I should have been reviewing on Anki but I inevitably began wasting my time on the time-sink known as YouTube. But at least there might be an interesting discussion to come out of it.

A very quick summary of me before we begin: I like animals and I like nature. I hate animal cruelty. I eat meat. I want farm animals to be killed as fast and as painless as possible before being turned into meat. If scientists can make synthetic (fake) meat that is virtually indistinguishable from real meat, I'll give up real meat for good. And abolish meat farms.

For a change, we won't be talking about whales, although that might be related to the topic. I would like to talk about general attitudes to animal welfare while comparing Asia as a whole (including the main East Asian countries Japan, Korea, and China as well as South East Asia), to the West as a whole (USA, etc).

In general, if you can allow me to be, the West as a whole does not like animal suffering or killing animals for no reason. If an animal is suffering (say, someone tortured a kitten), you can expect people to publicly display their sympathies (and hatred for the torturer). On the other hand, things that hurt this perception include large-scale industrial farms and hunters who like killing defenceless animals from far range with a high-powered gun, for fun. But I would say that on balance, people disapprove of animal suffering. Even though most people eat meat, they still do not like to see what goes on in farms (willingly ignorant in order to not feel guilty/disgust, and hunters are in the minority).

Now let's talk about Asia. Forgive me for being general again, but for some reason, I've always felt that Asians, on balance when compared to Westerners, care less about animal welfare. I'm sure Asians DO care about animal welfare, but my point is, when compared to Westerners, they care less. A little less, a lot less, who knows, but less. This was just an incremental feeling that built up slowly over time.

The first two examples that contributed to this feeling was the very controversial leaked China's fur trade video a few years ago:

More info: http://features.peta.org/ChineseFurFarms/

If you're too cowardly to watch it (and I don't blame you, I don't want to watch it a second time to confirm it's the right video), the entire wild dog's skin is completely ripped off while the dog is still alive. Once the skin was ripped off, the still-alive dog is basically just twitching, it's flesh in full view glistening with blood. I believe the reason for this is so that the fur is undamaged.

The second Chinese example, and a particularly heart-breaking one, involves bile bears (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bile_bear). The act itself is bad and painful enough (for the bears). But it's a lot worse than fur farms since the bile harvested from is mainly used for traditional Chinese medicine. In other words, bulls***.

The heart-breaking aspect of it was this: http://ingenira.hubpages.com/hub/A-Teary...True-Story

But alright, I concede that it's China. By that I mean that even though China is the 2nd largest economy in the world, it still has massive amounts of poverty. The person skinning the animal still needs to make money like the rest of us. Human life is cheap is China, let alone animals. Furthermore, those fur traders are being paid by, or indirectly paid by white people anyway (in the fashion industry etc). Fine, let's ignore this point.

My third and fourth examples: South Korea. No, I'm not going to state the obvious one here either (eating dogs). Stop reading if you don't want to be spoiled.

For the past decade, Korea has been making excellent movies. However, some has attracted attention for the wrong reasons.

First: The Isle (2000). I haven't actually watched this film but I have read about the apparently real animal abuse that happens in it and that was reason enough not to watch it, even if it's a good movie. Examples of the real animal abuse includes a bird in a bird cage thrown into the water, the bird cannot fly out of the cage and so it drowns; the skinning of a frog; the beating of the dog by the main female character; after successfully catching a fish, some parts of it are sliced off and the fish is thrown back into the water, minus the sliced off parts.

Second: Old Boy (2003). Although it didn't affect me much, I still don't approve of serving live octopuses and it being eaten, while still alive.

I can only assume real animals, as opposed to fake or CGI animals, were used to create controversy and hence publicity. I disapprove.

Finally, we move onto the 5th example, which is today's example and what prompted me to make this thread. Japan completes the East Asia triumvirate.

Basically, the same example as from Old Boy, except in this video, the live squid in the bowl is being tormented by having soy sauce poured over it and made to "dance" in some macabre way.

For more Japanese and Korean examples, just look to the right in the "related videos" bar. For South East Asian examples (Thailand, Vietnam, etc...), do the same thing.

Notice a pattern?

