The eating of meat - The Vegetarian discussion

@Pygathrix: Oh please, spare me the artificial British-German soccer hostility as well as the obligatory Nazi bashing. And which country actually produces pop music that is not rubbish? :rolleyes:
SOH???
 
For goodness' sake Sun you could try lightening up. Don't you recognise a bit of light-hearted banter? You asked for stereotypes... if you ask an ignorant Brit what do they think about Germans they will say nazis with no sense of humour (SOH), I didn't say I was agreeing with these sentiments.:p

Re pop music - maybe you don't like modern music, well plenty of people don't, but I think that you'll find that popular and critical consensus (in the Northern hemisphere at any rate) puts the US and UK in a league above everyone else. Apart from Austria of course - they gave us Falco;) Obviously the situation is entirely different if one is talking about the last 400 years but I wasn't

Oh and another one - Germans will get up at 4am to steal all the best places by the pool
 
@ Pygathrix: Sorry, I'm always a little thin-skinned when it comes to references to British football hooliganism...About the popular music: I know, I know, taste differs individually. But international fame & the praise of self-acclaimed music specialists is not always equal to quality-especially in regard to US pop music. I tend to rate Scandinavian pop music pretty highly, but that's another thing...

@NZ Jeremy: To explain the matter: for several years now, popular low-budget hotels in the Mediterranean region, f.e. on Ibiza or Majorca, have been the venue for a "competition" between Brits and Germans, but in recent years, other Europeans as well as Russians have joined as rivals. The goal? To reserve deck chairs at the beach & pool for the next day by draping Your bath towels on them. And as it is common in low-budget hotels, there are not enough chairs for every hotel guest, turning this competition into an adult version of musical chairs. So every day, middle-aged pater-/materfamilias, may they be British or German, wake up very early in the morning ("the earlier, the better") to outsmart the "competition" and race to the pool & beach to drape their towels on "the best chairs", instead of profiting from the holiday and sleeping in. The British claim that the Germans wake up just after midnight to have an advantage, while the Germans say similar things about the Brits; this ritual is followed by the "Who can stable more food from the buffet on his plate", "Who can gobble that down the fastest" and the "Who can empty the hotel bar the fastest" as well the 2007 version of "Who can sue the 16 year old German for trying to sleep with the 13 year old British girl". Others, especially "newcomers" like the Russians, tend not to go by the "rules" and just shuffle the foreign towels away-or just lie on them. This results in more or less fiery hostilities between the hotel residents every day, which reveal that the "brotherly friendship" within the different nations of Europe as well the Europe-Russia relationship is still overshadowed by old foe images...Anyway, this is one of some reasons why I don't travel to those areas...;) In case of a dooming misinterpretation-this post is just a light-hearted, joking observation about strange European behaviour.
 
I don't go to those places either for the same reasons... I made an exception once for Tenerife because I wanted to go to Loro Parque. Wonderful penguin house, interesting and unusual sardine exhibit (a three storey acrylic tube), although I thought the parrots were displayed a little unimaginatively considering they are the park's speciality, mostly rows and rows of smallish aviaries.
 
Huh...?
That's weird... I don't think they'll get much of a point across to be honest.
 
Being rather new to this forum, I hadn´t seen this thread before. Just my two cents on the original issue:

I have one main problem with meat eating and that is the industrialization of the whole process. You are probably all aware of this, you have seen the terrible pictures, videos etc on tv or on the internet: the horrible overcrowding at pig- or chicken farms, pigs that drown in almost boiling water at the slaughter house because they have not been properly bled, cows that never see the sunlight until they are transported to the slaughter house, ships filled with thousands of sheep sailing for weeks to the final destination, week-long transports of live stock on lorrys without food or water, senseless beatings of the poor animals at the slaughter houses. ETCETERA, ETCETERA in eternity....

I actually worked myself in a slaughter house for three summers in a row when I was young. Saw scenes that I will never forget and - then again - Swedish slaughter houses are probably nothing compared to slaughter houses in many other countries and continents...

So am I a vegetarian or vegan because of these experiences? Sadly, no! I wish I had the courage and the moral stamina, but no - unfortunately I have not. I go on eating meat. This is actually my biggest personal philosophical problem...

