How can you eat meat if you love animals?!
not trying to demonize people, I'm genuinely interested in knowing what you think. I struggle with it because I know that for whatever reason my body can't go without meat for too long without getting sick, but I hate the meat industry
Answers: how do you reconcile the two?
not trying to demonize people, I'm genuinely interested in knowing what you think. I struggle with it because I know that for whatever reason my body can't go without meat for too long without getting sick, but I hate the meat industry
Simple answer; you can't. You can't love animals and kill them at the same time. Just like you can't love your kids and kill them at the same time. Except of course if you're the mother of a really poor third world family and have too many kids and not enough food; in which case you may potentially have to intentionally starve one of your kids in order to let the others survive. You live in a world far far away from the poverty of the third world. You wouldn't kill your kids unless you had absolutely had to. You live in a society where you have access to all the latest nutritional choices and information, and you can make intelligent informed choices about the food that you eat. Do you have to eat meat to survive? No. Do you have to eat meat to thrive? Not at all. Do you love animals enough not to kill them for your own personal enjoyment? Only you can answer that one.
umm one bite at a time?
i don't think of where it came from when I'm eating it.
i just enjoy how dang tasty it is.
animals who are treated humanely are o.k. to eat, because humans too have to die sometime. just think that you too are like an animal and when it was your time, when you were called, would you go?
In my honest opinion:
Animals eat other animals. They hunt them down and tear them to pieces and eat them. We hunt animals, and eat them. Unfortunately, its just the way nature is. We need to survive, and meat offers vitamins and nutrients that humans need to survive...and we would never have survived this long if we had never learned to hunt animals.
So unfortunately, its either them or us. And I do disagree that people should not TORTURE animals before they are killed....THOSE people deserve torture.
I love animals...but I know I have to eat meat too. No one eats cats or dogs, or birds (far as i know) so I mean, the animals necessary for meat are necessary for survival. That's kind of it. =\
I don't love animals that are bred to be food, I don't know them. They are meat presented to me by the butcher and when I was younger, they were animals that I hunted for food.
Rabbit
Deer
Wild Hogs
Fish
lmao one has nothing to do with the other
i love veggies and flowers and i don't get upset when i eat them, cut them for a bouquet or step on the grass outside ya know
i think cows at the fair are cute has heck and birds and fish in pet stores are cute too. but cattle and fish etc raised for consumption are just that- meat. just like wheat in a field for making bread is just grain.
no offense but i think a lot of the vegetarians and vegans on here over think things too much.
granted the processing of livestock is rather messy - but it's effective and quicker than doing it the old fashioned way...
ya know the way they did it 50-100 years ago before vegetarians existed
I think you can actually begin eating meat again without feeling guilty by buying ONLY responsibly raised meat and knowing where and how they were raised....humanely and without steriods or antibiotics.
For example,I will ONLY buy farm raised salmon from Whole Foods Grocery (a gourmet store that champions animal rights and organic living) because the salmon farms are checked by third parties and salmon not starved and not overcrowded.
I feel so much better when I use this middle ground stance. I get both the pleasure of eating meat and being morally responsible. Try it out.
You can love animals and still eat meat if you want to. Maybe cut down your meat intake and try to buy from small farms only as much as you can. We don't need meat to survive, there are a lot of vegetarians and vegans out there to prove that. I like chicken and turkey still, but I don't eat them because of the way they are kept and killed. I don't feel any less of an animal lover because of that either.
Natalie above me, you seriously are another person that feels plants and animals are the same? Animals are much more like humans, it dosen't take a rocket scientist to figure that out. And as for the animals just being raised for meat, does that make them any less of a pain feeling animal? And make it ok to torture them???? Come on now, have a heart for these animals that are suffering every damn day. If you don't like what you read in here then find something else to do.
Go Kosher... to sum it up, the way they handle the animal is not inhumane.
Mostly a reply to the replies...
First of all, yes, everyone has to die. But animals don't naturally die then get turned into food. They're slaughtered (ie: murdered). And usually at a young age. That would be like saying it's OK to kill a 12 year old kid because, afterall, he had a good life up until that point.
