Protect the flock! From JP and Hachette!

What are you doing right now?

Besides posting on here and replying to this thread. Original credit for this goes back to Fate and Nathan on MX.

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by nathan_p on December 11, 2011 at 5:46am

"Living in the US" aka growing up surrounded by the crazy.

GMOs are safe and present awesome new opportunities. It's the dicks who want you to pay them a hell of a lot of money to plant their seeds that are bad -- whether or not that's regular corn or corn that makes its own pesticide.

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Permalink Reply by EndOfTheEarth on December 11, 2011 at 12:32pm

By past experience I mean a case where you're holding a living creature in your hands and deciding that it is, in fact, food, and therefore has no rights to life, liberty, or anything for that matter.

'The wonderful thing about supermarkets is that they let us distance ourselves from the process and establish philosophies about the rights that animals should have. In Wyoming, we had three vegetarians in our group, by two weeks, they were all catching, killing, and cooking fish. And not out of necessity either; it comes down to the simple fact of, "I am hungry, therefore you, Mr. Fish, are going to die" not so much because there weren't other options, but because we wanted fish at that moment.

From this perspective, the conceptual leap from animal to food is a fairly easy one, and we are taught since childhood not to humanize our food. We do not humanize our bread; similarly, when we declare our animals as food, we do not humanize them either.

Yes, it's terrible and cruel. Yes it's horrible for the animals if you consider them that way. I do not deny either. Yet it's food, therefore we treat it like food.

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Permalink Reply by Contradiction on December 11, 2011 at 3:12pm

I agree with Xuut, I'm a vegetarian, and if I were on a camping trip, I would eat the fish, too.

I don't think that we should stop treating animals like food, but there's a lot of unnecessary bullshit that happens to those we raise for food that only happens for the sake of productivity/efficiency/maximum profit, and it's sick.

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Permalink Reply by Xuut on December 11, 2011 at 3:45pm

But there's a certain limit you have to killing and eating. I'm not against organic or the fair growth of animals. Hell, I'll eat your bloody cow (well, no, actually since I don't like steak but the point is) as long as it was raised humanly (well, as humanly as you can get to slaughtering a cow) and as long as it's actually healthy for me to consume.

I'm not against eating meat because I think killing animals or something is inhumane and cruel. It's one of the reasons I dislike PETA, they make it sound like animals aren't supposed to be eaten. I'm against what happens to the animal in that process. You kill a fish within a reasonable amount of time from a river? Fine, cool. You torment that fish, grow it in a tiny little tank with hundreds of other fish and feed it crap? Not cool dude, not cool. Then chalking it full of GMOs because you've treated that fish so badly so it's small and basically tastes like crap in order to make it bigger and taste better is just the icing on the twisted cake.

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Permalink Reply by o0_flying high_0o on December 11, 2011 at 5:58pm

There is nothing at all cruel about eating animals. People need food. Animals are a great source of protein and they're delicious. I have eaten sheep that I met the day before out in paddocks. I have held chickens knowing they were going to end up on my plate. I have named animals that have become my food (though I don't recommend this, and its probably a big factor as to why my sister is now a vegetarian). Animals = food. And I am perfectly okay with this.

Animals also have the ability to feel pain and discomfort. Just because we're going to eat it doesn't mean we should make their life as hellish as possible in the lead up.

Curious, have you ever met your food? Because while it's alive it's damn cute, and your post reads very much like someone who only knows the animals as the end result in the supermarket.

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Permalink Reply by EndOfTheEarth on December 12, 2011 at 2:45am

Yes, again, Wyoming, caught and killed the things. No knife either, you need to snap the neck with your bare hands.

My argument is about when the philosophical transition is made. You and Xuut seem to be arguing that up until the animal is actually killed, it isn't food. I'm arguing that the animal is mentally shelved as food months or even years beforehand, which is what produces the apathy to the living conditions.

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Permalink Reply by o0_flying high_0o on December 11, 2011 at 9:53am

The first two answers are utter bullshit, pure and simple. From someone whose grandparents owned a farm, and spent a huge portion of their holidays on it. There is a difference between keeping them inside permanently and letting them wander around as much as they like. Like, my Pa had a little door that he propped open at the back of the chicken hutch and then they were allowed to wander around a small paddock as much as they'd like, and go back into the hutch if they needed food/ water/ shelter. It's possible to treat animals right, and just... they need to shut up.

The growth hormones thing, well, on one hand there is a world wide food shortage, so efficiency of production is kind of important. But, these are real live animals that can feel, so the point at which it's causing discomfort is too far. They should stick to mutating vegetables that can't complain. And antibiotics, well, they're medicine. I'm glad they try and keep the animals healthy, in that regard at least.

But End, I'd love to hear your explanation, or at least hear why I'm lacking past experience.