On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 8:55 PM, Bob Sullivan <[email protected]> wrote: > Thank You Graydon! > I've always felt that the vegans & vegitarians were looking down on us > meat eaters.
I'm really sorry that you feel that some vegans and vegetarians look down on you. Maybe some do, but for myself, I've made a personal decision. I know that most people aren't going to make the same decision, and I don't think I'm judgmental about it - neither are any vegans that I know. > They were lording over us there superiority because they didn't harm animals. You've got it upside down, Bob. The point is that we ~aren't~ superior -. Look, I don't feel that I can speak for all vegans (heaven forbid!), but I can tell you how I look at things. My thought is that humans are animals - just one among millions of species on this planet. Because we aren't superior, we don't have the right to take the life of another animal any more than we have the right to take a human life. We don't have dominion over animals, we co-exist with them. They have rights just as we do, and the most basic of those is the right to life. >From my point of view, it's meat eaters who feel "superior" because they feel they have the right to exploit animals without their consent, to their own ends. Again, I don't judge, but I choose not to live my life that way. > I see now from a total system perspective that's a crock of bull shit. I didn't respond to Graydon's post, but to say the least, I disagree. Yes, fruit and vegetable farming has an ecological footprint, just as any human activity does. Yes, some animals are displaced because farms take away from the habitat that was once theirs. Cities, too, have altered the natural landscape to the detriment of some species (and the benefit of many others). While that's regretable, and maybe even wrong, that's no rationalization for harming animals by raising livestock in horrible conditions for the sole purpose of killing them for their meat. The meat we eat doesn't come from little mom and pop family farms where contented cows ramble across huge sunny pastures all day long for years until they're slaughtered. No, these animals are raised on feedlots, spending all day in mud and manure, eating nothing but corn (not a natural food for cattle, but high in energy so it fattens them up faster). Each cow is basically a food factory and the idea is to put as much meat on them in as short a time as possible, so they can be slaughtered to get the highest yield for the smallest investment. Cattle who are properly fed and treated have an expected lifespan of about 20 years. The average age of beef cattle being slaughtered is twelve to eighteen ~months~. That's not cruel? And don't forget, livestock contribute more to greenhouse gases than all the motor vehicles in the world, plus the run-off from feedlots (much of which ends up in local streams if there's a spill) is highly toxic (can you say e-coli?). As much room as they cows themselves need, there's also all the space taken by the farms that grow their feed - by far the vast majority of all corn grown is to feed cows, not us. But at this point, I have to tell you what really really pisses me off (and quite frankly, disappoints me) about your post, Bob. You were very quick to applaud Graydon's post. Because of two or three paragraphs that he posted, you can now see that the vegan perspective is "a crock of shit". It doesn't look like you did any further investigation, checked or verified any of what he said, you just took it at face value and proclaimed my perspective "a crock of shit". Why? Because he said what you wanted to hear. You didn't need to check into what he said, you simply accepted it because you liked what he said. Fine. During this whole thread you and a few others have been very quick to make jokes about and criticize vegetarians and vegans, and I have to wonder why. I mean, I'm not offended by the jokes or anything (although I don't particularly find them funny), but I do find it curious that they're being made at all. For my part I'm not asking you to adopt my lifestyle, and I don't criticize you for yours, yet somehow it appears that you feel threatened by the fact that there are those out there that choose not to eat meat or use products made from animal products. Why the hostility? Why do you feel threatened? I just don't understand... cheers, frank -- "Sharpness is a bourgeois concept." -Henri Cartier-Bresson -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
