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I don't know how anyone can eat meat :-(

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Original post by RyujinTanaka
This is part of natural selection- the weak die and the strong survive and so far, the humans are winning. Therefore, that's why we take advantage of them like this.


Vegetarians live longer on average compared to meat eaters. So which diet is more evolutionary advantageous?

Also, the process of meat production across the world is wholly unsustainable and a significant contributor to climate change. Again, do you think this is evolutionary advantageous.
Original post by Twinpeaks




Makes me wonder whether all the "moral" behaviour we conduct on a day to day basis is a result of a desire to be good and moral, or actually simply a desire to avoid getting into trouble and to act in accordance with social norms. There's no laws restricting meat consumption, it's not frowned upon, so you people have no problem in obtaining your pleasure, even if it causes significant, and unnecessary suffering.



People think its ok because they were brought up to believe it ok. Since they could walk,speak, think, they have been eating meat. 90% of people are a product of society, they only think something is right if they are told it is right and they only think something is wrong if they are told its wrong. I can guarantee you that if most of these people would have no problem with slavery if they were born a few hundreds years ago.

That's why I laugh at people that say 'It doesn't matter what culture you born into you should still know the difference between right and wrong'. :rolleyes:
Original post by Becca.b
If you are a vegetarian, how are you "saving" animals? surely those animals still get killed but just get eaten by someone else? sorry if im missing something


By turning off your lights as you leave the room, how are you 'saving' the planet?
One action alone may be insignificant, but you need to think of the actions collectively.

Imagine the impact on production and supply if even 25% of the population became vegetarian. but if everyone took your attitude, we'd get nowhere.
Original post by Twinpeaks
By turning off your lights as you leave the room, how are you 'saving' the planet?
One action alone may be insignificant, but you need to think of the actions collectively.

Imagine the impact on production and supply if even 25% of the population became vegetarian. but if everyone took your attitude, we'd get nowhere.


Thats not my "attitude", i was just curious as i hadnt read the rest of the thread.
Original post by annoyed20
People think its ok because they were brought up to believe it ok. Since they could walk,speak, think, they have been eating meat. 90% of people are a product of society, they only think something is right if they are told it is right and they only think something is wrong if they are told its wrong. I can guarantee you that if most of these people would have no problem with slavery if they were born a few hundreds years ago.

That's why I laugh at people that say 'It doesn't matter what culture you born into you should still know the difference between right and wrong'. :rolleyes:


It's sad but true. Why should people stop and think about the issue and the effect it's having on animals and our environment when it's much easier to bury your head in the sand, go along with the majority and enjoy eating meat?

The only difference between supporting the meat industry and supporting domestic animal abuse are social norms. For one group we are conditioned to care about, the other we are conditioned to do the precise opposite.
(edited 7 years ago)
Original post by Becca.b
Thats not my "attitude", i was just curious as i hadnt read the rest of the thread.


I didn't mean 'your attitude' in a personal way, I was simply referring to the skeptic attitude that you provided.
Original post by Twinpeaks
I didn't mean 'your attitude' in a personal way, I was simply referring to the skeptic attitude that you provided.


i was just asking but okay
Original post by TimmonaPortella
Okay, thanks for this. I'll have a look at your source on the implications of preferring particular meats, and at sending some money to some of those charities. If the figure you've cited is accurate that's a really incredible impact for the money.


Obviously, they're estimates, but they're unlikely to be orders of magnitude wrong, and even if, say, 1.3 animals were spared per dollar instead of 13, that would still be a huge impact. The reason is that some interventions, such as leafleting, are very cheap, but can reach many, many people. Similarly, corporate reforms (retailers moving away from caged eggs or companies serving more vegetarian/vegan stuff in workplace cafeterias) have large and long-running consequences even though they are 'one-off' things.
(edited 7 years ago)
Original post by Unistudent77
None of the cows around hear are treated like that.
We have great grazing and cows roam the fields with 2 milkings a day (4am and 4pm). They are in great condition.

I've known of farmers getting reported if they keep their cattle in a poor state.

Hens are free range around here too (local honesty boxes etc) admittedly i can't totally speak for the supermarket ones but i don't like eggs (very mildly allergic) but i eat chocolate etc so yeah i do eat eggs.

Your post describes Spanish or Eastern European animal conditions.

It does not resemble the farms i've seen and worked on around these parts.

Scaremongering.

How many male friesians are there in those fields? None, because they're all immediately sent if to slaughter because they don't produce milk. Therefore drinking milk directly contributed to the killing of millions of cows.
12 pages, great! :tongue:
Original post by TheonlyMrsHolmes
12 pages, great! :tongue:


I dont understand, I am sure I've seen you post before speaking badly of vegetarians/vegans? But you're one yourself. Maybe I'm getting you mixed up with someone else.
(edited 7 years ago)
Original post by TheonlyMrsHolmes
Okay, so a tiny history about moi. I used to be a full on vegetarian for almost 3 years, I attempted vegan but failed many times due to not being able to resist a cup of tea or coffee, or eating cake made with egg etc.

