eating meat is not the problem, our bodies ended up designed and optimized for it a long time ago.
the problem is the way we produce meat and how many people claim their share.
it started a long time ago when we cut down forests and stopped hunting.
before that meat was unexpensive and self reliant. killing was a responsability and a gift.
nowadays we have emprisoned ourselves within convenient breeding practices, but you pointed evidence that we have yet to seize the real cost of it. arent cows and pigs degenerated versions of bisons and boars ? are we really treating them better by parking them their whole life instead of poaching what we need amongst free animals.
the perverted nature of man lead to cuisine and animal care, when it is really about nutrition and respect. nature takes care of itself as long as you can fit yourself amongst the cycles.
it is always important to filter out relevant information, because especially in this day and age, you could divert your whole life to believe in fighting windmills.

vix86 wrote:

Animal rights in the way PETA views it; are not an issue for the vast majority of people. People (in the US) do not believe pigs and cows are sentient creatures in the same sense that humans are. I am incidentally part of this crowd. The matter is highly philosophical and a debate upon the degree to which to extend human rights to something else.

i think this is less of a philosophical issue, and more of a science one. The beleif that animals are not sentient, intelligent beings is pretty much impossible to justify given what we know about animal behaviour, and about how the brain works and how similar animals brains are to humans'. Pigs especially are known to be pretty intelligent.

If you want to eat meat, this is something that you have to accept as a baseline, i think. Perhaps there can be philosophical arguments about whether it's ok to eat animals in general. But i think it's definately impossible to justify causing animals to suffer horribly in the process. You don't have to argue from an "animal rights" perspective to agree... it's just basic empathy again.

Personally, i can't wait till they can grow meat to eat cheaply enough to sell. I would never eat an animal again if i had that option.

@mrbryce: with 7 billion humans, it would be impossible to poach enough meat from the wild to feed them all without having a significant detrimental impact on animal populations... perhaps driving a load to extinction. The ease of regulation of animal populations in farming makes it a better option in some ways. You only have to look at what's happening to the fish in our seas to have a clear example of this...

Last edited by IceCream (2012 February 18, 1:09 am)

vix86 wrote:

Animal rights in the way PETA views it; are not an issue for the vast majority of people. People (in the US) do not believe pigs and cows are sentient creatures in the same sense that humans are. I am incidentally part of this crowd. The matter is highly philosophical and a debate upon the degree to which to extend human rights to something else.

People in the U.S. don't believe pigs or cows are sentient creatures because they have no knowledge of the subject; it's very easy to treat animals as inanimate 'things' when you have no interaction with them other than purchasing them to eat, wear, or for self-entertainment. And in that context they are treated the same as any commercial product: a thing.

I certainly felt the same way most of my life, it's a very easy trap to fall into. My first real awakening on the subject didn't come until I started taking neuroscience classes. Before we started learning about the human brain specifically, we studied the evolution of central nervous systems, their current manifestations in different organisms, and then more intensively mammalian brains. Because of the costs and rarity of human brains, in labs we of course dissected animal brains, and did a lot of study on them. Once I realized how neurologically similar we are to animals like pigs and cattle, how the same neurochemicals were coursing emotions, thought patterns, memories, and sensory experiences through their brains just as in us humans, I could never again regard animals as 'things.'

Whether or not it's okay for humans, at the top of the food chain, to eat animals is indeed a debate of ethics. But the question of whether or not mammals like pigs are sentient, whether or not they experience emotions and sensations like depression, joy, companionship, loyalty, and love, and are fully capable of feeling pain and suffering, is a question for science. And the unequivocal answer is that yes, they are sentient, and yes they do suffer. That's as black and white as can be.

I do not think that it's inherently wrong to eat animals, but the way that we raise and slaughter animals in factory farms is inhumane, sadistic, and disturbing beyond belief. If we, as a species, are going to continue to consume animals we should do it with compassion and respect, allowing the animals to live out natural and decent lives before we consume them, and not make them endure years of torturous existences just so that we can spend less cash.

Since we're on the topic of pigs, I'll focus on them for my example of the humane issues with factory farming: To begin with, pigs are incredibly intelligent mammals. Their cognitive ability is higher than dogs, and even higher than human toddlers according to some scientists. Heck, pigs have even been taught to play video games. They have complex emotions, form bonds, and are very social creatures. And how do we treat these 110 million intelligent mammals that become our breakfast bacon each year in the U.S.?

