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Originally Posted by DEM
Spiecies favoring their own, thats obvious. However, killing for the sake of killing has nothing to do with anything, people hunt not just to thin herds.
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I don't agree with killing for sport, I think if an animal is killed it should be used. I also believe most hunters hunt to use what they kill... they eat it and wear it. Besides, I would sooner support the swift shooting death of a deer who lived his life in the wild, than I would raising a chicken in a cage for food.
My point is this. Predators are not only a natural part of life, but a needed part of life. PETA doesn't recognize the global need for predators, and they see human predators (no matter how responsible and humane) as doing something "cruel" and "selfish". Vegetarianism is out of sync with nature. If PETA had their way cats would be fed vegan diets and nothing would ever be killed for whatever reason. I find it so ironic that if their dream to preserve life were ever actualized, all they ensure is the hasty demise of most every species and a steady retrogression of life on earth back to the level of primordial slime.
Imagine a stack of blocks, each block is dependant on the one that is lower than itself for support. If you pull one of the lower blocks, everything on the top not only collapses, but this collapse also triggers the fall of all blocks on the bottom. Life and the foodchain is a lot like that. Each species is stacked on each other, the dominant predatory species keeps the lower ones in check, and in turn the lower species support the dominant species with fuel. Nature is a delicate balance, and predators are an intrinsic part of maintaining that balance. Eliminating predatory practices would have an effect similar to eliminating producers.
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You would rather animals didn't have predatory instincts if they were around YOU or your family, but its ok for us the have predatory instincts to kill for enjoyment?
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It is REALLY a stretch to compare animals raising/using humans for food to humans raising/using animals for food.
You seem to equate the life and feelings of animals with the life and feelings of human beings. I don't understand this comparison. Sure, animals have emotions, but do you really believe they are as sophisticated as the emotions of people? Does any organism with a nervous system deserve equal treatment to humans? Where does this end... should we outlaw abortion too since the fetus has a primitive nervous system? Come on, you and I both know this is ridiculous.
The human nervous system is so much more complex than any other animals... humans are capable of feeling not only momentary pleasure/pain, but we also feel anxiety and doom for the future. A human being is capable of understanding the gravity of his or her situation and it's implications on the future (well MOST of us do anyway
), whereas an animal lives exclusively in the here and now. While an animal may feel momentary pain when their neck is severed, they didn't spend their lives living in fear of "slaughter day". A human being
would, because our nervous system is that much more sophisticated.
It is because of this that I really can't see a comparison between humans raising animals for food, and an animal doing the same to a human.
Although this does encroach on a related topic of interest for me. What if we weren't the highest on the food chain? Say, if aliens from another galaxy colonized earth... what if these beings had nervous systems so much more advanced than ours, that they were not only capable of expressing themselves and communicating in ways we can only dream of (i.e. telepathy), but they also could experience some sensations that were unthinkable to the human mind. It is possible these sophisticated beings would look at us as we look at animals. Our primitive methods of communication and experiencing emotion would make it impossible for them to relate to us. Would this lack of ability to relate to humans result in them treating us as we treat animals, or would they be able to understand that we have meaningful emotional lives and feel terror, fear, dread, and anxiety over the future just as they do?
I think a lot of vegitarians think animals just aren't understood by humans, like humans aren't understood but my hypothetical aliens. In other words, animals are conscious enough to make killing them wrong. I disagree, but it is worth considering.
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Meat eating isn't going to stop and I never said it should, but An animal is entitled to a decent life even if they are going to be slaughtered. Patently ridiculous or not.
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I agree. An animal should not be made to feel any pain that is preventable.
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If you were in captivity and knew death was imminent(I can think of a few times humans have been in that situation)you would still want a decent life until you were put to death.
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SLOW down there
.
That's the rub. You said "if you were in captivity and knew death was imminent"... that is a big if. Animals have no concept of the future, they have no idea they are being raised for food. This is exactly why we as humans have deemed it acceptable to raise animals for food. It is assumed the pain of being a slaughter animal begins and ends with slaughter. If animals had human nervous systems, they would spend their entire lives in a state of misery. Fortunately they do not.
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Its a joke to try and even put forth the notion that animals are in anyway given anything close to equality compared to humans so I don't understand that part of your argument.
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No, but that is the goal of PETA and many vegetarians.
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As for PETA, what should they be finding? What is non-extreme animal cruelty? When they do a report on say meat packing, they give specifics on what happened at each place they went, and name that place, on top of backing it up with video and photos. How is that digging to find the worst thing they possibly can? If its bad its bad.
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Easy. Focus on what they want to focus on, ignore what they want to ignore, no matter how obscene the truth is actually distorted. It's not all that dissimilar to how PETA front organization PCRM ignores the millions of people who had their lives saved or improved by atkins, and instead focuses on the one or two cases where people claim to have been made sick or died from it.
I have no doubt that animal cruelty has happened at slaughter houses. What I am saying is, I have a strong doubt that being excessively cruel to animals is the norm. THis is just as I believe that though some people may get sick and die on atkins, 99.99% of people will not (unlike what PCRM expects us to believe).
PETA isn't concerned with research, it is concerned with propaganda, period. It isn't concerned with research and reality, because they know their position is ultimately a frivolous one. They need to
sell vegetarianism, because logic alone won't cut it. Their propaganda is so blatant and irresponsible too. I saw a PETA video a few days ago, of a man stomping on a piglet, bashing it with a rod... it was absolutely horrible. Yes, I felt terrible watching it. It was a disturbing video. Do they expect me to believe pigs are ritually killed like this? WHY on earth would they? Even if these ranchers were animals who didn't care about the pain of the creatures, it would be so much more time/cost efficient to just put it down with a bullet or tool, rather than torture the little thing for an hour.