I tried meat a little while ago again, a few times and at the time I thought nothing of it. My mindset was "I've saved enough animals in the last 3 years, I can enjoy a chicken burger right?"

I was going through a rough patch at the time and was a bit numb to everything in life so I didn't really care where the meat was coming from or if the animals died for my plate.

The taste of meat was honestly SO not worth the few times I had it again. Meat alone is disgustingly plain, most of us would gag if were made to eat just that alone for a meal. It's only because it gets seasoned and flavoured that most people love it.

Anyway, I saw this video last night and I cried and cried. I feel that this kind of practice should be illegal, playing God with an innocent beings life. The way all the baby lambs huddled in fear because they knew that they would be next. This kind of killing makes me embarrassed of myself (that I tried meat again) and anyone who uses "meat is tasty" as an excuse for this type of killing.


[video="youtube;WO6Wd1i7eoM"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WO6Wd1i7eoM[/video]

Anyway, I am now 100% vegan. I will not contribute to any of this disgusting behaviour. I've hated vegans in the past, especially militant vegans but honestly this is disgusting and it turns my stomach.

I haven't really got a question, I just felt like expressing these feelings somewhere. However please do comment if you eat meat and feel fine doing after knowing about all this stuff.


I haven't watched the video mainly because I know what it's going to show battery hens and things the fact is though some animals are treated well before slaughter if you take a look at how beef is made it's jolt t the back of the he'd of the cow nice an quick it nearly knows it.

I admit some animals are treated badly but you can get free range meat (they live out in the open and can eat grass and things) and that's what I buy I don't know why I don't have problem eating animals I actually like animals in particular lambs but I still don't feel bad eating them.
Original post by Hype en Ecosse
No. I don't place the same value on an animal's life as I do on a human's life, due to moral agency and personhood. That's the line I draw.

There's the argument to be made that this is speciesist. But those who make the speciesist argument don't tend to place the same value on the life of fish, or insects, or bacteria, that they do on the lives of farm animals. So that's not internally consistent from the get-go.


Not all humans are moral agents or persons, though. Human infants and severely intellectually disabled humans are demonstrably less self-aware and intelligent than the animals that we rear for meat. You're only being speciesist if you would still value their lives more than, say, a pig's, and certainly if you would value their lives more than highly self-aware animals like chimpanzees and other primates; dolphins; elephants; and some birds.

Speciesism is indefensible, and can't be defended by using committing the tu quoque fallacy; just because you claim that anti-speciesists are actually speciesists themselves, it doesn't mean that it's justified.

In addition, I don't believe that your examples do show that people who make this argument tend to be speciesist themselves. For one, vegans and vegetarians by definition don't eat fish, while bacteria aren't sentient, so they can't feel pain and suffer. Speciesism occurs when people discount the interests of individuals simply because of the species they're a member of; bacteria, if they're not sentient, can't have any interests: life can't go better or worse for them.

As for insects, there's only a small probability that they are sentient, but given that there are so many insects, the total amount of suffering that insects could potentially endure is huge. As a result, I'm very concerned about the potential suffering of insects, especially as I believe that they have lives that aren't worth living (they're very short-lived, so the suffering that occurs during death will dominate). Aside from developing more humane insecticides, there isn't a lot that can be done about this right now on a large-scale (at least that's palatable to the public - reducing the amount of plant matter by continuing to build over habitats reduces future insect populations, which is good because they probably have lives that are net-negative, but advocating for more habitat destruction is unlikely to be fruitful). On a smaller-scale, there are things you can do: I try to avoid walking on grass, because more insects live on the grass, and I don't buy silk, don't leave food waste and try to ensure that insects don't enter my house.

But, many anti-speciesists, including Peter Singer, have considered the insect issue, and the anti-speciesist and effective animal advocacy communities are becoming increasingly concerned about insect suffering. See also this website run by the philosopher Brian Tomasik, who has inspired many including myself to become concerned about insects, which contains a tremendous amount of research on insect suffering. (There's also a Facebook page called reducing wild-animal suffering and another called reducing insect suffering.)

Original post by jonathanemptage
I admit some animals are treated badly but you can get free range meat (they live out in the open and can eat grass and things) and that's what I buy I don't know why I don't have problem eating animals I actually like animals in particular lambs but I still don't feel bad eating them.


