The treatment of animals in the western world

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NGO clips showing starvation, poverty, sexual exploitation of women, abuse of children, the misery of refugees are to be likened to Nazi methods of demonizing then? All highly emotional, all appealing to the human quality of mercy.

 

Here we have people, who, for better or worse, refuse to eat meat, let's say for moral reasons. They want to win over others by showing an excess.

That excess, however, if the previous poster is right, is over. The people have probably been prosecuted and punished. They continue showing the video anyway - because it is believed being effective in triggering the response they want to get, be it only their own outrage.

Techniques of propaganda are value free. What do you think is marketing about?

 

But you are not really suggesting cruel treatment of animals has seen an end with this incident, surely. It doesnt matter what case is brought forth when each one can only be an example of the ongoing madness of this industry. Nothing but a deft kick in the groin to shake people out of their apathy.
More recent attrocities would lend weight to the entire discussion, you think? To the goals of the site in question? Whatever the tastes and standards in excesses may be, I have no doubt procuring some shocking reports and pics wont be too challenging.

Certainly. First the Nazis, demonizing through agitation, pointing at the similiarities, then the lecture on the neutrality of propaganda techniques.

Feh.

/drops out

 

I really don't understand why the outrage for such as this. Drunkard husbands beat their children and their wife across the country and no one cares. Yet when some sadist farmer harms animals it becomes a major news piece across the country and the greens are ready to lynch the man. Interesting to see how mistreatment to animals is to some more important than the mistreatment of human beings. As I said earlier all unnessessary violence against animals is not ok and should be punished but the coverage these things get compared to crimes against humans is just wrong.

 

Dendri,
of course there are probably other cases going on, which are unreported, and could be seen as examplified in the video in question. But gimme a break: The site is of course pushing people into a certain direction. It is not asking for responsible buying of meat produced under decent conditions, but suggests to give up meat as food altogether. That video on this page is not exactly pointing out something wrong like investigative reporting on scandalous conditions in the agriculture industry would do. That's not neccessary because meat is bad anyway. They just pray their mantra and show off their scare-crow video. "Booh! Still wanna eat meat?"

Right. So meat eaters are ... what? ... Collectively guilty of fuelling the meat industry that wrecks the environment? Am I by extension incompassionate and irresponsible, suspect to become obese before I'm going to die an early gruesome death?! I dissent. Meat is not unhealthy. Eating large quantities of meat daily is unhealthy. Ranching is not destructive. Industrial scale ranching is. Not all meat is produced in factories, much less under the conditions described. But that is beside the point because all meat production is part of an all-encompassing system called the meat industry:
If you eat meat, you're complicit in acts like on the video. Sorry, but that's

Whatever else they are, these people are not value free in the point of view they promote by showing the video. They are activists, and they have their utopia. They will probably be showing this video in 10 years, if they don't find anything scarier in the meanwhile.

What they don't get is that, if we went back and turn food production to pre-industrial 'happy times' standard, the amount of food produced would be insufficient to feed the current populations. In every country.

 

/peeks in

That's all well and good, Ragusa.
I've had a brush with Death Rabid about something related. PETA and such bullpoo.

I dont get you guys. Seriously. Who *cares* what these people promote?
Your post? Fully absorbed with what you think about their ideas. Their "ideology". What a waste.

Bother me not with that. I wont discuss people when I want relief for animals. What this video has to show counts, not who provides it.

 

Farming animals in small scale produces less food than cultivating crops on the same small surface area. Maybe it's not destructive as such, but it's not the best possible way of producing food.

Shouldn't be jumping to conclusions that I'd be advocating animal rights here though, just so that this would be clear.

Farming animals is a waste of space and resources. Agreed, meat is a ready source of protein, when no other source is available, but it's not even the best source of protein. Peanuts, for instance, contain more protein than meat.

I don't really give a damn about what those animal rights activists are about in that webpage as such. If they really would want to go back to pre-industrialized times, then they're pretty dumb, sure. But the point I'm making is that if you think about farming animals as means to feed people, then it's a damn wasteful method of doing that.

In most of the hunter-gatherer tribes, most (80-90%, varies according to geographical location) of the food is gained from gathering. Not hunting. They can sustain themselves mainly by harvesting plants. Now making this relate to modern-day society, the ratio between agriculture and herding in food production doesn't need to change from what ratio between hunting and gatehering is with those tribes. Humans don't need industrial scale meat-production to sustain themselves.

Now I understand why people arguing for meat production are appealing to how emotional animal rights activists are, and are labeling anyone whose not for them as animal rights activists, hippies and yahoos. It's because their position is hard to defend otherwise. Now you should start talking about how culinary delights are a human right, more valuable than feeding more people, or that how meat industry will create prosperity without which this world wouldn't run as well as it does now.

