PETA bullshit

[doc]

Z, I like the way you think. Let's go to Burger King and give some more cows a chance to grow up in a slaughterhouse. Nothing like a cage for a few years, being force fed. Doesn't sound too bad now, does it.

But, please, let's leave the mice and bunnies out of this. They're so cute. I think we should stop testing medicines on them, and start using illegal immigrants instead. There's just so many people in Las Vegas that want to mow my lawn, I just can't choose amongst them all.

[onesp1ng]

......"bunnies"...........lol......

[liutangsanzang]

Honestly, i dont understand why i would catch an animal that does not want to stay with me. So i believe, but i try to hold it as a belief not as a truth, that killing fish, chicken, birds and every running away animal not to be ok.

But i have the cow question. I was in Songpan sometimes and there was this young tibetan girl taking care of 3 yaks, mao niu. The yaks would just obey her. So i thought the yaks might be ok to be killed.

Another point of view on this is that these animals are used to humans and not afraid. When i was in India i met a wild buffalo and he would not let me come close to him. This wild indian buffalo is one reason why i became veg.

So i dont have any clear answer on that. That is why i need to debate on that.

The Hindu civilization has proven that you can be vegetarian on a large scale and that you dont need to kill animals to build a way of life. India is a totally different place from the West and China, Hinduism a totally different religion. I would recommand to make a trip there, it can really change one's life. Travelling to India can really be an initiation trip and that is why we have the Sun WuKong story. To see vegetarianism on such a large scale changes one's perception of killing for living. Hindu people have a very refined practice of compassion and non violence, Buddhism being just a branch of it. Remember India is the root of Shaolin? Just for the Jain religion you have more veg than in the whole China i guess, and Jainism is a small sect. What Bodhidhamma brought from India we can only imagine, but it says a lot about its difference. India is really a shock to travel to, a big change for the ego, every shaolin practicioner should make that trip to pay hommage to Bodhidhamma's roots.

So all in all, i dont see meat eating as necesary and yes, i m afraid it is violence and that it might bring to bad karmic consequences. Karmic consequences can be the habit of using force to achieve one's desire against another's will, leading to anger, rape, war. But maybe some animals agree, this i dont know. But what animals except the tamed cow and is it really agreeing or just being conditioned?

[zachsan]

Nothing like a cage for a few years, being force fed. Doesn't sound too bad now, does it.

Naturally, that would suck. This is why I try to buy organic, free range, super happy paradise meat, etc., if there's a selection. I think people care about how their doomed animals are treated and the current market trends reflect that.

But at the end of the day, you also have to realize... it's a cow. It's not like it's sitting there considering its lot in life and what it all means anyway. More likely it's thinking about when it'll get its next meal, or whether or it's scheduled to be ****ed today.

[liutangsanzang]

Z, the problem with animal testing is also that it seems alternatives to it are not being used because it is more expensive. Read the thread i have posted on understanding capitalism in the Fugue section. Drug companies make a huge amount of money but would not spend it compassionately by avoiding animal suffering or giving medicine to poor children in underdeveloped countries.

About the cow being born to be meat, what about the wild cows? India has a different way to see the cow.

[onesp1ng]

how is it possible to talk on the conditioning of animals and their feelings, while, all along, following these various traditional customs ourselves? this is confusing to me.

actually i'd love to visit india, but, i still don't see compassion as something to be measured.

if it were, hell, (and "god" was real.. as we know "him"), he'd have some major explaining to do.......

[Iron Cross]

YOu know i have absolutely no problem with animal testing. Main reason is it saves human lives. I do tend to care slightly more about human lives than rats. In fact I would kill every rat in the world if it could cure AIDS. I would kill them all 100x over. If killing one mountain Gorilla saved a single child with cancer I would wipe out the entire population with my bare hands.

The idea that what happened to the Jews is morally equal to how we treat chickens and cows is so stupid and beyond anything that could be considered logic that anyone caught saying this should be immediately beaten and sterilized so they cant spread their clearly defective genes to the next generation.

Again PETA dude. Killing and eating chickens is no where near the level of killing and raping HUMAN BEINGS!!!! Chickens and cows are extremely stupid animals we basically created for our own purposes. What kind of world do you live in??? I know you want to see all the creatures of the earth living side by side in some bizarre fantasy. SOrry just isnt going to happen. Read a book on the food chain. TO quote Penn from the bullshit episode on PETA "Life is not disney bullshit. YOu think palestinians and jews have a hard time living next to each other? Try pitbulls and bunnies"

[onesp1ng]

"bunnies".......ooooo....lol......

[zachsan]

Z, the problem with animal testing is also that it seems alternatives to it are not being used because it is more expensive. Read the thread i have posted on understanding capitalism in the Fugue section. Drug companies make a huge amount of money but would not spend it compassionately by avoiding animal suffering or giving medicine to poor children in underdeveloped countries.

What alternatives are you referring to? If there really are good alternatives (and "good" includes them not costing obscenely more) then certainly drug companies ought to use them. But I have a feeling that if such alternatives did exist, they would be used and that use would be advertised loudly as a selling point (e.g. "guilt-free prilosec!"). It would create something similar to the organic foods market, but for pillheads.

Also remember there are often benefits to animal testing outside the initial scope of a given experiment. Some of our most important drugs come from findings reached accidentially during animal testing.

