Opinions on the topic of Vegetarianism - Part 6

A continuation of the topic. See part one for an introduction.

Note: From this point on, all the parts in italics indicate me (Ideoform) quoting part of a previous posting by someone else.

Ideoform Msg. 630

"- that you don't care if these people actually support the particular cause you are fighting for, so long as you can hang on the coat-tails of their respect to push an agenda- you want to take the respect of people like Mohammed, Voltaire, and Dr. Sagan, and use it for your own agenda, of which these people may or may not share the beliefs as you are interpreting them."

I can research each person's vegetarian status, but I thought you would want to do that, since you were the one to bring up that point. Then you can claim the credit and gleefully call them out as hypocrites.

If I only quote vegetarians, then I myself would not be in this list, since as I have already said before, I eat meat.

So are you saying that the content of the quotes don't matter if they are the opinions of someone who isn't a vegetarian?

"- you don't care what Voltaire believes- "

Actually, I've read Voltaire's books. I don't agree with his philosophy entirely. But he makes some very good points that aren't relevant to this topic. He was a good philosopher. I've also read many of the other's writings, except for the Catholic ones. (I have read parts of Vatican II, though.)

"The context of the quote doesn't matter?"

The context matters. That's why I said what I said about the quotes being pulled out of their original context. However, I really feel that from the content of the quotes, that they stand on their own because they are very strong opinions on the subject. It's hard to imagine any of these quotes being considered ambiguous.

"I'm saying you're warping Voltaires beliefs to suit your needs."

How is my quoting Voltaire here warping his beliefs? If you were to read more Voltaire, you might not have said that.

"You ...wanted to use the person's image-"Status Counts"- but now that it seems this character has a greater motivation, connections to the worlds largest Vegan Association- suddenly Status doesn't count for squat."

Status does count for squat, in that the Newkirk quote is from someone who works for the world's largest animal rights organization. That is a status. She's just not dead yet like most of the others. But time will remedy that.

I said that status counts with people. I used the quotes of various famous people for that reason. I consider a quote from a Peta member also to be a status quote.

But I also think that quotes have value apart from who said them, in that they might be articulate, and well-said. I said both of those things. Not one over the other. Both. You can have two values for the same thing.

I consider the quotes by themselves with no author mentioned to have value. I also consider who said them to have value in that many, many people look to others to help them make value judgements in their lives------including Ms. Newkirk.

"Jiperly quoting Ideoform: If you want to imagine conspiracies and hidden agendas and lots of intrigue, go ahead..."

Jiperly-----"Awesome, cause thats what I'm, like, doing. I think you honestly and legitmately decided to exclude Ingrid Newkirk's profession from the list as a means for misinformation."

Quoting someone is not misinformation.

Nor is it a conspiracy. I have no hidden agenda because my agenda has already been stated many pages ago, in various forms. Your agenda isn't hidden, either.

I could have included quotes by other vegans here and that wouldn't be misinforming people, either.

"Jiperly quoting Ideoform: It takes no true courage to defend the powerful."

"Jiperly---Then doesn't it stand to reason that its cowardly to support the police, and brave to defend murders and rapists? Why aren't you following your ideals to their obvious conclusion?"

It isn't cowardly to support police. Policemen are generally not considered the powerful in this country. They are working men and women who happen to defend others already. It isn't cowardly to defend them. It isn't brave to defend them. They can defend themselves, as well as others.

I think murderers and rapists are not weak people requiring bravery to defend. However, the lawyers that defend them might disagree.

It takes courage to defend anything from attack. But it takes less courage to defend the status quo, the already powerful, the majority, the ones who have no need for other's to defend them from anything except a change in their status.
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Ideoform Msg. 631

There is a lot of advertising promoting eating meat.

There used to be, in particular, lots of advertising that featured the animal themselves promoting the meat product made from it.

There were pigs, chickens, ducks, cows, and others who were given caricatures and jingles. They all acted very excited to be chosen for promotion, even to singing and dancing.

In this way, they had the best status of all--they represented themselves.