Let me give you an interesting example of alternative farming. Some 30 or 40 English miles from the city I live in there is a big pig farm that treats the animals in a totally different way. The pigs live in big outdoors enclosures, with grass, mud baths etc and when they are slaughtered/killed, this is done with extreme care, it takes place at the farm (no transports) and the individual pig is very gently, without any stress at all, pushed into a rather dark room where it is shot in the head with a tool that I don´t know the English word for. The pig dies instantly without having been beaten and scared. And it has led a happy life up until this very moment. (Compare the slaughter house in which I worked. One terribly frightened and mistreated pig was killed every 10 seconds). Unfortunately this farm has no distributors and the meat can only be bought at the farm. I don´t drive a car so I can´t go there to shop. Of course the meat is much more expensive than the meat I actually buy at my nearby shop.

I guess my main point is that I would not have problems eating meat from this farm - or others such as it. I also have no problem with eating killed wild game.

Any more thoughts on the subject?
 
Just some remarks:

Quite a lot of my friends were vegetarians. All had to stop after several months or years, because they found their health deteriorating. The last girl gave up when she had great difficulties falling pregnant. So, despite all theories - staying vegetarian is not realistic option.

Also - vegetarian food costs lives of many animals. Those killed by pesticides, those whose natural habitat was replaced by crops, those killed by getting resources to produce fertilizer, fuel, transport. In fact, some vegetarian foods like soybean sold in Europe tend to be intensively produced and imported from far away and are definitely not eco-friendly.
 
I would probably eat food produced by animal-friendly methods and low-intensity agriculture. I buy free-range eggs, for example.
 
One interesting point made by the Australian MLA (meat and livestock australia) when the garnaut report on climate change was released. Garnaut (sp?) suggested we eat kangaroo, there is plenty around they are soft footed and are alot better for the environment than ruminants. MLA came out saying we will start eating kangaroo and eat less beef when you convince asia to eat less rice. Rice is incredibly detrimental with the amount of water used as wella s the massive amounts of green house gases produced by rice production being very close to the amount produced by livestock. Good point and interesting i thought. a little off topic but hey
 
Just like to bring up certain religious things, I personally eat meat yes, and in some ways yes I think it is horrible, due to my certain strand of buddhism though every half and full moon I have a vegetarian day, which is around every 2 weeks or so, though people who eat meat are animal activists who oppose the consumption of exoctic animals.,,, A lot of confusion surrounds this with me,
 
Jurek7 said:
Just some remarks:

Quite a lot of my friends were vegetarians. All had to stop after several months or years, because they found their health deteriorating. The last girl gave up when she had great difficulties falling pregnant. So, despite all theories - staying vegetarian is not realistic option.

Also - vegetarian food costs lives of many animals. Those killed by pesticides, those whose natural habitat was replaced by crops, those killed by getting resources to produce fertilizer, fuel, transport. In fact, some vegetarian foods like soybean sold in Europe tend to be intensively produced and imported from far away and are definitely not eco-friendly.
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I have been a vegetarian (not vegan) for over 30 years, with no health issues.

so perhaps it is more suitable for some people then for others, or perhaps some people learn well enough how to succeed with it while others remain ignorant. I had to learn early on to get used to eating and enjoying foods I had hated before. If I was going to make it work, I had to be vegetarian in a way that would keep me healthy. But I do suspect that for some people's metabolism, that may not be possible.
 
Zooplantman said:
I have been a vegetarian (not vegan) for over 30 years, with no health issues.

so perhaps it is more suitable for some people then for others, or perhaps some people learn well enough how to succeed with it while others remain ignorant. I had to learn early on to get used to eating and enjoying foods I had hated before. If I was going to make it work, I had to be vegetarian in a way that would keep me healthy. But I do suspect that for some people's metabolism, that may not be possible.
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Took the words out of my mouth, except I've only been 3 years :)
 
If you eat lots of milk and eggs perhaps it works.

But milking cows and egg-laying hens typically live in very unpleasant battery conditions and are slaughtered early when they lose productivity. Spare cockerels and male calves are killed soon after birth and hens after two laying seasons (at least what Wikiepdia says)...
 
NZ Jeremy said:
I can understand where you coming from Ashley...

My gf is a vego and chooses to be so due to the fact she grew up on a farm and did not like some of the sights she saw (not your typical farm kid) but she has never tried to force it on me in anyway, its just her choice...
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My wife's the same way. But exchange the farm bit with a father who hunts. She's vegetarian because she doesn't like hurting any animal. Like your gf, she feels it's her own personal choice and has no problems with me still eating meat.
 
Pretty good eh, she even cooks me chicken from time to time..!
 
I'm pretty lucky, but not that lucky. She doesn't cook any meat, but doesn't mind if I cook and eat it.
 
Ah, I like to cook at my age, but I have no idea how it will work if I get married,
 
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