Somehow you should be able to answer the question what for is meat industry required, especially at this scale it's' running today. For food? Not a good answer. Basic ecology: Energy transfer between trophy levels is usually less than 20% efficient. Most of the energy a cow gets from the plants is wasted and a big chunk of that is wasted as body heat, which doesn't return to the soil. Now as humans can sustain themselves with plant food, why should we have this wasteful process of making meat?

Appeal to the hedonism of humans. If you know something about economy, appeal to that. But meat as food is a tremendously wasteful so don't go saying that we need meat industry for food, since we don't. Saying this, however, is a little like going against nuclear power on the basis that we're able to get only 10% or so of the energy produced by nuclear fission. But it is a perfectly viable stance if there is another, more efficient way of producing a lot of energy, which would create much less unwanted side effects.

 

The thing is though that in more troubled times when you can't just import everything you eat from distant lands getting the necessary proteins in vegetable form, when that time comes you can't just go back to having domestic cattle in a blink of an eye. Also the greatest problem with hunger is the unequal distribution not so much the lack of food (atleast not yet). If the west gave up on meat the starving children in Ethiopia would not be any better off anyhow. When it becomes a trouble for us to feed our own population some sort of regulation of meat (sky-high taxing) or even stopping its production might be an option but as it is now we really can afford the luxury.

 

I'll eat meat because I damn well love the taste. I'll wear leather because it's bloody durable. I'll drink milk because it's good for me and there's no better way to start the day than a fried egg on toast.

I've killed animals. It's a messy business but these things were bred to be killed and eaten and humans are natural omnivores by nature. You just need to look at our teeth to see we were designed to eat both flora and fauna. I both love and loathe vegetarians. I find their habits unnatural and just plain wierd how they turn down meat and think its horrible to do so but at the same time I realise that if they don't eat meat it means there's more for me!

When I eat eggs I love the yoke because that's where the baby bird is. Yum!

 

Sorry, but the stuff in that film is actually pretty standard in the US.....something you can verify by looking up any industry-written books (a good place to start is college textbooks for animal husbandry majors) on intensive animal agriculture. There's absolutely no reason the group would have needed to script it since everything in there is standard procedure in most facilities throughout the US.

 

the human digestive system is not ment for all plant food or all meat for that matter, to stay healthy we relly on a mix of both, with more plant then meat ill grand you. our teeth, do not have enough protection to handle all the plant acid and our stomach cant digest a large part of the plants.

so its only through import of a large variety of plantproducts that we can sustain a living of plants, often with the help of vitamin pills and so forth.

to gain a fair few vitamins and the prime sourc of protein and fat,we need meat. especially in does countries that cant impornt a lot of the plant products or who cant afford it.

thirdly you cant farm the same peace of land constantly, the soil looses all its neutrisions and the crops fail, so when you rotate soil, you might as well let livestock grass there. i know its not how its done in our part of the world, because we have industialised our farms and aimed for mass production of one thing, instead of farms that have a little of everything, but to be fair, that works better.

 

Eating meat is horribly wasteful and as far from optimal use of resources as you can get. A piece of land that could feed 100 people with crops would perhaps feed 10 people with meat. That said, I really dnot care. I like my meat and am not ashamed. This general outrage we see when animals are mistreated disgusts me, it is hypocrisy at its finest. Every day humans, children, innocents are killed, tortured, raped and maimed in ways is on the level and often beyond anything seen in these propaganda films. This doesnt only happen in some distant war torn place but everywhere around us. Neighbours beating their children, gangsters executing opponents, parents sexually exploiting their children. If you cant bringh forth the outrage for this how can you care about some chickens not being "happy"? Food animals live to die, they exist to be food and are truly not much different from a stalk of wheat or a tree grown for lumber. Maltreating them is bad, of course it is but it is also illegal and is being dealt with as much as possible. However, just as we have pedophiles and murderers we have people who mistreat animals. It is just sad that people are more upset over the lack of living space for chickens than they are over starving children far away.

 

I actually agree with Joacqin on this one

It must be a new year's miracle

 

What joyless nations y'all call home where people seemingly care more for livestock than dying children etc. What's even worse, it must be pretty disproportionate, too; why else this strong feeling of bitterness. Hmm.
Cant say the same for my own.

I dont buy that nonsense anyway. Unreflected rambling, employed by people who dont lift a finger to aid anything or anyone out there.

How's that for generalization?

[ January 02, 2007, 20:16: Message edited by: Dendri ]