Cartoon animals promoting themselves for consumption aren't done as much anymore, perhaps because more people are pointing out the same thing you are doing with quotes.

Animals have no voice of their own except for their behavior and sounds that they make. To assume that given a voice which had words, they would not object to being confined, killed and eaten, is quite easy when it's pretty certain you can't ever actually ask them for a true, honest quote on their own behalf.

(I would think, that given the circumstances, even if you did have a way of getting a verbal quote from a food animal somehow, that it is doubtful they would give an honest answer unless you could for certain provide protection for them afterward.)
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Msg. 632

H2O: "^^If you translate for us, perhaps I might reconsider.
Do you speak pig ?"

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Ideoform Msg. 633

Pig:

Oink.

Translation:

Oink.

People's general opinion about what this actually means:

Eat me.

(OK, don't get all weird on me.)

P.S. You started it......


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Ideoform Msg. 638

Warning:
The following is a quote. Quotes have been known to be used out of context for the quoter's purposes, stated or hidden. Please note any discrepencies and report them. Please consider carefully who is being quoted before deciding on the meaning of the quote.

Read at your own discretion.

***Those of you who are wary of quotes, please look away.***

I love this quote. I posted this quote, relating it to disability, on my blog a while back, but I think it also applies to those existences who have no human status.

“Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life,
few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive
or even to hope,
by a limit imposed from without,
but falsely identified as lying within.”

~Stephen Jay Gould

End of Quote.
Those who are quote-averse may now resume reading the rest of the thread.
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Ideoform Msg. 639

"As you said, its takes less bravery to support the status quo- again, if we take that standard of judgement and apply it to society, clearly it means you'd like to see more murderers, more rape, and frankly more anarchy all around, since the status quo is less murder, rape, and anarchy."

"Truth does not become more true by virtue of the fact that the entire world agrees with it,
nor less so even if the whole world disagrees with it."

--- Maimonides

And yes, this is another quote.
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Part of Msg. 640

"...I would just like to point out, that whilst these quotes are intresting and some of them are very moving, they remain useless to this discusion. These quotes do not provide any evidence or arguments for thier positions. As they are, they remain meaningless.............
For example:


“If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy furniture, let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophies... It would be a sad situation if the wrapper were better than the meat wrapped inside it.”
Albert Einstein

“If we're not supposed to eat animals, how come they're made out of meat?”
Tom Snyder...

“Better a mouse in the pot than no meat at all.” --Romanian

(---Many other quotes of this type omitted here.----)

...Now tell, me, other than being pretty words, what use were these quotes?"
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Ideoform Msg. 641

Hmmmm, pretty quotes.....

Well, what good is arguing?

Nobody has changed their position from the one they began with.

New posters come here to present their opinion. They might read a lot here and take some of it into consideration. That might be good for them to have more to think about.

I presented my opinion, my agenda, if you will, way back at the beginning. I feel that sometimes the arguments go in circles. Each side presents "evidence." But in the end, what to eat or not eat and why is a very personal decision, beyond eating what is available simply for survival.

Whenever "evidence" or "proof" is presented, it becomes target practice.

Whenever a person's opinion is presented, its validity is questioned, the person's character is analyzed; are they Christian? Are they Agnostic? Are they fanatical? Are they "wimpy" bleeding hearts? If I push them hard do they just give in to any opinion that is presented forcefully? Can they spell? Do they belong to a group of some kind? What does that all mean?

"If you don't stand for something you will fall for anything."

~Malcolm X

"I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it's for or against."

~Malcolm X

Now Malcom X said a lot of things I don't agree with, like:

"Nonviolence is fine as long as it works."

~Malcolm X

But you can appreciate the thoughts themselves without lumping me into the category with Malcolm X as a black revolutionary because I quoted him.
For instance, I don't automatically assume that you follow this practice because you quoted it:

“Better a mouse in the pot than no meat at all.” --Romanian

I liked this quote a lot:

“An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for special reasons - marriage, or meat, or beer, or cinema; but the moment he starts saying the things are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at other people who do use them, he has taken the wrong turning.”
--C.S. Lewis

And this quote:

“If we're not supposed to eat animals, how come they're made out of meat?”--Tom Snyder

...is just funny. Whoever doesn't have a sense of humor is too invested in the outcome of his arguments to really see either side clearly at all.