It all begins with the sows, which spend much of their lives in gestation crates--crates so small that the animals do not even have room to turn. To give a human comparison, imagine living most of your life imprisoned in your bathtub. Once the sows give birth, they are transported to slightly larger crates known as farrowing crates. What do I mean by 'slightly larger'? Now they can actually do simple things like lay down to nurse the piglets, though the farrowing creates are still extremely small, and restrict most movement. After a little over a week has passed the piglets are torn away from the sow, and once again the sow is impregnated and returns to confinement in the gestation crate. Year after year that cycle continues until at last the sow is slaughtered.

Do you not see anything ethically wrong with sticking a highly intelligent mammal into a crate that it can't even move in--basically the equivalent of a gibbet--to spend most of her life? That these conditions produce extreme stress and depression has been highly documented, with sows exhibiting obsessive behaviors and what we'd call "cabin fever" insanity. When I imagine pigs on open pastures, socializing, playing, and enjoying life beneath the sun, then I imagine them imprisoned in gestation crates, unable to make such simple movements as turning around, it's hard to feel anything but horror and disgust. How many Americans would wish that fate on dogs? Very, very few I'd wager. So why be okay with it on pigs? Ignorance of these business practices, and of the animals themselves, is what allows them to exist. Which goes back to the importance of informing consumers of the realities of factory farming in order to bring about change.

Thankfully, after many years by animal welfare organizations towards legislation, gestation crates were banned in the U.K. and four states in the U.S. But gestation creates continue to be used by the majority of factory farms, so that's really only a ray of light in the storm clouds.

As for those piglets that are torn from their mothers after a little over a week, and raised for meat, the journey begins with castration. Due to the high costs of giving tens of millions of piglets anesthetic, generally no painkillers are used (The U.K. does not castrate their piglets, luckily. In general the U.K. is further ahead than the US meat industry in terms of humane practices). The castrated piglets are then raised for slaughter in extremely crowded, stressful conditions since higher stocking densities = more profit. These conditions cause the piglets to go crazy, and to prevent them from damaging themselves and other piglets usually their tails are chopped off (tail-biting is a huge issue in those conditions) once again without any anesthetics.

After piglets reach their market weight, becoming hogs, it's time for transportation to the slaughterhouses. Unfortunately there exist no laws for regulating the treatment of livestock being transported; no rest, food, or water is given to the hogs, and workers cram as many as they possibly can onto the trucks with electric prods--and no regulation for voltage of the prods either. Due to the poor conditions for transporting the hogs, hundreds of thousands die simply in the transportation process alone.

Once hogs reach the slaughterhouse, they are stunned, then have their hair removed in scalding tanks. Since you have an incredible amount of hogs being slaughtered every hour, and employes who are both undertrained and underpaid, these processes are haphazard. Hogs are often incorrectly stunned, and are still conscious and alive when they go into the scalding tanks.

And all of those steps are just the standard best-case-scenario for factory farms, not taking into account the countless undercover investigations that have revealed unbelievable animal cruelty, such as beating pigs to death, sexually abusing them, stomping on their skulls, and other horrors. Things like that those incidents, and the standard inhumane treatment, both happen because there is not sufficient regulations in the industry, and because consumers don't know about them.

But really, typed paragraphs don't do justices to issues like this. It's one thing to read about intelligent animals being mistreated, and an entirely different one to actually hear them scream, thrash in agony, and go insane in the confinement of gestation creates. So I suggest taking a look at the actual footage from undercover investigations. Here are a few of the more popular ones.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeJfY5CXTM0 - Meet Your Meat
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THIODWTqx5E - Farm to Fridge
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KXZu65HpUA - 45 Days: The Life and Death of a Broiler Chicken
http://video.humanesociety.org/press/vi … 1219457001 - undercover investigation of a pig slaughterhouse in Iowa

Documentaries like "Food Inc." are fantastic too. For overall animal welfare, and why we should care, I suggest the documentary "Earthlings," narrated by Joaquin Phoenix. Full movie is at http://www.earthlings.com/

Like I said: I don't think eating meat itself is innately wrong, but the ways we go about it are. The animals we kill for food, like pigs, are intelligent, sentient beings, and do not deserve to live horrific lives simply so we can pay less money for our fast food burgers. I'm fine with meat consumption--in moderation due to environmental issues--so long as the animals have acceptable standards of living, and all measures are taken to prevent abuse and suffering. But since there's no way to ensure those things short of raising the meat yourself, or getting it from very trusted sources, it's simply not practical. Which is why I chose to go vegetarian; it's not about thinking eating meat is unethical, it's about choosing compassion over cruelty.

Last edited by Aijin (2012 February 18, 6:36 pm)