If you are a low/no meat eater, how do you feel about meat imitations?

In oz we have a very high profile vegan media personality, a national radio personality of a band that sang a lot of songs about getting smashed on various substances. That said he is articulate and funny. He is very unmilitant about his veganism, and firmly believes its a personal decision. He came to it because he felt, philosophically, that if he couldn't kill a cow or pig, then he would be a hypocrite to eat one.

I find that a hard point to argue against and am aware of my own meat eating, animal loving hypocrisy.

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Put to the necessity, i'd have no qualm about killing an animal in order to eat. But i don't dig my own iron ore, smelt, cook it with coke to produce high carbon steel which i then roll in sheets to make the body of my own automobile. There are lots of things in society which we don't do for ourselves, but that shouldn't prohibit us "philosophically" from participating in the very sensible division of labor in our societies.

As a boy, i killed, cleaned, cooked and ate small mammals (squirrels, rabbits) and fish. So, i know i could do it if i were obliged. It was common enough in small town and rural America in the 1950s that one of our neighbor's sons went out nearly everyday on his bike to hunt squirrels and rabbits, and about the only comment you'd hear, if anyone even bothered to mention it would be something like "That boy sure does love to hunt." I and several of my friends were that way about fishing. Everyone considered it sensible to go out and get what was essentially free food (fishing tackle and .22 longs aren't free, but they weren't terribly expensive, either--and we often fished with poles we cut in the woods on the way to the stream or the lake). We also picked up walnuts and hickory nuts in season, and picked wild strawberries, blueberries and blackberries. That was just how life was.

A lot of my attitudes are conditioned by those experiences. Then i meet city folks, or even small town folks "divorced" from the land, and i'm constantly surprised to realize what they don't know about where there food comes from. I've known any number of vegetarians to whom i gleefully explained that the cheese from the supermarket contained animal byproducts--they didn't know because their conceptual viewpoint on where cheese comes from is "the store." Until i 'splained it to 'em, they didn't know how cheese is made. Can't really blame 'em, though--that vegan cheese really sucks.

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@Setanta,

Hi Set

I too have killed and cleaned, but would rather not. I don't think mining and smelting is the same moral issue, I could do that without qualms.

I haven't come across people as clueless as your city folk. Thankfully. I'd be happy to milk things and make cheese or butter, or collect and eat eggs, or shear angoras. In fact planning just that sort of 'tree change'. Mrs Hinge is very proud of meals where she can say she caught, grew or made every part.

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@hingehead,

I should mention that though I'm a city kid my father was not and I first fired a rifle at age 6 and caught my first bream at 8, and I went to agricultural high school for six years that was a working farm and did 'squad' (farm chores) a few hours each week, so I've milked cows, docked sheep, dehorned cattle and drenched all of them.

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@hingehead,

off topic, but who's the personality?

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@hingehead,

hingehead wrote:

I too have killed and cleaned, but would rather not. I don't think mining and smelting is the same moral issue, I could do that without qualms.

Why do you call this a moral issue? Do you have qualms of a moral nature about uprooting a potato bush? Do you cringe from the screams of the wheat as the scythe lays them low? Really, this is nothing but a particularism willing to assign a value to animal life while remaining indifferent to plant life.

There were three men came out of the west, their fortunes for to try
And these three men made a solemn vow
John Barleycorn must die
They've ploughed, they've sown, they've harrowed him in
Thrown clods upon his head
And these three men made a solemn vow
John Barleycorn was dead

They've let him lie for a very long time, 'til the rains from heaven did fall
And little Sir John sprung up his head and so amazed them all
They've let him stand 'til Midsummer's Day 'til he looked both pale and wan
And little Sir John's grown a long long beard and so become a man
They've hired men with their scythes so sharp to cut him off at the knee
They've rolled him and tied him by the waist serving him most barbarously
They've hired men with their sharp pitchforks who've pricked him to the heart

And the loader he has served him worse than that
For he's bound him to the cart
They've wheeled him around and around a field 'til they came unto a barn
And there they made a solemn oath on poor John Barleycorn
They've hired men with their crabtree sticks to cut him skin from bone
And the miller he has served him worse than that
For he's ground him between two stones

And little Sir John and the nut brown bowl and his brandy in the glass
And little Sir John and the nut brown bowl proved the strongest man at last
The huntsman he can't hunt the fox nor so loudly to blow his horn
And the tinker he can't mend kettle or pots without a little barleycorn

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@Setanta,

Hi set

I call it a moral issue because I find killing animals, particularly largish mammals, distasteful and to be avoided.