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Ideoform Msg. 642

What's left is inspiration.

What is wrong with doing/believing what inspires us? With becoming enchanted with an idea or concept or ideal because it is beautiful, elegant, articulate or compelling?

Arguments only convince others if they have some force of consequence. Is there a consequence to eating or not eating meat? These arguments can be picked apart endlessly. There is proof on both sides.

Some types of reasons are better for some people than others.

For instance, I switched to eating fish and eggs and small amounts of chicken and lamb when I began a very strict diet for Celiac disease. Yet, I am proud that I lived for 17 years without eating these things because I think it made a difference in the world. Being a vegetarian didn't cause my disease, but ironically, the year I spent on a macrobiotic diet after my daughter died of cancer probably accelerated the disease.

I am dating a vegetarian right now. I had no idea he was a vegetarian until after we met and had spoken about other interests for a while. It was not a requirement for me...but I am comfortable with it. His health improved dramatically years ago when he gave up eating red meat. These are real consequences. His diet is essential to his health. He's probably the healthiest person in my age group that I know right now.

And for other people, one of the reasons for eating meat is that they live in a farming community, and are helping the local economy to eat what is produced there. If they were to become vegetarian, they might be misunderstood as "not being supportive" of their community--a rebel.

Ironically, the last book I bought, to help my own health and my son's, was called "Gluten-Free 101." The author, who is very allergic to wheat (but not a Celiac) was raised on a wheat farm. Her entire extended family is involved in some kind of wheat production. Imagine the explaining that had to go on when she had to confront her family with her allergy results...

I can't eat anything with gluten or casein in it. Neither can my son. We aren't boycotting these certain proteins. Its not a rebellion. If I give up lamb and chicken, though, to eat the way my boyfriend eats, (which I have done) it is to support his decision because he has done it for spiritual reasons, even though his health improved so much it extended his life by decades, according to him.

I am then doing something I did for ethical reasons in the past,
now, for the same reason other people on farms eat meat--to support the local economy. I am supporting a person I care about.

He was raised on a pig farm. He says it was atrocious how the pigs were treated in the area he grew up in, he says they were cruel to them, but he ate meat during his entire childhood. The pigs fed his family--literally, and also through the income they provided from their sale. So I owe this man's existence in part to those pigs.

Life is not ever very simple, cut and dried. Life will surprise you every time with unexpected twists and turns and relationships between things.

But that doesn't mean we can abdicate all responsibility for thought, and reasoning, compassion and ethics. On the contrary, what we think, dream and conceptualize is the formation of the very future we are heading toward. The future we are becoming is the one we are formualting right here with our thoughts, intentions, desires, choices and actions.

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Opinions on Vegetarianism -- Part 5

Continuation of Topic, see part 1 for introduction

Ideoform Msg. 387
(addressing post by mfreemo)

In my opinion the original question was not about cannibalism.

Re-quoting original question:
"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 part about eating another human was added for clarification:

Quoting previous post:
"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. "

The question of morality came up in this part. ^^^ But not religion per say.

The controversial concept of "animals having rights" is the OP's conjecture about how the vegetarians and PETAns decide how to answer such questions.

As for thread deletion, I have seen many good (or at least very interesting) threads deleted when the posters started getting into personal attacks on each other more than addressing the original question. The moderators don't usually have the time to go through an entire thread to delete individual posts and so often simply delete the entire thread.

There are several things that we got close to here, such as one poster "baiting" another to kind of push their buttons. Others got a bit rude with some comments insulting Christianity, and we have some where the posts seem to go in circles over and over the same thing, repeating what has already been said more than once before. Repeating is fine for clarification.

Taking the thread way off-topic is another no-no. Sometimes dragging a thread to some other topic in order to gain attention or for other reasons, will get a thread deleted. If threads wander a bit to explore a side topic more thoroughly that is ok.

