- Jul 31, 2012
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just thought id share this for you meat lovers i stopped watching after a minute
rusty shackelford
Banned
- Aug 4, 2011
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I'm good bruh bruh.
- Apr 3, 2007
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Meatspin >
- Aug 4, 2006
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:x.
wait I take that back, some of these pigs look like they have herpes
wait I take that back, some of these pigs look like they have herpes
Last edited:
- Mar 9, 2010
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i don't gives a @$#%......will continue to eat meat ( no ocean)
b smooth 202
Banned
- Dec 21, 2004
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making the transition for good haven't been eating beef...poultry is next. already cut back tremendously
- Aug 4, 2006
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fish part was the less explicit.
- Oct 13, 2004
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I don't want to sound cruel and just say its a first world problem, but it some what kind of is. I think we should be aware of the cruelty, but to think that we should or even can cut back on consumption of meat drastically is pretty complicated.
There is about 925 million people starving in the world. You think they are thinking about ethics if given the choice to eat? You think if we took away meat, we'd really be stable? It's either we eat meat or slow down birth rate (I choose birthrate for many reasons) and cut population. As much as I hate what the industries do to our meat (messing with science, etc), it is almost necessary to feed our need. When I say necessary, I mean how much society wants to consume. If we weren't so wasteful with food, if we chose to consume LESS; then we'd be doing our part.
Livestock lasts longer than crops, if weather was to become very unpredictable, what would you eat then if nothing grows? Most of us live in place that can't even grow the necessary crops for subsistence without importing, without meat being part of our diet, it wouldn't work. The argument that eating meat is unnatural might be true... but would animals think twice before eating you if it was hungry? We do not become the supreme being, and the dominant specie without F-ing a lot of things up. It's hard to be efficient and humane.
As far as the cruelty goes, of course its wrong. But to think that everyone does it is like saying every cop is crooked. There is no incentive to use more physical strength and beat an animal, there are no bonuses. They caught a few on film, that's it. Majority of people (at least I believe) have some type of sympathy. I don't think majority of people who work in the industry wakes up with the thoughts of "I'm going to punch these calfs so good today", or find a passion in neglect in general. But, I do find cruelty a problem, do not get me wrong.
We are always going to have something to frown upon. If we all became vegan, someone would argue that plants are living things too, which it is and I don't see how its any more correct to eat that just because it doesn't bleed. We'd be arguing "we should not gather crops with a swing of a blade, that's inhumane, we should dig the root out to collect crops". There will always be something we do wrong with things we consume.
Lastly, this is Nike Talk. Most of our favorite sneakers are made of leather and to not eat meat and put the rest of the animal's body to use would be the most inhumane thing to do.
There is about 925 million people starving in the world. You think they are thinking about ethics if given the choice to eat? You think if we took away meat, we'd really be stable? It's either we eat meat or slow down birth rate (I choose birthrate for many reasons) and cut population. As much as I hate what the industries do to our meat (messing with science, etc), it is almost necessary to feed our need. When I say necessary, I mean how much society wants to consume. If we weren't so wasteful with food, if we chose to consume LESS; then we'd be doing our part.
Livestock lasts longer than crops, if weather was to become very unpredictable, what would you eat then if nothing grows? Most of us live in place that can't even grow the necessary crops for subsistence without importing, without meat being part of our diet, it wouldn't work. The argument that eating meat is unnatural might be true... but would animals think twice before eating you if it was hungry? We do not become the supreme being, and the dominant specie without F-ing a lot of things up. It's hard to be efficient and humane.
As far as the cruelty goes, of course its wrong. But to think that everyone does it is like saying every cop is crooked. There is no incentive to use more physical strength and beat an animal, there are no bonuses. They caught a few on film, that's it. Majority of people (at least I believe) have some type of sympathy. I don't think majority of people who work in the industry wakes up with the thoughts of "I'm going to punch these calfs so good today", or find a passion in neglect in general. But, I do find cruelty a problem, do not get me wrong.
We are always going to have something to frown upon. If we all became vegan, someone would argue that plants are living things too, which it is and I don't see how its any more correct to eat that just because it doesn't bleed. We'd be arguing "we should not gather crops with a swing of a blade, that's inhumane, we should dig the root out to collect crops". There will always be something we do wrong with things we consume.
