Opinions on the topic of Vegetarianism - 4

Continuation of the topic. See part 1 for introduction.

Ideoform Msg. 268

Quoting previous poster:

"I KILL MY FOOD and I consume as much meat off the animal as my tools and teeth allow. The blood gets used in soups, the organs get eaten and I boil the bones for extra flavoring. In years past I've eaten the brains and eaten the meat RAW, especially when it's fresh and warm. ...I'm an omnivore and I kill rabbits, chickens and small game with my bare hands. Then the really, really sharp knives come out to properly butcher the carcass. All you styrofoam and saran wrapped hypocrites of meat eating can go suck on the drippings of the meat grinders in the slaughterhouses if you dare."

^^^^^ You do know that these forum postings appear on your profile?

Guilt is a powerful emotion.
I think that it is wrong to make any moral standard that people follow, a method to make others that don't follow it feel guilty.

When you know better, you do better. You can't feel guilty about the entire human condition. Being an aware, conscious being brings with it a natural sense of guilt from knowing the many ways in which we can affect the world and cause pain or suffering or great joy and well-being. This is what religions tend to help with. Religion provides a framework for discussing these awarenesses and measuring our responses to the things we see as we go out into the world and affect things. Christianity provides the concepts of mercy, of redemption, of forgiveness of both self and others.

Just because some people see morality in an aspect of their lives that others give no special thought to, should not make anyone else need to feel guilty.

If you see the same thing, however, then here is a path that others have taken before you should you choose to follow it. Or you can create your own path, develop your own awareness of the world, and find your own place in it among all kinds of sentient beings.
=============================
Ideoform Msg. 330

(after many very argumentative posts with repetitive discussion that landed on cannibalism, disability and euthanasia amongst other things...ugh.)

Please everybody, be careful. This thread will be deleted.

There is a set of rules about forum postings you can review:

http://forums.plentyoffish.com/datingPosts5028773.aspx#30

I like this thread. I like debate. I like everybody's opinions and thoughts on this. It would be a shame for the thread to get deleted.

My opinion on repeating the same points. Don't. It is there in the thread for people to look up. If you have to repeat something more than once, another repetition will not make a difference in the thread.

Also, more than two of any type of punctuation really is superfluous. Try using bold or italics.

Bold: [ b ] text [ /b ]

Italics: [ i ] text [ /i ]

Underline: [ u ] text [ /u ]

Don't use any spaces between the brackets, though.
=====================================
Ideoform Msg. 343

Quoting previous post: "...there is no real way to determine morality. It is choosing a favorite way. But even then, they are only preferences. I have no problem with you preferring a particular morality, but in the end you can't prefer away natural laws.

As in religious discussions, I don't care what your religious ideas are and you are welcome to them, but when you try to convince me that I should believe what you believe, I will argue why I don't.

I think my specieist religion is more true to natural laws than your vegan religion's beliefs. As long as the world is safe enough for you to practice yours, go for it.

When and if the world becomes unsafe, natural laws will override our preferences. "

When the world is unsafe, morality might have a totally different look to it. People living in a war zone might behave very differently, just like people stranded on an island.

Morality is by definition a choice of how to guide one's personal behavior. Extreme conditions are times when morality might be more in evidence than at other times.

Morality is not essential to survival. This is what makes it as precious as diamonds. It is something that might in the long run help our species to survive because it enhances our communal behavior, sometimes at the risk of the individual.

If everyone acted totally and completely independently, our society would probably break down. Society requires some "biological sacrifices" on the part of individuals.

Christianity has many principles that go counter to basic survival. The early Christians were fed to lions. Christians were told to love their enemies, turn the other cheek, give a thief their coat if he steals their shirt, and to not marry or reproduce. Yet this religion spread throughout the world and is the main religion of the western world. If you look at what the Roman society was like, they were the realists. They valued power, physical strength and practicality. Christianity was almost a rebellion against the brutality that was part of everyday life in that society.

I feel that the Christians were on to something that actually promoted survival and was very practical, but it is rather counter-intuitive. It promotes things that enhance the kind of lifestyle everyone seems to want and is even willing to fight and die for...peace, community, connectedness, tolerance, compassion, forgiveness.

Quoting previous post: "I am making a very simple point. That is, if you adhere to any variant of moral reasoning, then all of the traditional 'grounds' used to justify our current treatment of animals fail completely. "

I like this quote because it sums up Singer's argument so well that was the thing that "converted" me to vegetarianism so long ago. I had chosen to be a moral person, and by any moral reasoning at all, Singer's arguments work. The only way out of them is to not have a moral reasoning when it comes to animals.

Morality is counter-intuitive for humans, too. It is non-survivalist on the surface, yet it promoted our survival and even our ability to THRIVE since Christianity. This is the dillema and paradox of morality. It is a "dillema" as in the OP's question, for anyone who chooses to look at this beyond simply unconsciously eating whatever is expident whenever hungry. Once you apply morality to what you eat, the paradox is evident. And then you must choose.
=================================
Ideoform Msg. 348

(In response to atheist question about bible references previously mentioned:)

The Jewish people of the old testament had many restrictions about food, what to eat, how to eat, and even how to handle the dishes. There were even compunctions about the humane slaughter of animals which is why a religious person is required to inspect slaughterhouses when giving the Kosher designation.

Here are some examples from the old testament:

Exodus 23:19 (New International Version)

"Bring the best of the first fruits of your soil to the house of the LORD your God.
"Do not cook a young goat in its mother's milk.

Leviticus 3:17
" 'This is a lasting ordinance for the generations to come, wherever you live: You must not eat any fat or any blood.' "
Leviticus 7:24
The fat of an animal found dead or torn by wild animals may be used for any other purpose, but you must not eat it.
Leviticus 11:22
Of these you may eat any kind of locust, katydid, cricket or grasshopper.
Leviticus 11:39
" 'If an animal that you are allowed to eat dies, anyone who touches the carcass will be unclean till evening.
Leviticus 11:42
You are not to eat any creature that moves about on the ground, whether it moves on its belly or walks on all fours or on many feet; it is detestable.
Leviticus 17:14
because the life of every creature is its blood. That is why I have said to the Israelites, "You must not eat the blood of any creature, because the life of every creature is its blood; anyone who eats it must be cut off."
Leviticus 22:4
" 'If a descendant of Aaron has an infectious skin disease or a bodily discharge, he may not eat the sacred offerings until he is cleansed. He will also be unclean if he touches something defiled by a corpse or by anyone who has an emission of semen,
Leviticus 22:6
The one who touches any such thing will be unclean till evening. He must not eat any of the sacred offerings unless he has bathed himself with water.
Leviticus 22:27
"When a calf, a lamb or a goat is born, it is to remain with its mother for seven days. From the eighth day on, it will be acceptable as an offering made to the LORD by fire.

Deuteronomy 14:4
These are the animals you may eat: the ox, the sheep, the goat,
Deuteronomy 14:7
However, of those that chew the cud or that have a split hoof completely divided you may not eat the camel, the rabbit or the coney. Although they chew the cud, they do not have a split hoof; they are ceremonially unclean for you.
Deuteronomy 14:8
The pig is also unclean; although it has a split hoof, it does not chew the cud. You are not to eat their meat or touch their carcasses.
Deuteronomy 14:9
Of all the creatures living in the water, you may eat any that has fins and scales.
Deuteronomy 14:10
But anything that does not have fins and scales you may not eat; for you it is unclean.
Deuteronomy 14:11
You may eat any clean bird.
Deuteronomy 14:12
But these you may not eat: the eagle, the vulture, the black vulture,
Deuteronomy 14:21
Do not eat anything you find already dead. You may give it to an alien living in any of your towns, and he may eat it, or you may sell it to a foreigner. But you are a people holy to the LORD your God. Do not cook a young goat in its mother's milk.
================================
Ideoform Msg. 350

I want to discuss sentience for a bit.

The idea of sentience, and the ability to experience pain and suffering (as well as joy and well-being) has routinely been left to certain people who are the dominant in power, by the title they carry and by their profession. It is these people that have decided that only their idea of what matters when it comes to pain and suffering is what "counts." Historically, this applied to slavery, animals, and even our own infants. Only as recently as 1980 have Pediatricians routinely used anesthetic to perform surgery on infants. Even major surgery was performed without anesthetic because infant's brains were not considered "developed enough" to experience pain the same way an adult does.

Here is an exerpt from a paper on this subject.

"BABIES DON'T FEEL PAIN; A CENTURY OF DENIAL IN MEDICINE"
by David B. Chamberlain, Ph.D.

"During the 20th Century, when medicine rose to dominate childbirth in developed countries, it brought with it a denial of infant pain based on ancient prejudices and 'scientific' dogmas that can no longer be supported. The painful collision of babies with doctors continues today in neonatology, infant surgery without anesthetic, aggressive obstetrics and genital modification of newborn males. This presentation, given in San Francisco on May 2, 1991 includes an historical review of empirical findings on infant pain, some the reasons for physicians' indifference, and speculations about the negative consequences of violence to infants.

Introduction
Babies have had a difficult time getting us to accept them as real people with real feelings having real experiences. Deep prejudices have shadowed them for centuries: babies were sub-human, prehuman, or as Luis de Granada, a 16th century authority put it, "a lower animal in human form."

In the Age of Science, babies have not necessarily fared better. It may shock you to consider how many ways they have fared worse. In the last hundred years, scientific authorities robbed babies of their cries by calling them "random sound;" robbed them of their smiles by calling them "muscle spasms" or "gas;" robbed them of their memories by calling them "fantasies" and robbed them of their pain by calling it a "reflex."

In this paper, I reflect on the painful impact of medicine on infants over the last century. This is not an easy story to tell. It has been a century of discovery and denial, of promise and disillusionment, and the story still has a very uncertain ending.

In the 20th Century, infants have had a head-on collision with physicians, typically male physicians. Before this time, they always found themselves in the hands of women: mothers, grandmothers, aunts, and midwives. In the collision, infant senses, emotions, and cognitions were generally ignored. Over the years, doctors paid increasing attention to the pain of mothers but not to the pain of infants. Actually birth become more painful for infants. We must try to understand why."
----------------------------------------------------------
Here's another reference to this "discovery" that infants can feel pain:

The important and disturbing article on the new medical discovery that infants can feel pain (Science Times, Nov. 24), reports that doctors routinely operated on newborns without using anesthetics, ''from the 1940's until at least the late 1970's.''

The practice is a century older, and goes back to the very discovery of anesthesia. Dr. Henry J. Bigelow of Boston, who published the first medical article on the use of anesthesia, reported to the American Medical Association in 1848 that anesthestics were unnecessary for infants because they lacked the ''remembrance of suffering.''

