My reason for wanting to hear an argument behind this is that to me it makes more sense to continue to eat meat, but focus on getting local, ecological animal products from farmers/companies that promote animal rights. Because by this you show that there is money to earn by taking care of your animals instead of not buying animal products at all where all you show is that they will lose money no matter what. Infact there is more money in taking care of your animals since people generally are willing to pay a little more for it. But I would very much like to hear a strong argument to why going meatless is preferable
Now I understand that there are people out there that think that all forms of humans owning animals are bad. Once again this is an argument I do not understand. It is roughly 8 000 years since humans domesticated cattle, 14 000 years since we domesticated the wolf, 9 000 -11 000 for the sheep and 10 000 for the goat. These animals, especially in their domesticated version have played an very important role for humans. Without them and other livestock we would have still been hunter/gatherers and we would be where we are today.
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otakujpop : (no subject) [+6] - (Anonymous) : (no subject) [+1]
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In the end, eating meat and supporting animal right's is like justified war theory and that under certain circumstances one can justify ignoring the greater principle for logical action.
I haven't heard a convincing argument, the most recent popular one is that the meat industry pollutes, but to be honest cattle flatulence is a problem due to it's high methane composition and not having a controlled structure to limit cattle population would be as bad.
Other animals have not evolved and therefore have no choice but to eat meat.
Another argument is (as most people who eat meat believe this) if you eat meat because you like the taste, would you eat human if it tasted good? It's a fallacy, but it gives a certain scope to the argument.
I do believe that we can easily go down in our consumption of meat, especially in the western world, how ever eliminating it on a large scale seems highly problematic to me.
For the second argument, very few large carnivores or omnivores are cannibals. It is mush more common in predators that also are prey like rats because a corpse might attract larger predators. Polar bears, which is the type of bear that are mainly meat eaters, are starting to become cannibals because there are no other source of food for them. Most meat eaters, including humans, will turn to cannibalism in face of starvation. According to Kruger National Park cannibalism is uncommon among lions.
The more I read I realize that I might have been using the wrong word for what I believe in, the correct word being animal welfare. I do believe that it is alright to use animals for food, clothing and medical research, while also making sure that we are not causing unnecessary suffering for these animals.
To continue though, I have no problem with veal, but the way it is made is quite controversial. On one side, cattle that becomes veal is killed young, but also fed better than other cattle. At the same time, however, it is kept in a small stall to avoid muscle development to keep the meat more tender.
Does animal welfare consider quality of life arguments? And if so, how would we establish what those qualifiers are and where would be draw a line between acceptable and unacceptable?
And thank you for having this discussion with me, I highly apprichiate it and the reason I have been noting flaws have been because as I said I was looking for arguments that made sense
Companies that sell animal flesh do _not_ promote animal rights.
If you'd like to learn more about vegetarianism and veganism, visit ChooseVeg.com.
Tracy
http://www.diggingthroughthedirt.blogspo