Lastly, this is Nike Talk. Most of our favorite sneakers are made of leather and to not eat meat and put the rest of the animal's body to use would be the most inhumane thing to do.
- Oct 17, 2008
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- Jul 18, 2012
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I thought this thread was about something else.
putting in work
Supporter
- Nov 10, 2007
- 14,195
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Couldn't watch it... I trying to start only eating poultry, but it's a lot harder than I thought.
I hardly ate beef anyway only like steaks, and hamburgers... and I don't like fish at all, but I realize that will have to change.
Pork though... I love me my ribs.
I hardly ate beef anyway only like steaks, and hamburgers... and I don't like fish at all, but I realize that will have to change.
Pork though... I love me my ribs.
- Feb 28, 2009
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pork, not even once...
- Apr 15, 2005
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- Dec 8, 1999
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I agree that it's important to acknowledge that even participating in a discussion like this one requires a certain degree of privilege. It's fair to say that no one here is operating in pure "survival mode."
With privilege, however, comes responsibility. We have the option to choose. Doesn't that, then, present us with the responsibility to make ethical choices?
The irony in all of this is that matters of consumer choice in general can be categorized as "first world problems," yet the impact is disproportionately borne by those within the "developing world." For example: it's often cynically argued that caring about things like "conflict diamonds" (all diamonds are blood diamonds) and sweatshop apparel is the cause célèbre of yuppies and hipsters. Yes, they can afford to pay extra to assuage their guilty consciences, and they can, in vulgar fashion, turn ostensibly ethical sourcing into a status symbol, which is cause for outrage in and of itself. However, who truly pays the price for the purchasing decisions of the privileged? Whose children are assembling the ipads? Whose land is being ravaged by strip mining operations and pockmarked with pools of toxic waste? Is that a "first world problem?"
When we talk about "world hunger," we're not talking about something that can be prevented by factory farming. We're talking about something that is exacerbated by factory farming. In the modern world, people starve to death because we allow them to starve to death, not because we're unable to counteract regional crop failures.
I've posted quite a bit about these issues in the past and I don't want to try and dominate a conversation by dumping out the contents of my computer's clipboard on here when a simple link will suffice, so, if you're interested in the relationship between factory farming, plant-based diets, and world hunger / greenhouse gas emissions, check out the following thread:
http://niketalk.com/t/191398/food-inc-the-most-important-movie-of-the-year
As something of a preview, I'll include this one stat from the Earth Policy Institute:
• Grain needed to adequately feed every one of the people on the entire planet who die of hunger and hunger-caused disease annually: 12 million tons
• Amount Americans would have to reduce their beef consumption to save 12 millions tons of grain: 10 percent
In a way, you can draw a parallel here between policies like the war on drugs and animal cruelty. If police departments are given an economic incentive to shunt people into prison for minor drug offenses, what do you suppose the effect of that will be on things like routine traffic stops?
What if your department's budget is suddenly dependent on Byrne grants, property seizures, and, however indirectly, the private prison lobby? Just in terms of cognitive dissonance, what sort of rationalizations are likely to be produced by this situation?
Is it easier for a police officer to accept that she's complicit in something racist and unethical, or that she's helping to keep our communities safe? If she chooses the latter, what must she start to believe about the people she's stopping, searching, and arresting every day?
Now, what if you work in a slaughterhouse or a factory farm? There are incredible economic incentives to operate production lines are ever-increasing rates, which make it IMPOSSIBLE to prevent millions of animals from being literally skinned alive, among other atrocities. What happens to you if a cow reaches you, licks your hand, and you have to put yourself in the frame of mind to slit her throat? What do you have to believe about cows, or chickens, or pigs, in order to do that thousands of times per day?
What do you have to believe about non-humans to drag infants from their mothers, to keep sows in farrowing crates so narrow that they can't even turn around?
Cruelty is not incidental to factory farming. Rather, the system and its constituent ideology operate in tandem, like a pair of gears: each driving the other. Factory farming both produces and requires cruelty. To rationalize this cruelty, one must accept it as somehow inevitable or inconsequential.
