was getting too serious for the sewer so i'm starting this thread.

i feel i was born to eat meat. my incisors tell me i'm part carnivore.
as does my urge to eat meat. i would prefer it if i could be assured that every time i eat meat, the animal it came from was killed as humanely as possible, but i can'r, so i buy meat and eat it.

i thought about the killing of a live animal and wondered if there was another way other than a bolt through the brain of a knife across a throat.
isn't it possible to use a drug that wouldn't be passed through the food chain?

many people believe plants are alive, i think sj is a tree hugger (no offence meant sj) basically he loves trees (i think) as most nature lovers do. prince Charles talks to plants, he admitted it. many people do. if that's the case, why do they eat veg, is it that they don't bleed? do they silently scream when placed in boiling water. i think life is a painful thing for everything. in the old days we were the hunted, now we're not. the lamb and the cow and carrot are. personally i think many of us have come a long way. we now make laws to stop the hunting to extinction of animals (thought it's not as successful as it should be). if everyone stopped eating cows, they would virtually die out as a race. (apart from the water buffalo and cows without predators. of course we'd have to kill domestic cattle if they couldn't be eaten. having them just for milking wouldn't be profitable enough. lots of the cash the farmer makes is when he sends them to slaughter. so what to do?

ofcourse i like trees,but i don't hug them,you think i'm barmy?

back to the sewer

tree hugger is just a term used for people who like em sj,
what i'm getting at is many vegans believe that plants also have feelings.
why cut a tree down for firewood etc.
why eat a carrot or tomato.
for me (as one who loves living things) i think i'm like the vegan who eats a carrot. i know it's alive but i want it dead so i can eat it. i'd like it to be killed with as little pain as possible but i want it dead.

i have a vegetarian friend, (the sort that doesn't mind eating fish) she used laugh when placing a lobster into a pan of boiling water and it screamed. she was a bit miffed when i said it wasn't actually screaming. which is my point those who eat fish etc and say eating meat is wrong, spear them catch em with barbed hooks let them choke to death, flip flopping everywhere without batting an eyelid.
to me i'm no worse than they are.

no,i don't blame anybody for eating flesh,it's a personal thing for me,my wife and children eat meat,i never told them not .I mainly stopped because i felt bad about how animals are being treated in general and speceficly in the meat"industry"

(06-13-2011, 02:12 PM)srijantje Wrote:  no,i don't blame anybody for eating flesh,it's a personal thing for me,my wife and children eat meat,i never told them not .I mainly stopped because i felt bad about how animals are being treated in general and speceficly in the meat"industry"

i have to seriously agree that the meat industry needs to improve, i think australia or canada stopped exporting live animals to indonesia, i saw some of news clips and they were pretty gruesome..

vf, why wouldn't you eat horse.

i ate it once in france, it's pretty stringy and tough if you don't give it a lot of slow cooking.
i thought mexicans ate horse meat?

has anyone any idea as to the best solution as to the killing of the animal. one that causes least pain or suffering.

it's not so much that,the transportation and handling are the gruesome part,if you get blasted with 1000 volt in the forehead you're pretty much dead instantly,what happens after we can only guess

Before that happens, though -- in a humane world -- an electric shock is administered that knocks out the nervous system and renders the animal senseless, so that there's minimal suffering.

Butchery should always be performed by experts. Not only is unnecessary pain cruel, it toughens the meat.

I think you think to much. There's a food chain, we're at the top, get over it. Might as well say you think it's unfair that apples fall to the ground and suffer bruises and it would be nice if there was no gravity.

There's no meat I wouldn't eat simply because it was meat but there are certain stereotypes you're brought up with. For instance, even if was farmed and in perfect health I just wouldn't be able to eat rat without thinking of disease. And I don't like the texture in my mouth of offal. I like some 'grain' to chew on. So monkey brains aren't the top of my menu. And although (I think) I'd probably eat human meat in a survival situation, it would have to be pretty fucking extreme.

I've eaten horse in France, ostrich in Germany, kangaroo in Australia, crocodile in Singapore. I did have the opportunity of eating dog in the Philippines once but, tbh, the dogs I saw there weren't exactly healthy looking--so I declined but it was more on hygiene reasons than because it was dog. [It was a bit funny actually, I saw the trays labelled pork, chicken, dog meat and my first thought was "why would you would want to buy dog food in the same place you would buy food for yourself? ]

Cruelty in the killing? Yeah, sure, I wish everything I ate had a happy and fulfilled life and got to play with it's grandkids before dying peacefully in it's sleep. But, tbh, if it looks pink and juicy on the slab in the butchers I don't ask what it's favourite toy was.

dogs are illegal in the phill's now but it did used to be consumed with or after a few beers up untill not so long ago.
they still don't look too healthy. while i follow your sentiments. (if it's there i buy it without thinking about it's demise)
my question is primarily asked in order to find out what other people feel and whether people think more should be done in order to
ease the cruelty in some countries/slaughter houses etc. and to ask why some vegetarians eat plant produce while declaring plants are living things too.

