A question for Vegetarians and Vegans...?!
A question for Vegetarians and Vegans...?
Being a vegetarian is not eating meat. I understand about not being able to digest it because we werent ment to eat it, I understand about not having the teeth for it.
What I don't understand is how you can think it's 'wrong' and you feel guilty for eating something that is already dead?
I love animals. I think they are better friends than people lol.. I would NEVER kill and animal and I am against hunting.
But I eat meat. It's already dead, I didn't kill it and by me not eating meat I wouldn't be saving any animals.
Why do you feel guilty and bad about eating something who's death had nothing to do with you?
And Vegans.. take it a step further and tell me why you don't eat animal biproducts? I am aware that animals get treated horribly when they get milked or have to ley eggs, but it had nothing to you, so why feel bad about eating biproducts?
Answers:
For me, at least, (I'm a veggie) it's not so much an issue of feeling bad about eating meat but feeling good about not eating it. The thing is that animals are (obviously) not born dead. Although the cow in your steak is already dead, it was killed for you to eat. It is the same as killing it yourself, or worse because you are paying someone else to do you dirty work (killing the animal). By not eating the meat, you will not buy the meat, or at least not as much for a family, and by not buying meat you will not be paying the butchers, killers, and processors of the animals, therefore business will be reduced and killing rate will be reduced because of lower demand. So by being a veggie, you would not be contributing to the business, so your money would not be paying for more animals to be killed.
Basically, it's not an issue of saving the animal that you're seeing in a package at the supermarket but an issue of saving others from suffering the same fate.
I feel bad for murder victims, people involved in horrendous accidents, people who don't have food, shelter or clean water - shall I go on? I am not directly responsible for that either.
It is called having a social conscience.
I am a vegetarian but I drink milk.
For me, I just think that I didn't have to kill the cow for the milk or the butter so thats ok!
I don't know if eating meat is wrong or not if the animal was already dead, but I just find it disgusting. I think of it like this - A person who is eating meat is eating a corpse! Thats just totally disgusting for me.
Others may not agree, but thats me.
I am a Vegan by choice. It is mostly for health reasons. I do not advocate harming animals, but that is not why I am a Vegan....
Most feed animals are shot up with steroids and antibiotics. They are passed to humans when they eat their flesh, and use dairy products. This is a fact.... Why do you think so many pree teen, and teenage girl develop breasts at younger and younger ages. It is the steroids that they ingest from their Dairy intake. I will not even mention Mad cow disease, or how sick animals are ground up and fed to healthy animals (dispite the fact that it is prohibited by law.) The fact that the animals that you eat are dead is an illogical arguement. If noone ate animals, there would be no demand for their flesh, and they would not be dead.........
>I understand about not being able to digest it because we werent ment to eat it, I understand about not having the teeth for it.<
Oh, this statement is so untrue!
While we can get most of our vitamins and nutrients from fruits and vegetables, things like cholesterol (which we need in small amounts) and blood only come from animals.
Our teeth ARE meant for chewing critters! Why do you think we have canine teeth (for gnawing the hunk of meat off the bone) and wisdom teeth (the more the better)?
Not all vegetarians are vegetarians because of concerns about animals.
Your distinction between "animals" and "meat" is quite interesting, though; I hadn't considered it, but it's probably how most people think.
Anyway, I _don't_ think it's "wrong" to eat meat. I just never ate it, and think it looks and smells pretty bad. No big deal, though.
And, I admit that there's a good degree of mental disconnect, denial, whatever you want to call it, required for lacto-ovo* vegetarians. Chicken? Ew. Omelettes, yum! Yeah, a bit weird, but egg is an entirely different texture, etc etc, from chicken.
* the egg-and-dairy eating contingent
i can't answer all of your questions, as i'm not a vegetarian. but if you buy meat, you are financially contributing to the killing of animals. if nobody bought meat, nobody would bother raising animals for meat. are you eating roadkill? that's at least a more ethical way to eat meat - it died accidentally and you're not letting it go to waste. ;).
as far as you being against hunting, but still eating meat, you're being quite silly. at least if you hunt you are taking responsibility for killing what you eat. at least a hunted animal led a natural life before dying. when you buy meat at the grocery store, that animal probably was born and lived in crowded pens, ate all manner of nasty food and got shot full of antibiotics before being slaughtered on a factory line. yummy!
