Animals Are Food, or Are They

[Ella]

“You’re citing an organization that supports domestic terrorism, and is known to use widely distorted and falsified propaganda.”

So how does that make me "“Roughly on a par with saying, “I’m no anti-Bush fanatic, but have you seen Farenheit 9/11?””?

 

[vern_humphrey]

“You’re citing an organization that supports domestic terrorism, and is known to use widely distorted and falsified propaganda.”

So how does that make me "“Roughly on a par with saying, “I’m no anti-Bush fanatic, but have you seen Farenheit 9/11?””?

I’ll type this slowly – both the PETA and the Michael Moore opuses are the products of fanatics who have a long record of generating false propaganda.

 

[Ella]

Furthermore, Vern Humphrey, let me ask this.

Do you think that the way animals are factory farmed is moral?

And:

Do you think there is a better way to raise animals for food?

And:

Does the term ‘better’ change when you think of :

a. the profit margin when raising animals for food

or

b. the cruelty margin when raising animals for food

or

c. the health concerns when raising animals for food

or a., b and c.?

Many people, like me, think there is a better way to raise animals for food. It may not make meat as cheap as it is now. But it may make that meat healthier for the animals raised, and for our consumption.

That is why I have, and now, offer the link to www.slowfood.com.

And these are the questions that led me to that website, and to take a hard look at the factory farms that ‘raise’ animals now…

 

[Ella]

“I’ll type this slowly – both the PETA and the Michael Moore opuses are the products of fanatics who have a long record of generating false propaganda.”

OK. What have I quoted/written that is 'false propaganda"?

 

[vern_humphrey]

“I’ll type this slowly – both the PETA and the Michael Moore opuses are the products of fanatics who have a long record of generating false propaganda.”

OK. What have I quoted/written that is 'false propaganda"?

Well to start with, the URL you cited is a presentation, not on raising chickens or cattle, but an anti-fur diatribe.

Next, note who financed it – a person noted for over-the-top claims.

Finally, note that there is no evidence to show what the video presents is customary or widespread. I can find puppy mills and similar facilities to attack – is that an indictment of the cattle or chicken industries?

You realize you’re supporting an organization that ran ads to get college kids to drink beer instead of milk?

 

[Ella]

“You realize you’re supporting an organization that ran ads to get college kids to drink beer instead of milk?”

Is attacking PETA going to be your only answer to my questions?

 

[vern_humphrey]

“You realize you’re supporting an organization that ran ads to get college kids to drink beer instead of milk?”

Is attacking PETA going to be your only answer to my questions?

You missed the part about

"Well to start with, the URL you cited is a presentation, not on raising chickens or cattle, but an anti-fur diatribe.

Next, note who financed it – a person noted for over-the-top claims.

Finally, note that there is no evidence to show what the video presents is customary or widespread. I can find puppy mills and similar facilities to attack – is that an indictment of the cattle or chicken industries?"

---

You haven’t GOT anything in that cite – it’s about fur, not about food, it was made several years ago, by a noted “activist” who has a reputation for faking it, and there’s no evidence to show that even if it IS true, it’s widespread in the fur industry.

And no connection to the food industry at all.

 

[ktm]

Ella:

So, does the ‘right’ to eat animals also include the ‘right’ to be cruel, extrordianily cruel I add, to these animals?
I do eat meat. I am saddened by the treatment of animals in the ‘meat’ industry. Factory farming is a horror.

KTM posted:
“Regarding your second point, the surest way to preserve a species is to encourage people to eat it. Are chickens, cows, pigs, geese, rabbits, clams, shrimp, etc. etc. in danger of going extinct? Of course not, because there is a market for them. Producers have an economic interest in raising as many of these animals as possible because people will buy them. So if you want to remove the Spotted Toegrabber from the engangered species list, fire up the grill and start cooking it. Before you know it, Spotted Toegrabber farms will sprout up all over the place. (*)”