In other words, you have to believe that factory farms are a necessary evil or you have to believe that there's no such thing as animal cruelty, as only humans are capable of experiencing suffering. Similarly, most police officers may not consider themselves racist - but they have to find a way to explain why, despite the fact that White Americans use illegal drugs at virtually identical rates and visit emergency rooms for drug reasons three times more frequently than Black Americans, 1 in 14 Black men was incarcerated in 2006 compared to just 1 in 106 White men.
If you are literally being paid to do these things, and you don't want to think of yourself as a bad person, what sorts of things must you begin to believe?
First of all, I think we can all agree that "we are always going to have something to frown upon" applies to ALL moral standards. We shouldn't apply this to gay marriage and say, "yeah, but if we achieve marriage equality for LGBT citizens then someone's just going to want to make it legal for grown men to marry toddlers or something." "If we give women the right to vote, what's next?"
All moral standards are subject to collective negotiation and perpetual revision. Thankfully, our society's standards have undergone significant revision over the past several generations and I doubt too many people would argue that we've achieved the pinnacle of morality.
While it's all relative, which standard seems less arbitrary to you:
- Avoid causing harm to any sentient being. Strive for constant improvement to this end.
- It's okay to suffocate baby chicks in plastic bags or throw them into industrial grinders. You can castrate cows, slice beaks off of chickens, or cut the tails off of pigs without anesthetic. You can force cows, pigs, and chickens, to live in overcrowded cells where they can barely move. You can shoot a deer in the stomach and let her slowly bleed to death. You can cut the fin off of a shark, then throw him back in the ocean like garbage. You can genetically engineer cows, pigs, sheep, and chickens into monstrosities incapable of independent survival (or even, in the case of chickens, capable of supporting their own body weight.) You can snap a fox's neck with your bare hands or kill a mink via anal electrocution. That's all fine.
You can't, however, do any of the above to a dog or a cat. They're special. It's frowned upon to hurt dolphins or whales. You can torture monkeys for experimentation, but you can't be cruel to them in other contexts (and for the same reason: they're similar to humans.)
These sorts of conditions don't make a lot of rational sense. On one hand, people claim that it's fine to do anything to a cow because cows are supposedly stupid, but they nonetheless show compassion to animals of similar intelligence and mentally impaired/undeveloped human beings. We don't truly believe that it's all just a question of intelligence or the ability to experience pain. It's just a cultural tradition.
Simply stated: a lot of this boils down to the status quo bias. Most Americans would be hard pressed to explain why "standard" measurement is superior to the metric system, but they don't want to bear the burden of changing things, either. Since we aren't choosing a system of measure from scratch, we can always justify the inferior system by arguing that it's "too expensive" or "too difficult" to change. Future generations will judge us accordingly.
Actually, most people's favorite sneakers are made primarily from synthetics. For example, many colorways of the LeBron IX don't even use imitation leather. Most of Nike's "futuristic" products use ballistic mesh, "flywire," engineered textiles, and clean, uniform surfaces. We associate tumbled leather, reptile skins, etc. with old shoes more so than new ones.
Frankly, it seems a little crude for a "high tech" performance shoe to use something as primitive as a cow hide.
Quality synthetics are more sustainable and offer performance benefits relative to conventional leather. These days, you're more likely to find animal products present in the adhesives and rubbers of modern performance athletic shoes than you are in the upper.
With a little more effort, a company like Nike could easily produce vegan footwear products if they actually wanted to. (And goodness knows I'd love to see it happen.)
When I was a kid, I didn't covet Air Jordans because I wanted to be complicit in cruelty. It was just "how things were." Like most people, I rationalized it away as somehow "inevitable." I told myself that I had "no choice" but to buy leather basketball shoes. In the long run, those sorts of rationalizations didn't really make me feel better - they just made me feel less.
As Dr. King reminds us, "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
When things like human rights issues, animal cruelty, environmental degradation, and the like feel like they're out of our control, when we allow ourselves to feel helpless, then it becomes very easy for us to actively support these things through our purchasing decisions. "I'm a good person," we tell ourselves, "but I'm going to eat this or buy that because I want to do it and, anyway, my choices won't make any difference. It's gonna happen no matter what, so I might as well enjoy myself."