Bigelow's colleague Dr. Samuel Cabot Jr. noted in the case records of one 1854 operation that the child patient had been ''rolled firmly in a sheet as a substitute for ether.'' But others, including the noted surgeon Dr. Samuel Gross, and Dr. Eliza L. S. Thomas of the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania, favored anesthetizing infant patients by the 1850's.

The early history of this debate is presented in the book, ''A Calculus of Suffering; Pain, Professionalism and Anesthesia in Nineteenth-Century America.'' MARTIN S. PERNICK Associate Professor of History University of Michigan Ann Arbor, Mich., Nov. 26, 1987 "
-------------------------------------------------------------
The way trained professionals "saw" pain as a "reflex" in human infants resembles the same ways of "seeing" that professionals have towards non-human sentient beings.

Perhaps because of "it could never happen to me" people tend to not even try to have empathy for non-human pain, suffering, joy or well-being. In cultures that have a belief in reincarnation, there is some reason to identify with a non-human existence, and so certain animals are given preferential treatment. But is it necessary to have the "threat" of reincarnation for us to expand our sense of empathy and compassion to anything other than an adult of our own species?
=============================
Ideoform Msg. 373

mfreemo:
(Note: For transparency's sake, I should tell you that my father was an anesthesiologist, and I witnessed many surgeries using anesthesia, and also some with only ether. Having witnessed and experienced great pain, and anesthesia, and also witnessed the results of having no pain from paralysis, I have to say pain is necessary to life itself. Yet, unnecessary or arbitrary pain is a crucial part of suffering.)

BABIES DON'T FEEL PAIN; A CENTURY OF DENIAL IN MEDICINE..
by David B. Chamberlain, Ph.D.

You can read the entire article here:

http://www.terrylarimore.com/BabiesAndPain.html

I think it is interesting to note that we have to calculate suffering in order to deal with it. If we have the means to reduce or minimise suffering (as in anesthesia), and can choose to reduce it or not to reduce it, then what calculation do you use to decide who gets the reduction in suffering and who doesn't?

Its off track to discuss religion, but I think the discussion of suffering applies.

To me, it is relevant WHO gets to decide what suffering is, and who suffers and who doesn't.

In this discussion, most meat eaters are arguing that it is only a matter of who is the most powerful, and not who has the most empathy.

Morality has been brought into the discussion of survival vs. values.
Many posters who are meat eaters have argued that any morality that includes animals is moot because the powerful get to decide what morality is, and any morality that is imposed on them is a threat to their survival as powerful creatures.

I think that morality cannot be imposed on others by power. It is not morality then, merely obedience--whether to other more powerful beings or to the immutable laws of nature.

Morality and religion have become confused because religions have stated spiritual values that are not power based, yet many religions have abused their own values by using power (and guilt, shaming, threats, fear) to impose these values on others.

From the perspective of the least powerful, weakest of creatures, unnecessary suffering makes a great difference to quality of life.

From the perspective of the most powerful, strongest of creatures, suffering is irrelevant to survival, in fact, being swayed by the appearance of suffering in prey, food, or the weak that are being controlled is a sign of weakness, and loss of power, and a threat to survival. And therefore no distinction needs to be made between necessary suffering and unnecessary suffering.
===============================

Opinions on the topic of Vegetarianism - 3

Part 3 of this Topic. See Part 1 for introduction.

Ideoform Msg. 204

"I think using animals for food is an ethical thing to do, but we've got to do it right. We've got to give those animals a decent life and we've got to give them a painless death. We owe the animal respect."
~Temple Grandin

Grandin is considered a philosophical leader of both the animal welfare and autism advocacy movements. Both movements commonly cite her work regarding animal welfare, neurology, and philosophy. She knows all too well the anxiety of feeling threatened by everything in her surroundings, and of being dismissed and feared, which motivates her in her quest to promote humane livestock handling processes. Her business website has entire sections on how to improve standards in slaughter plants and livestock farms. In 2004 she won a "Proggy" award, in the "visionary" category, from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

One of her most important essays about animal welfare is "Animals are not Things," in which she posits that animals are technically property in our society, but the law ultimately gives them ethical protections or rights. She uses a screwdriver metaphor: a person can legally smash or grind up a screwdriver but a person cannot legally torture an animal.

As a proponent of neurodiversity, Grandin has expressed that she would not support a cure of the entirety of the autistic spectrum.

"Animals Make Us Human," By Temple Grandin
"Animals In Translation," by Temple Grandin

Temple Grandin is a professor at Colorado State University.
She received her bachelor's degree in psychology from Franklin Pierce College, her master's degree in animal science from Arizona State University in 1975, and her Ph.D. in animal science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1989.

Dr. Grandin is a designer of livestock handling facilities and a Professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University. Facilities she has designed are located in the United States, Canada, Europe, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, and other countries. In North America, almost half of the cattle are handled in a center track restrainer system that she designed for meat plants. Curved chute and race systems she has designed for cattle are used worldwide and her writings on the flight zone and other principles of grazing animal behavior have helped many people to reduce stress on thier animals during handling.

She has also developed an objective scoring system for assessing handling of cattle and pigs at meat plants. This scoring system is being used by many large corporations to improve animal welfare. Other areas of research are: cattle temperament, environmental enrichment for pigs, reducing dark cutters and bruises, bull fertility, training procedures, and effective stunning methods for cattle and pigs at meat plants.

She teaches courses on livestock behaviour and facility design at Colorado State Univeristy and consults with the livestock industry on facility design, livestock handling, and animal welfare.

She has appeared on television shows such as 20/20, 48 Hours, CNN Larry King Live, PrimeTime Live, the Today Show, and many shows in other countries. She has been featured in People Magazine, the New York Times, Forbes, U.S. News and World Report, Time Magazine, the New York Times book review, and Discover magazine. Interviews with Dr. Grandin have been broadcast on National Public Radio. She has also authored over 300 articles in both scientific journals and livestock periodicals on animal handling, welfare, and facility design. She is the author of "Thinking in Pictures", "Livestock Handling and Transport," and "Genetics and the Behavior of Domestic Animals." Her book "Animals in Translation" was a New York Times best seller.

Her aim is to educate people throughout the world about modern methods of livestock handling which will improve animal welfare and productivity.

"The Emotional Lives of Animals," by Marc Bekoff

"Animals Matter: A Biologist Explains Why We Should Treat Animals with Compassion and Respect" by Marc Bekoff, Forward by Jane Goodall

Marc Bekoff is Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and is a Fellow of the Animal Behavior Society and a former Guggenheim Fellow. In 2000 he was awarded the Exemplar Award from the Animal Behavior Society for major long-term contributions to the field of animal behavior. Marc is also regional coordinator for Jane Goodall's Roots & Shoots program, in which he works with students of all ages, senior citizens and prisoners, and also is a member of the Ethics Committee of the Jane Goodall Institute. He and Jane co-founded the organization Ethologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals: Citizens for Responsible Animal Behavior Studies in 2000.

These authors are both educated in science, and are highly ethical.
======================================
Ideoform Msg. 223

Algernon's Story

Or, Why care about what animals feel, or think or communicate before we eat them.

Here's the story of a real rat. His name was Algernon. He was my lab rat in college. I was majoring in Psychology, and at my particular University, Behaviorism was the norm. Behaviorism says that it doesn't matter what is "inside the box" of people's heads (or animals) because we can't really know that, we can only study behavior. Which is the evidence of "something" inside the box, but we don't have to know what it is to study it.

Algernon was a white lab rat bred to be practically identical to all the other white lab rats my class was using, so any differences in behavior we noted would be supposedly entirely due to how we treated them and experimented on them.

The rats were in little wire cages stacked on top of each other with numbers on the front, a water bottle and a small amount of food pellets for them to eat. They could see and smell each other but not touch each other. We were to reduce the food until they all were hungry based on a formula that was called a starvation diet, then they went without food for a day so we could experiment with hungry rats. The hunger was the motivator for them to do what we wanted to train them to do.

We were rewarding them with a single food pellet for pressing a bar in another cage while we took notes. There was a specific process called "shaping" that we were all supposed to be learning. So us students were being "shaped" too.

I felt sorry for my rat. I wasn't supposed to name him because we weren't supposed to think of them that way so we could be objective when we called them by the numbers we had given them. Of course, I thought the number was a name, too. But I had just read the book "No Tears for Algernon" and thought I'd be cute and name him that to be a bit rebellious. I started feeding him in between other classes. I brought him real food, like lettuce. He seemed to really love the real food--but that was "inside the black box" so I couldn't be sure except that I knew he was very hungry, and I saw him eating it very fast.

Anyway, my rat should have been the slowest to press the bar in the group of rats. The days we all got our rats, most students put on these heavy gloves to pick up their rats so they wouldn't be bitten. Algernon let me pet him when I fed him, so he let me pick him up easily, and then I would pet him and talk to him. My classmates made fun of me talking to a rat. Other classmates picked their rats up by their tails like we were taught to (to avoid the "friendliness" part.) I made fun of them because of their squeeling and even screaming a bit when they reached in to get their rats and the rats struggled.

So I cuddled Algernon a bit, watching all this. My professor frowned at me and said my rat would do poorly because we didn't have as much time to do the "shaping." So, Algernon goes into the testing cage. He looks around curiously exploring everything, touches the bar, sniffs the food pellet, takes his time eating it. Then goes and looks around some more and then looks at ME. I cheer him on. I get teased. (MY shaping isn't going so well.)

This goes on for a few minutes, and pretty soon he's eating about 5 pellets and grooming himself. So I look at how the other rats are doing, thinking I can learn something from all the other behaviorist experts who are doing it "the right way."

Next to me, a student's rat is in a corner, fur all ruffled up, head down. I ask, "So how many pellets has he eaten?" She says he hasn't eaten any because he had stayed in the corner the whole time so far.

On the other side, the rat is going in circles, around and around, looking nervous or angry about something (although, I am not supposed to presume such a feeling inside its "black box".) I ask the student how many pellets his rat has eaten and he says something like, "I don't give a shit, he's just bit me when I put him in there. This rat is F***** crazy, he just keeps going in circles." This is the guy who put him in by lifting it by the tail like we were told to.

The next day, I give Algernon a special treat of seeds and fruit. He's not hungry at all when he goes into the cage. We talk a bit, he goes into the cage, looks around, gets comfortable, and saunters over to the bar and then LOOKS AT ME. I cheer him on, I get teased again. He proceeds to push the bar about ten times. The other rats still haven't found the bar yet. Some are just starting to get "closer" to the bar, though. This is the shaping part--we were supposed to give them a pellet for just looking at the bar at first, then for getting "closer."