"Free-range" is a marketing term, nothing more. All it requires is that there be a small hole in a large, overcrowded shed through which the animals can escape for a few hours a day. Back on page 10, I linked to a number of investigations of supposedly high welfare farms, which were atrocious. Ruminants like cows and sheep are probably the best treated of all the animals, but unless we all reduce our demand for meat by reducing consumption of meat and other animal products, factory farming (which only exists because of the economic pressures on farmers to meet demand) will become increasingly prevalent with cattle too. And, producing beef and lamb is responsible for an enormous amount of greenhouse gas emissions.
(edited 7 years ago)
Hahah us vegans sure are good at arguing and debating, (quite a few here better than me :P). Maybe it's just easier cause we're actually right? :angelblush: :angelblush: :angelblush:
Original post by 0range
Hahah us vegans sure are good at arguing and debating, (quite a few here better than me :P). Maybe it's just easier cause we're actually right? :angelblush: :angelblush: :angelblush:

Depends on how you see this. I just see battery farming as a way to feed thousands of people who can never afford free range.
(edited 7 years ago)
Im just frying a nice steak, which is fatty. Its heaven on earth, steak that is. You are missing out
I may have missed something but who's talking about free range? It doesn't matter if it's free range, it's still vastly contributing to climate change and destroying our planet.

Posted from TSR Mobile
I eat meat because I like it. I've seen where it comes from, I've seen how meat products and other animal products are created and I'm fine with that, to be honest. If I was bothered by every little thing wrong in the world I'd never do anything or get anything done. I like a McDonalds or a pepperoni pizza sometimes, I'm not overweight or unhealthy. Sometimes meat does taste fine on its own (i.e a plain chicken breast) whereas many vegetarian/vegan options involve a lot of sauces and seasoning, so saying people only eat meat when it is heavily flavoured and processed is untrue. The various made-up stories to promote the vegan cause irritate me- i.e the nonsense about 'pus cells' in milk, there's no such as thing as a 'pus cell' anyway. Even if there was a tiny amount of 'something' like that in what I'm drinking it hasn't affected me so far in life, and I don't taste anything wrong with it, so I don't care.
Original post by viddy9


The welfare of non-human animals in the UK meat industry is simply atrocious, in general. The majority of meat sold in the UK is factory-farmed, and despite the claims of many, I sincerely doubt that people who claim to care about animal welfare, but eat meat, never buy factory-farmed meat. (“Free-range” and “humane” are marketing terms, nothing more, and the Red Tractor symbol is useless. Farms using all of these terms and marketing labels have been exposed as having terrible conditions - see below)

Indeed, if people only buy meat from small, local farms whose conditions they can personally assess, then that’s acceptable, but whenever they can’t verify the conditions in which the animals were kept when eating out, for instance –they should eat vegan. In addition, there’s not nearly enough land for humane, pasture-based farms to satisfy the current demand for meat: we need to substantially reduce our consumption of meat and other animal products in any case. So, for every meat-eater who doesn’t reduce consumption to one or two portions a week, a vegan is, in essence, carrying some of the extra burden.

Most people, as I say, buy from factory farms.

In the bulk of the meat industry, non-human animals reared for meat have their natural instincts suppressed, so much so that they show signs of depression according to some animal experts. Behaviours that are not seen in the wild are regularly seen in the meat industry: pigs bite the tails of other pigs, inflicting severe pain on them; chickens peck at the feathers of other chickens; and pigs kept in farrowing crates bite the bars of their cages.

The vast majority of chickens sold in the UK are kept in huge, overcrowded sheds, with no natural light whatsoever. Each chicken can have floor space that’s just the size of an A4 sheet of paper. They essentially live in their faeces, which often isn’t cleared out until slaughter time, and the air can become highly polluted with ammonia from the droppings, causing painful burns to develop on the legs and the breast, as well as ulcerated feet, respiratory and eye problems.

Chickens are also grown so fast that their legs can collapse under the weight of their bodies, or they become lame, and they also develop heart and lung problems as a result. Hundreds of thousands of chickens, if not millions, die every year from heart problems as a result. Chickens under the age of 10 days can still be de-beaked with a hot blade without anaesthetic and 1 in 10 turkeys, who are raised in the same horrible conditions, are still de-beaked. The beak is an incredibly sensitive area with many nerves: it is difficult to imagine the pain that occurs as a result of this.

Pigs, meanwhile, can be kept in farrowing crates for weeks at a time; these crates are so narrow that they can’t even move their bodies. In such confinement, pigs show signs of severe depression: they are highly intelligent, complex animals who can outperform three-year-olds on tests of cognition and video games they require stimulation. As with chickens, many pigs die due to neglect in these horrible conditions. Here are some examples of typical UK pig farms, including some owned by people who have received honours from the Queen for work on “animal welfare”, including some which were labelled 'freedom food' farms by the RSPCA, and some labelled "Red Tractor".