At that point, we're literally surrendering ourselves and our values for the sake of convenience. Shoes and other consumer goods are expensive enough as they are. They shouldn't require us to make ourselves feel literally powerless - and our lives meaningless - as part of the bargain.
Even if we can never attain perfection, the great thing about having perfect standards is that we always have the opportunity - and the imperative - to improve. We can always choose to be better - and that's an empowering choice.
- Jul 16, 2001
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Pretty good post. But I'm not vegan/pescatarian for the moral implications. I do it for the health. Fish oil > trans fats in a steak.
- Nov 17, 2009
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Dont want to start an argument, I really don't have the time right now. Wish I did. But, would like to discuss so I will contribute and let you all ponder my comments. I'll try to comment later if I'm replied too.
I'm not taking or talking about my thoughts on any sort of moral stand point, just FYI.
Strictly from a biological standpoint, its been quite necessary for humans and our ancestors to be omnivores and specifically have carnivorous diets, we would never have been able to come this far or accomplish this much if we didn't. Our brain would have never developed as they are now, through evolution, without consumption of meat.
There is a reason why all species with increased capability and higher intellect consume meat.
Lastly, there was one vegan couple who tried to give feed their baby an all vegan diet. It died basically from malnutrition. Was getting enough calories, etc..., but wasn't getting proper nutrients to develop properly.
I'm not taking or talking about my thoughts on any sort of moral stand point, just FYI.
Strictly from a biological standpoint, its been quite necessary for humans and our ancestors to be omnivores and specifically have carnivorous diets, we would never have been able to come this far or accomplish this much if we didn't. Our brain would have never developed as they are now, through evolution, without consumption of meat.
There is a reason why all species with increased capability and higher intellect consume meat.
Lastly, there was one vegan couple who tried to give feed their baby an all vegan diet. It died basically from malnutrition. Was getting enough calories, etc..., but wasn't getting proper nutrients to develop properly.
- Dec 8, 1999
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Obviously it makes some intuitive sense that omnivores can have an easier go of it, in terms of survival, than pure herbivores. Any vegan who's been through the midwest would admit as much.
Of course, pure survival also favors those willing to commit murder and rape. Moral standards have always been influenced, if not dictated, by the material conditions in which humans have lived. It is entirely possible, now, for us to survive, as individuals and as a species, without killing one another (or innocent creatures.) If nothing else, it's an option we ought to consider.
Whatever one's thoughts on veganism, there's nothing particularly "natural" about factory farms. Forget about heart disease, cancer, and climate change - the rate at which these facilities are breeding antibiotic-resistant bacteria presents more than enough of a threat to human beings for my taste.
I think that's a pretty unfair example, don't you?
Most of us, I'm sure, have heard of the late Dr. Benjamin Spock, one of the world's most famous and trusted resources on children's health. In his final book, Dr. Spock recommends a plant based diet for children. Countless organizations, like the American Dietetic Association, consider well-planned vegan diets appropriate for every stage of life.
If a child of omnivorous parents dies of malnutrition, their death is merely blamed on malnutrition - not on animal products or "omnivorism." It would be irresponsible, then, to claim that this one anonymous, anecdotal vegan couple's baby died "because" of veganism. That's simply untrue.
Myths aside, we all know there isn't something "magical" about animal protein. If you can fulfill all of your body's nutritional requirements through plant-based sources, and you most certainly can, what's the difference? It's not like growing children need to absorb the "life essence" of small woodland creatures in order to become strong.
Obviously it's important for EVERY parent to ensure that their children are well nourished. Plant based diets a perfectly valid option and there are a number of great resources out there for anyone considering plant-based diets for themselves or for their children.
If anyone's actually considering it, this book, by the Physicians' Committee for Responsible Medicine, can help you get your children off to a healthy start:
Amazon product ASIN 0471436216
- Nov 17, 2009
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Obviously it makes some intuitive sense that omnivores can have an easier go of it, in terms of survival, than pure herbivores. Any vegan who's been through the midwest would admit as much.