Why does it seem like those countries aren't very sympathetic to the treatment of animals? If they were, then the serving of live animals as food would be banned, as they are in Western countries. I know I've ignored Africa so far but some of the Asian countries are rich enough that they have many sources of food and they should be educated enough to forgo the needless suffering of animals as food entertainment.

I know Japan loves 猫たち but the least they can do is kill the squid first, if they cared even a little about its suffering. White folks love cats too but they don't go around pouring soy sauce on a squid just to make it dance.

Is it culture? Is it religion, or lack of? Is there a greater pro-human species bias in those societies? Is there a greater trend for animals to be viewed as tools to be used in whichever way a human wants, disregarding the fact that these animals can feel pain and suffering?

Asian countries like Japan and China are perceived to be collectivist. How come animals aren't part of the collective?

Western countries like USA are perceived to be individualist. How come animals are part of the individual?

Someone convince me that my feeling about Asia and animal welfare is completely groundless and has no basis in reality.

Someone tell me who the Asian Steve Irwin is (despite his flaws and some of his controversial stunts).
Someone tell me who the Asian David Attenborough is.

To finish off this long thread, I would like to leave you with a quote that is apparently from an Asian (Indian) philosopher:

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.

-Mahatma Ghandi

PS. I also trust that the users on this forum will be mature enough to not taint this thread with discussion-destroying posts that permeates other forums, such as "PETA = People for eating animals", "you're a hippie if you care about animals more than humans" (I didn't imply that nor is it true), "forget about animals, what about human suffering" (we can multi-task/2 wrongs don't make a right), etc...

I have a friend living in Korea and she said that young Koreans don't really eat dog meat and most are against this custom. It seems it's mostly the old people that still eat dog meat.

Anyway, I'm interested in knowing why you think that eating the squid alive is more cruel that killing it first? I mean, when the people put the squid in the mouth and chew it, the death is almost instant, isn't? It seems way less cruel that some methods we use it in west to kill animals.

Sure, pouring sauce in it and watch its movement is not really a comfortable scene... But I don't think it's more cruel than the way we get most of our meat. At least they know they're eating something that was alive once. When we buy dead meat on the market we surely don't reflect much about the animal it was before.

If anything, what worries and makes me sick about animals in Japan is their "puppy culture". They seem to adore small, "kawaii" puppies and breed dogs to make those super small puppies and sell for absurd prices. I think we have been doing a good work by asking people to adopt dogs and cats instead of buying in west but it doesn't seem people really adopt pets in Japan. Most abandoned pets end up killed.

[ファブリス]

Cruelty is wrong of course. It feels wrong even before thought sets in, because it goes against everything that defines the potential of human agency: love, passion, courage, humour, and so on.

The thing is, animal cruelty happens everywhere in the world. Ignorance happens everywhere in the world. What you want to focus on?

Now of course statistically speaking you can say, that it is more an issue in some countries than others, but it will still be that: statistics. Life isn't statistics. People aren't statistics.

Man can not even comprehend fully what a living being is, what life is. How can you expect man to treat animals like real living beings then?

Anwyay. I don't think that sort of topic will give any answers really except for sharing some perspectives maybe.

My main perspective on this is simply ignorance. And ignorance as I said happens all around the world. We're all in this together. It's like the old duality problem. If there are more "ignorant" countries allowed to treat animals poorly, maybe it's because there are "non-ignorant" countries making a point of having little boutiques where you can pet your chihuahua for 100$ an hour?

PS: In case someone doesn't catch my drift. I am not implying that it's bad to spend thousands of dollars on your pets. I am of course hinting at the great divide in wealth, education and so on, between countries.

yukimine Wrote:Anyway, I'm interested in knowing why you think that eating the squid alive is more cruel that killing it first? I mean, when the people put the squid in the mouth and chew it, the death is almost instant, isn't?

yukimine Wrote:Sure, pouring sauce in it and watch its movement is not really a comfortable scene... But I don't think it's more cruel than the way we get most of our meat. At least they know they're eating something that was alive once. When we buy dead meat on the market we surely don't reflect much about the animal it was before.

I suppose you have a point that chewing it alive might be the most efficient way of killing it. I dunno, maybe it's just the pouring of sauce over it as if trying to humiliate it that turned me off. Sort of like having a bucket of water placed above the door only for the unsuspecting person to get drenched when they open the door.