Also, humans aren't carnivores. Yes, some animals hunt, kill, and eat other animals because they need to to survive. That's not the case with humans. We're omnivores, with herbivore leanings. Meat causes a plethora of health problems, isn't very well metabolised by humans (and in fact causes humans to metabolise it as hormones which lead to over-production of fat, etc...), and causes the human body to become acidic (which leads to several health problems in itself). Humans can thrive on vegetarian diets (note: most cultures with the longest life expectancies eat little or no meat)... but would die within months if they ate only meat. There's nothing in meat that we need that we can't get from vegetarian sources.
Also, most people don't hunt... we buy packaged meat from supermarkets that get it from farms where the animals are tortured. And humans who DO hunt do it with accessories (guns, etc...), as we don't have the means to kill large animals on our own (or catch small animals). If, by evolution, we were supposed to hunt and eat, say, cows... wouldn't we have the means to do so without guns (like those predators who tear their prey apart)?
And people eat birds... what do you think chickens, turkeys, quail, etc... are?
Oh, and vegetarians have "existed" for thousands of years... long before 50-100 years ago. Many ancient cultures and religions (Hindu, Buddhist, certain Native American tribes, etc...) were vegetarians hundreds and even thousands of years ago. Many early Christians and Jewish people were also vegetarians.
And farm animal is a living and SENTIENT being, just like a domestic dog.
To MasterPython: just because the animals you eat aren't someone's pet doesn't mean they don't still feel, or aren't someone's son, daughter, mother, etc... Also, most every animal (and certainly every mammal and bird) *knows* they're alive, possesses thoughts and feelings, and know they're being killed (there are, of course, exceptions such as bees, etc... who while they possess sentience, they're loyalty to the colony wins out, and they consider their own lives insignificant).
To DM: Plants are "alive" in the sense that they grow via outside stimuli. However, they lack a central nervous system and everything that makes an animal sentient. Therefore they're alive and react to outside stimuli, but as an involuntary reflex, and lack thoughts and emotions.
And people shouldn't try to understand? The mantra of every ignorant person.
People are selective when they say they are "animal lovers". They only love animals that are familiar to them. But if they knew that pigs essentially act just like dogs (they are curious and love to be pet), if they knew that cows can show excitement when they are challenged intellectually, if they knew that chickens are so smart they can manage a system of levers and pulleys to control the temperature in the room they're in, undoubtedly they would think differently about their dietary choices.
Unfortunately this information isn't advertised on TV or in the Tabloids. No one has this information unless they seek it out in animal behavior studies or books. Therefore most people don't know or don't think about it.
How can you love little chicks and still eat the egg? Same thing here, we love animals, but doesn't mean we can't... Well, I get your point when I think bout the little animals being killed it does make me think, can I join you and become a vegtarian too? Good question hun, enjoy your star!
Love
Pearl
I have no idea. I have this friend who's all "Oh yeah I love animals, ANIMAL RIGHTS MAN lets go to this protest".
But she eats loads of meat! I dont really get it. She says as long as she lives with her parents she feels its rude to decline. But that's BS if you ask me.
I love animals but I still love meat. . I try to buy humanely raised free-range or kosher meat as often as I can.
and I see nothing wrong with eating eggs since most eggs you find in the grocery store are not fertile.
It's not like I am eating someones pet. No emotional atatchment.
And there are only three or four species of animals that are even aware that they are alive and I don't eat any of them.
people can eat meat without caring because they have there most beloved pet beside them and they know there not eating that !
also, possibly because they dont see how the meat is produced.. and in some ways how cruely they kill the animals .
some people dont even like the animals they are eating (pigs, chicken, cow) and prefer dogs or cats because they might be cuter . so they don't care they are eating some animal that they aren't attached to .
how can u think about the environment and drive a car???
I feel that if animals have led a healthy and happy lifestyle then they are fine to eat, I am against cruelty and bad treatment of animals, but I do not feel guilty for eating animals bred for food.
how can you eat veggies if you love plants
stop trying to understand and just live your life the way you want to........not the way others want you to live it
I know how you feel. Like when I eat meat, it's good for me, the protein keeps me full helps me lose weight all of that... but I love animals, even cows, chickens, etc. I just have to not think about the nice farm animals vs. the hamburger on my plate.