The tendency is for threads like this to go wholesale into religious or political arguments that end up going nowhere and just causing hard feelings rather than an exploration of a topic. Preaching, selling something, promoting an extreme or hostile agenda are all discouraged.

If this thread leads to interesting side-topics, starting new threads to discuss them is a good option.
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Ideoform Msg. 394

Animals and their ability to have empathy, morality, emotions, fairness and how that promotes species survival:

"Recent overviews of research by Stephanie Preston and Frans de Waal from the Yerkes Primate Center in Atlanta and Stanley Kuczaj's group at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg show that empathy is more widespread among animals than science has so far been willing to recognise. They point to research that suggests non-human primates, dolphins, whales, elephants and hippopotamuses, and even some rodents, behave in ways that support the claim that empathy has deep evolutionary roots."

"Decades spent watching wild and captive animals have persuaded me that species living in groups often have a sense of fair play built on moral codes of conduct that help cement their social relationships. Nature isn't always ruthlessly and selfishly competitive."

..."watching animals in action has convinced many researchers, myself included, that they possess the emotions upon which a moral sense is built. "

"...a sense of fairness is common to many animals, because there could be no social play without it, and without social play individual animals and entire groups would be at a disadvantage. ... morality evolved because it is adaptive. It helps many animals, including humans, to survive and flourish in their particular social environment. "

"...a moral sense may benefit groups as a whole. That's because group members learn rules of engagement during social play that influence their decisions about what is acceptable behaviour when dealing with each other. Recent research by Kyoko Okamoto and Shuichi Matsumura at Kyoto University suggests that we are not the only primates to use punishment and apology to help reinforce the rules of social engagement. And sticking to the rules is essential if individuals are to work in harmony to create a successful group that can outcompete other groups."

"What does all this tell us about human morality? First, we didn't invent virtue- its origins are much more ancient than our own. Secondly, we should stop seeing ourselves as morally superior to other animals. True, our big brains endow us with a highly sophisticated sense of what's right and wrong, but they also give us much greater scope for manipulating others-to cheat and deceive and try to benefit from immoral behaviour. In that sense, animal morality might be "purer" than our own.

We should accept our moral responsibility towards other animals, and that means developing and enforcing more restrictive regulations governing animal use. There is growing evidence that while animal minds vary from one species to another, they are not so different from our own, and only when we accept this can we be truly moral in our relations with other creatures and with nature as a whole."

~13 July 2002 New Scientist Magazine issue 2351, by Marc Bekoff
Marc Bekoff teaches biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He and Jane Goodall recently founded Ethologistsfor the Ethical Treatment of Animals

You can read the entire article here with the research references and examples:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg17523515.000-virtuous-nature.html?full=true
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Ideoform Msg. 453

"One farmer says to me, "You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make the bones with;"

and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying himself with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle."

~Henry David Thoreau

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Ideoform Msg. 521

Verzen:

Quoting previous post:
"I have to have meat in my diet otherwise my iron levels will drop really low and I will start having muscle spasms. Is it still immoral to eat meat if your health is on the line?"

Iron can be obtained easily from switching to using cast iron pots and pans for cooking. These are economical to purchase, easy to clean and maintain, and will last longer than you do. I also recommend drinking well water that has been tested first for contaminants.

Well water has many dissolved minerals in it that our current diet can be lacking in, particularly as farmed soils get depleted over years of farming and the use of chemicals to grow the food rather than the natural earth nutrients. For instance, some foodies recommend apples that have not had the "ideal" growing conditions, because too much irrigation and nutrients changes and dilutes the flavor of the apples.

As for the morality; when you know better, you do better. We all do the best we can given our upbringing, the nature of the culture we are immersed in, our current knowledge and awareness, and the availability of options.

I eat meat myself, but I find that eating organic, free-range meats and wild game and fish to be more to my liking, and I don't eat the large amounts most people eat. The recommended amount of meat per day is the size of a deck of cards. You can use small amounts of meats to flavor other foods, not as the main course.

