Hey DEM,

If you eat a predetor from time to time, then you're actually saving animals.

Just a thought....

I'm telling you peta is a radical organization who will break the law to get their point across. If any peta member were to throw paint on any fur my girlfriend had I'd drag you to court and make you replace it with another fur, real fur. These groups are way out there in their logic and are so extreme their ridiculous. They are 100% against anyone eating any meat, period, and there is no reasoning. They think fishing is bad because of fish hooks or milking a cow is cruel. I tend to agree with the previous poster who said that they are putting animals on an equal or higher pedalstole than humans which shows for some reason they have a problem with people thats deeper than being for animal rights.

With all due respect, all this talk about the radical fringes of PETA isn't that helpful, I think we can all agree their platorm is extreme. One can agree with some of their principles but not all (actually, a LOT of their members feel this way too and are not militant vegans), nobody here is defending PETA 100% but just their own views that happen to be shared by this group. Let's not paint everyone who opposes animal cruelty with the PETA brush and judge their views by this.

As for hunting, I agree that in some places it is necessary to contol prey populations, but this is unfortunately because we have extirpated large predators in these areas and thus damaged the ecosystem. Here in the West there are efforts to reintroduce these predators in places, some sportspeople are excited and supportive of creating a more healthy and balanced wilderness, but sadly there are many who oppose this because they are concerned there will be fewer hunting tags available. Again, really can't lump these people into a single category, there're good and bad ones both as far as wilderness ecology is concerned.

RD you almost sound like the exact opposite of a crazy peta member. That doesnt bother me if somene ruined your friends fur. Not a personal thing but if someone did it I wouldent shed any tears and lets not try and trick everyone, if its not real fur no one is going to throw paint on it. It is very easy to tell real fur from fake fur. In my opinion I dont understand why anyone wears fur. For one is very cruel to animals. Two its wasteful. Three its expensive. And four, people that wear fur just look extremely stupid. The ones that say PETA is crazy and does nothing good at all obviously knows nothing about PETA, just what you have heard off hand. The NRA is nuts but you see people supportings them because they agree with SOME of what they say. If the NRA had its way people would be chipmunk hunting with ak47's. But people still become members.

No one has explained their reasoning as to why PETA is putting animals above humans because they fight for animal rights? Their are a bajillion human organizations out their, obviously an animal rights group is going to fight for animal rights. Wouldent help much to do things totally unrelated to animals. You can look at a cow and see it isnt haveing any fun when its getting milked. While you dont have to go through that because your a human its easy for you to say it doesnt matter if it hurts them or not because you have no earthly clue what it feels like. Should they have milk? sure. Should the cow be cared for as well as possible? yes.

And it does not matter that they are 100% against eating meat. You are eating plenty of meat, we all are. How is this a problem to you? I will use the NRA as an example again. They are 100% for everyone being able to own a gun, be able to take a gun home the second you buy it etc. They obviously cant have all of it, but they fight for it. A good example would be yesterday. They were fighting for a drop of the assault weapon ban(like anyone needs an assault weapon) and they didnt want the gun show loop hole closed. What is the difference?

If you eat a predator from time to time your not eating an animal that was ever going to be able to kill anything considering that it was probably raised on a farm for slaughter. And we, in the west atleast, dont eat many predators anyway. We eat mainly herd animals. We might eat predators once in a while but I cant think of many

PeTA would have you believe that they are. The minority of these type of operations (more than likely located outside of U.S.) should not be used to characterize the majority. Charles Manson and Jeffrey Dahmer were cold-blooded murderers, therefore, all humans must be cold-blooded murderers.

Again, I respect them for holding true to their convictions, but they are radical in their approach. I don't have any convictions to eating meat, as well as others on this board, therefore our choice should be respected as well (not saying that we have been disrespected).

Dem I really can't follow your arguments or why you are making them.

Be a vegetarian then you will be happy with your choice.

Bev you havent read the whole thread then. This thread started out as a question to other people that feel eating meat might not be the greatest choice but do anyway for atkins. Then it turned into a personal views playground on all sides. At this point its about animal cruelty and the original post has all but been forgotten. There is a difference between eating meat(my original post) and animal cruelty(what the whole topic has turned into). From your post I cant tell if you are able to tell the difference or not.

I have never been that keen on eating meat, and as I said I dont eat a lot of it even on atkins but you guys are not hearing me. The diet works so I will stay eating this elevated amount of meat for awhile until I get where I want to be. I have never disputed the fact that humans eat meat because obviously I eat meat as well. I just plan on trying a vegetarian diet AFTER I am finished because of the increased amount of meat I will have taken in on the diet. Sure I feel guilty but I am also human, and my urge to be skinny is greater then my urge to eat not meat at all. I am not a vegetarian right now, never have been but I would like to try it at some point.