Quote:It seems way less cruel that some methods we use it in west to kill animals.

Certainly. Bile is farmed from bears for traditional Chinese medicine (bulls***), while animals like cows in the West are killed via Halal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhabihah#Co...al_welfare) due to religion (more bulls***).

yukimine Wrote:If anything, what worries and makes me sick about animals in Japan is their "puppy culture". They seem to adore small, "kawaii" puppies and breed dogs to make those super small puppies and sell for absurd prices.

I wasn't aware of this "puppy culture", does it have a name? Though it probably also exists in some form in the West too.

yukimine Wrote:I think we have been doing a good work by asking people to adopt dogs and cats instead of buying in west but it doesn't seem people really adopt pets in Japan. Most abandoned pets end up killed.

In my opinion, abandoned pets is the most underrated form of animal cruelty. Humans domesticate animals like dogs and cats, breeding out their survival instincts and strategies, and making them rely on humans for survival.

Only to throw them out again when we don't need them, into the wild without being able to fend for themselves, .

ファブリス Wrote:The thing is, animal cruelty happens everywhere in the world. Ignorance happens everywhere in the world. What you want to focus on?

I guess this is a broad topic despite my intention to focus on the comparisons of East and West (assuming such designations are valid in the first place).

But people can talk about whatever comes to mind I guess.

ファブリス Wrote:PS: In case someone doesn't catch my drift. I am not implying that it's bad to spend thousands of dollars on your pets. I am of course hinting at the great divide in wealth, education and so on, between countries.

Certainly, I think a lot of the pain, suffering and cruelty (to both humans and animals), can be alleviated if the gap between the poor and the rich was smaller.

Like the Chinese people who work on the Bear Bile farms in the link in my first post, they were somewhat distressed by the crying of the cub yet they persist in the business due to money.

A Western individual is alienated from the cruel facts of life and as such has the privilege to make a fuss about it. They live in the cities and go to the nearest supermarket to find the meat neatly packed, ready to be prepared. All the killing happens away from them while they can live in their blessed ignorance.

Asia and Africa are behind in making the distinction between life in the nature and life in the urban areas where outside zoos the only animals you'll see are pwetty puppies and kittens with their cute ittybitty eyes.

The same problems are across cultures. We tend to divide them because that is what we are taught. There is no distinction between the East and West. The further disjoint an individual is from the action, the further disjoint they are from the facts relating to how the animal product was produced.

I don't know enough about animal cruelty to partake in this discussion, but what I DO know is that the squid in that video is already quite dead. The soy sauce just activates some nerves and makes it wiggle.

i do think that part of it is lack of knowledge, but also there are difficulties in those countries with law as well.

In the west, animal protection agencies lobby the government to create more laws protecting animals, or go through the court system and argue the cases, setting precedents.

Well, i'm certainly no expert in law, but i think things work fairly differently out east. For example, Europe and America have laws stating that chimpanzees must not be used in any kind of medical testing nowadays. In Japan, there is no such laws protecting chimpanzees... what happened instead was that the scientists and researchers convened and made an agreement between themselves that they would no longer use chimpanzees in medical experiments, as it's unethical.

In one way, i think it's quite amazing & beautiful that they acheived this on their own just through diplomacy and relationships between scientists, but on the other hand, it shows how difficult it is to influence legal regulation in things like that. And obviously, legal regulation offers protection in ways a "gentlemens agreement" can't, so it's not ideal.

I don't know anything about Korea, but i don't imagine lobbying or taking legal action are really possible in China to any large degree, and almost certainly even less than they can in Japan.

qwertyytrewq Wrote:Finally, we move onto the 5th example, which is today's example and what prompted me to make this thread. Japan completes the East Asia triumvirate.

Basically, the same example as from Old Boy, except in this video, the live squid in the bowl is being tormented by having soy sauce poured over it and made to "dance" in some macabre way.

I'm at work so I can't confirm it's the same video I've seen before, but it's not alive. The sauce being poured on is ponzu, which is acidic and causes movement through a chemical reaction in the (dead) squid. It happens even if it's chopped up into pieces.