My feeling about it is that we all die. Plants, animals, humans. I can choose to fund the kind of lifestyle I think an animal would prefer (certainly this is anthropomorphic--whoever said THAT was a sin?) I decide by imagining if I were an animal what kind of lifestyle would I want. I would most of all want freedom, sunshine, the ability to reproduce, the ability to eat what my digestive system was designed to eat, and to have some choices about what to eat. I would want to live long enough to experience life beyond childhood. I wouldn't want to be exposed to pesticides and toxins. I would want to have a humane death, quick, simple and without undue suffering or torture.

I can pay slightly more for this type of animal food. Sure, its a luxury. But morality is often seen to be a luxury...

But what price is peace of mind? What price is emotional and intellectual integrity? When I was innocent of the differences among various foods, I was just as peaceful as I am now. I just know more now...and when you know better, you do better...but nobody is forcing me to. Its always my choice.

And freedom to choose a luxury--even if it is based on a non-human's well-being, is true freedom.

Do I have to always and only choose to do what society thinks is the best thing for me? Many people smoke even though it is expensive and unhealthy. Why would it be worse for me to make choices that went beyond my own utility?

If people can dress their dogs in human clothes, then why is it bad to choose my dinner based on how it was treated before I bought it?

I also prefer to buy vegetables a certain way. I prefer vegetables that are often "heirloom" varieties, to ensure the biodiversity of our vegetable population in case we have changes in our environment where our existing monocultures won't survive as well.

I think buying things that are locally grown and in season are also a good choice, since you don't transport them as far and they are less likely to need preservatives or a long period of refrigeration. This saves energy, but limits my choices...making me have to be more creative in my cooking, just like my ancestors did.

I prefer purchasing coffee from fair trade organizations. Coffee doesn't grow where I live, so it has to be transported. So I might as well support the local farmers better with my choices.

I read this blog the other day called The Ethicurian. Its all about applying ethics to food production, preparation and enjoyment. We apply ethics to almost everything else, why not food? We spend almost 30% of our budgets on food and kitchen appliances, and 30% of our time eating it, sharing it and using it to connect with each other in gatherings and celebrations. Almost every human interaction involves food in some way.

What is curious to me, is that Americans have these HUGE kitchens, and yet so few of us cook in them more than to heat things up, order take-out, and eat pre-prepared foods. Most of us are on diets...trying NOT to eat. But perhaps we are just not satisfied with the way we eat??

Perhaps we are not satisfied with the way we define food's meaning in our lives anymore.

Remember giving thanks? I still do that. Thank you for the abundance, for the over-abundance of food.

And thank you for my re-discovery of the meaning of nourishment.
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Ideoform Msg. 539

"If a group of beings from another planet were to land on Earth -- beings who considered themselves as superior to you as you feel yourself to be to other animals -- would you concede them the rights over you that you assume over other animals?"

~George Bernard Shaw, playwright, Nobel Prize 1925

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Ideoform Msg. 540

"I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights.
That is the way of a whole human being."

~Abraham Lincoln, 16th U.S. President

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"A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food;
therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite.
And to act so is immoral."

~Leo Tolstoy

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"Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them. We live by the death of others. We are burial places."

~Leonardo Da Vinci

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"In their behavior toward creatures, all men are Nazis.
Human beings see oppression vividly when they're the victims.
Otherwise they victimize blindly and without a thought."

~Isaac Bashevis Singer, author, Nobel Prize 1978

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"Reality cannot be found except in One single source,
because of the interconnection of all things with one another."

~Leibniz, 1670

"We are a part of Nature as a whole whose order we follow."

~Spinoza, Ethics, 1673

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"Our task must be to free ourselves . . . by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty."

"Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances of survival for life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."

~Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel Prize 1921

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"Whenever people say 'We mustn't be sentimental,' you can take it they are about to do something cruel. And if they add 'We must be realistic,' they mean they are going to make money out of it."

~Brigid Brophy

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"At the moment our human world is based on the suffering and destruction of millions of non-humans.

To perceive this and to do something to change it in personal and public ways is to undergo a change of perception akin to a religious conversion.

Nothing can ever be seen in quite the same way again because once you have admitted the terror and pain of other species you will, unless you resist conversion, be always aware of the endless permutations of suffering that support our society."

~Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle, English physician, author, Sherlock Holmes

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"Christians whose eyes are fixed on the awfulness of crucifixion are in a special position to understand the awfulness of innocent suffering. The Cross of Christ is God's absolute identification with the weak, the powerless, and the vulnerable, but most of all with unprotected, undefended, innocent suffering."

~Rev. Dr. Andrew Linzey, Anglican Priest & Senior Research Fellow in Theology, Oxford

"...there is something so very dreadful, so satanic in tormenting those who have never harmed us, and who cannot defend themselves, who are utterly in our power, who have weapons neither of offence nor defense, that none but very hardened persons can endure the thought of it."

~Cardinal John Henry Newman, leader of the Anglican Oxford Movement, "Father of Vatican II"

"...[I]t is a terrible thing that religious people today can be so indifferent to the cruelty of the farms, shrugging it off as so much secular, animal rights foolishness. They above all should hear the call to mercy. They above all should have some kindness to spare. They above all should be mindful of the little things, seeing, in the suffering of these creatures, the same hand that has chosen all the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and the weak things to confound the things which are strong. 'Who so poor,' asked Anna Kingsford more than a century ago, 'so oppressed, so helpless, so mute and uncared for, as the dumb creatures who serve us -- they who, but for us, must starve, and who have no friend on earth if man be their enemy?
"Man must never hurt animals, must never ill-treat them nor torture them physically because they are sensitive creatures."

~ Matthew Scully, speechwriter for US Pres. G.W. Bush, from Dominion

"It is forbidden, according to the law of the Torah, to inflict pain upon any living creature. On the contrary, it is our duty to relieve the pain of any creature, even if it is ownerless or belongs to a non-Jew."

~The Code of Jewish Law, Sephardic compilation 1560

"Here you are faced with G-d's teaching, which obliges you not only to refrain from inflicting unnecessary pain on any animal, but to help and, when you can, to lessen the pain whenever you see an animal suffering, even through no fault of yours. … As G-d is merciful, so you also be merciful. As he loves and cares for all His creatures and His children and are related to Him, because He is their Father, so you also love all His creatures as your brethren. Let their joys be your joys, and their sorrows yours. Love them and with every power which G-d gives you, work for their welfare and benefit, because they are the children of your G-d, because they are your brothers and sisters."

~Hirsch, Rabbi Samson Rafael, father of German Jewish orthodoxy, Chief Rabbi of Austria, 1808

"A good deed done to an animal is as meritorious as a good deed done to a human being, while an act of cruelty to an animal is as bad as an act of cruelty to a human being."

~Mohammed, The Prophet

"I know, in my soul, that to eat a creature who is raised to be eaten, and who never has a chance to be a real being, is unhealthy. It's like...you're just eating misery. You're eating a bitter life."

"As we talked of freedom and justice one day for all, we sat down to steaks. 'I am eating misery,' I thought, as I took the first bite. And spit it out."

~Alice Walker, author, The Color Purple

"We consume the carcasses of creatures of like appetites, passions and organs with our own, and fill the slaughterhouses daily with screams of fear and pain."

~Robert Louis Stevenson, Scottish author, Treasure Island, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde

"We manage to swallow flesh only because we do not think of the cruel and sinful thing that we do. Cruelty... is a fundamental sin, and admits of no arguments or nice distinctions.

If only we do not allow our heart to grow callous, it protests against cruelty, is always clearly heard; and yet we go on perpetrating cruelties easily, merrily, all of us - in fact, anyone who does not join in is dubbed a crank."

~Rabindranath Tagore, Bengali educator, poet, Nobel Prize winner 1913

"The thinking man must oppose all cruel customs no matter how deeply rooted in tradition and surrounded by a halo. When we have a choice, we must avoid bringing torment and injury into the life of another, even the lowliest creature; to do so is to renounce our manhood and shoulder a guilt which nothing justifies."

~Rev. Dr. Albert Schweitzer, German physician, author, Nobel Peace Prize 1952

"Some folks insist that believing in animal rights is like a religion. But religion asks followers to believe in things nobody can see, while animal rights advocates ask followers to see things nobody can believe."

