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Source: (consider it) Thread: How important is method of slaughter?
Moo

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quote:
Originally posted by Winstonian
Wild animals kill because they need to survive.

AIUI members of the cat family kill for the sport of it. They certainly torment their prey before killing.

Moo

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Penny S
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I think this is a bit of anthropomorphism again. Sport is a human concept, and can have some very ugly manifestations, some of which are resembled by cat behaviour. Torment implies a deliberate conscious choice to inflict pain - it is a synonym for torture. It implies some degree of rationality.

I believe that cats' behaviour with captured prey is a form of practice for future hunts. TV programmes on wild cat behaviour show how frequently hunts can end in failure to eat, so practice is clearly a sensible behaviour to carry through from the young animal to the adult.

Because it looks like the sort of cruel play some people carry out on others, or indeed on animals - boys tying fireworks to cats' tails, for example - does not mean it shares any of the internal characteristics of that human behaviour.

They are animals, like Winnie the Pooh, of very little brain, and should not be judged as if they were human.

Going back to the deer, a study of elk in Yellowstone showed a change in behaviour following the re-establishment of wolves. They chose different areas to graze, where there was less good forage, and seemed to be more edgy, even when the wolves were not near. So they did seem to respond to stress.

[ 15. May 2014, 14:33: Message edited by: Penny S ]

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argona
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Here is the article I was thinking of, suggesting that vegetarians may be less healthy and have a poorer quality of life than meat-eaters. It fits with recent arguments that a low fat, high carb diet is in fact less healthy than the converse.

When I mentioned that wild animals most often die painfully, that wasn't to excuse human cruelty. If we must eat meat, of course it's incumbent on us to dispatch livestock reared for food with the least pain and stress that's possible. It's awful where that doesn't happen, though here's a piece about a woman who revolutionised much of slaughterhouse practice in the US.

Must we eat meat? Maybe the jury's coming out that we at least should. It also seems reasonable to presume that, in the absence of solid evidence to the contrary, whatever we evolved to eat will be what our wellbeing requires. A cat can be healthy on a diet mostly of meat. A cow, likewise on grass. We are omnivores.

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argona
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Here's a Huffpost piece on the fat v sugar issue. Incidentally I don't disagree with her point that we should eat less meat (and for environmental as well as health reasons).
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cliffdweller
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quote:
Originally posted by argona:

Must we eat meat? Maybe the jury's coming out that we at least should. It also seems reasonable to presume that, in the absence of solid evidence to the contrary, whatever we evolved to eat will be what our wellbeing requires. A cat can be healthy on a diet mostly of meat. A cow, likewise on grass. We are omnivores.

However, it would appear that we eat far more meat than our ancestors (most of whom would have had meat as a rare luxury, unless they were in an elite wealthy class), so you can't really say that 2 or more servings of meat is what we "evolved" to consume. Further, we're also leading both longer yet far more sedentary lives than our ancestors, with much less manual labor/walking/ etc., which may also change our nutritional needs.

[ 15. May 2014, 22:14: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]

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argona
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quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
However, it would appear that we eat far more meat than our ancestors (most of whom would have had meat as a rare luxury, unless they were in an elite wealthy class), so you can't really say that 2 or more servings of meat is what we "evolved" to consume.

And I don't. The hunter-gatherers we evolved into were probably a lot more gatherers than hunters. Way too much livestock is reared and slaughtered, mainly to satisfy the bloated demand for meat in rich countries. Which means too many crops are grown for animal feed rather than human consumption. Not to mention the greenhouse emissions, which are very significant (herbivores do fart so). Yes, much less meat would be good but some may be necessary.
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Winstonian
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I'm not convinced by the article regarding vegetarians being less healthy, which the article itself notes is controversial. It is hard to know how reliable such studies are when you only have someone else's summary. There are many studies indicating it is healthier, most notably the China Study This page includes links to various studies linking eating meat with cancer, for example.

It is very clear most humans do not need to eat meat (I say most to make allowances for allergies and other special situations, as well as for those who live in places where adequate vegetarian or vegan food is not available.) The number of happy, healthy vegans and vegetarians roaming the streets (not to mention the professional athletes) are a testament to that.

I also note that argona said "I don't disagree with her point that we should eat less meat (and for environmental as well as health reasons)." I have to ask: what about for the sake of the animals?