Piglets also regularly have their tails docked and their teeth clipped without anaesthetic, inflicting extreme pain on them. The justification for this, as alluded to earlier, is that they would bite the tails of other pigs because of their sheer boredom and empty existence. Yet, choosing between the two is a false dichotomy: we should instead not breed them into such conditions in the first place.

In the egg industry, unwanted male chicks are placed, fully conscious, into giant shredders. Half of the eggs sold in the UK still come from caged hens (how many of these caged eggs are used in all of the products we eat and in restaurants?), in which hens can’t effectively practice their natural behaviours, and in which feather pecking still regularly occurs. If a hen is severely injured, as some were in this video, there's no possibility of helping them, despite their clear vocalizations. Because they’ve been bred to produce large amounts of eggs, laying hens can suffer from osteoporosis and fractures, which is exacerbated by their restricted movement in cages.

Free-range hens often fare no better. Contrary to popular belief, the term free-range simply entails that there needs to be a small hole in a large crowded shed through which the hens can escape outside for a few hours a day. As numerous investigations have shown, so-called free-range farms are often no better for the hens than cages. As for fish, when they are taken out of the water, often die from asphyxiation. The depressurization can also cause their insides to burst. It’s extremely difficult to even attempt to humanely slaughter fish.

All of this occurs before the transportation and slaughter process, which results in even more stress for the animals. Chickens, for instance, have to be rounded up and are essentially thrown into crammed crates before being taken to the slaughterhouse. Long journeys to the slaughterhouse cause animals a significant amount of stress. Due to neglect and disease in farms, as well as fires and other accidents, tens of millions of animals in the UK die before they even reach the slaughterhouse. This occurs on country farms and in factory farms.

In slaughterhouses even secular ones the slaughter process very often isn’t humane, because stunning can go wrong in a significant proportion of cases. Various studies have found that the slaughter process goes wrong in between 10-40% of cases. This equates to millions upon millions of animals chickens, pigs and cows - dying in intense pain every single year. Random investigations of secular, non-religious slaughterhouses in the UK have corroborated the fact that slaughter conditions are very often terrible.

Chickens are shackled upside down by their feet, which can exacerbate leg problems they’ve already developed in the slaughterhouse, and being hung also causes them extreme stress. Their heads are dipped into an electric water bath, but many chickens (and turkeys) may raise their heads, therefore they miss the water bath and are slaughtered whilst fully conscious. Other chickens and turkeys may have their wings painfully electrocuted instead of their heads, before being slaughtered alive.

Gassing has become an increasingly popular method of killing pigs and chickens, but it’s not at all humane. Pigs, for example, can be seen gasping for breath for up to 30 seconds, and trying desperately to get out of the gas chambers.

Overall, due to the insatiable demand for meat, we treat non-human animals are economic units who need to be bred and slaughtered as fast as possible and as cheaply as possible. They're not treated as sentient beings whose interests we should equally consider. Even if people think that intelligence somehow determines how much your suffering matters, we wouldn’t dream of treating severely intellectually disabled humans, or human infants, in the ways in which we treat animals reared for meat or used for eggs and dairy.



Okay so I'm not going to address all these issue but I can assure you that the welfare in this country is not atrocious! Have you ever even been on a farm? I regularly work on farms all over the country in different farms and with different animals. Yes some of the things you've mentioned do happen but things like farrowing crates only occur for around 4-5 days, a lot of farms dont use them plus the only reason they're used is because sows will crush their piglets and they'll sufffocate to death, so its a balance of piglet or sow welfare there. Even when pigs have huuuggggeee pens which are outside the sow will crush her piglets (more often actually than inside).

As for chickens, yep visiting an idustrial chicken farm did put me off chicken for a good while so now I only buy chicken from a local city farm which have the best life possible because they spend all day running round outside, put inside during the night so foxes don't get them and spend all day getting fed by children. Completely agree with the leg problems and stuff though this is why theres a push for the industry to now correct this and breeders are now breeding animals so this is less likely to happen.

I do agree with some of your points but as I've said all along no industry is perfect and change should happen overall. But I do think some of your points are wrong and I advise you actually visit some farms, work along side the farmers, see the animals and their conditions because I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. Yes theres some back examples out there which do put a bad name for a lot of other places and put people off of them but you'll find a lot of farms which don't do the things you say and have amazing welfare.
Original post by SunnyBoys
Depends on how you see this. I just see battery farming as a way to feed thousands of people who can never afford free range.


It doesn't depend on how you see this. Those people can be fed perfectly nutritiously without inflicting huge amounts of suffering on billions of sentient beings.

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