meat is murder

[elcheeso]

Peeps in this thread are so speciesist. (Shutup Chrome it's a real word.)

Do you think that other omnivores and carnivores give a shit how much their prey suffers? Cognitive thought is a tool that evolution granted to us and I guess it's just a testament to how weird the human condition is that for some reason we do care. In any case, to the five people who said it isn't justifiable, should omnivorous wild cats give up eating meat because they can survive without?
What part of being the most efficient killers (farming is pretty fucking efficient in the grand scheme of things) makes us liable?

Talking about animal welfare is not the point anyone should be making.

Eh. This response is going to be pretty anal considering I completely agree that sustainability/economics should be the main reason for going vegetarian (that and I'm not one of the people who voted no)... but honestly, you shouldn't compare animal behaviour to our own. It's a shitty comparison, both because cognitive thought is important (which yeah, is a really weird thing when it comes down to it)... but also because you'd end up justifying a lot of anti-social and downright awful behaviour that way (animals are arseholes).

Ultimately, people need to decide for themselves whether animal welfare means anything to them. Some people will, some people won't. I don't think either answer is necessarily wrong though, and I definitely agree that sustainability is the bigger issue that shouldn't be written off like animal welfare can be.

this is horrific

Don't act like you don't love the thought of consuming those ovaries and their delightfully scrumptious fetuses/embryos! Actually, I guess most of the seeds in fruits would be more equivalent to eggs, heh. On a related note, this orange is delicious.

 

[RosebloomNixie]

@elcheeso

I guess it depends on your stance. The way I see it is that I should feel no obligation to animals, but I should to my species. I wouldn't use the equation of humans and other animals as a justification of harm (in all senses of the word) to another human.

 

[Outlaw]

If that doesn't shock you enough, the beef and eggs in most fast food restaurants are treated with a major chemical in shoe polish as a preservative for shipping and storage. The majority of public school prepped lunches are also treated with the same chemicals, and are more often than not a much lower quality than what the fast food industry buys. Grocery store and delicatessen meats are of a much better quality, but can still be hazardous to health if tainted meat manages to make it through the USDA inspection system (tip: it's actually incredibly likely to happen, and probably does more often than not. Google "major beef recalls in the US" and you'll see some of the major ones).

Also random facts of the day:

-The burger patties served in fast food restaurants can contain beef from multiple cows around the country.
*Most vegan blogs and editors say it can be up to 100, but that number hasn't been proven. The beef processing companies however have admitted that the beef can have meat from multiple cows.

-The burgers and meals you see displayed in TV advertisements and posters are actually 100% fake, and use teams of more than 20 people just to keep the meals looking authentic for a 30 second slot on TV. The steam coming from burgers and sandwiches is actually created via computer animation sometimes, other times it's just clever "trick imaging" where it appears as such.

And it's so fucking TASTY.

 

[jc104]

As an ex-vegetarian of many years I have to say I really think meat is rather overrated as a foodstuff (with a couple of notable exceptions), and yet I think that eating it is fine.

Ultimately, I think that meat is indeed murder, but what's wrong with murder? Actually justifying the claim that murder is somehow objectively wrong is pretty much impossible. Murdering people is socially unacceptable, and a detriment to society. Murdering animals is not, for the most part.

Although this is equally difficult to justify, my instinct tells me that animal suffering, on the other hand, is a bad thing. When dead one is not able to suffer, so a relatively humane killing of an animal is not necessarily bad. The question is whether you value the animal lives that are created for meat, whether you think that there is some benefit as a result of the animal being alive or not. If you actually value the lives of these animals in this way, I would suggest that you should not object to the eating of meat, whereas if you think rather that these animals never existed and shouldn't suffer, then maybe you should. I would imagine that most people would recognise that this depends hugely on the living conditions of the animals, and would therefore, I hope, at least admit that a blanket judgement is not ideal (even if it is the best option for simplicity).

 

[Nix_Hex]

To clarify my vote, despite being a vegetarian, I believe that killing animals for food is awesome. I want my dogs to eat meat because they are carnivorous beings yet are too small to hunt for themselves (rats and birds don't count lol). Also, the vegetarian recipe smells 10x worse than dog food is supposed to smell.

 

[sax king]

I don't find if justifiable, I just do it anyway. Is that bad? There's a lot of things that I just do even though I feel that they're wrong.

 

[Princess Bubblegum]

I feel like I am on the outside of the loop here, what is up with all the vegetarians on smogon.

Is this was it is like to be a republican?