The next time, I do the same thing. He goes right over to the bar, looks at me, and proceeds to push the bar about 20 times. I cheer him on. I get teased. But everyone comes over to watch. He pushes the bar another 20 times. I have only rewarded him with a few pellets. He looks at me. I think he is enjoying this, but I am probably only "projecting" my feelings onto him. I know I certainly am enjoying this. He proceeds to push the bar another 30 times before cleaning his fur. I take him out of the cage, and give him a bit of bananna. I talk to him. My professor is furious. He says I have "ruined" the experiment.

The next day, nobody is watching anyone else's rat. Algernon is the star. He is pushing the bar as fast as he can, to cheers and whoops. He pushes the bar 100 times, and I have to stop him and give him a rest. The experiment is over. He only had to do 100 times to get one pellet to "prove" how shaping works. He didn't need that one pellet. I had given him an entire apple that morning.

I was reprimanded by my professor, and my grade was docked for feeding my rat and not keeping him on the standard starvation diet during the experiment. I complained that my rat completed the experiment, did the shaping, and I had learned how to do the shaping even though he wasn't "motivated" by hunger. The professor said I had disrupted the class (just because everone was watching my rat, not because I was acting disruptive during class) and was a bad example to the other students, and my grade was reduced.

I asked to keep Algernon when the experiment was over. The professor said it was against the rules because the students tended to loose track of them and they got into the University's sewers. I was going to sneak in and steal him (the professor told me I would be accused of stealing University property if I did) but because I had spoken to my professor about it, he had expedited the process of killing all the rats used in the experiment by the standard method of putting them all into a black plastic bag and gassing them.

There were lots of tears for Algernon. He did a very good job of being a lab rat for me.

So my experience with Behaviorism, was that I got really good at shaping animal behavior. I got on the Dean's list that year. I used that to get a scholarship, and I used the scholarship to buy a motorcycle.

Thank you for the motorcycle, Algernon. It drove me really nice to my Physics class, where there are few parking spots.
===================================
Ideoform Msg. 241

Human Chow

This concept has happened. A man who runs a bakery in our area used to work for large food manufacturers as a biochemist did the research that created it while working as a food scientist for Tenneco Corporation and the Quaker Oats Company. He studied the nutritional deficiency syndrome called Kwashiorkor in Columbia that is caused by protein deficiency in starvation victims. He then went on to create protein in a lab setting to end starvation and in particular end this disease. But once it was created, the product was "terminated" because ending starvation in the world was not profitable.

He then went on to do some of his own research and started this local bakery based on his findings.

He wrote a small book about his experiences working in the food industry and revealed the convoluted politics of food in it. He says the food industry determines what you eat and how much you eat, by manufacturing foods that create cravings.

Its called "Beating the Food Giants" by Paul Stitt. He put the entire book on this site:

http://www.whale.to/v/stitt_b.html

"Paul Stitt gives a first hand account of the inside workings of the giant food companies of America. He tells how they program you to crave certain foods, to overeat every day, to make you feel stuffed but hungry, and how this "mad energy" of the food industry is destroying you and what you can do about it."

Here's a quote from the introduction:

"Our 50 year national experiment of letting the giant food companies dictate what we eat, how often we eat and how much we eat, which began in 1945, is now beginning to reveal its full effect.

We are now a nation where 90% of the people cannot pay their own lifetime medical expenses. Lifetime medical expenses are now so great that no one else can pay them either — neither employers nor government nor any other group.

We can live without cars, computers, fancy homes and new clothes every month, but we can't live without being healthy. We Americans brag about having the cheapest food bill on Earth, but is it so cheap when it's impossible to pay the sickness cost of consuming "cheap" food. In actuality it's not so cheap—on a per-pound, per- week, or per-lifetime cost, a diet of fresh fruits, vegetables, whole grains and a little meat is far cheaper than the junk food the Food Giants grind out and force down our throats.

In other words, the do-gooders of this world have it all wrong. "Health" care is not expensive — it's free. Because a healthful diet is less expensive, short term and long term, than an unhealthful junk food diet.

Sickness care is bankrupting our country and is leading the way in destroying our way of life and our culture. Staying healthy is by far the least expensive way to live — and the most fun. Why choose any other? Why become a burden to your family and society?"

Here's another quote about some research on food that was done at Quaker:

"It contained a report on a study in which four sets of rats were given special diets. One group received plain whole-wheat kernels, water, vitamins and minerals. Another group received Puffed Wheat, water, and the same nutrient solu­tion. A third set was given water and white sugar, and a fourth given nothing but water and the chemical nutrients. The rats which received the whole wheat lived more than a year on the diet. The rats who got nothing but water and vitamins lived for about eight weeks, and the animals on a white sugar and water diet lived for a month.

But Quaker's own laboratory study showed that rats given vitamins, water and all the Puffed Wheat they wanted died in two weeks. It wasn't a matter of the rats dying of malnutrition; results like these suggested that there was something actu­ally toxic about the Puffed Wheat itself. Proteins are very similar to certain toxins in molecular structure, and the puffing process of putting the grain under 1500 pounds-per-square-inch of pressure, and then releasing it, may produce chemical changes which turn a nutritious grain into a poisonous substance. And Quaker has known about this toxicity since 1942. "
===================================
Ideoform Msg. 253

Responding to poster "HO2"

Quoting HO2: "humans truly aren't moral"

If humans aren't moral, then is any moral question just fakery?

Another way to ask the OP's question is:
Is it moral to care about the suffering of animals?

Or is any suffering that might happen to anything other than a human not a moral concern?

Perhaps we can have a separate "morality" (even though it's fake by your standards) for how to discuss caring about animals well-being or suffering.

And a separate "morality" that only exists for discussing human well-being and suffering.

Responding to poster "Bright1Raziel:"

Quoting: "Your argument is from morality, mine is from biology. Morality dose not impinge on biology in any way, they are entirelly seperate arguments."

Is it scientific to discuss morality? If you only discuss morality in scientific terms, then you are never going to come to any moral conclusions. Only scientific ones.

But you can use science to discuss morality by using data to support claims as to whether animals do indeed experience suffering or not, or have emotions or not, or feel pain or not. However, it is non-scientific to call pain suffering. People can experience pain during sex and feel pleasure.

Is the experience of suffering then, only something that a being that is self-aware can be said to experience?

Is the self-aware being the only one that gets to decide this?

Morality is totally voluntary. You can't force someone to be moral, only to behave as if he/she is moral.

My personal morality, chosen voluntarily by me, has led me to feel that the worst evil is preventable suffering. My experiences with suffering, both personal suffering, and from observing the suffering and death of others, both human and non-human, is that pain can be born, and great inconvenience, disease, distress and all kinds of trials. But in the effort of doing so, morality is revealed by how it is dealt with and why.

You know the true measure of a man/woman by what he or she is willing to die for. Animals have died rescuing their human. I have seen humans die rescuing their animal. In Christianity, Jesus said that you must give up your life to save it. I think that what he meant was that in a spiritual sense, morality is only truly born in a man or any being, when he, she or it demonstrates giving up life itself (the ultimate pain) for something that means something beyond survival.

As a parent, I know the feeling of wanting to trade places with a dying child. I would have done so in a minute. This is my measure as a moral being. It might be a biological drive also. But when people march off to war to protect a country, a family, a way of life, that is also a measure.

The bond between humans, their family their community, is priceless. This bond exists between species also. It is a circle where our lives and survival intertwine. We cannot exist truly without the others.

Paul Stitt invented a protein that could be made from one of the world's most abundant resources; methane. We could stay alive on protein made from methane. But is this really living, or is it just survival? I would rather appreciate the life force given up for me by the plants and animals that went before me in this world than try to live a sterile life devoid of these complex, emotional relationships.

Yet to see this only in terms of biology, survival and science is to miss an entire realm of awareness, consciousness and being in this world. To claim that you must shut off your emotions to eat dinner, to sustain your continued relationship with this world, is an unsatisfying solution to me.
=============================
Ideoform

"Facts are generally overesteemed. For most practical purposes, a thing is what men think it is.
When they judged the earth flat, it was flat. As long as men thought slavery tolerable, tolerable it was.
We live down here among shadows, shadows among shadows."

~John Updike

===================================
Ideoform Msg. 263

Quoting previous post: "This was not my point. I was trying to make it clear that as an animal, my behavior is largely subject to my genes, and I refuse to let vegitarians make me feel guilty for something that is just a natural function of my biology."

The original question of this thread was posted by a meat eater, not a vegetarian trying to make people feel guilty. It was a set-up to get people like me to try to show our methods of "conversion." However, over the many years I was a vegetarian, I met not a single one who was trying to convert anyone else to vegetarianism. Each of the one's I met had come to their own conclusions on their own.

Morality is voluntary. Coersion is antithetical to that. Conversion is close to coersion. Enforcing morality with laws is just a way to create standards of behavior we all can agree to live by so that we can be in a community together. You can't punish a person into being moral. Nor does guilt work that way.

Guilt.

Guilt doesn't convert people. It doesn't change people. Guilt happens when you break your own version of morality that you have previously decided upon.

Jeffery Dahlmer was from my hometown. He kept people's heads in his refrigerator. He treated people and animals the same way. He had no empathy for people's suffering, and also had no empathy for animal's suffering. A lot of crime profilers say that the way a person or a group treats animals is a sign of how they will or could treat humans. Its not a "slippery slope." It is an indication of the ability to have empathy for another sentient being.

I believe that most people come to vegetarianism by personal choice, not because of being made to feel "guilty" or because they were coerced or converted. Meat eaters who observe vegetarians or talk with them about this, put the guilt on themselves.

As for rights. A dog who bites a human is held responsible by generally being "put down." This consequence is part of responsibility, in that even a dog should know not to break "the rules" of his enslavement or the rules of living with humans.

Animals that cannot cohabitate with humans peacefully are not allowed to. Is that the responsibility of the animal or of the humans who have decided what peaceful cohabitation means to them?

Many, many disabled and mentally ill persons populate our overcrowded prisons. Is this just because we can't "put them down?" Do they retain the right to be alive because they can feel suffering, or because they have "rights?"
================================

Opinions on the topic of Vegetarianism - 2

Part 2 of this topic, see part 1 for introduction to topic:

Ideoform:
(After much discussion bashing PETA's often outrageous methods.)

If PETA is so bad, yet vegetarians tolerate it, then why don't meat-eaters organize to change PETA's practices? Are you thinking they won't listen to you because you are a meat-eater?

Meat eaters have the MOST say in how food animals live and die. Your money directs their lives and deaths.
==================================
Ideoform msg. 108
So it seems that you are only worried about PETA's affect on humans, not on animals, and PETA is only worried about meat-eater's effects on animals, not how it's actions effect humans. It sounds like both are doing the same thing--trying to draw an ethical line where certain things matter and certain things don't.

