vegan said:
they are like aid workers who have to create their own anti-feelings bubble to protect themselves from their surrounding
vegan said:
if an abattoir worker is not especially sensible, he is quickly encouraged by the behaviour of his co-workers to forget about the pain he sees
You're making the massive assumption that everyone is equally horrified by the killing of animals, but butchering used to be an everyday thing. In many places in the world it still is. You and I, however, live in a society in which we are removed from that reality. Instead of slaughtering our own pigs, someone else who we don't have to think about does it. If you grew up on a farm and raised and slaughtered your own livestock rather than relying on big industry, then you probably wouldn't be so shocked. Due to being removed from the reality of the food chain, we as a species no longer understand death.
(I think what's disturbing for some people is the contrast from ignorance to reality rather than the reality itself.)
vegan said:
i only see meat as corpse, not as food
It's both though isn't it:
me said:
Due to being removed from the reality of the food chain, we as a species no longer understand death.
The consumption of meat is not evil and people will never stop eating meat, so the guilt-trip method isn't going to work. You can't try and convince people that the consumption of meat is a bad thing because it isn't. Bad conditions in certain abattoirs or factory farms don't reflect the industry as a whole.
I eat a lot of raw salmon, for example. Probably makes up half the meat I consume. Do you think salmon are mistreated?
Ever see a cat play with a bird or a mouse before it eats it?
They take their time.
They kill them slowly.
They enjoy it.
Personally, I've never seen footage of a person being that cruel to an animal.
http://www.mytopclip.com/play.php?vid=11168
^Domestic cats are much worse.
Either way, though, death isn't pretty.
I'm sure a documentary maker could quite easily put together a montage of the most graphic footage obtainable, depicting animals killing other animals. And it would probably be difficult to watch, all of that death condensed into a film reel. But that doesn't mean that animals shouldn't kill other animals.
To question the conditions in the food industry makes sense.
But to say right across the board that meat is wrong is just silly.
You mentioned sentient beings. Then what about oysters? Do you really think an oyster is aware of it's existence?
Aren't most molluscs, in terms of sentience, closer to plants than animals?
The experts seem to think so:
http://www.animalsuffering.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7614
The current research on animal cognition/sentience suggests that most invertebrates are non-sentient. This includes insects, crustaceans, and most molluscs (see David DeGrazia's "Taking Animals Seriously" pp. 97-112 and Lauritz S. Sømme's report to the Norwegian Scientific Committee for Food Safety [available at
http://jillium.nfshost.com/library/pain.htm]
