• Philosophy and Spirituality
    Welcome Guest
    Posting Rules Bluelight Rules
    Threads of Note Socialize
  • P&S Moderators: JackARoe | Cheshire_Kat

Eating Meat?

I dont understand this arguement.

It started way back when communities needed food.
Lets see some main points for collecting food with minimal technology.

1. the animal cannot be to dangerous to capture/kill
2. Needs to have ample amount of edible meat.


Now, it would have been easy to hunt and capture cows.

One day a person that owned land realised that if he fenced the cows on his land in and made them reproduce he could get more meat easier.
*enter making money from meat.
*enter mass-meat production for the larger communities now in safe transport range.

The mass-slaughtering of cows came from our basic need of easy access food for the masses not from anything else.

You cant stop something we need, but if you think about it, what sort of change would need to take place to remove meat from everyones diet, you would need something to replace it.

How much land would the world need to support this in producing more vegetables etc .. would increasing the amount of plant farming needed hurt the environment more than just slaughtering of cows due to salinisation etc?

Either way you look at it, everything we do is bad. :)
 
the land used to grow plants for the cows to eat is more than would be needed to grow vegetables for humans. eating plants is much more efficient (i'm sure someone can get statistics on this). it wouldn't be necessary to remove meat entirely, just make it more expensive.
 
^^^ Not necessarily. First, animals can eat a lot of plants that humans cannot (or just will not.) Try eating hay or grass, for example -- you can't digest it, but ruminants like cattle can. As a result, lots and lots of areas which are not suitable for growing food crops do grow grasses etc which can support herds of cattle, goats, sheep, etc. For example, most of Texas is like this, so are much of Montona and Wyoming.

And even on farmland, it's very often useful for farmers to grow forage crops like alfalfa or clover instead of human-edible ones. These are great because they naturally regenerate the soil -- rotating them in works even better than leaving a field fallow. These can be made into hay for animals (or just grazed on). Human-edible crops like corn or wheat themselves have leftover parts that people don't eat which can be used as animal feed.

It's certainly true that people in rich countries eat much more meat than is in any sense maximally "efficient"; we also eat way more inefficient luxury plants, such as most fruits and vegetables.
Psychedelic Gleam said:
^they live in tiny stalls or cages, stuffed with food, never outside except in RARE occasions, this is nothing but cruel, often animals go totally insane from the horrid conditions.
Click to expand...
Dude... livestock spend most of their life free in a field. Drive through farmland or ranchland and you see shitloads of them just wandering around (well usually just standing there actually.) I think before they are slaughtered beef cattle usually get sent to a feedlot to fatten them up... they are stuck in little stalls then but they're still outside.
 
amnesiaseizure said:
And yes, milking a cow CAN hurt a cow. Have you seen those things they put in the udders to sucj out the milk?? We're not talking the soft, delicate hands of a gorgeous farm girl here.
Click to expand...

YES i am talking about the soft, delicate hands of a gorgeous farm girl here. please actually read my posts before making such ignorant comments. i said

"damn meat industry. i'll have to raise my own cow someday."

and

"it isn't ***supposed*** to hurt the cow, not that the meat industry doesn't hurt cows. "

i dont know how to make this any more clear but i am talking about the PRINCIPLE of milking a cow, this can iclude all measures of comfort and safety for the cow.

to reiterate, i'm NOT talking about the meat industries methods of mass milking cows but rather i' m saying the act of milking a cow itself, in PRINCIPLE does not neccesitate harm to the cow. let me know if you need further clarification.
 
What really should humans do?

I mean.. we have the technology and intelligence to use our environment how we please.

Should we just choose not to use what we can?

I for one will never stop eating meat even if that means I have to kill it to have some food.

I mean.. every time we eat a hamburger, should we go out and kill a whole animal?

fuck that... that's stupid.. that's why we outgrew that element.. and now we're just shepards.
 
Its called the food chain, if one species has an advantage over another species in this area then they can eat it. It helps balance the world and prevents overpopulation of species.

Us humans however are the dominant species on this planet so we are the ones who are overpopulating. There is nothing wrong with an animal killing another animal for food, its called survival. Even though most people hate me when I say this, I think the tsunami that killed a huge amount of people overall is not a bad thing. Population control is essential for a balanced ecosystem.