 

[lilyhollow]

I don't find if justifiable, I just do it anyway. Is that bad? There's a lot of things that I just do even though I feel that they're wrong.

This was my position prior to becoming a vegetarian. It's really an easy one to hold (no biggie, you just have to admit that you have some growing to do as a person), but for some reason most people seem more comfortable with vain rationalizations~

 

[mattj]

Don't act like you don't love the thought of consuming those ovaries and their delightfully scrumptious fetuses/embryos! Actually, I guess most of the seeds in fruits would be more equivalent to eggs, heh. On a related note, this orange is delicious.

[youtube]pDUPfdnisGQ[/youtube]
YOU ROAST THE UNBORN??!

 

[Eagle4]

To clarify my vote, despite being a vegetarian, I believe that killing animals for food is awesome. I want my dogs to eat meat because they are carnivorous beings yet are too small to hunt for themselves (rats and birds don't count lol). Also, the vegetarian recipe smells 10x worse than dog food is supposed to smell.

Wait... why are you a vegetarian?

 

[Tayla]

I think a lot of people don't really mind the fact animals are killed for food, but rather detest the horrible conditions these animals face in slaughterhouses. I'm not a vegetarian, but I always try to buy cage-free / free-roaming animal meat when I'm able. I guess in my mind, I believe every single penny not going to slaughterhouses helps.

 

[Eagle4]

I'd like to apologise to everybody in this thread for my comments and me being a dick. I have completely no idea why I wrote the comment, it was stupid and I'd obviously be raged on. I'm feeling really depressed knowing that I'm one of the most hated members of Smogon.

I don't want to be the most hated.

 

[moonbound]

I eat meat but try to get natural/organic/whatever whenever possible (I guess I have an advantage that others don't because my family owns a produce farm and we've been getting farm-fresh eats monthly from one of my mom's co-workers but whatever). I see nothing ethically wrong with doing what my body is made to do as long as the animals are treated well. I understand the health benefits of a vegetarian diet, but it's still possible to eat healthily with a diet that includes proper amounts of meat.

 

[Stratos]

very impressed by chou toshio in this thread, who has perfectly displayed how very challenging it is for people to poorly rationalize their harmful moral actions

Vintage eBooks is right: our ancestors did it in the past, and so we should do it now. Anyone can think of hundreds of applicable examples of this, such as honoring our parents, raping women, and going to school.

good points, Brammi. Our ability to make cognitive decisions has little bearing on things like morals, which, as we all know, are based entirely on primal instinct.

thank you user kristoph for your insightful one-liners now can you stop being a troll and get the fuck out of this thread

I, personally, eat meat. I'm not going to try to rationalize it, or shame vegetarians, or whatever the hell else, because I hold with Hawkstar. It may be retarded, hell it's probably retarded to eat like I do, or to spend as much time on the computer as I do, or to stay up as late as I do, but I live life like I want to live it, and not how it's objectively, logically "best" to. And I have no moral qualms with the predator-prey relationship so.

ps insects sound delicious somebody hook me up with that shit

 

[Lee]

and because I never addressed it in my last post - I don't eat meat but I do not consider myself a vegetarian. I simply realise that meat provides nothing beneficial to my diet; in fact, it makes it notably worse. I get plenty of better protein from milk and eggs and it's not difficult to get stuff like Iron and Zinc into my diet so I see no reason to load up on something that has been so irrefutably proven to increase the risk of heart disease (which is by far the biggest cause of premature death in the developed world...go figure), as well as increasingly likely-sounding links to prostate and colon cancer, arthiritis and osteoporosis.

I do however eat fish but that is like a hundred times more nutritionally sound than meat.

 

[Ace Emerald]

I'm going to eat animals because animals eat other animals.

I'm a vegetarian for many reasons; health, quality of the meat industry, and my general inability to kill anything all factored in to the decision. While I don't think eating meat is wrong (I would certainly do so if my life depended on it), I do have a problem with the above reasoning. Yes, it's true that meat is what our ancestors evolved eating, and yes, many animals eat other animals for sustenance. But humans aren't just another animal. We have morals and civilization, we have self assigned codes for living our lives. Morals essentially amount to empathy, caring about others and how they feel. And the natural extension of these morals, as civilization advances, is the extension of these morals to other forms of life.

While I'm not suggesting to stop swatting flys or stop eating trees, we are not treating other intelligent life well at all. The issue of dolphins has been touched on, and honestly elephants and maybe a few higher primates should be on that list too. Elephants mourn their dead, and actually experience post traumatic stress after seeing family shot in front of them. We don't have to start giving them representation in government, but some courtesy and space would really be nice.

