Let's send that man a copy of 'How to win friends and influence people'.

Humans SHOULD eat meat.  That's what our pointy teeth are for.

Absolutely not.

Meat is muscle.  Everytime vegetarianism comes up on this board scores of people have to post "If God didn't want us to eat animals, why did he make them out of meat?" or "I like steak." or "Vegetarians are weak and get sick all the time."

These are the oldest, most unoriginal comments and yet people still make them again and again and again.  At least try to come up with something new.

-smn

i'm not going to tell you what to eat, or wear, or kill either and i appreciate that your attitude is reciprocal.  i know liberal *and* conservative f*cks are always berating everyone about their habits.  but seriously, that doesn't mean i can't get pissed off at that frustration being unwarrantedly pointed at me.

i'm not really even pointing fingers at others in this post - i'm making a broad inquiry based on experiences in my life:  why do meat eaters get so angry and frustrated w/ vegetarians?

i go to bbq's, with my own food, cook it myself right in the charred gristle on the grill - not on some pristine grill cause my food 'can't get contaminated' - and never, ever initiate some 'you shouldn't eat that burger' conversation.  still, i get all this flak for my preferences.  stupid comments, disappointed looks, i get treated like a frickin leper by  these unarmed pussies that think they're tough cause someone else killed their steak for them.

sorry to vent at the decent people that post here, but man, the turkeys are getting me down.

[edit: bad spellah]

Got this from [url]maddox.xmission.com[/url]

Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2002 10:23:52 -0800
From: PETA Correspondent
To: [email protected]
Subject: response requested

Thank you for contacting PETA about animals killed during grain harvesting.
While it is true that animals are killed during harvesting, there is a lot
more to this story than meets the eye. First, we, and animals rights
advocates in general, are primarily concerned with preventing the suffering
of living animals. While millions of animals are killed each year in the
harvesting process, millions of animals suffer EVERY DAY in the meat
industry. BILLIONS of animals are tortured and slaughtered for food every
year in the United States alone. All of these animals being raised for meat
eat grain. In fact, they consume more than half of all of the grain produced
in this country. If the population of the United States were vegetarian, we
would actually require LESS grain, and thereby kill fewer animals during
harvesting. When you eat meat, not only are you contributing to the
suffering of the farmed animals, but you are also contributing to the
majority of the animals killed during harvesting.


If you have a moment, I'd like to know in which restaurant you saw this
"Guiltless Grill" menu section. Thanks again for your message. We appreciate
the opportunity to discuss this important issue.

Sincerely,

Cliff Kaminsky
PETA Correspondent
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Note: I have never contacted PETA. Someone sent my guiltless grill article to them and PETA decided to contact me instead.

PETA stands for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Let's ignore for a moment that their name implies there exists a universal set of ethics, and instead let's focus on the meat of this email: PETA is "primarily concerned with preventing the suffering of living animals." Oh really? As opposed to preventing the suffering of dead animals? Good thing they clarified because I was confused and couldn't infer that when they said "animals" they didn't mean dead animals. Glad we have that cleared up, let's move on.

So what exactly constitutes as "prevention" of animal suffering? The moral vegetarians (not the ones who do it for religious or health reasons) love to chant "we're trying to limit the suffering." What the hell does that mean? If you eat wheat or soy, you're not limiting anything. Unless you plant, grow and pick your own crops, you're not doing everything you can to "limit" the suffering. You know deep down that you could help limit a whole lot more suffering, but you've chosen not to. You've chosen not to because your lifestyle is too convenient, and you'd have to give up too much, but nevermind that--you have a conscience to feel good about, and you can't let a little thing like millions of violent deaths of field animals get in the way of your moral trip.

Limit the suffering? That's like me saying I'm going to eat meat only 364 out of 365 days of the year in an effort to "limit" the suffering, I'm doing my part to prevent suffering. "BUT MADDOX, YOU COULD LIMIT A LOT MORE SUFFERING BY NOT EATING MEAT AT ALL!!!1" Exactly, and vegetarians could limit a lot more suffering by planting their own crops, but where do you draw the line? You claim to have compassion for animals, but just as soon as it gets too inconvenient you decide to call it quits? Cowards. You're no better off. Not in my book. A murderer who kills 10 people is no better off than a murderer who kills 20. Of course, from the perspective of a suggestible young vegetarian I'm sure being responsible for half as many murders as the next guy means you're off the hook, right?