I'm a raw food vegan. I don't eat meat because it's not the healthiest way to eat and it causes diseases like cancer because of the hormones and steroids and antibiotics they give the animals to fatten them up quickly. Do some research into what they feed the animals. You wouldn't drink a gorilla's mother's milk would you? So why would you drink a cow's. Cow's milk is meant to turn a 100 pound calf into a 1,000 pound cow. It's not meant for humans or any other animal.
Meat eaters are using lot of resources compared to vegetarians. To grow meat producing animals, the required grassland and cutting of forest is too much in comparison with the requirement of resources for vegetarians. So meat eaters are causing most damage to the environment. Meat eaters are susceptible to more dieseases and they also create lot of new dieseases. It has been proven that the meat will create such substance in the body which will corrupt the mind and soul along with the body.
Apart from the above, by feeding the cows (which are vegetarian by nature) with meat, the people have brough a new diesesse to the world such as mad cow diesesse.
Drinking milk has been proven to be very good for both body as well as mind and soul.
You have written that you did not kill animal to eat. It is not true. This is a simple Demand and Supply Rule. Depending on the demand of buyers, the butchers will kill more and more animals. So you are killing the animals indirectly. You just think. If nobody eats meat then why would anybody kill the animals and stock the meat in the market?
Let me try to explain it through an example...
Your parent's buy you a Porsche. It's a great, slick looking car. Your parent's got a great deal on it because the previous owner was shot and killed in the car.
Would you want the car? The owner was already dead when you got the car.
How you answer the question is probably how vegetarians feel about eating meat.
Your resoning has no logic. Vegetarians by how they became is most important before they turn to veggie. By Birth, By practicse, By paaion towards animals, By any blue cross or any associations etc,
Now if it is by birth and practicse, there are religious as well sceintific values ingrained for a vegeteraian than mere love of animals. It is not possible to eat meat as they regard a cow equvalent to goddesss. So before u attempt to generalise things have a serious thoughts.
How u or one has become vegeterian is most important. While one needs to ponder that meat or sea food is not a design for humans still we consume. That is why ask urself this question and decide about vegeterians.
Now being a vegetarian one can eat any veg food without even cooking or adding flavours. Can a non vegetarian eat meat raw or eat fish straight from the net. U will die. U need to add all vegetarian items to make the non veg food edible got it. Think wisely and stop pissing in the air.
I tasted the blood I dreamed of animals slaughtered blood falling flying I went insane the killing done to live animals so we could have one little steak for a life made me feel like I was having to kill
Being a carnivore I cant answer all your Qs, but I do love animals, am totally against animal crulty, but feel no guilt about eating them. It is a need, though the steroid and antibodie agrguement does truly frighten me.My best friend on the other hand is a vegi, doesnt eat anything with animal product in it but does do milk eggs cheese ect. She says shes an animal lover but seeing as I've never seen her like an animal she's actually met, I guess she loves them in theory only lol. If everyone in the world decided to stop eating meat tomorow, can you imagine the millions of animals that would have to be destroyed? Would that still count as cruelty? Have you ever seen a cow that needs to be milked? It's in some seriouse pain, not milking would be the cruelty. If your an animal lover with pets do you make them vegis too? And is it cruel to deprive your pet of one of its needs? Also in some cultures vegetarians dont eat anything thats had to die to feed them. so it fruit falls from a tree its ok, but if you pick it it's not. You can pick the lettuce leaves from the outside, but you cant pick the whole thing. Garlic's ok but onions not and so on.( this is just a really basic explination) I guess the most imortant thig is to respect each others beliefs and sometimes just agree to disagee
i'm also a vegetarian.
i agree to kmennie coz not all vegetarians have concerns for animals.. they just aren't practiced to eat meat
Hmm, how can we get the "personal responsibility" thing to make sense to you?
Let's try abortion:
The death that comes about because of abortion is not significant to some and very significant to others. The byproducts of this death (stem sell research, etc) are morally okay to use to some and not to others.