All that aside, I have absolutely no problem with eating meat. Food is food, and plants are living organisms too. Just because a plant is devoid of conscious experience in the sense that we understand, does not make it inferior to cow, or a pig. We feel a closer connection to organisms that are more like us. The fact is, life exists in many forms and no one form is superior or deserving of a better treatment than the other. So to all the fanatical PETA sympathizers, I extend a big "Fuck you." It's natural to feel emotion for beings that are similar to us, but unless you get your energy directly from photosynthesis, you are in no position to bitch about surviving at the expense of other living things.
 
cannabis sativa said:
the land used to grow plants for the cows to eat is more than would be needed to grow vegetables for humans. eating plants is much more efficient (i'm sure someone can get statistics on this). it wouldn't be necessary to remove meat entirely, just make it more expensive.
Click to expand...

Very true, meat takes much more land to grow than vegetables. Beef in particular is very wasteful...this is a test you can do on many different websites. In my Contemporary Environmental Issues class we discussed how lots of world hunger could be reduced through more vegetable consumption.

http://www.earthday.net/footprint/info.asp

I am a strict vegetarian who walks everywhere. Even with all this, I still use 9 acres (4.5 are available for everyone on the planet to use).
 
^^^ No, not true. If you had read the thread you would have known that but I guess reading comprehension isn't your strong suit.

Vegetables are often as or more "wasteful" than meat. If you really cared about food grown on a minimum of land (which would be stupid) you would eat a diet almost entirely consisting of staples like potatoes or rice. Which is of course what historically dirt-poor people near the edge of famine tended to eat.

World hunger, of course, is not caused by there not being enough food around on the Earth. There's tons extra. It's caused by there not being enough food in a particular place -- say, Zimbabwe -- and nobody giving it to them. In the case of Zimbabwe, for example, this is because the government won't let anyone do so, because it uses food distribution as a means of political control.

Whether you stuff your face with filet mignon or eat only a couple packs of Ramen noodles won't make one fucking bit of difference to world hunger. But giving money to charity might. http://www.oxfamamerica.org/
 
Grim said:
Us humans however are the dominant species on this planet so we are the ones who are overpopulating. There is nothing wrong with an animal killing another animal for food, its called survival. Even though most people hate me when I say this, I think the tsunami that killed a huge amount of people overall is not a bad thing. Population control is essential for a balanced ecosystem.
Click to expand...

earth can support 3 to 100 times our current amount (its debatable)
who knows what sort of technology we will come up with, including new means of producing food and perhaps soon enough living in space
killing off a few thousand or hundred thousnad in a tsunami wont do much anyway, compared to the 6 billion people we have
 
talking about better supply of food:

My friend was talking about how if we grew all of our crops hydroponically cities could be pretty much self-sustaining.

Think about it.. 4 'skyscrapers' in NY, LA, wherever with nothing but hydroponics systems... machine/farming would become obsolete, however.

Maybe we oughta just genetically engineer an animal that is basically a parasite to whatever it can get ahold of, but has no brain. We could grow these chunks of protein and other things in tanks, in the hydroponics buildings...

This would save humanity... that and learning how to maxmize effeciency of space, like japan.

Also, legalizing pot would do the same.
 
zorn said:
^^^ No, not true. If you had read the thread you would have known that but I guess reading comprehension isn't your strong suit.
[/url]
Click to expand...

Man, I'm sorry but it seems like you must really have some issues. Anyone who feels the need to insult others on a message board should reevaluate who they are.

I never said that my personal choices affect world hunger on any real level, but the idea of my post, and of the site I posted, is that we as a culture are quite wasteful. There are only 4.5 acres available to each person on the planet to use for food etc., but poorer countries use far less than this. That is why we can get away with our lifestyle. While you say contrary, and I would love to know your proof, I found out about the concept of ecological footprints from 2 separate classes in college. Meat is much more wasteful than vegetables, as a cow eats more to grow into a fully mature animal than the sum of food we get from its body. Cows take several years to grow and are eating machines. I trust my professors over an angry anonymous person. Also, potatoes definately aren't a vegetable 8).

I read quite a bit of advanced literature, but I guess you would know that better than me. Quit sending bad vibes and get a real life. The last thing this planet needs is more people like that.
 
Vegetables are often as or more "wasteful" than meat. If you really cared about food grown on a minimum of land (which would be stupid) you would eat a diet almost entirely consisting of staples like potatoes and rice.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Please share with us Zorn, where you came by this amazing information. Really, I would like to check it out.
 
Psychedelic Gleam said:
"Vegetables are often as or more "wasteful" than meat. "

back that up please, that seems to be total bs.
Click to expand...

I don't know exact figures, but farmers are paid by the government not only to NOT grow crops, but they often are told to destroy what surpluss they have to balance supply/demand/price. Of, course some of it they manage to sell privately, but a significant amount does go to waste. However, I don't think anyone had any exact figures that would lead them to make the statement of which is more wasteful, meat or vegetables.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top