~Craig Burton, US novelist, "A Hatful of Pain"

"Recognize meat for what it really is: the antibiotic- and pesticide-laden corpse of a tortured animal."

~Newkirk, Ingrid

"To be a vegetarian is to disagree -- to disagree with the course of things today. Starvation, world hunger, cruelty, waste, wars -- we must make a statement against these things. Vegetarianism is my statement. And I think it's a strong one."

~ Isaac Bashevis Singer, Polish author, Nobel prize, 1978

"How pitiful, and what poverty of mind, to have said that the animals are machines deprived of understanding and feeling . . . has Nature arranged all the springs of feeling in this animal to the end that he might not feel? Has he nerves that he may he incapable of suffering?

People must have renounced, it seems to me, all natural intelligence to dare to advance that animals are but animated machines . . . It appears to me, besides, that [such people] can never have observed with attention the character of animals, not to have distinguished among them the different Voices of need, of suffering, of joy, of pain, of love, of anger, and of all their affections.

It would be very strange that they should express so well what they could not feel. . . . They are endowed with life as we are, because they have the same principles of life, the same feelings, the same ideas, memory, industry—as we."

~Voltaire, French author, quote from Trate sur la tolerance

"Humans - who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals - have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain. A sharp distinction between humans and "animals" is essential if we are to bend them to our will, make them work for us, wear them, eat them - without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret. It is unseemly of us, who often behave so unfeelingly toward other animals, to contend that only humans can suffer. The behavior of other animals renders such pretensions specious. They are just too much like us."

~Dr. Carl Sagan

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Ideoform Msg. 609

Quoting previous post:
"...got any original thoughts in that head of yours ---or only those of others ?"

I have posted my original thoughts on this thread first. My thoughts have been influenced by this thread. I don't repeat the original ones because they were formulated after much thought and personal experience to begin with.

Many of my original posts refer to the discussion that is currently happening and I like to only put things/ideas that haven't been already posted.

I think some of the quotes are more elegantly put than I could ever do. That's why I like quotes. I collect quotes. It's an interest of mine.

Here is a personal opinion; I think that there is not much in this world that is totally new in terms of thoughts and ideas. What we each add to the zeitgeist is our personal experience, our unique identities, and we sometimes try new things in new combinations...and even this opinion is not entirely new...and neither are many of those other's have posted here.

We are all using either science, religion, ethics or personal preferences to refer to in our postings. We use the leverage of the sources to leverage our arguments. If the source is trusted and respected that is "good" but if the source is a reformer that is making waves then that is "bad." Yet you are asking me for my own opinion, and who am I? I am a nobody. I am a housewife. I have no leverage. My opinion counts as one person's opinion. I get one vote. I am not as eloquent as these others, or have as many credentials. Why is it you want my opinion at all? It is only my own personal experience and thoughts...I throw my hat in with vegetarians...yet I am not a vegetarian at this time...

Original opinions are just that...opinions. Every one of us has a right to our opinion. Creating a proof about an opinion doesn't make it any less of an opinion. And I have learned that you can't create any proof that is strong enough to change someone's strongly held opinion. Particuarly if they formulated that opinion very young in life and stayed with it for many years.

What you have when you have a list of evidence is a guide map to someone's agenda. The agenda can be completely emotional, irrational and illogical. But you can use logic to layer it with to package your agenda.

I have presented my agenda already. You don't need any more layers of things to cover it up, pretty it up, make it seem more logical, more factual, more realistic, more practical, healthier, more commanding, convincing, more ethical, or more proof-like.

I think that all that is left is inspiration.

Everyone has to come to their own conclusions based on their own experience. That is freedom. If you make a mistake the others will not save you from it by creating laws about it...yet.

Quoting previous post:
"...who IS Ingrid Newkirk? ... she is the co-founder and president of PeTA.
... whom you placed on equal footing as novelists, prophets, and noble peace prize winners"

Well, at least she is doing something about what she believes in. I admire that. Plus, the particular quote of hers is something I have come to believe myself. I consider this quote quite succinct. I am not concise at all, myself.