If it is the terrorism aspect of activism that bothers people about PETA, then why not organize around the issue of terrorism in all its forms, as it manifests in all the different organizations that people place their passions into?

If you could figure out the root causes of terrorism, how it gets triggered, and how to stop it or transform it into something less hazardous, then your information will be in high demand in several governments...

Hmmm, but then you would have to limit your own organizing activities to strictly non-violent, non-terrorist methods yourself, to show how its done. (And to avoid being labeled a hypocrite.)

"It might do many well to take a survival class.
When energy levels plummet in a ice cold, barren, winter wonderland, devoid of many edibles some roasted critter on a stick fuels that internal furnace and stops the shivering. Mental sharpness fades quickly without refueling, hindering your chances to survive. I would challenge people to put their money where their mouth is ..."

I took a Wilderness Survival course in college. It included camping in the winter. Also a course in Orienteering, and one on how to forage for edible wild plants (Ethnobotany.) And I took Botany. (I know my food REALLY well, inside and out. Gross, huh?) I think I could survive in most situations, but probably it would be easier to eat the vegetation than to try to hunt something, even though I know how to shoot a gun, do archery and fencing (in a survival situation I probably won't have a gun or bow and arrow with me anyway.) As for insects, I do like snails, if you can call that an insect. Its kind of an aquired taste.

Quote from previous post:
"I keep a dog as a pet, he's adorable and I take care of him as best I can making sure he's well fed, groomed, and trained (poor training can lead to a dog dieing if they run out into a road or run away)."

I have a pet, too. He's a house rabbit. He's litterbox trained and has the run of the house like a cat--except he doesn't jump up on the kitchen counters. I also have two African Clawed frogs and some pet fish. I have trained the fish to do some things. Fish are smarter than people expect. I never thought about calling them kittens. I think PETA is pulling people's legs a lot. Cats and water are like oil and water--just don't go together. Its a strong, weird image. Very compelling, I think.

Vegetarianism, Veganism, aren't really survivalist subjects, and they aren't really political groups. They are a lifestyle, mostly. Its a lifestyle that is good if you are extremely poor, or it is good if you are well-off enough to care about food more than how it tastes. Like where did it come from, how was it made, and was it aware before becoming food?

PETA is taking the individual philosophical arguments from the ethics books and making them point by point, by a time-honored argumentative method of taking the traditional idea and turning it upside down, or backwards, or using exaggeration to the point of absurdity...we see our own unconscious conformities in a new way by making them seem "strange" for a moment. Its a very spirited method and mostly fun, but the weirdos can't be kept out of any big organization enough to keep them from causing some damage (and using the organization as a framework or as a scapegoat for their own destructive impulses.)

For instance, nobody eats cats. I don't really know why (I mentioned the carnivore thing earlier.) Even in China where they eat dogs, I don't think anybody really eats cats. So PETA chose kittens (cuter, baby cats) to compare to fish...they could have picked hamsters, or snakes, or turtles, or frogs, birds, or chameleons (all are sometimes pets.) Yuck, who would eat a cat?

But I ate sea turtle once when we were in Nicaragua. Tasted like veal. (I was a kid, we were tricked, they said it was chicken.) It was the first time I had met my food face to face before it was eaten. I had seen it roped upside-down in the back of a pick-up truck by the ocean earlier that day (it was HUGE and filled the entire truck) and we were eye-to-eye for a moment. Its head was larger than mine, with huge eyes.

In Nicaragua, the family we were staying with had a pet Paka. It was a huge rodent the size of a dog with red eyes and stripes. It slept in the bathtub to stay cool. They had rescued it as some Mosquito Indians were chasing it down for food, and it ran across their property. It was smaller then, and must have looked looked cuter. I forget its name, but we treated it like a dog. The Indians laughed at us because we were treating food as a pet. My Dad worked in the hospital nearby, which was on stilts because of termites. They kept pigs underneath the hospital. For some reason, nobody thought the pigs were as cute...even though they were probably smarter than the Paka.

I always felt bad that the Indians, who had worked so hard to hunt down their evening meal had to forgoe their dinner because some forgeiners decided to keep it for a pet. The reason was, we also were there to help a village whose entire population was dying of starvation because of a company cutting down the rainforest they depended on the year before. Seeing the starvation, and then seeing the Doctors acting that way about things (they lived like kings compared to the natives) made me think twice about it. When I got back to America, I never complained about caffeteria food again.

I really like the food ethics of the Fair Trade movement. I haven't seen Fair Trade meats yet. But any product can be Fair Trade, its just that we import so much of certain types of food that it greatly affects the local economies of the countries our food is imported from.
=============================
Msg. 111
People eating cats --also known as ""roof rabbit" by many.

Felines are the main ingredient in a famous soup .
Guangdong, China-- home to the Cantonese people .
Cat meat fetches approx $1.32 a pound.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/18/protests-in-china-over-ea_n_152175.html

Basically if it looks like food, one of the 6 Billion people on earth has probably tried it.
================================
Msg. 112
You'll never starve on a desert island, because of all the sand which is there.

==============================

Ideoform: Msg. 113

Hmmm, so people eat cats? I will have to go call PETA now to tell them to change their ad campaign.

I always say to people, that if it comes down to me or my rabbit, the rabbit will go. I tell my kids that even though we have gotten to know this individual rabbit and have chosen to make it a family member, that it is a food animal. Kinda like keeping a chicken as a pet. If we had to move, or someone living in our home became allergic to the rabbit, we would be sending him back to the Humane Society (where they give them away for free right after Easter when people tend to abandon them. You have to sign something to the effect that you won't eat them.)

Basically, I am kind of a Foodie. I have watched Marc Bittman's show over the years. He's this chef who has his own show, who travels around the world looking for the best food there is and then he challenges the chef to cook with him, and modifies the recipes but uses the same theme or technique the forgein chef employs. So he was on the radio just now. He has a new book out, called "Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating with More Than 75 Recipes." There is also a movie by the same name, produced by different people.

You can hear a clip of the radio interview at NPR:
http://www.npr.org/templates/topics/topic.php?topicId=1053

This guy is a major Foodie. This means he's mainly about cooking, and the taste of food, and eating really, really well, and he's been like that for many years. If he's "converted" or changed his diet--enough to have written a book about it, then this is a big thing. It means you can eat really well (he lives in New York,) and even be a top chef, and have very good reasons to eat with a conscience.

Here's a little more about him:
His book "How to Cook Everything"––won the IACP/Julia Child award, the James Beard Award, and three international cookbook awards––is the bible of basic cooking for millions of Americans, and is in its fifteenth printing; the 10th anniversary, revised edition was published in October, 2008.

The TV show; "Bittman Takes on America's Chefs," first aired in spring 2005, later won the James Beard Award for the best cooking series of that year, and continues to run regularly. The second season, "The Best Recipes in the World," aired a year later. In 2008 he appeared with Gwyneth Paltrow and Mario Batali, in a show called "Spain: On the Road Again." He also appears twice a month on NBC's Today Show, usually on Wednesdays.

In the 90s, Bittman created a best-selling collaboration with the internationally celebrated chef, Jean-Georges Vongerichten. Their classic, "Jean-Georges: Cooking at Home with a Four-Star Chef," is widely considered to be among the most accessible chef's cookbooks available. Mr. Bittman's first book, "Fish—The Complete Guide to Buying and Cooking" is the best-selling contemporary book on the subject. "The Best Recipes in the World" is a companion to his television series.

Anyway, I was a vegetarian before he was, but I did enjoy watching his show. Now I eat some fish, eggs and a little of organic meats. This is essentially what he advocates, now, too.

I think it's about being conscious about how what you are eating affects you, your health, and the well-being of the rest of the world. Its not about "banning" the sale of anything. Isn't it better to promote better lifestyle choices, than to try to legislate some kind of law about it?

If we can ban trans fats, and smoking, we can ban anything. But I think that it doesn't have to come to that if everyone has open discussions about the issues and becomes informed, and makes their own voluntary choices. Then you don't have to waste money "enforcing" a ban, or over-regulating and inspecting things. People will vote with their dollars, and people have already set up their own types of monitoring and regulations with things like Kosher inspections, and different independent evaluations being paid for by the food industry and other food-related businesses like restaurants themselves.

However, sometimes a ban or a law becomes necessary to get people's attention. We banned alcohol once, but removed it later because it didn't work and created a black market. A ban doesn't have to be permanent...but if we think the ban would actually work, then it might level the playing field for businesses so that they can all compete with the same set of rules. We have learned that banning something addicting doesn't work. Witness the failed war on drugs. Bans don't cure people's addictions.

You can try to ban things in creative ways. Like with cigarettes, you can ban where people smoke. But you can't force them to quit. The addiction is too strong--even when people WANT to quit, and everyone agrees that smoking is bad for people.

Note: I am not saying meat eating is an addiction, nor is it morally wrong. I am saying that there are ways in which we could change the meat eating in the country that would greatly improve things for a lot of people, and not just in this country.
================================================
Ideoform Msg. 117

Quote from a previous post:

"Moderation is the key--too much of anything can kill you--"

Its about way more than just being moderate. If moderation were really a key to American well-being, then we wouldn't have a skyrocketing obesity rate, heart disease rate, colon cancer and diabetes. We all think we are eating moderately already.

In most ethnic cuisines meat is used more as a flavoring to a dish than the main thing on the plate.

Moderation in meat eating can help some; we consume over 10 Billion animals in America each year. If we cut back 10% on meat consumption, we would consume one billion fewer animals. Raising animals for food production is a very inefficient use of our resources, and this level of consumption, about 10 lbs. of meat a week per person, doesn't enhance our lives much if you take into consideration the health care costs of obesity, high cholesterol drugs, and colon cancer treatments.

We pay for our meat over-consumption three times: once when we purchase the meat, again when we have to go to the gym to work it off, and again in high-priced cholesterol-lowering drugs and other expensive treatments like heart surgery.

But moderation doesn't take into account the quality of the food you do eat, or its origin. Food isn't generic. Our food is produced around the world in varying conditions and by varying ways of treating the workers.

For instance, buying organic foods has a triple-benefit: First, you get fewer pesticides (which usually affect neural cells.) Second, you protect the farmer and his family. There is a large increased rate of cancer among farmers and their families who need to use pesticides to produce crops at the level of production we are requiring of them. Third, you protect the people who manufacture and transport the chemicals themselves.