There is nothing specifically cruel about whale/dolphin hunting or eating dog or horse meat, some people are just emotionally obsessed with "majestic" animals. If the way the animals are butchered is cruel, that is an issue separate from consumption itself.

That said, there apparently are places where you can get sashimi served from a live fish that is gasping on the plate, but it is very uncommon and very expensive (and it's a Korean dish I believe). Most Japanese people don't even know it exists let alone eat it.

Also, see the west where lobsters are typically boiled alive, people kill animals for fun (hunting) and factory farming raises animals in horrible conditions (esp. veal, foie gras) on a much larger scale than anywhere in Asia. Pet abuse is a problem everywhere.

Stop making this an ignorant/hypocritical us vs them issue.

Only continuous, sustained, and enforced pressure from the West can change these cultures. If they want to do business with us, then we have to insist that they don't slaughter dolphins, suck bile from live bears, all that stuff. But then, look what we do cows, pigs, and chickens. Look what we do indigenous populations! We are no better. It's just that they don't feel like they need to tell us what to do.
Japan has a strict hierarchy of kicking and being kicked, animals are the bottom of the heap. If you come back as an animal in Japan, better hope you come back as a dachshund or chihuahua, or you're screwed.
Arguing for animal rights in Japan would be like arguing for vegetable rights in the West. Most people would think it's ludicrous, especially the older people. And there's a few of those here, let me tell you. Nothing will change here until all these old people die, and they live longer than anyone else on earth every has, so it might be a while.
My old next door neighbors had a dog, big malamute beast, which would bark all the time. In the year I lived there, they never walked it once, never took it off its 1.5 meter chain. It would go days without food or water, usually only until I would give it something, even though it drove me nuts with its barking. Every now and then the bitch grandmother would come out and beat it for ten minutes with a broomstick. I called city hall, and in my crap Japanese told them what was going on, and the guy said if it's barking all the time it must be okay.
I asked my girlfriend if there was an RSPCA or something. Of course not. Finally, a month before I moved out, the owner, the grandfather, hanged himself, and the family had the dog put down the next week.
Just another happy ending here in Japan.

Mennon Wrote:Only continuous, sustained, and enforced pressure from the West can change these cultures.

Because we're right and they're obviously wrong? I'm pretty sure that's not how morality works...

Anyway, some of the above mentioned I do have a problem with, like sucking bile from live bears. There's just no reason to do it--we can produce the ingredients found in bear bile in other ways and traditional Chinese medicine is a crock of shit anyway (unlike morality, whether or not a medicine works is strictly an empirical question. To be fair, sometimes bear bile is actually used to cure something that it would cure--gallstones--but actually the majority of time traditional medicine containing the bile is used in an attempt to cure things which it won't cure). Basically, what's happening is that bears are suffering because people are stupid, and that's not okay.

As for things like eating live animals, I don't see how that's bad. Animals eat live animals. It's part of the game of being animals--how could it be immoral?

In fact, I don't really understand any version of animal rights that concentrates on it being wrong to kill animals. It seems to me that the cruel and unusual thing that humans do to animals is keep them living in awful conditions for years. Killing an animal, on the other hand, is completely normal. Animals that eat meat kill other animals for food--that's the game.

I think a lot of animal lovers are unable to accept that humans are another animal - an omnivorous one that is part of the food-chain. If we weren't evolved to eat meat we wouldn't have the biology to handle it.

I think killing and eating a freerange animal is actually far less cruel than keeping a caged pet (bird, hamster, dog in Japan, etc).

What is quite interesting that, as far as I'm aware, meat in general is very good for humans nutrition wise. It makes a great meal.

On the other hand crops are considered to be "less than optimal" for human diet, as they don't want to be eaten and resist when digested (or so I have read). They also contain nutrients that are generally considered as useless (in large doses) such as carbohydrates, when meats are high in protein and good fats among everything else. Still, vegetarians want us to give up meat and eat crops as well as a dozen other ingredients like nuts to make up for the lost nutrients. When we could just eat yummy meat and be done with it.