I keep getting email from moral vegetarians saying "HEY MADOX WE FEED MORE GRAIN TO ANIMALS AND IF YOU EAT THE ANIMALS YOU ARE KILLING TWICE AS MUCH." No shit? The only difference is that I'm not protesting at street corners about other peoples' diets--I'm not the one with a mission to prevent "the suffering of living animals." This email I received, and many like it is the whole reason I wrote the article in the first place. My opinions are kept to myself on my personal web page. I don't remember asking anyone to read a damn thing on my website. When you open up your inbox, you don't find it full of my opinions, and if you do I didn't send them to you. I'm not standing on the street corners protesting, I'm not putting fliers on your car and I'm not putting ads on TV and in magazines. I'm not shoving my agenda down your throat, don't shove your agenda down mine. All you dumbass activists need to get bent already.

Fun with facts: vegetarians love to boast outrageous figures like "it takes 5,000 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef and only 20 gallons to produce one pound of wheat." I've heard figures ranging from 2,000 to 5,000, and vegetarians will be damned if they include a source so we'll take the mean (that means "average") and go with 3,500. The average person consumes 1.5 million gallons of water every year (it takes water to grow and produce the food you eat in addition to the water you drink, quit emailing me you morons). Why isn't PETA protesting overpopulation of humans on the street corners? Why isn't PETA passing out free condoms or throwing javelins in your cock when you walk down the street if they really cared about water consumption? It's not like that water just suddenly disappears. The earth has had about the same amount of water for 2 billion years. So if a pound of beef takes 3,500 gallons of water, what difference does it make? How many vegetarians drive a car? To make a car (including tires), it takes about 40,000 gallons of fresh water. That's not including the gas it takes to run the car, the electricity to run the gas station, the water used to create the boat that brought your precious oil, the water used to create the pavement you drive on, the destruction of toxic chemicals that went into creating your clothes, and the electricity you use every day to send me stupid emails over the internet. Every year you are directly responsible for the consumption of billions of gallons of water. There are 26 million people suffering preventable brain damage from iodine deficiency, and another 1.5 billion people at risk. Nevermind that, you have animals to save. By driving your cars, you pump billions of tons of poison into the atmosphere and you're slowly killing us all. The computer you use requires 250 watts of electricity, let alone the billions of computers required to keep you on the internet. All consuming energy. All contributing to pollution. Let's just ignore those minor hypocrisies. Someone wants to enjoy a burger and you'll be damned if you're going to let them.

What makes you think that animals suffer in slaughter houses anyway? I think it would rule to be raised for slaughter. Get all the free steroids you want, free meals and plenty of good company--hell, you have it made. Then when you're at the prime of your life, you get your head generously chopped off so you don't have to live through the suffering of old age. Not only that, but you can die with the satisfaction of knowing that somebody is going to enjoy eating a burger made out of you. What's more humane? Being slaughtered for meat or having to spend 8 hours a day, 40 hours per week in a cubicle for the rest of your life with assholes who listen to shitty music without headphones, then retiring and withering away with old age and cancer as your obnoxious kids grow up and treat you like shit? Slaughter please.

I don't eat dead animals (live ones either)!

I'm neither.

[img]http://www.click-smilie.de/sammlung/sauer/angry-smiley-002.gif[/img]

I am only a vegan when meat isn't on sale.

A "vegan" is one that avoids the use of [b]ALL[/b] animal products not just meat.

im gonna have to go find my beef cattle managment textbook, because theres about 3 pages of products that beef cattle products are used for that you'd never expect............like numerous common pharmaceutical products

edited, like the post before it, because im dyslexic today or something

[img]http://www.jacpac.com/images/steak.jpg[/img]

I personally don't give a rat's ass if someone wants to be a vegan or a vegatarian or even if they want to be a member of PETA.  What I DO have a problem with is when they try to force their beliefs onto me.  Like I said before I'm keenly aware with where my meat comes from and have killed plenty of it.  If you feel that meat is murder, fine.  Go sell crazy somewhere else.

[pot stirring mode]I only eat meat that once had a cute face and a name.[/pot stirring mode]

I do know where it comes from. Shot many deer, and a hog to make this (along with some other stuff):

[img]http://home.wi.rr.com/antigov/summersausage.jpg[/img]


people are pretty touchy about this stuff



i posted the question because a "friend" of mine just made a big deal out of telling me he is giving up meat. When I asked why all he could say was "because I feel like it"-- which is a good enough reason i guess. Just wondering if anyone has any arguments for no meat that are based on something other than "ewwwww grosss".