Believe it or not, you can save the life of animals simply by not eating meat. They would not farm those animals if there wasn't a demand. As the demand goes down (as it is doing right now!) they are farming less animals. This will help the environment greatly, too.
"35.7 -- factory-farmed land animals eaten per person per year in U.S.
2,714 -- land animals eaten per person during their lifetime
1,786 -- land animals still to be eaten by a 26-year-old"
The teeth argument doesn't hold water. Cats and dogs are meant to eat small animals like chickens and mice. Look at how huge thei r canine teeth are! The animals that eat animals as big as cows or chickens, their canines are huge....and their colons are short. Out colons are very long and meat just rots in there before it can get out. That is why colon cancer is now the number one cancer in America. Animals have very strongly acidic stomachs...this digests the meat in their stomachs. We don't produce that strong of an acid.
Anyway, if you are really interested and not just complaining about veggies doing something that you don't agree with, then check out the website below. It also explains the horrors of the egg and dairy industry and all the resultant deaths and torture that causes.
Good luck in your quest for understanding!
I am a vegan. The reason I don't drink milk is because I don't agree with animal cruelty, whether it be their unecessary death or them being kept in unfair conditions.
This question has many questions within it. Let me see if I can try to give my opinion from this vegan's point of view:
You say you love animalsand that they are better friends than people. From this statement I get the impression that you mean the pets that we keep with us in our houses (or outside in their own houses). These animals are probably different to you than the animals like the cows on the farms, or the chickens in smelly cages, or pigs that wallow in their own excrement in pens. Well, I love animals and as a vegan I see no difference between any animal.
You say you would NEVER kill an animal and you would not hunt for them. Well, you are not doing the killing, you have someone do it for you! And when you pay for it at the store, you are paying for someone to do it for you (just like a hired killer). Personally, as a vegan, if someone went out into the woods with just a knife and killed an animal for food to eat, I don't think I would have a problem with that ( but morally for me, I would have a problem of killing any living being).
It's already dead because you, and collectively as a group, you have created a demand for the meat. And thus a supply was made and the supply increases as the demand goes up. That is why cattle farming in the rainforest is now in demand. It is money for the land owners that was created from this demand for burgers in America's fast food restaurants.
Now the animal by-products is because of factory farming. Humans have taken something that was a symbiotic relationship and turned it parasitic. We use to treat animals with respect and be grateful for what they gave us. But now they are just a commodity to be used, and are abused if they can't produce enough.
You are always saying You had nothing to do with it. Yes, you do. Individually and collectively as a group. And at both levels, you can change to help the world live in peace and harmony.
what's quilt got to do with it? There's a number of reasons I'm vegetarian. First of all
meat is expensive and not necessary... it's recycled product. Another thing if you eat something dead you make yourself somewhat dead.. They say You are What You Eat. Also half my youth was on a farm and I saw how cruelly animals were killed for meat. I saw how gross abatores are! Meat also doesn't taste all that great either. If one partook of eating stuff
that was cruelly killed that's indicating approval of killing. Vegans don't eat it cause they don't approve of it. I'm not a vegan but I am a vegetarian. It's just costs too much to be a Vegan. There's no need to eat animal! If you eat animal flesh then why don't You eat yourself?
You make choices and support things by giving them money. For example, when the girl scouts are selling cookies, you give them money, and therefore you support the girl scouts. If you knew a store was treating its employees poorly, the food was always expired, and they treated their customers rudely, noone would buy their products or support them in anyway and they would close down. By being a vegetarian you save X-amount of animals each year because the next year, they may butcher less. You don't buy fur because maybe less animals will be skinned next year...supply and demand.
If people continue to eat meat, people will continue to kill animals ( it's sort of like a supply and demand thing). I like animals alot and I don't care if they are dead by someone else's hand, I still won't eat them because they are creatures much like us. I'm a vegetarian so I have no problem with dairy however, because nothing was killed for it, and cows have to be milked. As for eggs I don't eat them mainly because they don't taste good, but I do eat them when they're in recipes (cakes and stuff).
I'm a vegetarian only because it's gross for me to think about putting something that was alive in my mouth.