The 'cruelty in other countries slaughter houses' question is an interesting one. Australia has just banned live animal exports to Indonesia(I think. It may be somewhere else), because they don't kill animals as humanely (funny word when you think about it) as they do in Australia. I can accept that but I don't particularly think the west ought to be forcefully imposing a conscience fostered by wealth upon countries which are not so wealthy.

As for vegetarians? You might just as well ask a churchgoer for a rational explanation of their behaviour as expect any sense out of them.

They've not been banned, just "suspended because a current affairs programme told us it's evil". Our Agriculture Minister is meeting with the Indonesians today, I think. The problem is that there are international standards for this sort of thing, which are met and exceeded in Australian abbatoirs but Indonesia is a developing country, with limited training and resources. Still, there's really no excuse for taking several goes to kill an animal -- people have been doing that for a couple of thousand years at least, so a clean kill is a reasonable thing to expect. If live exports are banned, Australia's market will suffer badly, so it's obviously in our best interest to make sure that we're selling our live animals in countries that adhere to at least the minimum international standard and, where necessary, to spend our own money to make sure their conditions are brought up to a satisfactory level.

yeah it's Indonesia. when the Aussies said Indonesia don't kill them humanely, they were referring to the unchecked cruelty that had been videoed in the Indonesian slaughter houses, of animals being beaten, badly mistreated (i know there's no worse mistreatment than death) in some horrific ways. (i saw a few of the vids and they even made me wince) it had little if anything to do with the actual capability of the Indonesians to kill the animals. a few years ago they closed a lot of english slaughter houses for the same thing and stepped up the regulations in a way as to deter such severe cruelty.

not sure i agree that the aussies forced it's conscience on the indonesians as much as used it's right to say we won't sell you living livestock. they're not actually saying "stop killing your animals in such a way"

(06-21-2011, 03:15 PM)Leanne Wrote:  They've not been banned, just "suspended because a current affairs programme told us it's evil". Our Agriculture Minister is meeting with the Indonesians today, I think. The problem is that there are international standards for this sort of thing, which are met and exceeded in Australian abbatoirs but Indonesia is a developing country, with limited training and resources. Still, there's really no excuse for taking several goes to kill an animal -- people have been doing that for a couple of thousand years at least, so a clean kill is a reasonable thing to expect. If live exports are banned, Australia's market will suffer badly, so it's obviously in our best interest to make sure that we're selling our live animals in countries that adhere to at least the minimum international standard and, where necessary, to spend our own money to make sure their conditions are brought up to a satisfactory level.

one of their ways to kill the animal is to bleed them. often they don't tranquillise them first which they're supposed to. a lot of Indonesian are also pretty pissed at how the animals are being treated.

As for vegetarians? You might just as well ask a churchgoer for a rational explanation of their behaviour as expect any sense out of them.
[/quote]

for me it's rational enough,if i see chickens being bundled in 10"s ,than thrown into a corner for later etc.i don't wanna eat them because i feel bad about it

moreover i think animals are conscious beings not really intend to be raised to get slaughtered,you wouldn;t eat your cat,would you?also the amount you have to feed them and what you get back in food value is way out of kilter .you could surely do something more clever with your grain surplus then turn it into meat?

grain fed and grass fed cattle are two distinct beasts. i'd eat grass fed any day except it's too damn dear.
and sj; i can accept what you say as a valid reason. it's why i don't eat veal. somehow i can't see a chicken as a baby cow though...but thats just me.

That set me off, when i was about 18,i had a job cleaning stables for veal calfs,horrendous.
the whole idea of "meat industry"rubs me the wrong way

(06-22-2011, 09:46 AM)srijantje Wrote:  That set me off, when i was about 18,i had a job cleaning stables for veal calfs,horrendous.
the whole idea of "meat industry"rubs me the wrong way

i think the truth is we as a species have grown too big for the planet in that we can't just catch and eat what we need anymore. everything has to be mass produced, even veg. you're lucky in the you can grow your own stuff sj, many now have no gardens or time. solent green may not be as far off as we think.

yes,you're right,but to eat meat you have to feed the cows and the return in protein is i don't knowexactly,as far as i can figure it's about 14 to 1 ratio