When you come to think of it, everything we eat is alive or was once alive or can become a new life form.  Are we to be so bigoted to think a plant is a lower life form just because it cannot move out of a predator's way?  Plants are NOT defenseless, look at poison ivy, briar thorns or tobacco.  We preferentially eat the infants (seeds)or reproductive organs of plants, often leaving the rest of the plant to die!  What a waste!  Its like General Sherman's March to the Sea where he cut the hams off living pigs.  Damn butchers!!  And I am talking of the vegetable growers.

Plants have the right to reproduction without harassment!

Now on to health matters.  Eating natural animal products is not unhealthy.  But eating farmed chicken is far worse than field-raised animals.  Its even with eating farmed beef as the feed often contains hydrogenated oils.

Sure, the Oreo cookie lawsuit was bogus but part of it was based in fact, that being hydrogenated oils can be bad for you.

[b][size=6]SAVE THE SOY!!!!![/size=6][/b]
[b][size=6]TOFU IS MURDER!!!!!!!!![/size=6][/b]

hehehehe, sorry, had to

been a vegetarian for about 15 years -
why? cause it just works for me...feel good eating this way, hardly ever get sick, don't consider myself thin and frail at all...

don't mind folks eating meat, will usually cook meat for friends and family..

what i do oppose to is how we treat those animals intended for food...hormones, antibiotics, in some cases extrememly poor living conditions, horrible trips to the slaughter house...

animals are here for us - whether it be as a pet, for food, for clothig, etc...

and because they provide us with many wonderful things...
ANIMALS DESERVE THE UTMOST RESPECT AND HONOR!!!

without them it'd be a pretty shitty place to live, don't you think??

i'm sure your "friend" is eternally thankful for your blessing.



who and what you f*ck over to survive is a concern for some people...  but you always f*ck over something. to paraphrase mr. gecko - murder is good, murder works.

murder is how god does things.  the socio-political reasons i choose not to eat meat are not selfless, 'let's not hurt the poor bunny' arguments.  they are 'i will thrive and backstab everyone that gets in my way' arguments.  i just realized my unnecessarily precarious position in this matter.

one:  there is a HUGE "organic" beef movement going on, along with grid marketing, alliances, etc......

first trend is to give only sick cows antibiotics instead of doing it as a general rule, then sell them at the auction barn as they are no longer "organic"

the hormones they give beef are damned mild, mostly only for more efficient lbs gained/lbs fed ratio, once again you can get meat from various companies that have no enhancement hormones

poor living conditions for cattle equates to poor cattle quality which equates to low prices however you choose to sell your cattle, so from a profit standpoint most producers make their cattle just as comforatable as possible

horrible trips to the slaughterhouse arent horrible, one quick head blow and the cattle are dead.  the only traumatic part is if they're skittish, which comes from late weaning, which is also a huge trend to get away from, for a premium price alot of cattle are now guaranteed weaned 3 months prior to sale

and lets face it, simply because we eat them they're are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more cattle and chicken etc...... than there would be if we just liked to feel good about their living conditions

edited for this website as an example(which i had to do a report on in my class)

[url]http://www.laurasleanbeef.com[/url]

true - you can find organic meats..but have you compared the prices to that of non-orgainc, non-treated meat??  it's still too expensive for the majority of the meat-eating public to purchase on a regular basis...

i did say in some cases...
i've just seen some not so nice slaughter house conditions - and have seen cattle kept in some pretty nasty places...

I didn't claw my way to the top of the foodchain to eat fuckin' soybeans!!!

its true that you're going to pay a premium when you buy a branded beef from an alliance or whichever entitity is providing a wanted product

but then again, thats the exact reason they started doing this, is because the public wanted it, therefore, if this is your reason to not eat meat, the solution is there and you pay a premium for the option

capitalism at its best, another reason for a free market

BTW, that was not my major in college, but instead an agricultural elective, instead of welding, which is an easy class but i already knew how to do...............i chose to take a class that require actual work because i was interested in knowing more about the field

 Cleveland Plain Dealer(I think) last week. Sorry, I didn't keep it.
Anyway, lack of vitamin D.

Really, I don't care if people eat meat or not, it's the attitude of the fringe vegetarians and PETA freaks that they are somehow "superior" that pisses me off.

Yea I like "Vegetables" with my steak!

