The Red and Black

Originally posted by

Dawggone

Chris,

Lets start with your first point. I think that people's repulsion to killing and experimenting on other people is not based on whether they have human traits, but on the fact that they are humans. The whole coma comparison just doesn't work. To carry your point a little further, if you are a vegetarian how do you feel about eating someone in a vegatative state? Isn't eating a stalk of celery like eating someone in a vegetative state? They don't really have any any animal chracteristics save maybe a pulse so they are just like vegetables, right?
Secondly, the global warming issue (and that was a stretch but I'll go with it)doesnt really pursuade me to stop eating meat. Last time I checked dead cows and pigs don't fart deadly greenhouse gasses. If we quit killing livestock the large population would become even larger and fart even more. That is unless you propose some sort of population control (hunting?).
Thirdly, most livestock are fed byproducts of the grain industry. The "cream of the crop" so to speak is used for human consumption and the rest is used to feed animals. If you want to think about it in environmental terms, it is actually recycling and an effecient use of agricultural crops.

Not eating humans just because they're humans is arbitrary, and morally unjustifiable. No, eating someone in a coma is completely different from eating someone in a vegetative state. Even if it can be guaranteed that the person in a coma cannot feel ANYTHING (a process which is difficult), they most likely had will, which, in keeping with preference utilitarianism, should be respected. But let's say that they can feel nothing, and have no will, because this example is an infant - then they have parents whose will stands in. Eating this infant would cause extreme emotional suffering to the family. And on top of all of this, we've likely evolved to think cannibalism disgusting, though that has nothing to do with morality. So eating someone who feels nothing is still far more detrimental than eating celery (or any plant, for that matter).

Actually, they do fart deadly greenhouse gases - it's called methane, and it actually is much, much better at warming the atmosphere than CO2. Here are a few articles on studies that demonstrate this point:

http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2006/1000448/index.html
http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2007/09/12/redmeat-study.html
http://environment.newscientist.com/article/mg19526134.500-meat-is-murder-on-the-environment.html

And no, the populations would not swell to excess were we not eating these animals. It's not that we'd release them all into the wild - if everyone stopped eating meat, these animals wouldn't be bred by the millions annually, which is the only reason the population is so astronomically large to begin with.

And as for your claim about crop recycling, you seem to be talking about silage. This is a variation on our tasty vegetables that contains huge amounts of fiber, and really isn't fit for human consumption. Therefore, raising livestock isn't inefficient - we only feed them stuff we can't eat, right? Well, no. Even with silage, it is our harvesting methods that make it unappetizing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silage). And it still takes valuable arable land, water, fossil fuels, and labor that could otherwise be put to use feeding people. While corn is sometimes salvaged during drought years and turned into silage, at least some of the silage produced annually is intended to be harvested in this way regardless of the plant's suitability for human consumption. This is because of the incredible capital needed for investing in the specialized harvesters.

Most importantly, the United States produces more corn than any other nation in the world. A staggering 80% of this sum is used to feed livestock. It is simply unbelievable that 80% of our annual corn production is drought damaged or, as you say, simply "byproducts". As such, the EPA reports that only about 12% of our annual corn harvest is silage, far from the 80% fed to animals. (http://www.epa.gov/agriculture/ag101/cropmajor.html) Assuming that ALL of this 12% is consumed by livestock, approximately 85% of the corn they consume is non-silage, perfectly acceptable for humans. It is similar with the other crops that go into animal feeds, but I have spent so much time on corn here because it is the principal component of most feeds.

As world food prices rise, reputable news organizations have taken the time to untangle the varying sources of the climb. They have rightly pointed to the increase in per capita meat consumption in both India and China (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7284196.stm). Because of the need for giant amounts of grain to raise meat, the price of grain rises as well, starving the poor of the third world, for whom the increase is unbearable. Well, that's fine, we're not Indian or Chinese. But it's not that there is anything special about them. Their new purchasing power is just the straw that has broken the camel's back. It is a simple result of understanding supply and demand - using so much of our grain to feed animals (80% of US corn) raises grain prices no matter who you are. The inefficiency of using grains to grow an animal is that most of the calories will never be eaten (bone, organs, blood, and homeostasis), when all of them could be, right from the plant, by people. As this contributes to the starvation of people that most of us at least pretend to care about and put on our sad faces for when they make the news, I feel obligated to at least change my diet.

Originally posted by

Dawggone

Chris,

Lets start with your first point. I think that people's repulsion to killing and experimenting on other people is not based on whether they have human traits, but on the fact that they are humans. The whole coma comparison just doesn't work. To carry your point a little further, if you are a vegetarian how do you feel about eating someone in a vegatative state? Isn't eating a stalk of celery like eating someone in a vegetative state? They don't really have any any animal chracteristics save maybe a pulse so they are just like vegetables, right?
Secondly, the global warming issue (and that was a stretch but I'll go with it)doesnt really pursuade me to stop eating meat. Last time I checked dead cows and pigs don't fart deadly greenhouse gasses. If we quit killing livestock the large population would become even larger and fart even more. That is unless you propose some sort of population control (hunting?).
Thirdly, most livestock are fed byproducts of the grain industry. The "cream of the crop" so to speak is used for human consumption and the rest is used to feed animals. If you want to think about it in environmental terms, it is actually recycling and an effecient use of agricultural crops.

Well said. However, I wish to add that in my opinion NO ONE SHOULD HAVE THE RIGHT TO TELL OTHERS HOW TO LIVE THEIR LIVES. We should have FREEDOM of choice in a country like this, and I feel PETA is out of control with the way they abuse the US constitution just to serve their own personal agenda (I know study's in Europe have shown that some people have a carnivorous gut designed to digest meat.)

BTW I have NEVER heard of a group of non-vegetarians trying to FORCE our meat eating lifestyle on vegetarians into eat meat dishes....We are far too peaceful for that crap.

Originally posted by

Carnivore

Please stop lecturing Red and Black readers on ethics and morality.

Yes- we only want to read about football and drunk drivers. How dare you make us think about a world beyond game day?

KT=bitter

I don't think that's the point, KT

I believe a newspaper should report on everything in a community it can - including arrests as the citizens of that community have every right to know who in their community is dangerous. Perhaps you would only find arrests newsworthy if the involved offenders were beating a dog or a cow rather than a person?

Please understand that your opinions may not be entirely correct.
I don't see any of you in the animal science department helping the researchers there determine ways to reduce methane, improve feed efficiency, or improve animal handling.

Originally posted by

Georgina

Pig urine is in high demand in Denmark. They us if for making plastic tableware, so it's not all bad.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-9925048-54.html

Check it out...

How would one go about collecting pig urine?? Maybe hook them up to tubes like cows when collecting milk or maybe training them to use buckets instead of just going on the ground. Hmmm...

Originally posted by

Georgina

Pig urine is in high demand in Denmark. They us if for making plastic tableware, so it's not all bad.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-9925048-54.html

Check it out...

I believe the article stated that the pig urine is released naturally by the pig onto the concrete run which slopes down toward a channel along the outside of the pigs enclosure where it is collected in a tank at each end of the run. Somehow, I don't think they have trained them to use a potty, but you never know. Pigs are smart as far as farm animals go.