Animals have rights but is it OK to eat them??

not now

im hungry

Food eats vegetables.

How does our nature have anything to do with morality. No living thing drove a car or went into space before what 1800 something (when was the first car)? Yet both of these are not considered immoral. Even if i had the dental configuration of a cow, i would still enjoy meat.

I think animals should be treated humanely because the idea sounds good to me.

I am an animal lover. I also eat meat almost every day. It's one of life's great contradictions.

I hate carrots. I eat them alive.

No contradiction, edgar. I have read that American Indians apologized to the buffalo before killing him, telling the beast, in effect, "Don't misunderstand. I'm not mad at you. I just need your meat and I thank you for providing it." Meat eating, for me, has absolutely nothing to do with morality. Is the lion "evil" because it hunts down and eats a zebra?

Still, it's hard, being friends with a chicken and then having chicken soup for luch more often than not.

Here's a true story from Merry Andrew's very early childhood. My parents and I were visiting gramma (my dad's mother) who lived on a farm. I was probably three or four years old. I really loved helping gramma feed the hens that were being kept in a chicken-wire enclosure next to the cow-barn (there was only one cow in it). One day, as we entered the chicken coop, a nasty old rooster got jealous of the attention this little tyke was giving his hens and up and actually attacked me. No major damage, some scratches on the top of my head. So, to please me (she thought) Gramma had the offending fowl slaughtered the next day and cooked him up in a rich chicken soup. When I was told at table that that's what I was eating, I damn' near threw up all over the tablecloth. I think I practiced being a vegetarian after that for ...oh...all of maybe two weeks. True story.

I did a thread on my chickens, Henrietta and Lulu. I was an adult when I lost them, but you would have thought by the way I carried on they were much more than mere chickens.

I love animals and I also eat meat. I am at peace with that.

I grew up in the 'country' where I was often recruited to help out with the chicken slaugters. Other animals too; but I always hated the chicken slaughters the most because of the big chicken dinner at the end of it, the smell of singed chicken skin, the gutting.

I had a rooster I named Scrunt. He was crazy and attacked me every time I saw him, he was a runt, and he was ugly looking. I loved him though. He had personality. Needless to say, I was sad the day that I found out Scrunt was dead.

No veggies here, huh?

I can tell you, based on things I've seen in the news, that this is often not the case. I saw one newspaper article indicating that, although the rules stated otherwise, in one meat processing plant, animals were cut up into parts while still conscious. What the rules say is one thing. The reality of meat processing may be something different.

I'm really surprised that, so far, no vegans or begetrians have shown up on this thread to tell us all that we're all going to burn in eternal hellfire. There must be people of that ilk on A2K.

I've been holding my breath.

I am not a vegan. But I can tell horror stories of slaughter houses with the best of them.

Chickens, while alive, are strung up by their feet on a conveyor belt and dipped into boiling water to remove thier feathers. Most are still alive while this is done.
Top that off with thier living quarters.
By nature, chickens are relatively lazy animals. They dont run around a yard much and hens sit still 'most' of the time.
They are piled , sometimes 10 at a time into cages small enough for what you would think would only house 2 chickens. They live in each others **** and are piled so high up on top of each other that their food bins get chicken poop in it as well. Very little ventilation. They are given growth hormones in amounts that make thier bodies grow to what would take them naturally 8-10 months , in less then 3.
Cows.. same thing.
Pigs.. same thing.

Pigs and cows are strung up by their feet and cut at the neck to bleed to death. Those that dont bleed to death in a proper time, are then clubed to death, or what ever means the employees at the slaughter houses have available..
Baby calves are put into cages so small they can not turn around to keep thier muscles soft and tender for Veal.

Milking sows are hooked up to machines that tug and pull at their utters supposedly the way a baby calf would do .. to keep them producing milk.
Their utters get blisters and sores from the constant friction.
They are pumped with antibiotics and other hormones to keep the infections from spreading to their hearts and killing them before they produce enough milk to " get a profit"... all the while the pumps are still attached to the utters and right along with the milk, comes in the puss and blood from these sores. When they are given breaks from the pumping machines, their utters are so swollen that they literally drag on the ground underneath them causing these sores and blisters to get even bigger. Many MANY cases of utter infection has been the death of cows that are in your grocers freezer. Since they were treated with antibiotics, they are deemed safe for sale.

Im not a vegan.. but I dont see this treatment as OK by any standards.

We don't need to eat meat. It may be 'natural,' but whatever shape our teeth are etc., we're smart enough and technologically advanced enough to survive and be healthy without meat. Agreed?

So does that mean we shouldn't eat meet?

Animals have the unfortunate properties of being delicious and nutricious. What are we gonna do?

I didn't claw my way to the top of the food chain to eat broccoli.

Vewgetarians are the weak link in the food chain.