There are safer products to manufacture. Why use something so toxic if we are already producing more than we need to feed ourselves and much of the world? We are an overweight country. Why do we need such a concentrated food protein in such abundance that we are harming our health anyway? We lead sedentary lives. Our livelihoods do not depend on how much energy we burn each day doing our work anymore, like we used to when America was mainly an agrarian society (mostly farmers.)

(Besides which, chemical fertilizer is a bomb ingredient--if we had less of it laying around, terrorists might have a harder time finding the ingredients for their chemical disasters.) Let's reduce the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. I like that better than trying to dictate exactly someone's menu.

The price you pay for organic foods is the true cost of the food, without the artificial incentives and requirements (and regulations) we have placed on our food producers. If your food budget seems tighter eating organic, you might naturally spend less on meat and more on other things, and eat a little less and be healthier. This is how the economy should work. All the other things we are doing to enhance our production only enhances someone else's bottom line who lobbied for some crazy legislation, at the expense of our health by selling us stuff we don't need.

I think that food's cost should reflect it's total lifespan effect on America. Like from when it comes out of the ground to when it goes back into the ground. With all its effects on people's health, the situation and health of those who produce it calculated in between.

The economy can do this if you think about it carefully. Its not totally about banning. Its more about accountability. Its more about having the true costs reflected in the price. If it has a cancer-causing effect, or an obesity effect (think the appetite enhancers like MSG, high-fructose corn syrup, and aspartame) then that is part of the cost of how we are producing food in our country. If you added these not so "hidden" costs to the price of non-organic foods, I believe the prices would end up being the same as organic foods.

If you knew that you could eat all you want, except that there would be a tiny bit of Arsenic or Cyanide in all the food, would you still eat it?
===============================
Msg. 120

(Quoting Ideoform:) "I always say to people, that if it comes down to me or my rabbit, the rabbit will go. I tell my kids that even though we have gotten to know this individual rabbit and have chosen to make it a family member, that it is a food animal. Kinda like keeping a chicken as a pet."

This is one area where I would differ from this poster. I too have a rabbit, and he is as much a part of my family as any human. Could I kill and eat him if I were starving? I truly don't believe I could. Now again, this is what I am assuming, not having been in the situation....as starvation is a desperate place to be in...but I honestly could not tel l you right now that I could do it. It would torture me to even consider the idea, as I look at him as family.
==================================
Ideoform Msg. 121

Hello fellow rabbit person. I know the feeling.

It was the time when I first looked into the eyes of my food.... the saucer-plate sized eyes of that huge sea turtle...he really seemed to actually LOOK back at me....and then finding out that we were tricked into eating him the next evening...that's I think what really primed me for acting on the ideas in that ethics book on food animals. Because ANYTHING that is alive can be food for humans. That's the consequence of being an omnivore. (Well, don't eat armadillos or monkeys, OK?)

OK. Just to be clear, I didn't mean to say that I tell people I'd eat my pet in a starvation situation.

I meant that he would go back to the Humane Society where he came from if we had to move to a place that didn't allow pets or some other problem like that. I say he's a food animal to people to remind them that he's really, after all, just a rabbit. My yard has several rabbits that have a route around my house they follow, trying to figure out why they smell a rabbit in there...I don't feed them or bring them in the house. We think they are funny, looking for our rabbit. And our rabbit sits on top of the couch, looking out the window at the yard a lot. I am keeping him away from his tribe. I feel bad about that. I give him lots of his favorite vegetable, cilantro, as compensation. He's really quite spoiled.

But I also allow my teenage son to go hunting with his father. Even though I don't own a gun myself and I am for gun control, I think it is a good male bonding kind of thing. Plus, I think its always a good idea if a guy in a wheelchair knows how to shoot a gun...

If I eat hamburger chili for dinner, I am being a real hypocrite if I say that my rabbit's life and well-being is more important than a cow. For one thing the cow is way bigger.

(Its about the same kind of logic that a lot of PETA people are trying to point out...)
================================
Ideoform Msg. 123

(After very extended criticism of my previous posts.)

Dear Jiperly,

You are very young. You can take all the risks you want with your food. You will live forever for sure, at least for now.

Someday you might feel differently.
==================================
Ideoform Msg. 135

Quoting a previous post:
"A vast majority of produce, fruits and vegetables are truly quite dead by the time most Americans eat them.

Top 10: America's Healthiest Grocery Stores..."

I guess I have it pretty easy. I live within 10 blocks of two stores that sell whole foods.
I've seen that Woodman's has a big section of organic foods and other health foods, and their prices are very reasonable. I don't know if there is one in your area.

15 years ago there were only two stores in the entire city. We used to have an in formal food buying group. A bunch of us moms got together and pooled our grocery money together and got a truck to come from the warehouse with an order every month. We also bought shares from local farmers directly for produce.

Before that, I had a garden. They used to call them Victory Gardens. There was this really cool organic gardening magazine that was really crazy and funny and I miss it.

I was at an economic development planning meeting at our city last night and I met a Master Gardener. He was a retired lawyer, and really good at it. There are people like us everywhere...you just don't hear about it because we are usually pretty low-key about it. In my area there is a big group that is into buying all their food locally. They have a "challenge" to eat only food produced within 50 miles of where they live. Its not easy to do, but that's kind of the fun of it. It stretches your abilities, and makes you unhook from your old habits a bit. Its not like they are going to change the world, but you can change your part of the world...
========================================
Ideoform Msg. 138

Hey, cool that you have a house rabbit. I really don't know anyone else who has a house rabbit. I learned about it from a home health aide I hired for my Grandmother a long time ago, but her's died (was 18 years old!) and I haven't kept in touch with her. Everyone else locks up their rabbits in cages most of the time. I hate seeing animals behind bars. Its feels like they committed some crime, or are slaves of us or something, when what crime did they commit except by being our pets?

There's a website about house rabbits where I learned how to take care of one before adopting a rabbit. I have learned some things on my own, though, too.

I think caring for and living with pets teach tolerance and understanding to children. (If you teach it to them, that is.) It has helped my Autistic son learn to be gentle and understand other creatures better. Autistics have trouble with body language with people. Animals have only got "body language" so it forces them to relate on that level.

"btw, monkeys and armadillos are eaten by humans as well...some humans ..."

I put that comment in there because armadillos are known to be one of the few sources of leprosy. And leprosy is still incurable. And monkeys, gorillas and bats have been the suspected source of the Ebola virus disease that is also almost impossible to treat or to survive.

People don't read things here that carefully (I think a lot of us are at work and get a lot of interruptions) and I didn't want anyone to get the wrong idea that I was somehow advocating that people could eat any living thing at all --just because we CAN as omnivores.

There is also a really good reason to avoid cannibalism. Any animal that eats its own species is at risk for Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, Mad Cow disease (prions--which are indestructible by normal sterilization methods such as cooking, radiation.) This is controversial, but might have some truth to it because almost no species regularly eats its own. Its possible that it causes more problems than it helps with survival.

"Plants breathe, metabolize, and grow--hence they DIE once pulled from the ground..."

I love that you brought this up because I get to use it as an excuse to brag about my senior high school science project. :)

I cloned carrots. It was fun. I duplicated the original cloning experiment. The procedure basically involves taking a really fresh carrot, slicing it up into very tiny bits, then keeping it in a sterilized rotating growth medium for a month. Each cell then turns green and can be grown into an identical carrot plant to the original. This I would hardly call "DEAD" material.

My mom wasn't crazy about my experiment sitting rotating in her kitchen for a month though.

"Calories in - calories out."

^^^The above statement is "scientifically" true in a chemistry sense. But this is a phrase that I believe was used by lobbyists for the food industry to protect their businesses from the problems they think would happen if everyone knew that food grown in one place is not identical to food grown in another place. You see, when the scientists who drew up the calorie content for various foods tested food, they simply burned them and found out how much carbon each food contained. To test for nutrients is more difficult, but was done. However, many of these tests are very old, and done on plants that were grown differently than they are today. Food grown in one type of soil can have significantly different levels of nutrients than one grown in another. Witness the Vidalia onions. They are only able to be grown in a certain place. The same has been known to be true for centuries with grapes used for making wine.
=============================================
Ideoform Msg.

Quoting Jiperly:

" Are you honestly saying your stance has no victims? "

Sigh... Jiperly;

If you go looking for victims, you will always find them, because they volunteer themselves.
===================================
Ideoform Msg. 146

Quoting previous post by Jiperly (letting him push my buttons, I think)

"I don't understand Ideoform- you claim you're all for freedom and letting people decide with their wallets and that people have an inalienable right to decide what they put in their body- but you're equally arguing that people need to be protected from themselves, that people should not be left to decide things for themselves, and that the individuals freedom to decide what they put in their body is irrelivant when it comes to their health.

Which is it? Do you respect each persons ability to decide for themselves, or do you think people should be protected from themselves? Why all this talk of having "the true cost reflect the price"? Isn't that maniplulating the costs to force a healthy standard, rather than allowing people to choose their own healthy standard? Are you honestly saying your stance has no victims?"

So you want to know what my agenda is--what my bias is--because then it would be easier to research things to refute everything I am saying. I didn't answer your many earlier questions based on every line of my postings because your posting style leads me to think that you aren't really looking for the answers. You are looking for holes in people's arguments.

If by saying that you don't understand Ideoform, you mean for me to explain myself to you, then I have to say that I don't owe you an explanation of myself, but I will tell you, anyway. (Even though I don't think you want an explanation really, but more things for you to refute. And to use that to promote your own agenda. Which is fine, but it isn't really on-topic for this thread, which was about what goes into vegetarians' thinking, not about organizing vegetarians to take action. )

If you really want to organize vegetarians to action, that would be a really good idea for a new thread topic.

I like ideas, and I like putting them into form. (Hence, Ideoform.) I like listening to other people's ideas, collecting various bits of information, and studying topics like philosophy, science, ethics, and human behavior in some depth. I play around with the ideas, and after turning them around, inside out and upside down, I act on what I have learned and concluded.

This changes. Over my lifespan my values have changed. I have learned from this process. I have changed. I also know what works for me and what doesn't. I have seen these ideas play out over time. And seen the effects of my actions. It is one of the main benefits of growing older. Reflection.

I think that sometimes people think that the best judge of their own arguments is how firmly they can keep to their original conclusions. This negates the value of the argument that includes learning from experiences--including those of others. You can always go and check people's facts. (This is one of the main fun things about debating on the internet. You can fact-check almost immediately--WHILE you are arguing.)

If you are debating strictly as a scientist, then any discussion is not really an argument or a debate; it is an exchange of facts (or pseudo-facts.) If you think that all opinions are moot unless they are based on the current body of scientific evidence that has been researched and so-called "peer reviewed," then your bias is going to eliminate ALL OPINIONS. Because a fact is simply a fact, not an opinion. Plus, you will miss all the debate, feelings, motivations, problems, pressures, and emotions that go into forming what scientists choose to study, and how they formulate their hypotheses so that they can learn more about the universe.

