This Is Why I’m Vegetarian…

Ah, that’s why I’m a carnivore!

I can understand their anger. Lobsters only turn red after being boiled.

If you’re going to cook a lobster, for Odin’s sake finish the job! Otherwise it will just come back and eat your children.

If most people turned vegetarian, the “hey, plants scream in pain when you pick up / cook / eat them” meme would replace the current one…

H.G. Wells imagined in The Time Machine that giant crabs would rule the Earth sometime around the year 802,700. Perhaps he was wrong, and it’s actually lobsters that will rule.

For gosh sakes, lobsters are nothing more than large cockroaches that live in the sea.

We need to sign you up for the real PETA! People for eating tasty animals.

anonymouse

Bet you wouldn’t say that if you’re starving.

Right, which is why we eat other animals, just like plenty of other animals do.

You’d think atheists, of all people, would have abandoned the idea that humans are the only animals with souls.

Whaaaaaat? “The only?” You mean other animals also possess souls? Invisible, undetectable spirits inside them that mark them as “special” to some omnipotent being who also happens to be invisible and undetectable?

We eat animals, like plenty of other animals. But we also grow animals and keep them in fear and discomfort (if not outright pain) for the entirety of their lives.

Other carnivores eat animals because they don’t have a choice otherwise. We do. We don’t have to eat meat. I am a vegetarian because I hate the thought that five chickens had to suffer and die just so I could have a plate of wings.

Aaaaand this is why I don’t usually post in veg-related topics in general. Sometimes I just can’t help myself.

Some quick answers-
I’m NOT starving and at this juncture I have a choice. So do you. The starving argument is pretty old and moot. If you aren’t starving you do have a choice. You can’t use that as an excuse. Most of us would even resort to eating human flesh if we would certainly die otherwise..but most of us aren’t starving. Starving but with an internet connection…

Regarding plants- if anyone gives a damn about plant feelings/suffering, then it is still better to not eat animals because the animal industries use many times more plant life to feed cattle, pigs, etc than if the plants were eaten directly. If you truly care about plant suffering, then reason would tell you that fewer plants used and harvested= less suffering. Since we must eat something to survive, the most ethical thing to eat (even if plants were to feel) would be plants because fewer of them would have to die than if we fed them to animals and then killed the animals. However, as thinking people we know that there is no evidence to support this, just as there is no evidence to support fairies existing. (Coincidentally, one of the “studies” done on plant suffering was authored by the same person who also wrote a book about fairies.) I’m embarrassed to have even addressed that question.

Animals do eat other animals. However, you’d be hard pressed to find a fox keeping a rabbit in a box, forcing it to get pregnant, taking its milk, killing its baby, and then sending it to a slaughterhouse. (Happens to dairy cows)

You’d be hard pressed to find a lion cramming a zebra/gazelle into a space too small to turn around (with 5-6 other zebras), killing all its male offspring by suffocating in plastic bags or grinding up alive, forcing them to live in their own waste (thereby getting severe chronic respiratory and eye infections/problems) without even a moment of sunshine and then sending them to the slaughterhouse. (Happens to chickens)

I’ll stop defending vegetarianism when some of you defending an industry (that I would bet you actually have never even researched) that does your dirty work for you behind closed doors, and packages it in such nice receptacles that you never even have to imagine that suffering occurred.

Please, go out into the woods, catch the animals with your bare hands (and no lures) and eat them raw with your hands and teeth. Then you can compare your actions to those of animals that do not have a choice but to eat animals that way. There is no such thing as a factory farm in nature.

I won’t respond again because it’s clear some people just want an argument. I’ve not heard anything here that I haven’t been hearing already for over ten years. Too bad it’s adults saying it and not high school students. At least they have a bit more reason to be immature about it. You’d think that reasonable people would at least come up with a better argument.

In case any of you feel compassion at anytime for beings that are as capable of feeling everything your pet feels…check some of these out. Animal-based industries are very, very good at keeping things to themselves. They have billions of dollars and even govt subsidies to help them out. It’s a shame, in the true sense of the word.

http://fowlplaymovie.com/

http://farmsanctuary.org/issues/factoryfarming/

http://www.cok.net/

or just google “factory farms”

I was once a christian and I was once an omnivore. I look back on both practices with the same level of regret and disgust.

You can not appreciate the madness of such institutions until you are outside their doors…

I follow the paleo lifestyle, which means I generally eat just meat and some veggies and fruit in moderation. I’ve never felt healthier and more energetic, because I’ve trained my body to actually use fat for energy, and not store it like most people who eat low fat diets and rely on carbs for energy.

It may have to do also with the fact I get all my meat from local farmers markets where the cows are grass-fed, and the chickens are free range. No hormones or antibiotics. I am free from hunger, and I mean that I generally only eat a couple times a day, and fast for 24 hours once or twice a week with no problem. I don’t want to live like a chimp, having to spend most of my time eating to get enough nutritional value…”Tanzanian chimpanzees spend more than 50% of their waking hours chewing, roughly 6 hours to consume about 1800 calories.”

Also, you’ll notice that the carnivores in the animal kingdom pretty much always have a substantial amount of lean muscle mass, whereas a majority of herbivores are fat. We have never evolved to the point to efficiently digest a vegetarian diet.

Whatever the case, and whatever happens with the healthcare reform, I want to do what I can to stay healthy, and I know the way I’m eating now is going to keep me out of the doctor’s office and not become a burden on the healthcare system nor on my family. So bring on the red meat, seafood, and poultry, and out with soy, white flour, sugars and inefficient overeating!

but it’s fascinating to me that people who are vegetarians for the reasons outlined above are soooo often labelled as nutbars.

The thing is, those presented arguments are purely emotional. You are correct that industries sometimes do horrible things to animals — but the only reason you’re not outraged about plants is because you don’t sympathize with them because they’re not made out of meat just like you are. We also keep plants inside boxes with special lights and feed them food that’s designed to make them as tasty as possible. Then we kill them when they’re at their tastiest. We’ve genetically engineered plants that cannot reproduce without human intervention, for example. How do you feel about the corn industry? There are atrocities going on there that would make you cry if they were done to pigs. You don’t care, though, because they’re just plants.

I don’t have anything against vegetarians or people who are vegetarians for logical reasons, but “eating meat is cruel to animals!” is an ignorant, bleeding-heart argument that has no place in a logical discussion. We’re cruel to plants, too, it’s just that you don’t care.

You simply have to accept that living involves killing other organisms to sustain yourself, and all of those organisms want to live, no matter what their cell structure is like. As reacting to negative physical stimuli is an evolutionarily advantageous trait, you can rest assured that practically everything you eat has that ability, even if you don’t call it “pain” because they don’t squeal. Some corporations are unnecessarily cruel to animals, but that doesn’t mean all of them are. I try to buy meat products that are organic and free-range when I can, but I have accepted the fact that things are going to die in order to feed me. That’s life.