They have found things such as that at almost all of the slaughterhouses they investigate. People that spend their lives killing things tend to be more odd then normal. PETA started because of things like that, not to create things such as that. If it only happened once in a blue moon PETA would not exist anymore. I doubt they are justifying their own existence by trying to find a few weirdos that hurt animals. It must be awful easy to find animal cruelty because they can find it a whole hell of a lot of places and have proof that they did. I cant say the same for people that say it doesnt happen on the scale that PETA says it does because on their side we are just supposed to take their word for it that it doesnt happen. PETA has the hard proof that it does.

DEM...
Its harder, but very possible to do Atkins and incorporate a vegitarian lifestyle...You might want to consider doing that so you don't have to feel "guilty" from time to time...You will have to be a little more creative thats all, but you can do it!!

In all honesty, I think that PeTA has done some good in making the public aware of some of the practices (granted, there are some in the U.S. that have been exposed) in the meat for food & clothing industry. I think that there have been changes made under such pressure. Furthermore, I personally don't care for fur.
I actually ate veal on a cruise once, and did feel bad after I found out what it was...later that night by my wife, who opted for the steak. Besides, it didn't taste good at all.

I too agree that animals should be treated as humanely as possible while they are here. I have never heard of people beating pigs to death in order to slaughter them. Not that it doesn't happen, I'm sure it is not in the norm. For one it would take much longer than just shooting it. We raise pigs with a friend. He keeps them on his property. The procedure is to call a slaughtering service to shoot the pig, then deliver it to the butcher. I'm sure huge farms do the slaughtering themselves but I agree that beating the animals to death is inhumane and it should be stopped.

As for cows not being happy being milked, well on our dairy farm they seemed pretty content to me because they ate while they were being milked. When we went out to herd them in they all came running towards the parlor. This wasn't the only time they ate, they also graze all day long in the pasture. It is some what of a relief when they are milked since it takes a lot of pressure off of them. Just as when a human breast feeds or pumps. Does it "hurt" them, I really don't think so because if it did they would let you know because they would start to bawl.

DH and I have chickens, cows and horses at our home that have plenty of shelter and free room to roam. I can't tell if they are "happy". How do you tell if and chicken is "happy"? I know that they are taken care of well and get plenty of food, water and shelter so I can only assume that they are happy. Are they sad when I take their eggs? I don't think so, because they never really seem to care. I can tell when they are scared or feel threatened because they squak, cows and horses will kick or buck, but as for when they are happy, I just don't know. They don't wag their tales like dogs or purr like cats, they don't smile like humans. I just don't know how one can tell if a cow is happy or not, unhappy or threatened yes, but happy...I just don't think so.

RD64, DH also belongs to the wild turkey federation. Along with DU he also belongs to some other wildlife federation that covers like all wildlife, but I'm not sure of the name. We also donate all kinds of things to 4H and to the FFA at our local high school.

Wee

The example you used of the pig getting beaten. In that case most of them they would just beat it, not to kill it but for fun. The slaughter is something completely different. This is ongoing torture to the animal. Take a look at some video from a few pig farms. The pigs spend all day getting beat by hook sticks or numerous other nasty things.

And their is a difference between a local dairy farm and a corporate dairy farm. Corporate farms pump their cows so full of hormones they produce milk at an alarming rate and the suction machines suck VERY hard. Until you have heard a cow cry out in agony you wont understand what I am talking about. Its a horrible sound. Its very rare to see groups like PETA go after small farms or anythign of that nature because for the most part small farms tend to treat their animals a lot better seeing as their own personal buisness and life is involved with the wellbeing of the animals. On corporate farms employees have no ties besides a paycheck, they have no ties to the animals or anything personal riding on the success of the farm.

Well I guess it's good to know that all the meat I eat has come from an animal that was treated fairly. But as you know, meat is meat so those of us that eat it will always be looked down on by those that think that we shouldnt.

Wee

Isn't it true that PETA kill all unwanted animals that are given to them to re-house or look after because basically as a militant vegitarian group they don't approve of people having pets?

I don't know about the killing thing (that would push them over the edge from "militant" to "hopelessly insane"), but yes, they don't think anyone should have pets/companion animals. I'm not sure how they think animals that have been domesticated for thousands of years would fare out in the wild.