Not true. IN FACT, factory farmed species of the animals we commonly eat are compromosed in many ways. Only certain breeds are bred. Unnatural conditions are used in their ‘care’. Turkeys, in a short time, have been confined to the White Broad-Breasted - their breasts are so large that they can’t mate but must be artificially inseminated. If a resistant virus or bacteria strikes these birds they - and the turkey industry - will be in a systemic plague. Lack of genetic variants in farm raised species makes for a serious vuneralbility in the case of disease.
Rather than ‘help’ a species, targeting it as a popular food item reduces it to a genetically engineered, factory farmed, mutant.
The living conditions of these animals are shameful. Justifiying cruelty to animals is, I believe, inherently UNCHRISTIAN. Do we think it’s funny torturing a pet dog or cat to death? Why then think it’s moral to burn the beak off of a chicken, house it in horrible conditions where it can’t move, lest it ‘toughen’ the meat, where it lives in its own feces? Even worse is the fur industry - fur which we do not need, which is a luxury, a rich man’s item.
I don’t buy it. Jesus didn’t eat animals that were tortured like that. The first job in the bible is that of a gardener. I believe eating meat is moral - but torturing animals is NEVER MORAL.

Someone was born without a funny bone, evidently.

Go back and read my post again. I was talking about animals in danger of extinction, not large-breasted turkeys. (I’ve always wanted to write that.) As to your posts about animals abuse, what you describe is deplorable. You’ll get no argument from me on that one.

 

[Ahimsa]

vern humphrey:

Other ways of accomplishing what goal?

Is there some way of accomplishing a sacrifice of an animal that doesn’t involve animal sacrifice?http://forums.catholic-questions.org/images/icons/icon5.gif

Animal sacrifice in religious ritual is often used as a means to satisfy the demands of a Deity. In Christianity, that satisfaction was accomlished without killing animals; similarly in Islam. I was curious as to whether you supported animal sacrifice as a means of satisfying the Deity.

 

[Ella]

*KTM: "Someone was born without a funny bone, evidently.

Go back and read my post again. I was talking about animals in danger of extinction, not large-breasted turkeys. (I’ve always wanted to write that.) As to your posts about animals abuse, what you describe is deplorable. You’ll get no argument from me on that one."*

Sorry. I did get ‘serious’ about your post because people are not aware of the dangers of only breeding one specific breed of animal until that animal’s population is defenseless against an epidemic.

Also:
*vern humphrey: You haven’t GOT anything in that cite – it’s about fur, not about food, it was made several years ago, by a noted “activist” who has a reputation for faking it, and there’s no evidence to show that even if it IS true, it’s widespread in the fur industry.

And no connection to the food industry at all.*

**
The ‘connection’ here is that both this fur farm and factory farms house animals in cruel conditions for human consumption or use.
**
Look, I’ll not try to convince anyone. I only ask that you all do some investigation to the truth of these factory farms. the link ‘www.themeatrix.com’ is a good start. It’s not gross footage; it’s a cartoon. It’s not against eating meat - it’s against factory farms.

That fur farm is HORRIBLE and I do certainly hope that it is not a typical fur farm - but I really do suspect that it is. I’ll do some more investigating - would you like me to post on here what I find?

 

[Trelow]

If you will hold still long enough I’ll eat you.

Pass the ketchup.

http://www.consumerspacking.com/html/slides/veal-porterhouse.jpg

MMMM, VEAL!

 

[DeniseR]

Ella:

What does ‘overly cruel’ mean? That’s the problem. There is no standard definition. Money determines what is ‘overly cruel’. Antibiotics make up for gross lapses in care. We EAT these animals. Should we not be concerned about their health?

Just to clear up a serious argument on a fun threat… An animal cannot be shipped for butchering until antibiotics are out of it’s system. Antibiotics are expensive and not necessarily economically superior to cover “lapses in care.” A vast majority of farmers know it is in their best interests to care for their product until it is shipped.

Now for those who eat squirrels… er, tree rats…they really don’t have a lot of meat on their bones. I prefer to send them to my mother-in-law. She’s like Granny Clampet on the Beverly Hillbillies and won’t waste a vegetable from the garden or a dead animal that isn’t halfway decomposed. Talk about a thriving immune system! She’ll live to be 150.