That said as far as I'm concerned, unless forced to eat crops due to factors I can not affect like raised prices of meat and more even distribution of food among the population I'm going to keep eating meat and be content with it, because it is good for me (and the abstract idea that by eating less healthy I am somehow making a difference to anything does not sit well with me). As much as we like to distinguish ourselves from nature not much has changed in the short time we've been around. Our biology still would prefer us to breath, sit, sleep, and even give birth or take a dump differently than our "evolved" culture would lead us to believe (there is an article on that somewhere, in fact). This "animals are sacred" ideology is strictly a result of our culture.

Regarding hunting, which is more cruel, (thinking in terms of deer) culling the herd to sustainable size via regulated hunting which results in (usually) a quick death for the animal, or allowing the population size to grow beyond what their living area can sustain, causing mass starvation among the herd the next winter?

Obviously an over-simplification, and of course, the problem of not enough space for the animals is due to the population and industry of humans in the first place, but I'm not convinced by the whole "hunting is evil" propoganda.

You are making it sound like hunters are performing "humanitarian aid" when that is really a side effect. The core is killing animals for fun, just like rich people go on safari to up the exclusivity factor.

I never claimed hunting was evil (nor do I think it to be), but it certainly sounds just as bad as or worse than what those morally inferior Asians are doing. The point of bringing it up was to shine the mirror back at westerners pointing fingers at others.

Yeah, hunting is really done for sport and for fun. He's right though, we can't let deer populations increase too much.

Actually, the reason the deer population is so high in America is that humans pretty much destroyed the population of predators that ate deer. The two most obvious populations that were killed off when Europeans came were wolves and members of the same species--native Americans. We also made the bear population much smaller.

So now, even though the deer have much less land to live on, their population is about as high as it's ever been. Deer end up destroying ecosystems in some areas because they eat tree seedlings. When there are too many deer new trees can't grow, and it screws up a whole bunch of other animals like song-birds.

Also, deer kill more people in American than any other animal, due to car accidents (although, they can't really be blamed for that). They also spread lyme disease.

There should be a lot less deer than there are.

Humans are naturally plant-eaters

Actually I still occasionally eat meat, but this article presents some compelling evidence.

We wouldn't last long eating meat that hasn't been cooked. The ability to cook and eat meat helped make humans what we are. But we can't use that as a justification to eat meat anymore (ie. we need it to survive, evolve, etc) because we no longer don't. We can get all the nutrition we need from the vegetables, grains, and multivitamins found in any supermarket. Western diets have a lot more meat in it that any caveman ever ate.
It tastes good. But so many terrible things are associated with it, cruelty to animals, exploitation of the poor, disease, degradation of the environment, it's getting really hard to justify eating it just because it tastes good.

That is more a problem of balance than the act of eating meat itself.
You don't need to eat a five pound steak three times a week like many people I know in Texas did.

The reason you cannot really constantly eat raw meat safely is largely a combination of the lack of freshness and the dirtiness of mass farming/butchering operations. Those are both modern problems and not as big of an issue in Japan. I recall reading somewhere that humans used to be more well adapted to handling raw meat but we've evolved away from it since the taming of fire. It is also theorized that we've evolved towards a more meat-based diet over time, which is why humans cannot digest much cellulose and the appendix became a vestigial organ. The bacteria on meat (e.coli, salmonella etc) may have also evolved over time to be more virulent of course.

Re nadia's article, the author is obviously cherry picking data and stretching the truth in places. The biggest problem is the fallacy that there are three clean groups of animal: carnivore, omnivore, herbivore. The reality is that it is a scale that spans from no plants to no meat. Humans can be omnivores while being closer to herbivores on the scale than to a lion

nadiatims Wrote:Humans are naturally plant-eaters

Actually I still occasionally eat meat, but this article presents some compelling evidence.

I know you weren't responding specifically to me, but whether or not humans are better adapted to being herbivores or omnivores is unrelated to whether or not it is ethical to eat meat.

(And if I thought it had anything to do with the question at hand, various things on the site could be criticized.)

Mennon Wrote:We wouldn't last long eating meat that hasn't been cooked. The ability to cook and eat meat helped make humans what we are. But we can't use that as a justification to eat meat anymore (ie. we need it to survive, evolve, etc) because we no longer don't. We can get all the nutrition we need from the vegetables, grains, and multivitamins found in any supermarket. Western diets have a lot more meat in it that any caveman ever ate.
It tastes good. But so many terrible things are associated with it, cruelty to animals, exploitation of the poor, disease, degradation of the environment, it's getting really hard to justify eating it just because it tastes good.