Would you eat dog? Technically there is nothing wrong with it. But mentally, emotionally it's abhorrent in almost all situations, because we identify with the animal. And I'm pretty sure I'd identify with the cow, pig, chicken if I had to kill it every time I felt like a burger. To me it's a moral issue, but your mileage may vary. Potato bushes don't mean that much to me.

I was just cataloguing a Traffic greates hits album - but it had no tracks from John Barleycorn Must Die

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@hingehead,

In fact, i have eaten dog. The thought didn't bother me. As for chickens, when i was just a liddly, my sister and i had to feed them. We would each take one side of the bucket bail to carry the feed into the chicken run, and i would fend them off with a stick while my sister put the feed in the trough. My grandmother always warned us that they would peck at us if they got the chance. When my granfather would slaughter chickens, my sister and i were euphoric--we would run and dance around for joy.

My point all along has been that i am offended by those who disparage me for my dietary choices, when i don't disparage them for theirs. When you add morality to the question, you are essentially saying that those who don't think as you do, those who are content that animals should be slaughtered that they may eat, are wrong based on an absolute standard--morality. This is the source of my objection all along. I suspect that's not necessarily what you meant, so i would suggest that you speak in terms of personal choice--philosophy if you will--and not morality.

Life feeds on life. We kill that we may eat. It appears that some are more squeamish about this than others.

Traffic was great. I saw them live. Stevie Winwood's voice is even better live than on a recording. That's true of damned few singers.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

Why do you call this a moral issue? Do you have qualms of a moral nature about uprooting a potato bush? Do you cringe from the screams of the wheat as the scythe lays them low? Really, this is nothing but a particularism willing to assign a value to animal life while remaining indifferent to plant life.

Not necessarily, for at least two reasons. First, there are some vegetarians who do avoid eating root vegetables---along with everything else you can only produce by killing plants. Back in college, for example, I used to know a Japanese couple who practiced one of the stricter denominations of Buddhism. They ate dairy, eggs, seeds and fruits---whatever they could consume without getting anything killed in the process. Both of them appeared healthy and well-nourished to me.

Second, the ethical value of life is not the only reason people might avoid meat; another is the ethical value of preventing needless suffering. We know that animals can suffer, pretty much like we do. Plants, by contrast, lack nervous systems to perceive pain through, so they almost certainly can not. And althought that's no argument against Farmerman's free-range steers, who presumably don't feel too much pain while they live, it is a valid argument against meat from factory-farmed animals.

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@Thomas,

You post is irrelevant to the conversation between Hinge and me--he spoke of the morality of killing animals, and it was to that that i responded.

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@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

Plants, by contrast, lack nervous systems to perceive pain through, so they almost certainly can not.

You're on pretty shaky ground with that one, Bubba. Single cell organisms recoil from hostile chemical introduced into their environments, and multicell microscopic organisms recoil from stimuli such as heat and electricity. You're going out on a limb to suggest that "suffering" can only be experienced by living things with nervous systems.

Once again, remarks about feedlot animals are irrelevant to the discussion i was having with Hinge. And, at any event, you lack imagination. I was showing how perception of these matters can vary greatly, which is why i quoted John Barleycorn Must Die.

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@Setanta,

Quote:

I've had vegans get in my face so frequently that at one point i stopped partonizing my neighborhood coffee shop because of their hostility, after i had ridiculed their bullshit objections to meat eating--so i don't consider my hosility to vegans to be unprovoked, for however you might see it.

Now there's a real mouthful and a half of hypocrisy. Funny that you didn't choke on that, Set.