I think that you have judged me as someone who attempts to maniplulate the facts to push an agenda. You want me to just present my sources. You have lost all interest in people's stories. You believe I am a cultist. You think I thrive on telling people reality is the opposite of what it is.

You say you entered this topic to encourage people who were outraged by people assuming that a violent organsation represented them, to create a counter organsation that promotes peace, tolerance, and acceptence of all people reguardless if they eat meat or not. And you admit it sounds like you are against "harmony and acceptance."

I am not outraged. I don't have that level of passion about PETA. And so far you haven't convinced any vegetarians that have responded to become outraged by them attempting to represent them. It seems as though YOU are the one who is outraged. Outrage is a pretty strong emotion. (Not very scientific at all. Not very objective.)

You accuse all vegetarians of supporting by default an organization that protects and supports arsonists who firebomb places where animal testing is conducted, while using the very benefits of animal testing to continue living to say such things as "Even if animal research resulted in a cure for AIDS, we'd be against it."

Are you saying that if we aren't against PETA we shouldn't be vegetarians to avoid association by people like you who would connect us, like McCarthy, to a terrorist organization even though we are not its members?

You say that if a vegetarian posts on this thread defending the way they eat, that it is as a bad as if we 'came into this forum and announced that Al Quedia, despite its flaws, still has a good message.' And you are 'surprised that someone was shocked and appalled at the outrage that flowed in response to such a message.' You say that there is no action you can take to rectifiy that situation- only vegetarians can help change it.

I think that there are lots of things you could do--here's one you probably won't do, but it would work if you care so much about this as your words say you do. You could become a vegetarian--or even PRETEND to become a vegetarian, and then organize a group to protest the tactics that PETA is doing. Or you could just organize vegetarians directly as a meat-eater. You could write letters to your representatives, do political advocacy yourself, to ban the political action practices PETA is using so no other organization that is advocating even worse ideas can try to use them.

I think that we can all be grateful that PETA is ONLY promoting not eating meat, or not hurting animals. How they are doing it can hurt some businesses, I haven't heard of any person being bombed by them.

I think you want to "get a bead on me" so you can tailor your arguments based on other people's arguments debating various political issues. You want me to fit into one of two "camps" that you present me with, like it's a war, like who I am is a black and white thing. You are either for this one group or against this one group...no in-between. Or I must join or create a different group to justify my eating habits to others.

So here is my position: I'm posting on this thread because I have been both a vegetarian and a vegan for a very long time in my life, I have seen starvation caused by human intervention in a population's food supply in person, I keep an animal as a pet that I would probably not eat myself if I were starving, I have also fasted for a very long time (24 days) so I know what not eating feels like. I also studied ethics and philosopy in college where the issue of the ethics of food was discussed in depth. I have experience doing political advocacy for 8 years, so I understand some about what PETA is doing/trying to do.

The OP's question was an ethical challenge to vegetarians, involving starvation, and most of the posters used PETA as an example. I think the OP's question could be re-phrased as something along the lines of:

"Are you a vegetarian because you believe animals more important than people?"

I don't think animals are more important than people.

I became a vegetarian after reading a book. My 19 year-old self was so impressed by the facts presented, the morality proposed, and the arguments used to back them up that I acted on them right away.

It goes to the kind of person I am. I made a committment to myself when I was very young to try to live my values. Whatever I valued, whatever made sense to me, whatever grabbed my heart, and my gut instinct, and inspired me, that is what I would do. I wouldn't just talk about it, and think about it. I would start to do it--take some kind of action--that same day or as soon as it was relevant. I've been doing this for almost 30 years.

Live rewards action. Worrying, wishing, wanting, all help people to learn what it is they really want in life, and they are clues as to where our lives need change or effort or action. But life, politics, culture, posterity, fame, fortune, whatever you value--rewards action.

For example, I have "a few extra pounds" on my profile. I gained most of them during a stressful time when I was sick. I now go to the gym every day and I dance on the weekends, and take yoga for flexibility. Thinking about doing it won't help me loose the weight. I have already lost 25 lbs. This is very hard to do for a woman my age.

Once I became a vegetarian at 19, I felt healthier, and I noticed that most people like me had become a vegetarian for health reasons. It's all over the literature about it, the cooking books about it, and when people talk about it.

At the time, when I was young, I sort of thought that what appeared to others to be an obsession with health at that age was a little weird so I didn't talk about it much. As I have aged, though, and lost people I loved to cancer, the health benefits of anything have become very important to me. Particularly since I have had children, and my motivation skyrocketed to try to keep them healthy because their health was completely dependent on what I did, or did not do for them.

Having kids you cook a lot. I learned to cook for 4 picky people (my ex was one of them.) After learning about cooking, watching lots of cooking shows and practicing a lot, I have become a very good cook. I can cook lots of different styles. I learned to cook meat for my husband because I DIDN'T want to try to CHANGE him or CONVERT him.

I didn't become a vegetarian because someone converted me or tried to change me. Posters have mentioned vegetarians being "wimpy." Or in other words, "bleeding hearts."
Nobody saw a wimpy fool and then came to my door and tried to convert me to vegetarianism like it is a religion. My professor in college didn't teach me ethics to convert me to anything. We discussed about a dozen different religions in that class and I didn't convert to any one of them. In fact, at the time, I was an agnostic.

I didn't become a vegetarian because I was "against something" I became a vegetarian because I was "for something" that I was really very impressed by; which was a certain type of ethics and quality of ethical debate which I could not, in my own conscience, ignore. Once you know better, you do better. Once you know, you don't have the excuse anymore of not knowing about something. I chose to risk my current lifestyle to put it more in line with my values. If someday PETA does something I feel the same way about, then I might take action against them. For now, they seem to have the same reasoning that came from the book I originally read, but they are using political tactics that are both aggressive and a bit funny, but not on the level of the kinds of things I advocate for right now. In fact, I think the best use of my time right now is to promote the healthiest, sanest, most compassionate lifestyle for myself, my family, my community and my planet that I can.

As you have said that you don't "believe in" vegetarianism, you must be someone who does eat meat.

So from what I can read, you are on this thread only to attack the arguments, motivations and reasoning of any vegetarians that respond to the OP's question--which was aimed at vegetarians.
===================================

Opinions on the topic of Vegetarianism - Part 1

Part 1 of 8 parts, of a file of postings by Ideoform.

Hello. A while ago, I participated in an extended discussion on various aspects of vegetarianism on a free public forum. I have seen some indications that this forum will be withdrawn soon, so I am transferring a lot of my own writings to this blog.

There are many more postings by other people on the thread that I will not be copying here. Its not to make my arguments sound stronger, but mainly for lack of time and because its not my writing and I can't identify the other posters to get their permission to copy their words. I might copy a few just to clarify why I wrote what I wrote because most of the time I am responding to other people, not creating a new discussion thread.

To see the entire thread, you can go to:

http://forums.plentyoffish.com/datingPosts11606996.aspx

Subject: Science/philosophy
Thread Title: Hypothetical dilemma for Vegans/PETA...
This thread spans the dates 1/13/2009 -- 12/5/2009.

The debate on this thread became quite intense at times, which made it interesting to read, and I didn't participate that often. I was suprised to find so many intense feelings surrounding the topic considering it is just about food and what people eat or don't eat...

I really appreciated reading and reasoning with all the people on the thread who took the time to make a thoughtful or empassioned post. It helped me to clarify my thoughts, which I had never had the chance, the inclination, or the audience to express them to. Personal beliefs are so important, that to leave them un-considered, un-conscious, un-examined, and un-expressed, is to live life half asleep.

Note: I have changed my views on vegetarianism over time with experience and input from discussion with others and information I have learned, and from new research. I explain some of this in my postings.

Currently, I follow a similar diet to that recommended by Dr. Mercola, but I began this style of nutrition years before I found his site.

For an interesting take on health and nutrition go to Dr. Mercola's site:
http://www.mercola.com/

Question Topic:

"Here is a hypothetical situation for those who prescribe to the somewhat extreme
vegan and PETA philosophy concerning the use of animals.

If you were stranded on a desert island, that had nothing but water supply, inedible trees and nothing to to eat but fish and seals, would you eat the animals or
strave to death.

The reason I ask is that I have some friends that are into the PETA
and vegan philosopy, and I have wondered how deep their conviction is.
From what I can understand it is based on the assertion that animals have the same
inherent rights as humans, and therefore it is immoral to eat or exploit them just as it would be to do the same to a human.

If I were in a situation where the only option for survival was to eat another human, I wouldnt do it. I would rather die than cross that line. A civilized man I have lived, and I would prefer to die as one.

So how about it PETAN's and vegans, honestly, what would you do?"

=================================================
NOTE: Italics indicate postings by other people.

Ideoform's (Me) Postings:

Hi, I am not a member of PETA. And I am not a vegetarian currently. But I can answer your hypothetical question from the position of a vegetarian because I was one for 15 years, (ovo-lacto) and vegan (no dairy or eggs) for a year.

I currently eat fish, (but not seals.) Fish aren't really considered animals, but seals are. Some vegetarians, like Mr. Roger's, say they won't eat anything with eyes, so fish end up in that category.

Vegetarians live longer (Seventh Day Adventists live about 9 years longer than average, I think.) So if you are a person who became vegetarian for your health, you would live longer if you switched to eating fish (seals, being mamals would be a last resort, then) on the island while you are waiting to be rescued, and then you could go back to being a vegetarian again. (I have heard that people can survive quite well on just coconuts for a very long time, though, and most (desert = tropical) islands have them, since coconuts float to almost any location.)

I became a vegetarian after taking a philosophy class where we were required to read the book "Animal Liberation" by philosopher Peter Singer, which had just been published back then and was causing a lot of discussion among ethicists. This is the book that later became the foundation for the creation of the animal rights movement, even though Peter Singer doesn't say that animals have rights per say, but that they can and do suffer, and that morally it is important to minimise suffering. His position was the greatest good for the greatest number (Utilitarianism.)

Most food animals are not caught in the wild, and in the process of domesticating animals for food and in their upkeep, many animals suffer greatly from the conditions in which they are required to live until they are used for food.

There are several other arguments for not eating animals, including fish, and one is that it is a very inefficient way of producing food for humans. A lot food that could be consumed by humans is wasted in the process of feeding it to the animals while they are being raised. You could feed many more starving people with the food and water we use to produce one cow, for instance, which would feed a limited number of people--and usually those are not starving, since the starving can seldom afford to eat meat.

