the meat and veg debate

[kath3]

To eat animals or not ultimately is a personal choice, though I don't think most people put much effort or care into understanding why they eat them. It certainly is not necessary in our day, nor can our planet sustain a population of humans who do. In Canada alone, 650 million animals are killed annually. This number is accounted for by slaughterhouses and does not take into account the many animals killed by hunters or backyard farmers, to me this is a disgraceful and unnecessary amount of suffering.
I prefer not to eat animals and I very much agree with sj regarding the fact that animals are conscious beings. They experience stress, they experience loss, they experience fear, and they experience pain … all conditions I myself do not want to be responsible for inflicting upon them.
Just because an animal is raised for the sole purpose of being slaughtered is no excuse.
We have become so disconnected from a farmed animal’s existence it’s no wonder we have little to no regard for their lives. If people had to do the nasty’s for themselves there would be far more vegetarians, or at least a lot less meat consumed. I've mentioned in a previous discussion here, we are only accustomed to seeing an animals body politely laid out on styrofoam plates, neatly wrapped in plastic. We see it as meat, nothing more, nothing less. We don’t think about what it took to get it there.
Even milking cows has it’s grievous times. Farmers freshen cows most by artificial insemination, once the calves are born they are shortly after taken from their mothers and fed milk replacement by machines.
As a child I spent many of my weekends and summers on my brother’s dairy farm.
Many cows gave birth and then were stripped of their babies at the same time. For days you would her them bawling in the fields … I would cry with them. I witnessed many things that did not sit right in my heart and when I turned 13 I made the choice to not have anything to do with animal suffrage. I went a bit overboard to the point of refusing to even wash pots that an animal had been cooked in.
I’ve settled down some since and will occasionally eat a fish or a bit of chicken, but only what has been handled with the utmost care.
Many years ago we agreed to raise a lamb for some friends who did not have property.
When the day came for him to be butchered (I hate that word) we led him to his end without his knowledge, and even though we took great care I still felt as though I had betrayed him.
An animal’s life purpose is not to feed our bellies, that is something we’ve tricked ourselves into believing.

Comparison between carnivores, herbivores and humans
When you look at the comparison between herbivores and humans, we compare much more closely to herbivores than meat eating animals.
Humans are clearly not designed to digest and ingest meat, at least not for the quantity that we consume.

• Meat-eaters: have claws
Herbivores: no claws
Humans: no claws

• Meat-eaters: have no skin pores and perspire through the tongue
Herbivores: perspire through skin pores
Humans: perspire through skin pores

• Meat-eaters: have sharp front teeth for tearing, with no flat molar teeth for grinding
Herbivores: no sharp front teeth, but flat rear molars for grinding
Humans: no sharp front teeth, but flat rear molars for grinding

• Meat-eaters: have intestinal tract that is only 3 times their body length so that rapidly decaying meat can pass through quickly
Herbivores: have intestinal tract 10-12 times their body length.
Humans: have intestinal tract 10-12 times their body length.

• Meat-eaters: have strong hydrochloric acid in stomach to digest meat
Herbivores: have stomach acid that is 20 times weaker than that of a meat-eater
Humans: have stomach acid that is 20 times weaker than that of a meat-eater

• Meat-eaters: salivary glands in mouth not needed to pre-digest grains and fruits.
Herbivores: well-developed salivary glands which are necessary to pre-digest grains and fruits
Humans: well-developed salivary glands, which are necessary to pre-digest, grains and fruits

• Meat-eaters: have acid saliva with no enzyme ptyalin to pre-digest grains
Herbivores: have alkaline saliva with ptyalin to pre-digest grains
Humans: have alkaline saliva with ptyalin to pre-digest grains

Based on a chart by A.D. Andrews, Fit Food for Men, (Chicago: American Hygiene Society, 1970)
http://blog.atmajyoti.org/2008/04/humans...by-nature/

[billy]

interesting read about herbi and carni truth is we're omni. we're built to eat both meat and veg. our claws are our fingernails.
we can digest meat, we do digest meat. most if not all nutritionist tell us us to eat food from all types. protein in the form of meat is one of the easiest to generate. i see no scientific source where the guy gets his info from, in fact he states it's unknown. he also says we're not animals in the wild. in that statement he's misguided. he uses what we call modern life as a meme for a non wild life. if fact it's as wild as when cavemen hunted mammoth, it just evolved somewhat. we still live in a survival of the fittest world where we have to defend ourselves from predators etc. (often from within our own species) to say we don't live in the wild as animals takes us out of the animal kingdom per say and that doesn't hold water. the reason we kill and eat animlas stems from our history. a who mammoth would last a tribe a season. a good whale season lasts eskimos a few months. it's less efficient to hunt seed and berries over huge distances than it is to have a cow in the cupboard. having the meat stored is what gave us the ability to forage and farm and a wider scale. without the ability to eat meat we'd have less seed to plant and less energy to farm. now we can farm. some of us still enjoy the taste of meat. something thats been with our species for thousands of years. at our basest we are animals. at our best we're still animals the only difference is the social conscience. it's what helps create laws on how to treat animals. that some break those laws is just us being what we are at our base. despite what the blog says, we are indeed built to eat meat and veg. our who body make up is one of a major predator.

[srijantje]

interesting read,Cath

[kath3]

Absolutely, and I get all that, but there's a big difference between needing something and wanting something.
If I were stranded somewhere needing food and a rabbit came along I would kill and eat it, that's my survival instincts at work. But on a daily basis and because of where I live and what is available to me I need not eat meat to survive.
I don't begrudge anybody who eats animals, I do however have a huge problem with the amount of animals being sacrificed, the way they are being sacrificed and the conditions many are made to bare for our sole desire of satisfying our taste ... not need.

[billy]

if it's about want and need, lets get rid of our clothes, unless it's too cold or too hot. we don't need cars and wagons. we don't need many things.
i agree about the cruelty being wrong but i think thats a different issue than eating meat. it's like not eating carrots because someone pisses on their crop (almost)
i remember you saying eating meat is a personal choice, and i also agree with that as long as you have access to other food and are an adult.
i fed my kids meat everyday, they had no choice, as it is they love beef and lamb and chicken. as well as veg.