saints. Like Bono: "Move over Jesus, God has a new favourite son." But in actuality, Bono and the rest of those phonies still choose to live in a society which is a significant (if not the MOST significant) contributor to the problem. If they really cared, they'd pull a Mother Teresa and ditch the first-world. Let's not get started on her though. Anyway the point is, even though they TRY to make things better, they never will. Let's crucify them too!
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Okay, okay. That was sarcasm. Except for the Bono thing. That guy DOES think he's Jesus.
Seriously, I'm a vegan and I thought that article was very well done. The rancor was charming. Honestly, I hate PETA and other organizations that try to force their ideals on you. People are educated and are capable of making their own decisions. If they're okay with their dinner coming from the slaughterhouse, then so be it. They've made up their mind, stop badgering them. And you wonder why everyone hates you people?
Anyways, some veggies should at least get props for trying. Don't persecute them. Especially the PETA ones. Then they'll become self-proclaimed martyrs. But the other ones --- the demure ones --- they really just can't handle animal cruelty. So they TRY to make it better. Just give 'em a break once in a while. ;)
I get bored with this crap. The facts are that people have to eat. Regardless. And its the process that is killing wild and native animals so what do we do request that the farmer harvest their wheat with horse and equiptment?
The concept of "murder" when it comes to the humane slaughter of food animals is nothing short of ridiculous. Whether or not God made humans in His image, we are definitely designed biologically to be omniverous - to eat animal food sources as well as vegetable sources. If you want to stick to vegetarian sources of food, by all means that's your choice. But don't try to impose your beliefs on others when science and common sense cannot validate them. Such an approach is as bad - and as stupid - as people of one religion trying to impose their beliefs on people of another religion - or none at all.
Oh what a load of absolute codswallop!
You trolls often berate people for basing some of their answers on unscientific internet sites. And yet you come up with this site (which is nothing more than a tirade of abuse) - an opinion piece, at best, backed up by very iffy 'research' articles - as the basis of a trolling question.
You deserve all the abusive answers you get to this one.
Still, that leaves us with the advantage because we only eat vegetables, while you eat BOTH meat and vegetables, thereby, we're reducing the killing of animals.
man seriously i'm so f*cking sick of people coming onto the vegetarian and vegan boards to tell us that we're hypocrites, that we're wrong, and to harass us about why we don't eat meat. GET A LIFE. why does it matter to you? at least we're making the effort to stop eating meat, to stop the torture of animals in slaughterhouses, to be healthier. If you're not veg how about you stop concerning yourself in our choices. Seriously how much time do you have on your hands? mind your own business and stop coming onto the vegetarian and vegan section of Y!A to post some stupid article about how vegetarians are hypocrites. WE ARE MAKING A F*CKING EFFORT
This is what I think:
http://ar.vegnews.org/harvesting_crops.h...
First off, I'm not a vegetarian, but I wouldn't use that article for anything more than cat litter liner. It's shamelessly biased and patronizing from the outset - "meat hating fascist"? "I'm supposed to feel guilty if I eat meat? Screw you." Having a section clearly aimed towards veg*ns on a menu, and alluding to guilt, doesn't have anything to do with the morality of meat eating for omnivores. If I were a vegetarian for spiritual or religious reasons, I'd find that article extremely offensive, because the vast majority of the world's vegetarians avoid meat for religious reasons.
Second, the fact that animals are killed in the industrial agriculture process is well-established fact. Good on the author - he has read wikipedia's summary of Davis's research. But so can I, and he's failed to mention that:
"Gaverick Matheny, a Ph.D. candidate in agricultural economics at the University of Maryland, counters that Davis' reasoning contains several major flaws, including distorting the notion of "harm" to animals, and miscalculating the number of animal deaths based on areas of land rather than per consumer. For example, currently nearly 10 billion animals are killed each year in the U.S. for food, more than five times greater than Davis' estimated 1.8 billion for crop harvesting. Matheny says that "After correcting for these errors, Davis’s argument makes a strong case for, rather than against, adopting a vegetarian diet."
Eat meat if you like. But if you do, at least think through WHY you are eating meat, instead of writing an ill-researched rant like this guy.
