What's for dinner?

[Gulp]

If animals could talk, and you asked them, 'Hey would you rather not die?' They would say yes. If you asked them, 'Which food would you rather eat:

A) Something tasty and easy to catch that died in pain, causes you healthy issues, contributes to the destruction of your environment, and causes starving people on the other side of the world to starve a little bit more until they're no longer able to wage war for natural resources.

B) Something tasty that took some adjusting, that didn't cause anyone pain, that didn't destroy the planet for your children, didn't contribute to the starvation of people on the other side of the planet, and ultimately causes you to think about the implications of your choices, whether they are what to buy or what to eat.'

You know what the animals would say? They'd choose A. Because it's easier. Even if it killed them and their children, they'd choose A as long as they didn't see the bullet coming.

Choosing B would be something that only humans could choose because we have the ability to complexly analyze the effects of our choices on our environment, our bodies, our children, and strangers on the other side of the planet.

Things that SuperflyTNT and others have suggested are more responsible ways to be a meat eater. There are ways to be a better meat eater. But as we all know, that's not how 99% of meat eaters behave. They want it as cheap as possible, even if it said, 'This is poison' on the wrapper. Even if it said, 'This contributes to global warming on the scale of automobiles.' Even if the wrapper said, 'For only 25 cents more you can get a healthy version of this burger,' people would still choose the cheaper burger.

And that's the only reason I've been posting is because I'm sick of people thinking that vegetarians just do it because of the animals or just do it to feel healthier. Most of them us do it because it's just an easy way to make a better choice.

Vote Gulp 2012.

[dok]

Originally Posted by Gulp

If animals could talk, and you asked them, 'Hey would you rather not die?' They would say yes.

That they can't talk, and that they lack the cognitive capacity to understand that they are destined for the slaughter, is precisely my point.

Just to further inflame the subject - do you see any parallel/contrast between your view on animals and your view on the morality of late-term abortions?

Originally Posted by Gulp

A) Something tasty and easy to catch that died in pain,

The conditions in most slaughterhouses are pretty wretched, but there's no reason that the death of a cow need be more painful than any other death any living animal suffers.

Death is inevitable for all living things; life is not. If the cows could answer the question, "would you rather exist and be slaughtered, or not exist at all?", are you sure they would pick non-existence? I'm not.

Originally Posted by Gulp

causes you healthy issues,

Meat in moderation does not cause health issues. Heck, some traditional cultures (Mongol, Inuit, Masai, many others I'm sure) have had an almost purely carnivorous diet for centuries with little or no resultant health issues. It's the particular variant of industrially-made meat eaten in excess, in the modern diet, that causes health issues.

Originally Posted by Gulp

contributes to the destruction of your environment,

Again, a function of our peculiar ways of raising cattle. See my previous post about carbon taxes, waste taxes, etc. I would also suggest assessing much higher property taxes (i.e. fines) based on runoff contamination, which would encourage more natural ranching practices as well as no-till agriculture. Again, just provide the economic incentives to nudge people toward behaving in a more sustainable way.

Originally Posted by Gulp

and causes starving people on the other side of the world to starve a little bit more until they're no longer able to wage war for natural resources.

There's more than enough capacity to feed everyone in the world without reducing meat consumption. Therefore, starvation is a problem of resource allocation and transport, as opposed to simply a question of land use. As such, this could just as easily be used as an argument against airline travel, or ski resorts, or professional football, or ANYTHING that consumes a lot of resources and is not strictly necessary. Sure, using meat production consumes lots of resources, but so does many other things that people do just because they like to do them.

Originally Posted by Gulp

You know what the animals would say? They'd choose A. Because it's easier. Even if it killed them and their children, they'd choose A as long as they didn't see the bullet coming.

And if the choice is between their existence and their non-existence, who is to say they would be wrong to make that choice?

To take it even further - animals in the wild suffer what we would consider horrible deaths all the time. Does that make their lives not worth living?

Originally Posted by Gulp

There are ways to be a better meat eater. But as we all know, that's not how 99% of meat eaters behave. They want it as cheap as possible, even if it said, 'This is poison' on the wrapper. Even if it said, 'This contributes to global warming on the scale of automobiles.' Even if the wrapper said, 'For only 25 cents more you can get a healthy version of this burger,' people would still choose the cheaper burger.

So internalize the costs. Repeal the farm bill. Put in all the taxes/fines/usage fees I've discussed. Make the responsible, safe, healthy burger cost the same as the lousy industrial one - which, of course, will make the lousy one stop existing.

