Quote:Originally posted by Induane
Don\'t tell me not to be stupid. I\'ve every right to be as stupid as I want, as do you, though you seem to use that right more often than I remembered you did. Besides, I wasn\'t really challenging you to prove anything. The question was rhetorical. The point was that unless you are a cow or a horse or a tree or a fern, you cannot really say what they expirence. That isn\'t saying that you can justify animal cruelty, only that we may not have the whole picture and stating some of these things as absolute \"facts\" is misleading.
Well said Induane. The irony is that this post was one of your \"smarter\" ones. So, by posting a smart post you are complying to zanzibars request.
OH no!!!!!!
Never would have thought of that - partially because I\'ve a tendacy to miss irony, and partly because I\'m unconfortable declaring myself intelligent or smart... somehow it feels vain to me - as if I\'m putting myself above other people.
Why would meat producers free their animals? That doesn\'t make any sense, so the rest of your post falls apart.
Well, even if they didn\'t release them its not like they will be keeping them as pets. They WILL breed, and fences are not indestructible. I grew up on a farm/ranch, and believe me, even a 3 ft, hogwire with 3 strands of barbed wire set in hedge posts will only hold so long without maintence. We have some fences on the farm that are over 100 years old, but with the exception of a few posts none of that is origional. Even with a good secure fence, our cattle made a grand escape several times a year.
Funny thing about cows is I can\'t tell if they are the most idiotic animals I\'ve ever encountered or really smart. I\'m still doing some detective work on that.
We have a hunting season here in Kansas, and I\"m sure in other places as well - specifically for deer. We\'ve long since killed off all of the major predators with our pastures and cropland which has all but driven them out. As a result the deer population explodes yearly, becoming dangerous for drivers, and in mating season, anyone who gets near one (and they will come right up to your house). Simply put - there are too many for the area we have. As a result it is up to humans to thin these herds. We\'d have to do something majorly majorly majorly scaled up if the cows were running loose too. Not that cows are even native to Kansas anyways...
/me wishes there were still Bison
What is natural is not necessarily moral
You use this arguement alot. It seems to be a major brick or even the keystone to your belief. The problem with it is that what is moral isn\'t necessarily what is necessary. Given that morals differer among social groups, societies in generral, religion, etc... we can show that moral is indeed a relative term. Personal perspective weighs in heavily. Necessity is not relative, though some things people define as \"necessities\" are obiously opinions. My car is not a necessity, not my computer not tv. I need food. Can\'t live without it.
or can we
TANGENT!
Hira Ratan Manek, aka Hirachand, has not eaten solid food in eight years. That is because he lives on sunlight. One day he just got sick of food and just quit eating it. He has been living on sunshine ever since.
Don\'t believe me? Well neither did NASA so they called him in to studying him, fully expecting to watch him starve to death.
He lived with them under observation for 130 days and they confirmed that all he did was drink water and \"eat\" sunlight.
What we have now is a new phenomenon. They even named the sh*t after him.
http://www.eightballmagazine.com/diatribes/volume02/007/138.htmMaybe that is the real solution! Yay we can abandon eating plants AND animals and that way we can only hurt things with our other means of destroying habitats. Then we can find jobs for all the people who work in the food industry!
/tangent
....whats moral isn\'t necessarily whats necessary. Given the choice of starvation in a dire situation, people even go canabilistic. Is this wrong? Die or become a canibal?
......too long continued next post.....
*edit*
Is it immoral to take and take and take land and build our houses and amusement parks and stores and farms in order to maintain the growing human population? doing so causes animal suffering, starvation, extinction....Does something being a necessity superceed morality of individual groups?
that said, my next major point is that currently the meat industry is a necessity. It could possibly be phased out but the ammount of additional cropland we\'d need would be quite large. Who knows the environmental impact of this? Animal byproducts are also necessary when growing food. Many pesticides like 24D use animal products in them. Fertilizer is often made from animal byproducts, and 50% of animal waste in the US is collected and flung into fields to fertilize in that manner. See there is an important process that gets interrupted in agriculture:
Plants ----> Animals eat plants ---->Animals Poop fertile material, and also die, making fertile material. ----> plants grow well -->cycle repeats.
*I know its simplified but you get the point.
We need large amounts of animal byproducts at the very least to sustain crops. Crop rotation doesn\'t magically revitalize the soil. Even well rotated cropland begins to degrade and produce less yield unless it is properly treated with nitrogen(main source is animal products) and other vital nutrients. While it is true that some plants replenish soil of certain nutrients, it is not enough. The cycle was there for a reason, before we interrupted it by growing it for ourselves in a controlled fashion. As a result of this, the agriculture industry and the meat industry are currently codependant on each other. Unless that changes with major advances in farming technology, it is impossible to have one without the other.
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