People always say 'don't force your opinions down other peoples throats' etc. but what if you see someone using a slave? Personally I would force my opinion on this person and fight for the slave. If people feel strongly morally and ethically about something I feel they should try get other people to stop the actions they are against (within reason (as a reasonable person would approach someone using slaves))
I think that a majority of the grain goes to feed livestock, which is then slaughtered and eaten. So you are actually killing more wildlife to feed other animals so you can eat them, because it takes more grain to produce meat than it does to feed me.
Makes that argument sound pretty stupid.
Absolutely agree veggies dont understand how the real world works thats for sure
wow
Thats a pretty insulting/rude/ angry article - it could have been put much better. If it hadn't been so full of Swearing / stereotyping I might have given it some credit.
Anyway. I have some points to raise
1) The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few- Tragic as it is that animals get killed in the harvesting, the number is less that those killed in the meat industry.
2) Most of the grain will go to feeding animals for meat production, not to humans. Stop "growing" meat - and less animals will get "harvested".
3) Ok- so lets say Vegetarians stop eating any harvested product - what do you expect them you eat ? They have to eat- they just choose to try to limit the harm caused by their diet. Better to save some animals rather than none.
Oh you people, trying to bring us vegetarians/vegans down. It will never happen. Don't you have better things to do?
*Yawn* And by the way darling, you are very information deprived.
:)
By that guys reasoning, it would seem like people that buy hybrids, recycle, compost and use energy efficient electronics and then try to get their family and friends to do the same to help the environment are a bunch of hypocrites because simply by being alive they are still creating a environmental footprint.
The point is that we try to limit our negative impact on both the other animals of this world and the environment, while still trying to live in it. We know that zero impact isn't possible, but our choices DO make a difference.
With regards to the stats in the article, if you believe the wiki quote referenced by drusilla then a vegan diet still results in less death than a omnivore one. And this can be further reduced through farming techniques designed to work with those animals, such as 'wild farming', 'no till grain cultivation', and 'synergistic gardening' to name a few. Another technique that has been found successful is surrounding the crops with plants that are a preferred source of food and habitat for those animals, so that they don't need to enter the crop fields in the first place. I'm sure the options are limitless, if only we as a society had the social and environmental conscience to seek them out and implement them.
However, the only way to reduce the death toll of food source animals is to stop eating them. At the end of the day, irregardless of how we treat them, we are still killing billions of animals every year for no better reason than because we 'can' eat them (b/c we are omnivore), and they taste good (or at least all the spices and vegetables we cook with them make them taste good, trying eating just some plain, unspiced beef), even though in our modern world we no longer have any requirement for meat in our diets.
Maddox is funny, but an idiot nonetheless. He's simply a comedian, most of the things he says are total B.S., but they keep people coming to his site, and keep him making money.
If you have time, I would recommend reading his book "The Alphabet of Manliness". It's actually really funny... completely false, but funny.
Here's what I think of the article:
Of course cute little bunnies get killed when grains are harvested, but it is important to remember that unlike animals slaughtered for food, they actually have a chance of escape. A food animal will end up dead 100% of the time... that's the point, an animal living in crops will die some of the time, but also has a chance for escape. Also, estimates on how much grain is required for a cow to eat to produce a pound of beef range anywhere from 4 to 40. Let's stay around the low end and say it takes 15 pounds of grain to make 1 pound of beef. Now, it only takes 1 pound of grain to make 1 pound of bread. Which is more likely to kill more animals in harvesting? Eating beef requires several times more animals killed while harvesting, so eating vegetarian still kills fewer animals. Maddox's all or nothing mentality really doesn't make sense. If you have two evils, you should always choose the lesser of the two.
By the way... the source Maddox used as the basis for this article is a "404 Not Found"... that alone should set off your B.S. detector.
::edit::
The Steven Davis article is so idyllic it's funny. Again, cattle do not graze like most people think. It is extremely rare to find grass fed beef, and it's more expensive because ranchers can not get their cows as big as they could using grains. Cattle are fed soybeans, corn, and many other things (including chicken "litter" and the remains of other cows) that they would not naturally choose to eat in order to get bigger cows and higher profits.
That's deep. Score one for the carnivores!
That's has been pointed out and conveniently ignored in this forum. But opinions are opinions and while everyone or anyone is allowed to make one, the rest of the world are not obliged to subscribe or believe in that opinion. Even well conducted researches and "scientific" studies have their skeptics and counter arguments.
there is a green eyed poster here who is fond of using the phrase "information deprived". But I bet she deliberately deprived herself of this bit of information.