Of course, pure survival also favors those willing to commit murder and rape. Moral standards have always been influenced, if not dictated, by the material conditions in which humans have lived. It is entirely possible, now, for us to survive, as individuals and as a species, without killing one another (or innocent creatures.) If nothing else, it's an option we ought to consider.
Whatever one's thoughts on veganism, there's nothing particularly "natural" about factory farms. Forget about heart disease, cancer, and climate change - the rate at which these facilities are breeding antibiotic-resistant bacteria presents more than enough of a threat to human beings for my taste.
I think that's a pretty unfair example, don't you?
Most of us, I'm sure, have heard of the late Dr. Benjamin Spock, one of the world's most famous and trusted resources on children's health. In his final book, Dr. Spock recommends a plant based diet for children. Countless organizations, like the American Dietetic Association, consider well-planned vegan diets appropriate for every stage of life.
If a child of omnivorous parents dies of malnutrition, their death is merely blamed on malnutrition - not on animal products or "omnivorism." It would be irresponsible, then, to claim that this one anonymous, anecdotal vegan couple's baby died "because" of veganism. That's simply untrue.
Myths aside, we all know there isn't something "magical" about animal protein. If you can fulfill all of your body's nutritional requirements through plant-based sources, and you most certainly can, what's the difference? It's not like growing children need to absorb the "life essence" of small woodland creatures in order to become strong.
Obviously it's important for EVERY parent to ensure that their children are well nourished. Plant based diets a perfectly valid option and there are a number of great resources out there for anyone considering plant-based diets for themselves or for their children.
If anyone's actually considering it, this book, by the Physicians' Committee for Responsible Medicine, can help you get your children off to a healthy start:
http://www.amazon.com/Children-Physicians-Committe-Responsible-Medicine/dp/0471436216
I agree with your statement but I wasn't even taking into consideration survival, although you are right there is more food availability. But, I'm talking about our development and the evolution of our brains from consuming meat. We wouldn't be the same as far as size, content, and capability. If we didnt eat meat.
So not to ignore your comments about murder and rape but they have nothing to do with my point, it has nothing to do with survival. Also rape and murder have a lot to do with morals and JUST consuming meat, not taking into consideration how you got that meat, does not. Which is also why I prefaced that I'm not discussing anything related to morals. I do agree that we could all survive without killing anything, and I even think we could adapt to a more vegan diet, but again bringing up my main point, biologically, we wouldn't have developed into the species which we are today without consuming meat, actually just consuming meat, too, not also taking into consideration evolving to hunt, etc...
Additionally, I do agree that was an unfair or at least very correlative example which could have no real causative relation, but it is a true account and I should have also stated the baby died from malnutrition because the couple fed it a FULL vegan diet, so no milk or formula to supplement. Obviously it doesnt take a genius to imagine the problem with this, even adult have to sometimes supplement for not eating meat let alone a baby who can't even eat solid food. It just wasn't getting the proper nutrition. There is a reason why mammals have mammary glands which proliferate and produce milk due to hormone stimulation during birth. Babies are suppose to survive off an animal product, milk. I won't and it was never my intention to place blame on a vegan diet or lifestyle I was only pointing out that a lot of extremist think you aren't suppose to consume animal proteins and eating only a strict vegan diet is ok, this is untrue. Especially during development when what your suppose to be naturally drinking milk as a baby mammal.
To argue against one of your other points though, there IS something quite special about consuming animal proteins, evolutionarily. I'm pretty sure you can as an indivudaul consume all plant-based proteins, but I will argue with you that there is a difference, especially as already stated evolutionarily.
My point is to support my main point, which is again to state that humans have evolved to be omnivores and although could survive being a vegan we are suppose to be also consuming meat, biologically. And other animal products as babies, milk. Anyone refuting otherwise needs to do more research. Lastly, to reiterate, we would have evolved into the animals we are today, specifically our brains, had our ancestors not consumed meat. The size, structure, and biochemical content would have not developed as such, nor could we support such content or development only on plants.
- Dec 8, 1999
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It's fine that you have a very specific point, and that you're uninterested in anything else, but, last I checked, this thread was about factory farming. Given that, ALL of this is tangential UNLESS you're trying to imply that the "evolutionary value" of meat somehow justifies the content of the video.
