The Best Speech Ever Made

A>r do not all animals have to deal with that problem, herbivores and carnivores alike?

Do they not have to care for their young also feed and protect them and so on?

I'm not sure what your stance on this from your post, I'd like to know more.

Also it really has nothing to do with the fact that we can chose what to eat, this is about what we should and were meant to eat. Why didn't the poor tired elephant say fuck it, let's eat meat tonight, there so much choice and a big old buffalo would feed my two babies, fuck eating leaves?

Humans, like elephants or buffalo or kangaroos do not have a natural urge to eat meat, if they did toddlers would catch birds in the garden and get constantly told off by their disappointed mothers...

all these activists should rethink their approaches. you create where you put your attention on. so if you look aroudn to look for animal suffering, actually you are creating it.

my opinion is that veganism is just as 'morally wrong' as meat eating.

life feeds on life. if were not killing animals were killing plants, i see no difference.

Let me spell it out for you The really clear difference comes about when you look at environmental or ecological impact / or environmental loading. The meat based diets are more taxing to ecologies on numerous measures than the plant diets, whether it's pollution by products, resource consumption, amount of acres of land required, or any other measure. This is rooted at the most basic level in the laws of thermodynamics. As you move higher along the trophic layers or up the food chain as one organism transforms or utilizes the matter / energy from another there is more and more waste energy and by products produced. So plants are more efficient at converting nutrients in the soil, water, and sunlight into their metabolic byproducts, than a cow is at converting grass into its required metabolic biproducts. It's often looked at on resource input and undesired biproducts per gram of protein or per kilocalorie generated. It tends to be the larger the animals the more undesired byproduct per unit protein or per calorie of the final product being worse than smaller animals, which are still worse the equivalent plant product.

interesting. so ur against meat eating because of the toll on the environment in general rather than the toll on the individual animal. And i can certainly agree with ur point of view.

i was addressing more the moral agrument vegans have when that say 'meat is murder'.

I know for a fact the farming of cattle has a negative effect on the carbon dioxide and therefore global warming, but im not entirely convinced global warming is a result of human interference with the planet, and not part of a bigger cycle of warming and cooling, but i guess even scientists cant agree on this either. so wat hope do we have of figuring it out.

Anxious1 wrote:interesting. so ur against meat eating because of the toll on the environment in general rather than the toll on the individual animal. And i can certainly agree with ur point of view.

i was addressing more the moral agrument vegans have when that say 'meat is murder'.

I know for a fact the farming of cattle has a negative effect on the carbon dioxide and therefore global warming, but im not entirely convinced global warming is a result of human interference with the planet, and not part of a bigger cycle of warming and cooling, but i guess even scientists cant agree on this either. so wat hope do we have of figuring it out.

Throw the global warming stuff out the window, worry about pollution, but humans have very little influence if any over the temperature of the planet...

I don't think the emphasis for restoring the environment should be put on raising plants or animals. Both types of farming have the potential to do good for the environment. Manure is a huge tool for restoring soil, probably better than any other material for this purpose, in terms of restoring bacterial cultures and nutrients to overused soil. Then there are examples of certain plants, like some kinds of beans, that are good for restoring nitrogen content to the soil.

And there are an equal number of examples of poor farming practices on either side that are detrimental to the ecosystem at large. Overfarming, overplowing, pesticide use all deplete soil and lead to topsoil erosion/contamination, which will eventually contaminate the water table. We know that poor farming of animals also has contamination issues, let alone the disrespectful and awful treatment of animals on SOME farms.

But my point again isn't to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Just because some animals are raised in poor conditions, doesn't mean consuming animals is inherently wrong or unnatural. Just because megafarms are using disgusting amounts of pesticides on their vegetables doesn't make eating vegetables inherently wrong. We need to be focusing on the practices and trying to emphasize organic farming methods. Its certainly possible to farm in sustainable ways that enrich the soil instead of deplete it, and put back what we take while also treating livestock with due respect.

Its just that this system is at odds with a capitalist economy. Our economy has nothing built into it to protect the envrionemnt it relies upon. It values and provides incentive for operating at the highest volume with the lowest cost. By definition, the recipe for competitive success in this system means taking the most you can from the environment while putting the least back, as anything that raises costs undermine your competitive advantage. It is a largely unregulated (in terms of envrionmental impact) economy that is the primary mover in all of these poor practices being discussed.

And the farming of cows contributing to global warming? No, this is like saying human beings are contributing to global warming by breathing. I see it now: graduated breathing taxes.

Since I started this forum have seen this argument surface and resurface.

So for what it's worth some basic points.

Harvesting of grain foods kills more small animals than all the slaughtering of larger animals.

I am sure that all sides would agree that the industrial style of animal feed until slaughter
would be substantially improved if they were all fed real food (grass), not grains and therefore
sanitary conditions and land would also be improved as a result.

I sincerely believe based on thousands of blood tests that no one is designed to eat the same
food. During the "dark ages of nutrition," I made attempts to go vegan twice, and each time
fell into poor health (the first time was primarily vegetable juicing). Others can thrive on it--simply depends on metabolic type.

I agree with anthonyspencer54 point on the environment. Hopefully most of us are aware that man has no real control
over the 'global warming' factor, since the data used to "prove" that climate change is caused by CO2 (a lagging indicator) and other info were interpreted with bias, now it has become a political thing and no longer a science issue.

Also, I've heard the vegan argument about the digestive system and they are so full of holes it is embarrassing. In 1994 area, I fell for all of the propaganda, not knowing enough at the time. I would provide lots of counter arguments, but that has been done to death here already in past posts.

The final point is that individual metabolism is quite different from another.

Cattle contribution to global warming comes from their methane output not their carbon dioxide output, so the analogy fails. Methane is about 20 times more potent of a green house gas than carbon dioxide.

CS was waiting to hear your take on things. I would be really interested to hear your views on the digestive system argument because I haven't really seen anything that seems to disprove it? Also from a moral and ethical stance what is your opinion?