I think there's a reason that vegetarianism is associated with enlightenment. Vegetarianism is counter-intuitive. Logically, killing others for your benefit makes sense. People don't become vegetarian for no reason, at least no one I've heard of. It takes thought and reflection. I guess all in all what I'm trying to say is the reason why we should care about the lives of animals is because caring about others is what advances civilization. Empathy separates us from lower animals, makes civilization possible. Meat isn't wrong, it's not even immoral. It just isn't as moral as we could be.

 

[Outlaw]

So you're saying you are better than meat eaters?

Huh?

 

[Nastyjungle]

i am usually disappointed with the conditions animals being prepared for the slaughter are kept in

i wish it would be more humane, but i dont think there is anything wrong with the commercial or otherwise production of meat for human consumption as a moral issue

 

[Ace Emerald]

So you're saying you are better than meat eaters?

Huh?

Did I ever say that? I said it takes thought. And it does. I said it's associated with enlightenment, and when you look at many cultures, it is. I said it's an extension of morals, and I stand behind that. And I followed that with I don't think meat is wrong or immoral. It's perfectly natural.

 

[a fairy]

Did I ever say that? I said it takes thought. And it does. I said it's associated with enlightenment, and when you look at many cultures, it is. I said it's an extension of morals, and I stand behind that. And I followed that with I don't think meat is wrong or immoral. It's perfectly natural.

can you provide some proof to back up the claims of enlightment being associated with vegetarianism, please?

 

[Ace Emerald]

can you provide some proof to back up the claims of enlightment being associated with vegetarianism, please?

[URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddism"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddism[/URL]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinduism
Judaism and vegetarianism
http://www.realitysandwich.com/what_does_yoga_have_do_vegetarianism
http://www.nickroach.co.uk/Vegetarianism.htm
Not saying I buy all this stuff, but come on vegetarianism is the "zen" stereotype.

 

[a fairy]

That middle one does not seem to put together enlightenment and vegetarianism at all, just seems to be a page advocating vegetarianism through pulling vague sources out of Judaism.

Just wanted to point this out, but: "the consumption of meat as halachically unacceptable": According to the Old Testament/Torah/whatever you want to call it, eating meat is permissible, and I'm almost positive it is a positive commandment(good deed, do this and you get reward) to eat meat at certain times.

Apparently when you offered "thank-you" sacrifices when the Temple was not destroyed, you were required to give some of the meat to the Kohains(people who burnt the sacrifice, upkept the Temple, and generally helped people bring sacrifices) to eat, and then to have some yourself. Also with other offerings, but I'm very confused as to which ones so I won't bother trying to explain them. On the holiday of Passover, you are REQUIRED to eat a roasted lamb when the Temple was built.

As a side point: There is nowhere that the Jewish friends that are providing me with the above argument know that vegetarianism is called "ultimate meaning of Jewish moral teaching", or anything close to it, backed up slightly by above.

 

[ssbbm]

stuff humans have empathy morals make us better than animals

actually im pretty sure the majority of animals have some sort of empathy - humans arent really special. you can google search "animal empathy" to get it. i mean i agree with you that humans are superior to animals because that is what has allowed us to dominate the world (though this is obviously kind of overexaggerated but w/e) but i disagree that it is because of a better moral code. at our core we are still animals and i feel that we do what we can, as a species, to survive. morality is questionable because everybody has different moral standards but i mean theyre arbitrary; the moral code that survives in society will almost always be the most efficient one. our superiority is defined not in our moral codes but rather in our intelligence.

i mean, theres an actual scientific difference that we can establish against other animals to allow us to discriminate from them - they are a different species from us. this is more concrete than lets say ideas of intelligence because it's much harder to draw a line between "oh look that species is smart enough to be treated well"; additionally, it is natural that humans give preference to other humans because that is a biological function so that the human species will prosper over other species.

edit: also "enlightenedness" is kind of bs i mean you could easily say jesus wasnt vegetarian!

im not saying vegetarianiism is bad i mean it is linked to positive effects in humans but by no means is it not justifiable
tl;dr: we are proud megalions and we can eat meat if we want to

 

[lilyhollow]

I agree with sbmm. Moral standards, as completely opposed to the very objective and unchanging distinctions we draw between species, are completely arbitrary.

 

[THE_IRON_...KENYAN?]

FUCK COWS

test post im back bitches