For me, the main idea behind refusing to eat animals for so many years was NOT that I wasn't prepared to go out and hunt, kill, dress, cook and eat an animal myself, since I had never had to do that in my life, anyway. It was to prevent unnecessary suffering in a creature that I felt, could feel pain and experience suffering. If I could survive just fine on food that cattle, pigs and fish eat, then why shouldn't I spare them the problem of processing my food for me?

If an elephant, whale or rhinocerous can grow and thrive and be extremely strong and vital without eating meat or eggs, or drinking another mammal's milk, then why couldn't I?

Humans evolved so well because we are adaptable. We originally seem to have existed mainly on fruit grown high up in trees (where we were safe from other predators) and on vegetables we could forage, with a few insects thrown in for protein. When times got tough and the fruit was gone, we ventured out of the trees and were able to also eat and digest some meat. However, too much meat--in the sense that cats, dogs, (Cheetas and Wolves) sharks and crocodiles eat meat--is not good for our long-term health. Eating meat is a good way to get vital nutrients in a concentrated form for survival. I do not exist at a survival level, so I have many more choices that I can make, and my brain allows me to even make moral choices about how I prepare, kill and eat my food.

Even carnivores don't usually kill food for sport or over-kill a species. That would remove the source of their food, and they are less adaptable than an omnivore is.


Quote from earlier discussion:

"The reason I ask is that I have some friends that are into the PETA
and vegan philosopy, and I have wondered how deep their conviction is."

If you are interested in how deep your friend's conviction is so that you can try to change it, then you have to consider what their individual reasoning is in becoming vegetarian in the first place, and if in doing so, they have benefited from it in some way.

If they have benefited from being vegetarian, by feeling better, having better health, having something in common with other people in the nature of a club, or feel more passion in their lives for having a higher purpose beyond their own survival, then it would be ethically wrong of you to try to convince them to give up their convictions simply for your own comfort level.

If they are battering you over the head with their belief system, and are trying to change you/convert you against your will, then you can read this book and try to use some of their arguments against them. Perhaps by suggesting that it is unethical of them to cause you undo suffering because you don't share their personal convictions.
====================================
Posted by another member:

Ideoform, you say: "If they have benefited from being vegetarian, by feeling better, having better health, having something in common with other people in the nature of a club, or feel more passion in their lives for having a higher purpose beyond satisfying cravings, then it would be ethically wrong of you to try to convince them to give up their convictions simply for your own comfort level"

I changed one tiny part of your post. I know 2 vegans and there take on it all, is that animals are more a necessity to each other and the environment, than they are to civilized humanity now.
They also said they would eat meat during any situation where it became a necessity to survive.
I suppose there are many reasons people choose not to eat meat.
==========================================
Ideoform's Post:
Eating meat is more than satisfying a craving. Men, in particular and many older people need more protein in their diets. Meat is an efficient way to get more protein, and sometimes this feels like a CRAVING, but it might also be a signal your body is sending you that you are missing key nutrients you need for your health.

A vegan diet, one that eliminates dairy and eggs, does not supply a vital nutrient, vitamin B12. B12 is stored in the liver, and you can survive for many years without a source of it. But a B12 deficiency is serious, looks like anemia, and can cause dementia and memory loss, among other things. A diet of junk food can cause this, too.

When a person is able to live at a level where physical survival is not a daily concern, then eating meat is generally available to almost anyone on the planet unless you are in a religious group that prohibits it for religious reasons, like many people in India. There is the feeling that if you have the money you can eat meat, then. This is what I mean by having the luxury of being able to choose to have a higher purpose with regard to what you eat. If you are starving on a desert island, then you don't have this luxury.

Ethics/morality might be something that is a luxury, too. And the OP's question goes to that...

A more extreme question might be, if everyone on the planet who didn't eat meat now for whatever reason, began to eat meat, would it put a huge strain on the food supply? People in poor countries survive on vegetable food sources because it is more economical and more of their country's population can survive on less total food. These people survive amazingly in very difficult circumstances, and often when they have adopted a Western diet, which is very meat-based, they also get diseases they didn't get before, like colon cancer, and sometimes live shorter lives.

I think it is morally unethical of us to disregard the need for very tiny additions to a person's diet that can make a huge difference in their health, like the problem of vitamin A deficiency in children in developing countries. A very tiny amount of vitamin A can prevent blindness in children, (the dose required costs two cents) yet we somehow don't have the resources to provide the single dose required to prevent blindness. Perhaps if we all gave up (a nutritionally unnecessary, but more expensive serving) of meat on a few Thursday's, we could afford to prevent the blindness of 250,000 to 500,000 children each year.
======================================
Original Poster's Response:
"I will have to ask them where they get their B12 from then, as they look healthier than I do.
But then my diet is savoury pies, double stacked subs, and pizza.

I think the reason one of them does it is spiritual. She is a very conscious, and caring person.
As for my other friend, he is a pompous **** So I think part of the incentive is it is something he can feel proud about.
And he brags about it/pushes it on everyone too."
=========================================
Ideoform's Post:
Maybe he has some dementia and memory loss, then. :)

There is a big difference between how some people adopt a vegetarian lifestyle and how others do. If you just take the typical American diet and eliminate all meat, you have a sub-standard, unhealthy diet, that can leave you feeling depleted and irritable from a lack of nutrients for your brain. B12 is a brain nutrient.

If you are going to eliminate an entire food group, you have to eat more consciously, and the remaining food you eat needs to be even more nutritious. (That usually means, fresher, less processed, and well-rounded.)

Many vegans know about B12 and take a supplement for this. But any person can benefit from taking B12 for their health and brain functioning. Just be sure to tell your Doctor about it if you are feeling unwell, because taking B12 can mask anemia that is caused by other diseases.

B12 is being used to treat memory loss, dementia, autism, ADD and is in supplements for people trying to enhance their intelligence.

The religious/spiritual reason for being vegetarian is based on observations by spiritual people for centuries. I think it has a lot to do with the hormones in the meat at the time the animal is killed for food. If the animal is unduly stressed at the time of death, or is unhealthy (and thus has inflammation, or immune system activity) then these hormones are in its body tissues when they are removed to become food.

The adrenaline (the fight or flight hormone) that is in the fearful animal is in the food you eat. We can produce all our own hormones ourselves, in our own bodies. We don't need them from animals. So if you are eating animal flesh, the hormones from the animal (and also any hormones that are given to the animal by the farmer, such as bovine growth hormone) are going to enter your body, and your body will have to adjust its hormones to that. If you are trying to meditate or are trying to hear "that still, small voice" they call the conscience, any hormones you have injested might interfere with that process of going within to seek a quiet source, or of seeing the subtle mysteries of life.

In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with trying to find a purpose in life beyond your own self-interest. Paradoxically, our species' ability to do this has helped us to survive because of our ability to cooperate with others in the same survival group. And expanding this to include those in the entire ecosystem could also help our species to survive long term. But trying to gain moral superiority by just claiming to be vegetarian is annoying, not spiritual.
=======================================
Posted by another member (Jiperly)
>>>Vegetarians live longer

They don't live longer because of their diet, but rather because they observe their diet better than the average person- that they eat certain plants because it helps them balance their nutrients, as opposed to the average person who simply eats.

>>>I have heard that people can survive quite well on just coconuts for a very long time, though, and most (desert = tropical) islands have them, since coconuts float to almost any location.)

Don't twist the hypothetical to suit your needs. It wasn't a question of "would you survive on coconuts rather than eating meat"- it was "would you die for your ideals, or would you eat meat"

>>>I became a vegetarian after taking a philosophy class where we were required to read the book "Animal Liberation" by philosopher Peter Singer

I think thats horrible that your professor, in order for you to pass your philosophy class, forced you to be exposed to their politics. I think, in the effort to expose you to some ethics, your professor acted unethically.

>>>in the process of domesticating animals for food and in their upkeep, many animals suffer greatly from the conditions in which they are required to live until they are used for food.

And I believe that that is a message not against animal domestication, but rather a message against animal abuse. And alot has changed in the 35 years since that book has been written, too.

>>>A lot food that could be consumed by humans is wasted in the process of feeding it to the animals while they are being raised.

Thats a misconception spread by animal liberationists in an attempt to gain support by essentially maniplulating people- for instance, alot of the food fed to animals are completely inedible by humans.

Also, this concept assumes WAY too much- like in order for the feed to be given to the starving, that everyone would have to have equal ownership of the food to decide such a thing- otherwise, it would be left up to the farmer- and the farmer would offset the cost of feeding the animals to the increased profit they would make. Equally, alot of the land used for livestock isn't able to handle crops, and to convert these farms would costs hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars- and if the world rejects meat on that same day, the farmer would have no way to regain their losses. So what you are arguing would, in fact, create more starvation and malnuitrition, since both meat would become a rare commedity and less food would be able to be produced.

>>>We originally seem to have existed mainly on fruit grown high up in trees (where we were safe from other predators) and on vegetables we could forage, with a few insects thrown in for protein.

If what you're stating is our ancestors didn't eat meat, you're wrong. We are onmivores, and evolved from onmivores.

>>>Even carnivores don't usually kill food for sport or over-kill a species. That would remove the source of their food, and they are less adaptable than an omnivore is.

Neither morality nor concious thought has anything to do with that- they don't spare some animals and eat others to ensure there will be food next year- they do it because they are full, and content. Some animals, though, still hunt for sport- esspeically in their youth. And if given the chance, yes, animals will hunt other animals to extinction. This is nothing humanity is unique in doing. Hell, even herbivores will eat their plantlife to extinction if the opportunity arrises- thats why we have hunts, to keep the herbivore population in check with the plantlife population

>>>If they have benefited from being vegetarian, by feeling better, having better health, having something in common with other people in the nature of a club, or feel more passion in their lives for having a higher purpose beyond their own survival, then it would be ethically wrong of you to try to convince them to give up their convictions simply for your own comfort level.

Except for the health, couldn't the same results be achieved if they take up Heroin?

>>>In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with trying to find a purpose in life beyond your own self-interest.

I agree- but equally, I find nothing wrong with trying to living a life with your own interests in mind. Hell, I imagine that living for your own happiness rather than living through the happiness of others is a far greater moral action.





Also, I didn't post this earlier although someone mentioned it, but what the hell- this has already diverged into a general "Vegans suck" thread, so here is the Bullshit video that someone mentioned earlier;

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=0exLa6saV9o
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=ENAJ6-X7zvY&feature=related
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=3gpEyHWXqQ4&feature=related
===================================
Ideoform's Response:
Re: Post 28 Jiperly

Vegetarians outlast the general population by perhaps as much as ten healthy years."
--Michael Greger M.D.