 

[fix]

The madness of the animal-rights movement
© 2000 WorldNetDaily.com

Social workers in Scotland recently rescued a pet monkey from the filthy, drug-infested apartment of a couple of heroin addicts. Contacting an animal-welfare group, the social workers took great pains to make sure the animal was removed from the squalid cesspool of a home.

But the social workers neglected to do anything about the little girl living with the couple.

The 5-year-old’s fingernails had not been cut for more than a year, she was covered in bed sores, lying in human waste and wearing a plaster cast on her broken leg that should have been removed 10 months earlier. When doctors eventually removed the cast from the girl, whose leg has been permanently scarred, they found spoons, a fork, and a pen she had used to try to scratch her ulcers.

A judge rebuked the social workers, noting incredulously that they had visited thehttp://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=18765

 

[Poisson]

serendipity:

All Jesuus seemed to eat was fish. I would think he must have had lamb during the passover celebrations, but fish, fish and more fish, and fish is the symbol of Chritianity…

The fish did not become a symbol of Christianity because Christians ate fish. It was an acronym. I think it meant (and I may be a bit off) “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior” The symbol was used so Christians in the early church could identify themselves to each other to avoid persecution.

 

[otm]

abcdefg:

I stick to limit species of animals as food.

I’m an animal right activist. I strongly oppose my fellow countrymen’s logic of eating everthing to extinction.

There are more cows than people. We are more likely to become extinct.

If God didn’t want us to eat animals, why did He make them out of meat? (bumper sticker seen on a meat case of a local butcher)

 

[Patjoe]

Here’s the way I view this question. To the poster who said that we eat animals and that is why they are called animals, don’t forget that humans are animals also.

I believe that God gave man permission to eat meat of the lower animals after the Great Flood. Perhaps men ate meat prior to that time without God’s permission, just as they ate the fruit of the apple tree.

It is pretty obvious that there is a long way to go before we are all totally civilized and/or until we reach the conditions on earth that were promised to be those in the next life, where all creatures will live together without any violence toward another.

I don’t think that anyone can successfully disagree that when we kill an animal, there is violence involved. I think that as humans, even this far civilized, we must make certain choices regarding that violence and the purpose of the violence. Thus, as has been beautifully stated above, as moral creatures we have a duty to see that animals are not mistreated and are killed humanely.

To kill for fun puts us on a level below most of the lower animals, who kill out of necessity. To kill animals for food when there are quality substitutes makes us selfish and is one of the qualities of humankind that needs to be civilized either in this life or given us as a gift in the next.

The lower animals, even squirrels, are fantastic creatures. God must love them very much to have given them such variety and such marvelous traits. And He has given them as gifts to His angels and to us. He permitted mankind to kill and eat them while we grow into more completely Godlike creatures. Just as He gave us Himself to eat, He wants us to have what we need at every stage in our development as both spiritual and physical creatures.

As our spirituality matures, we need to satisfy our lower nature less and less. That would include the killing and eating of His creatures. Actually, as we mature spiritually, we need all food less and less and our physical appetites seek only the minimal needed for sustenance.

Nothing on earth should be taken for granted or used without thanking God for its use. Just as we should not surround ourselves with material things that take us from our path to God, by taking any life without predetermining that it is necessary for our betterment is violence without justificiation. That does not mean that all have come to realize this, but it also does not mean that those who have are claiming to be more Christlike than Christ Himself. He lived in a time and place when and where killing and eating lower animals was necessary for continued life. That was violence with a legitimate purpose.

 

[ktm]

Patjoe:

Here’s the way I view this question. To the poster who said that we eat animals and that is why they are called animals, don’t forget that humans are animals also.

Hey, speak for yourself there!

Just don’t fall into the trap that humans are merely glorified animals. We have two extremely important differences with them (among others) – an immortal soul and the ability to reason.

 

[Patjoe]

ktm, Humans are animals, nevertheless, vis-a-vis the comment I to which I was referring.

The attempts at humor on this thread regarding the “killing” and “maiming” of fruits and vegetables overlook the fact that grain, fruit, and vegetables are the by-products of plants that have a season. Their specific purpose is for food or to become the fertilizer of the next season’s food.