It contains almost exclusively good nutrients for any human. It doesn't resist our digestion system like crops do. It doesn't contain almost solely useless nutrients like carbohydrates. It is natural and simple source of nutrients.

As for the article, few points:

1) it is hardly written according to scientific standards. Opposing arguments are ridiculed and full of hyperbole. The bias is clear, and not only because the website in question is for vegetarians.
2) Research with opposing results exists. However they are not represented on the website because, as mentioned, the writer is not looking for objective discussion. He clearly rejects any and all opposing claims on the subject, falling to the same hole he is accusing others of doing.

In fact, were that website not completely biased the writer would not in any circumstances claim that his stance could not be invalidated at some point. The only thing certain in science is that nothing is certain.

I hope the rest of you are right and that the squid in the Japanese restaurant is already dead. Still, when the squid was wiping soy sauce from its eye, it looked pretty alive.

IceCream Wrote:In Japan, there is no such laws protecting chimpanzees... what happened instead was that the scientists and researchers convened and made an agreement between themselves that they would no longer use chimpanzees in medical experiments, as it's unethical.

In one way, i think it's quite amazing & beautiful that they acheived this on their own just through diplomacy and relationships between scientists, but on the other hand, it shows how difficult it is to influence legal regulation in things like that. And obviously, legal regulation offers protection in ways a "gentlemens agreement" can't, so it's not ideal.

If what you say is true, then it is certainly quite amazing that this positive result has come about through self-regulation (a libertarian ideal), rather than the result being imposed by another party (ie. government).

I suspect however, that this positive self-regulation is an exception to the rule (profit at all costs).

IceCream Wrote:I don't know anything about Korea, but i don't imagine lobbying or taking legal action are really possible in China to any large degree, and almost certainly even less than they can in Japan.

"Unfortunately" and naturally, human rights will improve in China before we start seeing improvements in animal rights. So it will be a long wait yet.

Jarvik7 Wrote:That said, there apparently are places where you can get sashimi served from a live fish that is gasping on the plate, but it is very uncommon and very expensive (and it's a Korean dish I believe). Most Japanese people don't even know it exists let alone eat it.

Well, that's good that it's rare.

Jarvik7 Wrote:Also, see the west where lobsters are typically boiled alive, people kill animals for fun (hunting) and factory farming raises animals in horrible conditions (esp. veal, foie gras) on a much larger scale than anywhere in Asia. Pet abuse is a problem everywhere.

Stop making this an ignorant/hypocritical us vs them issue.

If you read my first post completely or if you read it again properly, you'll see that in the 4th paragraph, I already mentioned some of these things so I'd say I'm neither ignorant nor hypocritical.

Although on the surface, the thread appears to be an "us vs them" issue, when it comes to animal welfare, it's really us (humans) vs them (non-human animals). However, I still think the comparisons between "West" and "East" are still valid because there ARE notable differences (and of course many similarities).

Mennon Wrote:Only continuous, sustained, and enforced pressure from the West can change these cultures. If they want to do business with us, then we have to insist that they don't slaughter dolphins, suck bile from live bears, all that stuff.

"If they want to do business with us (the West)"

Even though you recognise we are no better (in your next paragraph), I have an issue with this statement because business is a two-way transaction. Sure, they (the East or whoever) want to do business with us. But just as much, we want to do business with them. Everyone is complicit when it comes to animal cruelty in the name of profit. Whether it's the business who wants to do business in China due to less stringent worker protection laws (hence cheaper costs) or the consumers back home who vote with their wallet by purchasing the business' products made from the blood and sweat of cheap Chinese workers (or animals).

However, the advantage of the West I think is that we do have the luxury of caring and lobbying for the welfare of animals which can only be a good thing and should be promoted.

Mennon Wrote:Nothing will change here until all these old people die, and they live longer than anyone else on earth every has, so it might be a while.

Without going into details, and whether you realise it or not, I think this would be a positive outcome also for the United States.