This, to me, is where the rubber meets the road. If we are concerned about our health, we are concerned about ourselves. If we are concerned about the planet, we may be concerned only about humans. As Christians, we are called to be concerned about all of creation, and to give special attention to the animals, who, like us (and unlike trees, and streams, and air) know happiness and sorrow. They know what it is to be loved and to be lonely. (Before you accuse me of anthropomorphism here, please read the work of the scientists I noted in an earlier comment: Jonathan Balcombe, Marc Bekoff, Jane Goodall, and Franz de Waal, among others. Or just check out this website.) They most certainly know pain. Our modern meat production system is a thorough-going exercise in cruelty. It wasn't always this way, but this is where we've got to, and it seems to me sacrilege for Christians to be silent and/or complicit in cruelty.

In the words of Humphrey Primatt, an Anglican priest who wrote A Dissertation on the Duty of Mercy and Sin of Cruelty to Brute Animals in 1776:
quote:
"We may pretend to what religion we please, but cruelty is atheism. We may make our boast of Christianity; but cruelty is infidelity.
We may trust to our orthodoxy; but cruelty is the worst of heresies."



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Penny S
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It has been my understanding that, originally, meat was derived from animals which grazed on the land which could not be used for growing crops, thus increasing the sources of food, and making sensible use of resources. Also animals used primarily for other purposes, such as draught animals or textile sources. I also gather that grass fed animals do not produce as much greenhouse gas as those fed on crops. I eat meat which is grass fed and outdoor reared, and not much of it. It would be a good idea if all meat production went back to those principles, but that is unlikely to happen.

The problem round here is that we don't use the grazing land for food, and even some arable land has been turned over to grazing horses. Thus damaging my argument.

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Karl: Liberal Backslider
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quote:
Originally posted by argona:
Here is the article I was thinking of, suggesting that vegetarians may be less healthy and have a poorer quality of life than meat-eaters. It fits with recent arguments that a low fat, high carb diet is in fact less healthy than the converse.

When I mentioned that wild animals most often die painfully, that wasn't to excuse human cruelty. If we must eat meat, of course it's incumbent on us to dispatch livestock reared for food with the least pain and stress that's possible. It's awful where that doesn't happen, though here's a piece about a woman who revolutionised much of slaughterhouse practice in the US.

Must we eat meat? Maybe the jury's coming out that we at least should. It also seems reasonable to presume that, in the absence of solid evidence to the contrary, whatever we evolved to eat will be what our wellbeing requires. A cat can be healthy on a diet mostly of meat. A cow, likewise on grass. We are omnivores.

That study, which contradicts a lot of other work on the subject, is also the subject of this article on the NHS website.

http://www.nhs.uk/news/2014/04April/Pages/Vegetarians-have-poorer-quality-of-life-study-claims.aspx

I'd tend to give more weight to the NHS analysis than a newspaper report. Newspaper science reporting is appalling.

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Marvin the Martian

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quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
I think this is a bit of anthropomorphism again. Sport is a human concept, and can have some very ugly manifestations, some of which are resembled by cat behaviour. Torment implies a deliberate conscious choice to inflict pain - it is a synonym for torture. It implies some degree of rationality.

I doubt it makes much of a difference from the victim's point of view.

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argona
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quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
[QUOTE]I'd tend to give more weight to the NHS analysis than a newspaper report. Newspaper science reporting is appalling.

True. But remember also the ubiquity of confirmation bias, even among the most intentionally objective of people. On this issue I'm aware of it in myself.
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
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quote:
Originally posted by argona:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
[QUOTE]I'd tend to give more weight to the NHS analysis than a newspaper report. Newspaper science reporting is appalling.

True. But remember also the ubiquity of confirmation bias, even among the most intentionally objective of people. On this issue I'm aware of it in myself.
Aye. Which is why basing a position on a single study is a very bad idea.

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lilBuddha
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Most evidence suggests we are omnivores. And also that eating meat helped give rise to our formidable brains.
Several problems here. This does not translate to meat eating being necessary for any individual. Nor does it translate to it being necessary for a long and healthy life.
Vegetarian means one doesn't eat meat, it does not mean one eats healthily. Meat is an efficient way to consume protein and some nutrients, this does not mean those cannot be substituted.

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Winstonian
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Here is a five minute interview from this morning w Gene Bauer, President of Farm Sanctuary, ironman triathlete, and vegan since 1985, on some of the issues we've been talking about here. (I hope the link works!)

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aunt jane
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quote:
Originally posted by Winstonian:
I'm not sure where the anthropomorphism comes in in what I said above, but I appreciate that you agree with at least some of what I said.

I don't think the whole comparison to wild animals is valid.

