Those lovely Hindus!

[drscience]

I was a vegetarian for 8 years, mostly because of animal cruelty issues with factory farming. I just couldnt survive anymore, needed protein, and try to buy friendly beef at the local Hippie Grocery. I do agree that cruelty and irregular treatment of animals is wrong...but these people are a little bit behind if you know what i mean. I assume they do not have the same level of education that we enjoy. They will catch up.

Every lettuce harvest is like a holocaust. Every year. Cry a river for the lettuce. Damn veggies.

 

[Mr Wobble]

TBH, I won't be losing much sleep over the matter. There are indeed terrible things happening all of the time.

When I first came across the article I was just shocked and appalled by the size and brutality of the slaughter and more than a little surprised that this was being carried out apparently under the auspices of a Hindu ritual - a religion that I had largely previously associated with vegetarianism and reverence for other living beings.

I accept I was naive with respect to my knowledge of Nepali Hindu customs, but I still find my self shocked and appalled by the cruelty of this particular festival.

 

[Vader]

I agree that the manner in which foxes are hunted is cruel, I was just pointing out that there is an underlying purpose. Of course the most efficient hunting dogs should be used, and foxes should not be encouraged to breed just so they can be hunted. The sport I disapprove of, but I don't think it's intrinsically wrong to hunt a fox with dogs in all cases, which I'm not sure I could say about baiting, then killing, a bull for a crowd's amusement.

 

[Mr Wobble]

I agree that the manner in which foxes are hunted is cruel, I was just pointing out that there is an underlying purpose.

Fair enough. If foxes numbers really must be controlled, I prefer the use of dogs to flush them out so that they can be shot, which is the only legal option with respect to hunting foxes with dogs for now (not that the fox hunts around here are much troubled by adherence to the law). And I might agree that even trad fox hunting is preferable to a lingering death caused by poisoning or snares (I'd like to see both banned).

That said, I would argue that there isn't really a necessity to hunt foxes anyway.

Foxes will take lambs and domesticated fowl. To protect hens and geese it is more cost effective to ensure that the foxes can't get at them in the first place, which is most people's default position anyway.

So far as lambs are concerned, well I would first ask, what is the necessity to keep sheep? Hill sheep farming up here wouldn't be economically viable were it not for agricultural subsidies, and I just don't see that the benefit for the tax payer in subsidising it. The argument is that having sheep on the fells helps to maintain the landscape - I would argue that without sheep there would be more biodiversity and a richer landscape, rather than the monotony of close cropped green fields and little else that we have now.

I'm not sure what the score is elsewhere in Britain, but I would be surprised if rearing sheep is economically viable anywhere once any subsidies are taken into account.

Anyway, apologies, off topic, blah, blah ('countryside issues' is a bit of hobby-horse of mine 8)).

 

[B9]

If some skilled orator were to prove beyond all doubts that everything is "one" where would you stand on the harvesting of fruits & vegetables ? I believe this abhorrence of slaughter/cruelty is limited in the main to mammals, simply because we identify much more closely with mammals. The personal pleasure that people take from killing animals for "sport" is beyond me (but then again that's my culture - or lack of maybe) then again the cruelty that animals suffer over the years of being treated as milk/meat machines must be equally unfair. However that largely seems acceptable because the financial efficiency generated by intensive practices is a soothing balm all to us. These fuckers probably kill stuff coz their ancestors did & to show that they have animals to waste - maybe not that dissimilar to buying three unneeded gas guzzling ruiniously expensive cars - that incidentally create roadkill as a by product.
Roadkill vs ritual animal slaughter - how does one compare - by weight of usable meat or by individual ?


I believe the only thing one can effectively change is oneself - does anyone recall the PNG tribe that came to Britain and were appalled at the casual disinterest that our society shows to the vulnerable?
People are animals too - driven into wars by the farmers of control & power.
Nothing is simple - this poster excepted.

 

[MyDoorsAreOpen]

OP, do you see the world slowly moving in the direction of phasing out the raising of animals for either food or bloodsport, over the course of centuries or generations? I'm not one of those animal rights nuts, but I must say, it does seem like the most civilized and compassionate direction to be moving in.

 

[Mr Wobble]

do you see the world slowly moving in the direction of phasing out the raising of animals for either food or bloodsport, over the course of centuries or generations?

Maybe, but not for the obvious reasons.

One might argue that there is a progressive trend in commonly shared attitudes towards animal welfare in the western world and one might extend this trend until a time where eating meat derived from animals would become taboo.

One might equally argue that in the West we have a hypocritical attitude, or at least one of willing self-deception towards animal welfare - people probably have an idea that their consumption of meat likely causes a level of animal suffering that they would find totally unacceptable for, say, their own dog or cat - and this hypocrisy/deception/disconnect could well carry on for some time (perhaps progressively more humane methods of farming and slaughter might also be adopted).

There's also the rapidly developing non-western economic powers - I might be displaying my ignorance of other cultures again, but the impression I get is that very few Chinese have much understanding of, or sympathy with, Western attitudes towards animal welfare. Perhaps this will change with time.

All that is by-the-bye, any attitudinal changes would probably require the generations or centuries that you mention and in that time I think it likely that human civilisation will undergo some profound changes.

As per the end of the world thread, I'm pretty pesimistic about our chances in the next 100 years.

IMO, we're not going to get to grips with atmospheric CO2 in enough time to prevent serious global warming. We've also got an impending energy, over-population and resource crisis. Added together, by the end of the century people may become vegetarian out of necessity - raising animals for meat will just be far too inefficient a use of scarce resouces (plus, the oceans will likely be fished out, and dying due to acidification).

OTOH, if we dodge the climate and energy/pop/resource crunch bullets then the future is likely to be very strange with humans augmenting their brains using artificial intelligence and eventually self evolving into hyper intelligent beings. It's hard to predict what would happen from then on, but I would guess that such beings would ditch the cumbersome, inefficient biological system and use a direct energy source - thus vegetarianism goes out of the window by default.

Either, or, perhaps, some combination of the above pessimistic or strange scenarios will likely happen by the end of this century.

EDIT: I forgot about this article in the Times yesterday