Personally, I don't believe that's the case.
There are plenty of good articles about this online (this being one: http://www.thescavenger.net/animals/humans-did-not-evolve-to-eat-meat-32156-420.html), and I'm not sure it's necessary to rehash that here unless there's some applicability to the topic post.
Obviously the "value" of meat in the course of human evolution is highly speculative. You can't fire up the "what if" machine and determine what MIGHT have happened if human beings ate more like gorillas (not that people aren't suggesting exactly that today: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/science/07obgorilla.html) than chimpanzees. It's like saying, "what if Portland drafted Michael Jordan instead of Sam Bowie?" Well, we'll never know, will we? As such, all of these ex post facto hypotheses are virtually impossible to test.
Things happened the way they did. That wasn't our choice. We do, however, have a choice now and that, I think, is really the central issue here.
When you say "supposed to," you're ascribing some sort of intentionality to evolution. Are humans "supposed" to drive cars or use computers? The argument almost sounds like "if God wanted man to fly, he'd have given him wings." I don't believe that's your point.
With that in mind, I don't see why it's any less "unnatural" to bottle-feed an infant a formula containing the milk of other species than a formula synthesized from plants. We're just talking about chemical energy, after all, not mysticism.
It is entirely possible for babies to thrive on a vegan diet. If a formula or supplement happens to be plant-derived, that doesn't make it "less" vegan. We're just talking about something that wasn't available to early humans.
That's all fine and well, but I don't see much value in holding ourselves to "early human" standards.
It could be argued that early humans benefited from a sexual division of labor that, by today's standards, would be utterly sexist. Men can't nurse. Unlike chimpanzees, human children can't cling to their parents' backs. The implications of this are obvious. That doesn't mean that our current societies need to echo early human behavior in the absence of the very conditions that prompted these behaviors.
So, in that sense, I'm sure you can see why I consider all of this rather tangential.
I get that you find it interesting, but, in this context, I hope you can understand my objection. If this were a thread about gender discrimination, we'd be right to wonder why someone might say, "not to start a thing here, but human societies as we know them probably wouldn't exist unless women were willing to stay close to home and focus on domesticity." That claim isn't necessarily sexist unless it's being used to support contemporary sexism or promote the idea that it's unnatural for women to serve as material providers. When juxtaposed against evidence of contemporary sexism, however, it's difficult to interpret it otherwise.
Once could mount an argument that we wouldn't be the same if humans never began riding horses and other animals. Redundantly, that isn't a valid excuse for riding an ostrich to Best Buy and strapping a refrigerator to his back.
We get into dangerous, regressive territory when we talk about what we're "supposed" to do based on biological limitations - let alone based on material limitations that no longer reflect our everyday reality. Biologically, humans aren't "supposed" to breathe underwater - or in outer space. Historically, it might have been irresponsible for parents to try and raise children in the middle of a desert prior to the advent of air conditioning or irrigation. We rarely hear people criticized for attempting to do so today on the grounds that it's "unnatural."
It also strikes me as oddly incongruous to demonstrate a sort of blind fealty to the "plan" of evolution. After all, its "purpose," if you want to anthropomorphize evolution in that way, as though it were a "force of nature" rather than a description of how random mutation functions over time, is adaptation. In other words, humans don't eat meat because we're "supposed to," just as humans don't walk around on our hind legs because we're "supposed to" - or grow appendices because we're "supposed to." It's just worked out for us thus far.
Over time, human beings have devised better ways to combat malaria than through sickle cell anemia. What was once a "survival advantage" is now, by contemporary standards, considered a disorder.
Our highest aspiration isn't just to endure long enough to procreate - by any means necessary. Generally speaking, we tend to want long, peaceful, and fulfilling lives and we adapt our behavior accordingly. Not coincidentally, having these types of goals - beyond pure survival - has actually enhanced our survival as a species. More of us have the opportunity to raise families because we aren't constantly killing one another and eating each other's corpses.
Morality has served us well as a species. Technology has served us well as a species. Applying technology to live in better alignment with our morals, then, is arguably more consistent with the "human arc" than enacting, in almost ritual fashion, atavistic behavior from humankind's primal past.