About the cow being born to be meat, what about the wild cows? India has a different way to see the cow.

I live in the U.S. and have never seen nor eaten a wild cow or wild anything (excepting venison). But I certainly would have no problem with it, unless the species were close to extinction or something. In the case of venison, my state (Pennsylvania) actually has a huge deer overpopulation problem, so any time you shoot and eat one here you're doing a service to the environment. (Ironically, selling venison from American deers is prohibited in the U.S., so most storebought venison comes from New Zealand... end tangent.) And from an ethical treatment point of view, a life and death in the wild is the best thing you can hope for for an animal.

[LFJ]

whats the big difficulty about seeing all life as wanting to live and not suffer, and respecting it as you would yourself?

i dont think its about putting chickens and cows on the same level of worth as human beings. its just about respect for life. chickens, cows and human beings are the same in that we all want to continue living and none wish to suffer.

i know you'd be crying yours eyes out and hysterically pleading for your life is someone cut your balls off and skinned you alive.

people who can do that type of sh!t without remorse are not even human. its just sickening.

but most would like to pretend that doesnt happen. kind of lying to yourself. you shouldnt be able to eat meat unless you can sit through one of those horrifying videos without flinching or thinking "wtf", or do the deed yourself just like growing corn and beans.

[zachsan]

I agree that someone who eats meat ought to have the stomach to kill the animal as well, or at least watch it happen. Not sure how often or why they'd be skinned alive though, but I might just be ignorant on the subject. Re: The cutting off of balls, sometimes that's the humane and environmentally responsible thing to do (like neutering cats).

Of course you would not want to be the recipient of such things. But this is nature. Energy gets stored up in living organisms of varying complexity, and other organisms consume it. Nobody said it was pretty. Nobody smart anyway.

Just finished a barbacoa steak burrito from Chipotle across the street. Delicious.

[Iron Cross]

WEll speaking for myself. Ive seen videos of chicken farms and how they are killed and prepared. I honestly dont care. Just like I go fishing in the summer. I catch the fish, throw it in a cooler, take it home, then kill it if its still alive and cut it up to be eaten. I dont hesitate for a second because I PLAN TO EAT THE FREAKING THING!!!!! I wouldnt think to hesitate in picking and eating an apple would I??? The chicken, the fish, the apple... all FOOD!!

[LFJ]

Re: The cutting off of balls, sometimes that's the humane and environmentally responsible thing to do (like neutering cats).

they usually dont do it by picking them up by their hind legs and snipping their balls off with scissors, with no pain relief, and then toss them back in the cage screaming and crying.

iron cross:

maybe watch the chinese fur farm video that liutangsanzang posted. can you watch it without any sort of negative feelings or reaction?

or maybe bigger animals where you can see their personality and suffering in their eyes, like cows.

[zachsan]

they usually dont do it by picking them up by their hind legs and snipping their balls off with scissors, with no pain relief, and then toss them back in the cage screaming and crying.

I'm not sure what you're talking about, sorry.

or maybe bigger animals where you can see their personality and suffering in their eyes, like cows.

Personality? Suffering? I see big, dumb, tasty animals. And no, the fact that I refuse to invent human personalities for these animals does not make me heartless.

Main Entry:
an·thro·po·mor·phism Listen to the pronunciation of anthropomorphism
Pronunciation:
\-ˌfi-zəm\
Function:
noun
Date:
1753

: an interpretation of what is not human or personal in terms of human or personal characteristics : humanization
— an·thro·po·mor·phist Listen to the pronunciation of anthropomorphist \-fist\ noun

[Iron Cross]

I dont wear fur. I think wearing fur is stupid. There are far superior synthetic fabrics available now. Maybe in the future we will be able to produce synthetic meat that is superior to the real thing. Until then I will enjoy my chicken and turkey.

In terms of personality and suffering. Again I dont care because I am about to eat the animal to sustain my own life.

Where does it end with you people? Seriously. After you would ban all forms of animal usage what would you do next? WOuld you ban lions from eating animals too. I mean the zebras personality and suffering is very apparent when the lion suffocates it to death and tears into its stomach with its teeth. WOuld you ban all carnivores from eating meat because you dont like the fact that cute and fuzzy things have to die for them to live. The world is not a disney fantasy where all the animals sing songs and play together. Eat or be eaten is the code of the wild. It is the force the drives evolution. Not for nothing but the only reason there are cows and chickens alive today is because we eat them. If there was no need for cows or chickens there probably wouldnt be any. If there were any in the wild they would most likely be an endangers species. 10,000 years of selective breeding has made cows incredibly stupid.

My dad told me a story once. He saw a cow eating a bunch of grass. The grass had a roll of razor wire in it. The cow simply kept eating. ate all the razor wire and died on the spot. These are not animals thats are even capable of surviving without human care. It really is a symbiotic relationship. They need us to live and we need them.

It should also be noted that human resource use is the biggest factor in animals suffering. If you want the cute animals of the wild to be free from human intervention you will need to kill about 4 billion humans. There might be enough room then for humans to live without interfering with the animals in the wild. Of course the population of people would return to 6.6 billion in no time and you would have the same problem again.

I'm really curious. I've always wanted to ask a PETA person or animal rights activist this. If you were along on a boat with no food. The only thing you have is a single chicken. Would you kill the chicken and eat it, thus surviving, or let the chicken live and you yourself die????