Big(TheMeatEating!)Dozer66

You're right and many "vegans" have problems in that area. I'm not a "vegan" so I don't worry about it. I have found it interesting that it seems to bother more meat eaters that some here are vegetarians than the opposite.
I personally don't give a damn what [b]ANYONE[/b] eats and don't give a damn if anyone approves of me being a vegetarian.

[img]http://www.click-smilie.de/sammlung/tiere/animal-smiley-032.gif[/img][img]http://www.click-smilie.de/sammlung/tiere/animal-smiley-034.gif[/img][img]http://www.click-smilie.de/sammlung/tiere/animal-smiley-035.gif[/img][img]http://www.click-smilie.de/sammlung/tiere/animal-smiley-085.gif[/img]

First off Elephants are  vegan are they small?

Clint Walker is a vegan 6'5  275 is he small?

He fell on a sky pole pierced his heart,didn't kill him,because he ate no meat,hell no just a tough dude!

We have no really large incisors like the ape(whom is a vegan)we really can't rip fresh meat from the still quivering animal we just killed!

That's why we learned to use flint and then steel to cut the pieces to where we could eat it!

Then fire damn that changed it all!

But one should be careful to buy a piece of meat from a one cow basis!

When you buy ground hamburger it is from say 100 different cow lots with 100 different multiple doses of antibiotics to each cow!

So when you buy it (each lot sells it to say 100 more dealers down the road from Kansas to Oklahoma) its not what you want to eat!

Brahms makes their own burgers(think it might be milk cows no longer able to cut the mustard?)

So if you don't know the owner of that grain fed steer(you don't want the hamburger)  just go for the steaks and one cow one cut type meat!

I love red meat and my veggies too! Can you get B-12 from squash?

 Bob [:D]

Brahm's burgers!!!!!  I haven't had one of those since about 1987!  Them's good eatin'!  I may have to make a trip to OK one of these days...  [;)]

Even in the bible, it says that all the animals on earth are put there for our use.    

I'm not saying I believe that literally,  but I do know that life consists of participation in the food chain.   That includes eating anything you can catch, if you care to.

Vegetarian:  an old American Indian word for "lousy hunter".

There has been some reasonable speculation that it was essential for our ancestors to learn how to catch and kill animals in order for our ancestors to survive and prosper.    There is a lot of food energy in meat, especially when compared to the diet of a vegetarian.    By learning to catch and eat meat, which can provide enough energy in one meal to sustain you for the day,  this gave our ancestors more free time to do other things rather than constantly browse for edible plant matter.   Time to develop tools and invent things.

If you were to assume a purely vegetarian diet, you'd find that you can practically eat all day and never gain an ounce.   That's because there's not much caloric content in that diet,  and our systems aren't all that efficient at processing vegetable matter anyway.   Specifically, we can't break down cellulose.

I consider myself to be a second order vegetarian.   Meaning that I prefer to eat first order vegetarians, which are animals that have a vegetarian lifesyle.

You are what you eat, and I eat vegetarians.  Does that make me a vegetarian, too?  If so, then THIS is a type of vegetarianism I can really sink my teeth into!   Give me the 18 ounce Prime Rib with a nice rim of fat on it, (Fat is flavor in red meat!) cooked rare!  The kind that you can cut with a fork.

And yes, I'll have a salad and baked potato along with it so as to make the meal essentially complete,  so long as I don't run out of room first.


I don't have a problem with people choosing to pursue a vegetarian lifestyle.   Do what you want.  But if you get in my face about my choosing to be a meat eater,  expect me to cut my knuckles on your teeth, right through your lips.

I'm fully aware of the raw reality of animal slaughtering.   Rest assured,  if I had to butcher my own cows, pigs, and chickens to keep the buffalo wings, bacon, and sirloin steaks coming,   I'd do it.  No problem.   I'd kill them quickly and humanely,  but I'd do it.

If meat is murder, then I revel in murder.

CJ



CJ

FYI:  in hamburger meat, what you have is old cows no longer suited to do whatever it is they were doing, be it milking, breeding, whatever.  these are 90% grass eating cattle and as such have yellow fat.  but wait, the fat in hamburger meat is white.  yep, thats the fat from the beef cattle that didnt make it onto the edge of your steak.  old cow meat, young cow fat.  so if you drain off the fat, there is likely very damned little hormones, as what the hell would you give already grown cattle growth hormones for?

and now you know...........the rest of the story