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I think on the point on animal products that should be underlined is that we don't need them to have a balanced diet or be healthy. Combined with the fact that they aren't as efficient, it's perfectly reasonable to decide not to use them.

I think people eat animal products because they want to. I think that's fine, I don't desire to control what people ingest. I think people can agree that smoking is unhealthy, but I don't need (or even want) it to be illegal. People can make their own choices.

A
R
T

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@failures art,

Quote:

I think on the point on animal products that should be underlined is that we don't need them to have a balanced diet or be healthy.

I don't think that this is necessarily true. You can get by without meat, but the ideal diet for humans does include meat. It's the whole point of being an omnivore - eating lots of different things is the best diet.

It takes a lot of work to replicate the protein and nutrient density that is found in meat.... not saying that it can't be done. But it isn't necessarily the most efficient.

Cycloptichorn

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@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

Plants, by contrast, lack nervous systems to perceive pain through, so they almost certainly can not.

1998

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/08/980806090010.htm

2004

http://ds9.botanik.uni-bonn.de/zellbio/AG-Baluska-Volkmann/plantneuro/pdf/NeuroPlantTZ-Biologia.pdf

wiki on one subset of fruitarians

Quote:

some fruitarians feel that it is improper for humans to eat seeds as they contain future plants

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruitarianism

yeah, the moral/ethical/scientific thing's working out well as a position to defend

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@Setanta,

Quote:

How environmentally responsible is it to cut down rain forests to meet the demand for hardwoods by Japan and Europe, ...

Setanta, the guy who always suggest fact checking. I'd suggest that you are a piece of excrement but excrement has value.

Quote:

Imports of all wood products for reporting countries in 2004
totaled $71.2 billion, a 24 percent increase from 2003. The
world’s leading importer of wood products was the United
States ($23.3 billion), followed by the EU-25 ($13.2 billion)
and Japan ($11.8 billion).

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@hingehead,

hingehead wrote:

He came to it because he felt, philosophically, that if he couldn't kill a cow or pig, then he would be a hypocrite to eat one.

now that I can appreciate. not agree with (for me), but appreciate the honesty

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@Cycloptichorn,

I don't know if you read the earlier pages in this thread, but we kind of went here already.

Farmerman asserted that some B vitamins could only be found in meat. I searched, and this claim is only made of B-12. B-12 is found in lots of non animal products, and for that matter is not even a product of the animal but rather of bacteria. As for protein, how much is left in a piece of meat after cooking it to the point where the germs are killed?

Humans can digest meat, but there no reason to believe that we must or even that it is a component of an optimal human diet.

A
R
T

1 Reply

@failures art,

Quote:

I don't know if you read the earlier pages in this thread, but we kind of went here already.

Farmerman asserted that some B vitamins could only be found in meat. I searched, and this claim is only made of B-12. B-12 is found in lots of non animal products, and for that matter is not even a product of the animal but rather of bacteria.

So what? I'm sure you can supplement your diet in order to make up for the nutrients you are missing out in meat. But that's an artificial replacement for a natural source of energy and vitamins. Never as effective as the real thing.

Quote:

As for protein, how much is left in a piece of meat after cooking it to the point where the germs are killed?

Tons of it is: just cook your meat to medium-rare. There is a reason that bodybuilders and others who want to build muscle eat tons of chicken: because it works.

Quote:

Humans can digest meat, but there no reason to believe that we must or even that it is a component of an optimal human diet.

I don't think there is a shadow of a doubt that it is part of an optimal human diet. It is extremely dense with nutrients and fats, more so than practically any vegetable. We evolved to eat meat for a reason....

I can't imagine for a second being athletic and not eating meat at all. Maybe it works if you don't want to push your body to do tough things. But it wouldn't for me.

Cycloptichorn

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@ehBeth,

Stranger things have been published in some obscure journal or other. If the authors really had found that plants have nervous systems in any meaningful sense, they wouldn't have bothered with Biologia from Slovakia. (Sorry Dasha!) Instead, they would have published their discovery in Science or Nature. Both journals would have been eager to print it.

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If you are a low/no meat eater, how do you feel about meat imitations?

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