Mennon Wrote:Japan has a strict hierarchy of kicking and being kicked, animals are the bottom of the heap. If you come back as an animal in Japan, better hope you come back as a dachshund or chihuahua, or you're screwed.
Arguing for animal rights in Japan would be like arguing for vegetable rights in the West. Most people would think it's ludicrous, especially the older people. And there's a few of those here, let me tell you.

Your anecdotal evidence aside, do you have any other proof that backs up your general assertion? This seems new to me and sounds more like China rather than Japan.

Jarvik7 Wrote:I think a lot of animal lovers are unable to accept that humans are another animal - an omnivorous one that is part of the food-chain. If we weren't evolved to eat meat we wouldn't have the biology to handle it.

There are some that would dispute that humans are naturally carnivores/omnivores.

Furthermore, what is interesting about the meat we eat is that we very rarely eat it raw (the proper way) like the way we eat fruits and vegetables. Instead, we roast it, we bake it, we toast it, and we fry it. We cook the meat to the point that it doesn't actually look like meat anymore.

Jarvik7 Wrote:I think killing and eating a freerange animal is actually far less cruel than keeping a caged pet (bird, hamster, dog in Japan, etc).

Although I agree to an extent:

First thing: I guess it depends on how we kill it (painlessly or with a lot of pain) and how we eat it.

Second thing: Just because one thing is less bad than the other doesn't justify it (two wrongs don't make a right).

Betelgeuzah Wrote:Still, vegetarians want us to give up meat and eat crops as well as a dozen other ingredients like nuts to make up for the lost nutrients. When we could just eat yummy meat and be done with it.

How about the more inevitable future: We could just eat yummy synthetic meat that is indistinguishable from real meat but might as well be real meat, and be done with it?

Betelgeuzah Wrote:This "animals are sacred" ideology is strictly a result of our culture.

Although some might take it too far, I prefer to believe that is also a result of our empathy.

Jarvik7 Wrote:You are making it sound like hunters are performing "humanitarian aid" when that is really a side effect. The core is killing animals for fun, just like rich people go on safari to up the exclusivity factor.

I would prefer if culling was done by people who care about the sustainability of the population of animals, rather than people who are simply bloodthirsty.

The former would also probably do a more effective and efficient job too.

Jarvik7 Wrote:I never claimed hunting was evil (nor do I think it to be), but it certainly sounds just as bad as or worse than what those morally inferior Asians are doing. The point of bringing it up was to shine the mirror back at westerners pointing fingers at others.

Reminds me of China whenever we (the West) criticize them for anything.

This whole politics thing is so juvenile "nah nah so are you!"

Mennon Wrote:Western diets have a lot more meat in it that any caveman ever ate.
It tastes good. But so many terrible things are associated with it, cruelty to animals, exploitation of the poor, disease, degradation of the environment, it's getting really hard to justify eating it just because it tastes good.

Earlier in my post, I mentioned how humans don't eat raw meat. We cook it.

Another interesting point I would like to make: Does meat actually taste good? Or do we disguise the blandness of meat by using herbs and spices, sauces, and marinades?

qwertyytrewq Wrote:Earlier in my post, I mentioned how humans don't eat raw meat. We cook it.

This is posted on a website pertaining to Japan? In Japan alone I've had raw fish, raw goat, raw horse, raw beef, and raw pork. Humans eat raw meat all the time.

In say America, no we don't really eat raw meat. It's just a cultural thing.

qwertyytrewq Wrote:

Jarvik7 Wrote:I never claimed hunting was evil (nor do I think it to be), but it certainly sounds just as bad as or worse than what those morally inferior Asians are doing. The point of bringing it up was to shine the mirror back at westerners pointing fingers at others.

Reminds me of China whenever we (the West) criticize them for anything.

This whole politics thing is so juvenile "nah nah so are you!"

I see nothing wrong with that when the criticism is ALWAYS framed as the west being superior morally/developmentally. If the focus was on "xyz is bad, for example in China and France and blah blah" then I would leave it as that, but instead it's always "Japanese people are barbarians, goddamn backwards yellow people I'm glad thousands died in the tsunami and we should nuke them again".

That is not exaggeration, that is the typical line of the Sea Shepherd supporter. The exact same comments happen regarding soccer, so it's clearly just racism/xenophobia tacked on to token activism.