First, as I noted above, the fact that nature can be hard is no justification for human cruelty.

Second, it would work better if we were talking about whether or not it is appropriate to hunt deer or other wild animals for food. The question whether it is less painful and frightening to die by a gunshot rather than to be killed by another animal would then be a valid comparison. Here, however, we're talking about animals bred in captivity to be eaten. There is no question of them being either killed quickly by humans or slowly by wild animals. The only question is how humans will treat them. The answer is almost always with extreme cruelty, since almost all animals we eat are now bred on factory farms, where not only are their living conditions cramped and filthy, and they are mutilated (debeaked, dehorned, tails cut off) without anesthesia, they are fed unnatural food, and they are bred and given hormones to grow unnaturally. Broilers, for example, grow so big so fast that their bones often break or fracture, causing them great pain. Commercial turkeys can no longer mate naturally because their breasts are so big. And that doesn't even consider the brutality with which their handlers often treat them (as repeatedly revealed by undercover investigations) or the misery of long, overcrowded transport, often without food or water, to slaughter. Finally, the slaughter process is so fast, that it is regularly done wrong, with the result that great suffering ensues. In the US, chickens speed by at more than 2 chickens per second (with proposals pending to increase that speed) and are often not hung properly in restraints before their necks are cut, with the result that they are plunged alive into scalding water, sometimes with broken legs because they are slammed into the restraints so fast. I'm not sure attack by a wild animal looks bad by comparison.

Wild animals kill because they need to survive. Humans kill (like this) because we want a "dollar value meal."

Also, while life in the wild has its challenges, as you point out, it is also full of rewards. Ethologists like Jane Goodall, Frans de Waal, Marc Bekoff, and Jonathan Balcombe have made great strides in understanding the intellectual and emotional lives of wild and domestic animals. They form meaningful relationships, they mourn the loss of a companion, they play with one another, and more. Jonathan Balcombe in particular has done extensive work on animal pleasure. As Balcombe said in one of his writings, "Animals aren't just alive, they have lives."

Sorry to go on like this, but our need as a species, and especially as Christians, to be honest with ourselves about what we are doing when we eat meat is a subject I feel rather passionate about.

One of the most thoughtful posts I've ever read around here. I for one am veggie precisely because I object to modern methods of factory farming
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BashfulAnthony
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I have been a keen sportsman all my life and a vegetarian, too. I have had no ill-effects due to my diet. So, as far as I'm concerned killing - and there's no nice way to die, physically or emotionally - is unnecessary. It is a question of " the taste of meat is irresistable to me, though I have to kill you for it. Hard luck, since I intend to have it."
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deano
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Interesting thread. I have been watching the Channel 4 series "The Island with Bear Grylls". The scenario is that thirteen British men have been placed on an uninhabited island in the south Pacific.

The second program showed the men's struggle to find food. They found a fishing net that had been washed ashore but were unable to catch anything.

They managed to survive for about a week on coconuts and winkles taken from rocks.


A pair of the men decided to go further inland and they found a small crocodile called a cayman. They cought the cayman, hogtied it to a branch and carried it back to the camp. Then one of the others - a sheep farmer who went to my childrens school a few years ago - killed it by stabbing it in the head.

They butchered it, roasted the meat over a fire and ate it. This saved them from having to leave the island early before they became seriously malnourished.

Is that right or wrong. The men killed to eat. As part of a realiy TV show. The animal wasn't slaughtered in accordance with current UK law.

Personally I don't have a probelm with it at all. It's showing just how we can adapt if we had to, but it just seems to be pertinent. They needed to eat protein and that meant they caught and killed in any way possible.

Anyone who advocates that we should only eat what we ourselves can kill, should be prepared for much uneccessary suffering of animal if that happens.

Is production slaughter perfect? No. Of course sometimes bad things happen and there is suffering that should be avoided, but far less than if we ended up doing the killing ourselves.

I am a meat eater, but I make a point of admonishing my children if they leave any meat on a plate as part of a meal. They can leave anything but the meat. I try to point out that an animal has died and they are wasting it. They tend to eat the meat then.

I've killed animals, I've fly fished and killed trout and salmon by hitting them over the head with a weighted club. Then I've eaten them.

I have no qualms about killing animals for food, and I believe meat to be an important part of human diet, nevertheless I would like to see less of that meat being wasted. I do think there is an ethical case to be made for that. Let's at least eat what we kill rather than landfill it. That is a true injustice.

[ 22. May 2014, 19:45: Message edited by: deano ]

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