There are several schools of thought about the food chain. One says that “we are what we eat.” Another finds that what we eat becomes what we are, e.g., if a fish is eaten by a bear, the fish becomes part of the bear and thus moves up the food chain. I like to see the food chain as “the decisions about what we eat reflect what we have become.” Thus, we would like a nice juicy steak, the more blood the better; but realizing that for us to have that temporary satisfaction, there must be terrible violence, both to the animal from which the steak comes and to our spiritual growth, we decide to take our nourishment in a less violent form, and we are more God-like.

This is far different from our eating God and becoming Him. In this we are alive still, both physically and spiritually. In fact, we become “more alive” spiritually and, in the sense that we live better human lives, we become " more alive" in that way also. When an animal is eaten, it is dead, with no further chance to live. What the animal was composed of is absorbed or discarded by our bodies.

Meat is found my most humans to be a good; to most it is more tasteful than meat-substitutes. But think of our appetite for food in terms of our appetite for material things. When we make a choice to deny ourselves a pleasure, for that choice, we make great strides in our spiritual journey. Perhaps God gives us the choice in what we eat as a means of wanting meat less than we want to be the gentle beings that he intends us to be. And we are not being smug when we realize this, as it comes as a grace from God, just like every advance in the spiritual life. And to instruct another in the spiritual life is good, even required, for both ourselves and for the good of the other, even if the other does not yet realize it.

 

[otm]

vern humphrey:

There’s nothing like a pleasant morning hunting squirrels – and they’re good eating, too.

Squirrels: rats with bushy tails.

And if you are hungry enough, even rats taste pretty good…

By the way, are you good enough for a head shot? What distance?

 

[otm]

Ella:

So, does the ‘right’ to eat animals also include the ‘right’ to be cruel, extrordianily cruel I add, to these animals?
I do eat meat. I am saddened by the treatment of animals in the ‘meat’ industry. Factory farming is a horror.

KTM posted:
“Regarding your second point, the surest way to preserve a species is to encourage people to eat it. Are chickens, cows, pigs, geese, rabbits, clams, shrimp, etc. etc. in danger of going extinct? Of course not, because there is a market for them. Producers have an economic interest in raising as many of these animals as possible because people will buy them. So if you want to remove the Spotted Toegrabber from the engangered species list, fire up the grill and start cooking it. Before you know it, Spotted Toegrabber farms will sprout up all over the place. (*)”

Not true. IN FACT, factory farmed species of the animals we commonly eat are compromosed in many ways. Only certain breeds are bred. Unnatural conditions are used in their ‘care’. Turkeys, in a short time, have been confined to the White Broad-Breasted - their breasts are so large that they can’t mate but must be artificially inseminated. If a resistant virus or bacteria strikes these birds they - and the turkey industry - will be in a systemic plague. Lack of genetic variants in farm raised species makes for a serious vuneralbility in the case of disease.
Rather than ‘help’ a species, targeting it as a popular food item reduces it to a genetically engineered, factory farmed, mutant.
The living conditions of these animals are shameful. Justifiying cruelty to animals is, I believe, inherently UNCHRISTIAN. Do we think it’s funny torturing a pet dog or cat to death? Why then think it’s moral to burn the beak off of a chicken, house it in horrible conditions where it can’t move, lest it ‘toughen’ the meat, where it lives in its own feces? Even worse is the fur industry - fur which we do not need, which is a luxury, a rich man’s item.
I don’t buy it. Jesus didn’t eat animals that were tortured like that. The first job in the bible is that of a gardener. I believe eating meat is moral - but torturing animals is NEVER MORAL.

Much, if not most of the fuss about “animal torture” is made up by the paganistic tree hugging liberals who anthropomorphize animals. If the animals are properly fed and protected from theelements, they are way better off than those that have to forge for their next meal in the wild. Every year there are massive deaths ude to starvation in the wild; not because we have done anything at all, but simply due to climactic conditions.

I’ll eat my cow and pig and turkey and enjoy every bite of it.