The most data arises from a study of 1904 vegetarians over 21 years by the German Cancer Research Center (Deutsche Krebsforschungszentrum). The study's results:
Vegetarian men reduced their risk of early death by 50%
Women vegetarians benefit from a 30% reduction in mortality.

Research a Vegetarian diet
Medical research demonstrates that a Vegetarian diet provides protection against several diseases and the top three fatal problems in the United States; heart disease, strokes, and cancer. Those who follow a Vegetarian diet have fewer instances of death from heart disease. According to the latest medical research, Vegetarians run a risk that is 50% lower than that of meat eaters of developing heart disease. Generally Vegetarians have healthy cholesterol levels, blood pressure, and are less at risk for developing hypertension, diabetes (type 2), and colon and prostate cancer. Similarly, Vegetarians are at a 40% lower risk of developing cancer. Meat eaters are also 9 times more likely to have weight or obesity problems as compared to Vegetarians.

I put the reference to coconuts into parenthesis because it was intended a side-comment, not a twist.

Peter Singer's book was used in our Philosophy class as an up-to-date issue in ethics, not a way to promote politics---because at the time, PETA did not exist. PETA was founded in 1980. So I became a vegetarian before PETA existed, and so I was also not doing it for political reasons.

It simply wasn't a political issue at the time, it was more of a "lets adopt Eastern practices" kind of thing at the time. The health benefits had been well-known for decades before that in America because of the Seventh Day Adventists. And it had been promoted as a cure for mental illnesses in Sweden and Denmark before that, and was a spiritual-based practice in India for long before that.

Peter Singer is a Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, and laureate professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, University of Melbourne. He specializes in applied ethics, approaching ethical issues from a secular preference utilitarian perspective.

In an article for the online publication chinadialogue Singer called Western-style meat production cruel, unhealthy and damaging to the ecology. He rejects the idea that the method was necessary to meet the population’s increasing demand, explaining that animals in factory farms have to eat food grown explicitly for them, and they burn up most of the food’s energy just to breathe and keep their bodies warm. That loss of total energy has been verified in multiple studies, and the Nov. 2006 UN FAO Report states as much.

If cows were still fed grass and hay then your "inedible by humans" would be true, but cows are given a lot of corn and grain--human food--because it makes them grow faster, and get to market quicker--so they don't have to be fed and watered as long, which is expensive.

We did evolve from omnivores (if you believe in evolution) that ate mostly fruit and vegetables. Apes were considered omnivores because they ate a small amount of insects. Not much meat.

You say animals will eat other animals to extinction. Well, they don't. They would have all killed each other off long ago, then, way before we even got here. Animal predators don't generally kill any more than they can eat in one session. If you mess with their ecosystem, like say, a volcano erupts and their hunting grounds shrink to almost nothing, well then, yes they might.

Heroin will not improve your health. Trust me.
And generally heroin will not be a valid higher purpose for someone. Unless you call addiction a higher purpose. Or you call selling addicting illegal drugs a higher purpose.

"Hell, I imagine that living for your own happiness rather than living through the happiness of others is a far greater moral action."

Living for your own happiness--by itself-- is not a moral action. It is usually just called survival. Morality generally implies at least the consciousness of other's existence and well-being. Living for your own happiness, is however, an economic principle of capitalism based on the concept of greed being used for the common good. Greed is generally considered a bad thing, morally, but is being utilized by a political system for its own purposes.

It is interesting to note that you started your sentence about living for your own happiness with the word "Hell."
================================
Ideoform:

(After much debate by other posters that veered off-track...)

The OP's question is whether vegetarians are willing to let themselves go extinct to allow for fish and seals to survive.

If every vegetarian were to be faced with this dillema, and they were the type of vegetarian that became that way for moral reasons, (not just health reasons) then this philosophy--or rather--constraint, would succeed in doing what you want to be done to PETA. Vegetarians would go extinct. It is a non-survival based strategy. That only a human can or would do.

A scientist would say that any strategy that does not have survival as its most basic tenet is an un-truth. The mere existence of even one human who would give up their life for an animal is antithetical to that. And yet, in our city, someone just died last month going back into their burning home to rescue their cat.
=====================================
Ideoform:
Msg.68
Ok. I think that the OP's question was a good one for people to get started on the ethics of what people eat. But it seems as if many subsequent posters are really interested in debating with/refuting claims of PETA members. No one posting has so far admitted to being a PETA member, so I decided to represent their case, just for fun. I have to say though, that I am currently not a vegetarian or a member of PETA. But I suppose I could join and infiltrate their camp and get some inside information...then again, no.

I think the reason so many vegetarians don't organize to try to get PETA to be more mainstream-friendly, is that it is already accomplishing something for vegetarians. It is getting them publicity, perhaps some recognition, and even some information about what they are doing. It makes it a little easier to be a vegetarian when you aren't always having to explain what a vegetarian is to everyone.

There is a reason you have only heard of PETA and not much about the many other vegetarian organizations. They seem to be organized specifically to get media attention to their concerns. They take a reasonable issue, which admittedly is rather bland--i.e, not eating something--and push the edges out until it looks a little extreme, and then take some outrageous action or make some outrageous claim or create some way-out advertisement to get attention. This works.

In the dating scene, this is called "drama." And if drama didn't work for people, then no one would do it. In the newsroom they have a saying; "If it doesn't bleed, it doesn't lead."

When I first became a vegetarian 25 years ago, I was worried about looking too weird so I didn't talk about it to other people much, unless they asked me. And people did react funny to me at times, (remember PETA didn't exist yet, there was this "Anti-Vivisection Society" at my University), but the main reactions were religious in nature. Which is funny to me, because a lot of vegetarians are so because of ethical reasons.

I will share with you an interesting story from 25 years ago about what it was like back then to be a vegetarian. I was hired to work for our local utility company to be their "Executive Waitress" which included planning menus and cooking and creating a big buffet for the top exec.'s every week, as well as personally serving them in a special dining room on Wegewood china every lunchtime.

This worked out fine for a while, until when I was eating, the woman who hired me made a comment that she had noticed I never ate any meat when I was eating my own lunch. She wanted to know why (I guess perhaps she thought I didn't think the meat was good enough or something like that) and she sort of challenged me to tell me why in a confrontational kind of way--like I was making some kind of passive-aggressive statement or something. Maybe since I had very long hair she thought I was a hippie or something (I wasn't.)

And I told her I was a vegetarian. She then got very preachy with me and even got a little angry about it, even though I was trying to minimise my personal investment and interest in vegetarianism (I wanted to stay working there!) She acted like I had given her a personal affront. She said God had put meat on the planet for us to consume and it was a slap in the face to God that I was throwing His food back in His face by rejecting it!

I had no idea people felt that strongly about what I chose to eat or did not choose to eat. I had never mentioned it to anyone at work. I had no idea people were actually interested enough to WATCH what I was eating or not eating during my own personal lunch time and break time. And also to take so much interest as to even lecture me about it....I thought that it was none of her business.

So, I guess, I kind of like PETA for throwing it back in their faces a bit. That intolerance. That meddlesomness in people's private lives. That "I know best what is good for you" kind of attitude.

If you do anything against the norm, you are asking for people to push you back to the middle again. Perhaps if all of you non-vegetarians were to become vegetarian for a while (come on, it won't kill you) then you would see what we are talking about. You would get what we get from people and you would know why we aren't stopping PETA, even though we would individually never go that far or be that outrageous.

Now, if I were organizing a vegetarian group, I would run it differently myself. And this is not a frivolous statement coming from me because I already am a trained political grassroots organizer, and have done organizing for many years. I just haven't organized around the issue of what I eat. I feel there are many other more important issues to organize around than that.

My favorite methods of organizing people are those promoted by Martin Luther King, who advocated a policy of non-violent political action. This is what inspired me to post this today, on his birthday. Dr. King was a student of the political action style of Ghandi, Leo Tolstoy, and in America Henry David Thoreau's essay on Civil Disobedience (Thoreau was mainly a vegetarian.)

Boycotting is one of the non-violent methods of changing things. So perhaps some people think of vegetarians as people who are boycotting meat. I used to work for an Economist at my University. He told me that people in capitalist countries "vote with their dollars." In other words, whatever you pay for you get more of, and whatever you don't spend money on goes away--or there is less of it produced. Its "the invisible hand" of economics.

If you don't like Coke, you buy Pepsi. It isn't passive-aggressive, it isn't a boycott of Coke. Its the American Way.

If you don't like Coke because they get all their high fructose corn syrup from a communist country, then that's a political statement (if you TELL someone.) If you don't buy Coke because you like the taste of Pepsi better, then that is a personal preference. But the economy doesn't know WHY you aren't buying Coke unless you tell someone, or organize/influence others around your choice. If you personally want to vote with your dollars for whatever you like or don't like and never tell a soul, then the economy still works just as well as before. They just sell a little less of one thing and a little more of something else.

So I guess there will be a lot fewer cows around if a lot of vegetarians organized to try to influence other people to stop eating meat. This would be sad for the cows, if you think that living to only be one year old is living much. Is this better for the cow? If he/she/it is never born because it isn't being bred, then I guess there just will be fewer cows, but those that are still around won't have much of a change, unless people who EAT MEAT organize to make their year-long stay here more pleasant, or longer. It is people who pay for meat that will have the say in that.

This is what I currently do. I buy meat from farms that raise cattle differently. I like that my food is treated well before I eat it. (Is it too silly to say I like to eat only happy food?)

Well, actually, the energy I get is from the sun. This energy gets captured by very industrious plants and converted into chemical energy. Then a hard-working farmer feeds it to the hopefully happy cow, or buffalo, that kindly processes my plant food for me, by digesting it really well through two stomachs, creating muscles that I can get really good concentrated protein from. Hopefully, its death is quick and relatively painless, so I don't injest tons of andrenaline from the terrified dying animal.

I hear that if you buy Kosher products, there is some religious person who periodically inspects slaughter houses to make sure the animals are killed relatively humanely.

I have no reason to stop eating to save the earth. To live here on Earth, something must die, be it a plant or an animal. The only question is if we have the luxury of deciding how the food is produced, cared for and dispatched. I don't even get to decide when I will die.

Have you noticed that carnivores don't make good eating? That is because you are eating too high on the food chain. The solar energy degrades too much, the contaminants get more concentrated after being condenced by an animal. So almost no carnivores are eaten on a regular basis. I know people say crocodile and bear taste good, though. So, this means that I will make a bad food choice for a predator. Vegetarians, on the other hand, are what every carnivore usually eats.

Food is a good topic for a discussion of ethics and economics because A. Everybody eats, and B. A large part of most people's spending is on food. So your food budget influences people around the world.
==============================