Carl Sagan is pretty recognizable. So is Ingrid Newkirk to most people on this thread. I think that there isn't a single member of PeTA on this thread. Yet we are discussing them. I really don't think that it is a fair discussion for that reason, since the original poster was asking for members of vegetarian groups to respond.

All the quotes are ones that strike me as true, and that I believe. There are hundreds more quotes by these same people and by others that I found...but these I selected because I like them and thought they were appropriate.

Quoting previous post:
"My, that sounds like a well balanced person whose opinion I should trust and cherish their thoughts."

Sometimes reformers are considered crazy. Jesus was such a reformer of the Jewish faith. The religion I was raised in, Lutheran, had a reformer, Martin Luther, who was considered crazy and unbalanced. Martin Luther King was named after him and he was killed. I think that any new idea, is first seen with fear because it causes change and might disrupt the way things are. Anybody who defends the weak and powerless, the children, the elderly, the disabled, is sometimes seen as weak themselves. Yet this requires great courage.
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Ideoform Msg. 611

Quoting previous post:
"...Yea, they're brave- spending their money to keep arsonists on the streets, rather than spending it for the welfare and survival of abused and mistreated animals. What a bold stance."

I quote people not to strong-arm the debate but to provide inspiration for one side of it. I don't think my quotes are any more strong-arm in nature than those of the other's on here.

I don't have evidence of the people I quoted having been vegetarians.
I chose the particular quotes because of what they say, primarily. Secondarily is the person who was being quoted.

Status counts with most people. Some people will read the quotes and listen to the content of what is said, regardless of who is saying it. Some people will skip right to the name of the author to see "who it is" before reading the quote so they can decide whether or not to listen to what it says. That is why I tried to provide quotes by widely differing authors, from religious people to scientific people to politicians. Some people will only listen to the scientists. Some will only listen to religious. Some will take a political/power side only.

If you put the particular authors in a room together they would probably not-- as a group-- agree about much else, except that particular opinion I quoted. But that does not take away from the power of their stated opinions, (in my opinion.) :) Why would they all have to agree on everything in order for their opinion on this matter to be valid?

Perhaps they were taken out of some sort of context that would have changed somewhat the direction of their meaning. You could research that, and it might be a good topic for another thread--people not living up to their stated beliefs--making them hypocrites in the name of animal suffering.

As for Ingrid Newkirk, she is now "outed" on this thread, not by me, but by you. I didn't want the quote to be about Peta as much as about what the quote itself said. If it was a quote to defend Peta's actions, I would have put her job title on there. But I think the quote stands on its own.

I think it is nice that you put some of her other quotes on here. This provides the part of the discussion I thought was missing, but I wasn't going to promote Peta myself, since I don't approve of some of their actions. But I do approve of taking action about what you believe in and that is something I do myself and have done many times in the past.

Including her quote in with the others was not intended in any way to equate her with the other author's quoted.

You have done that comparison. I think you are reading into my posting more than what was intended. If you want to imagine conspiracies and hidden agendas and lots of intrigue, go ahead, but I prefer to keep pretty academic about things. Drama creates unnecessary exaggeration when the truth is usually not that dramatic.

I am not here to create guilt in anyone. I think that is what many people object to. It is not about making people wrong. It is about looking for light. What is good?

Good for me is not always going to be good for you. I can show you my way, and you can join me on my path, or not.
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Ideoform Msg. 613

Quoting previous post:

"Ideoform: I think that any new idea, is first seen with fear because it causes change and might disrupt the way things are. Anybody who defends the weak and powerless, the children, the elderly, the disabled, is sometimes seen as weak themselves. Yet this requires great courage."
----
Jiperly: Yea, they're brave- spending their money to keep arsonists on the streets, rather than spending it for the welfare and survival of abused and mistreated animals. What a bold stance."

Put it another way, then,

It takes no true courage to defend the powerful.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 "
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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. "
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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.
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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

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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?"
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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...)
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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.
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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...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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