Don't want to eat meat? Great...then you shouldn't, but it doesn't make you somehow morally superior to those who choose to eat meat. It just means you've made a decision that has meaning for *you*.
Melody, I don't think anyone here is saying that. Perhaps we are thinking that, but then, that is because it is a moral issue. For us, it is just like the issue of whether killing innocent children is moral. It is a moral issue, and when we do not kill innocent children, we feel morally superior to those who do. I'm sorry, but this is just the way we feel. I try very hard not to
ever come from a "holier-than-thou" approach. It just doesn't work. I agree, eat what you want.
And Melody, your plant vs. animal argument is crap. Seriously, think about it, how many plants are killed to feed the cow, which you then eat? By eating the cow, you kill far more lives than if you had just eaten vegetable matter. In fact, if you really cared about the loss of life, you'd be a fruitarian, where all food is given freely by the plants.
The simple fact is, by eating plant material only, you cause much less death, and
much less suffering (plants can't feel pain). No one has ever addressed this, in any argument here on RF. No one has told me why it's ok to kill more beings, even though, according to them, they'd like to kill less.
Sure. The "experts" love to say that eating a diet high in fat is bad for you...which is why they came up with their old food pyramid with fats at the tiny little top and grains at the wide bottom. Yet they can't explain why, in spite of their insistence that a high fat diet leads to heart disease and heart related problems, families like mine do not follow their belief. I just had a physical and my cholesterol levels are all within the right range...despite the fact that I eat a high protein, low carb diet and have for 30 years.
By any chance do you have Viking or English/Scottish/Irish descent? Those with the blood of these races have a chance to be near immune to the effects of salt, and the effects of cholesterol. I believe this is because the Vikings weren't good at farming crops, seeing where they lived and all. They passed these genes to the English, Scottish, and Irish (or, at that time, the Northumbrians, Mercians, Pictish, Scottish, Irish, Saxons, and a few others).
My physical oddity:
My heart beats
way below the normal range. Last time I checked, it was nearly 35 below "below average". It's always been this way, since I was a baby (lower than normal, I mean, not that it was the same then) and no one knows why.
Oh, and speaking as someone with children, there's a world of difference between raising your child and raising a sheep or calf. If or when you have children, you may find you see a difference after all.
The closest thing I have to a child is Darwin, my african grey. I would equate the slaughter of Darwin to the slaughter of a cow. I would never do either. Neither would I slaughter a child I don't know at the playground, merely because I was hungry. To me, slaughtering the cow is the same as slaughtering the child. I can't help that; it's how I feel.
No, I expect it would have been far more humane to leave him to die a horrible and motherless death as a very small lamb than have him live for 18 months and have an extremely good life as far as the lives of sheep go before he was humanely and quickly killed.
Just because you raise something that is orphaned does not automatically make it your child. Just because you can make the decision to eat something that would not have lived if it wasn't to be eaten does not make you inhumane. You save what you can from a horrible death as a tiny thing and give it life it wouldn't have had if left up to nature. Do you think he would have thanked us for saying, "Well, it's cruel to kill him for lunch when he gets older, so lets just leave him be beside his dead mother and let the crows eat him in little bits while he's still alive.If the foxes don't get him first,of course."?
You can't keep everything you hand raise...it isn't practical. Is it kinder to kill these animals yourself, or send them to someone who you don't know isn't going to beat them with a stick to get them moving and cause them undue stress and pain before they die? Or is it better for them not to have any life at all, to be left to die as babies without intervention?
Wow, amazing logic. Let me try: "Is it better to keep this slave alive, even though he's a bit sick? Or should we just kill him now? Let's keep him alive, at least until we don't need him anymore. He'll probably be of some use. Wow, we are so merciful and kind!"
Perhaps it is kinder to help it live, but you know what would be even more kind? Letting it live until it dies of natural causes.
I don't think we'll ever see eye to eye here. I think slaughter of anything that feels and thinks is wrong, be it human or non-human. You think the slaughter of non-humans is fine. Good for you. I won't be happy with it, but I'll never bring the topic up. If someone else does, I'll join in, but never will I bring it up. I agree with Leonardo Da Vinci, when he said:
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"Truely man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds theirs. We live by the death of others: we are burial places! I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look on the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men. "
And I always will agree with him.
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