---

If your argument is that I (if I want to act in a moral way) should do something now, in stead of waiting for the world to change, then my answer is that I do, by attempting to choose sustainably raised, healthy meat whenever it is available.

If your argument is that these policy changes will never happen, then my response is that a wide-scale outlaw of meat consumption isn't happening either.

[ollie]

Originally Posted by dok

There's more than enough capacity to feed everyone in the world without reducing meat consumption. Therefore, starvation is a problem of resource allocation and transport, as opposed to simply a question of land use. As such, this could just as easily be used as an argument against airline travel, or ski resorts, or professional football, or ANYTHING that consumes a lot of resources and is not strictly necessary. Sure, using meat production consumes lots of resources, but so does many other things that people do just because they like to do them.

A couple of tangents from these comments:

While there are sufficient calories being produced at the moment to feed the world adequately, as poorer countries aspire to the diet of the richer countries things become less clear. The world does not have the capacity for six or so billion to eat the amount of meat that is the norm in the US. A future world that more closely approximates fairness than today's involves much lower average meat consumption for us.

A crucial difference between professional football, say, and food distribution is what happens if the system breaks. We need food, but we don't need football (controversial, I know). The evidence suggests to me that there is a reasonably high chance of severe energy problems in the near future. We saw high oil prices cause food problems around the world last year; there is no reason to suspect that we are immune. Building local resilient food systems should be a high priority; buying local sustainably produced food---whether meat or vegetables---directly supports this goal. This is why locality is such a high priority for me in food purchasing.

Edit. Actually, to echo Gulp's argument that vegetarianism has more than one motivation, that's true for localism too---it helps economically, helps alleviate energy worries, fights global warming, often tastes better,...

Originally Posted by Gulp

... do it because it's just an easy way to make a better choice.

[Gulp]

DOK, apparently I didn't make it clear. I'm talking about regular old meat eating. You're talking about fancy meat eating. I'm not talking about the kind of meat eating that relatively few people do, where they buy a cow that grew old on a pasture and was smothered with a pillow while it slept.

If you're doing that, that's awesome. It's much more in the acceptable gray area than trying to argue from the point of view of someone who eats fast food a couple times a week and buys the rest of their meat products from Wal-Mart or Kroger.

I understand your cognitive argument, and that's why I haven't been arguing that animals have the ability to understand their deaths. Animals have the ability to understand fear and pain. If you have two buttons in front of you, and you choose the one that causes fear and pain to an animal just because you can, then that to me is excessive and unnecessary pain. I'd rather push the other button if it's all the same or better.

The starvation mainly comes as a result of global warming. We have enough land to feed everyone, but where's the money in that? Also, third world govt don't have a great record of using their land wisely, esp. when they can make some money selling corn to beef producers.

I haven't made a suggestion of what should be done beyond anything at the personal level. Like global warming in general, the best option at this point might just be to pour lots more money into research so that we can do a band-aid fix.

The 'if animals could talk line' was just a segue into the next line of the conversation with the animal. Obviously, if adult fetuses could talk, which they can, then they would not want to die. Any animal, human or whatever, still in the womb/egg doesn't have any idea of what wanting or having a choice would be. If you want to eat cow fetus from a mama cow that was completely happy to give you its fetus, then I will support your right to do so. However, once it's passed nature's threshold, then it no longer belongs to the cow since a surrogate mother/farmer can naturally take over.

[dok]

Originally Posted by Gulp

DOK, apparently I didn't make it clear. I'm talking about regular old meat eating. You're talking about fancy meat eating. I'm not talking about the kind of meat eating that relatively few people do, where they buy a cow that grew old on a pasture and was smothered with a pillow while it slept.

My point is that a lot your argument for vegitarianism is very much tied to modern, industrialized agriculture, and the way meat is produced in that system. Your problem is not with meat eating, per se, it is with the way most meats (and plenty of vegetarian products, for that matter) are produced in this any many other countries. This is why I think it's very relevant to the discussion for me to toss out all the public policy measures that I think should be taken in order to encourage sustainable and healthy practices.

I don't think that these sustainability arguments necessarily mean I shouldn't eat meat, either from a "think globally" or an "act locally/personally" perspective.

Originally Posted by Gulp

If you're doing that, that's awesome. It's much more in the acceptable gray area than trying to argue from the point of view of someone who eats fast food a couple times a week and buys the rest of their meat products from Wal-Mart or Kroger.

I usually buy my meat from the Whole Foods around the corner, and when the option is there I get the organic and/or local products. This is better than nothing, but I also freely acknowledge that I do my share of supporting industrialized agriculture. If I had more sustainable options available, I would take advantage of them.

The best steak I've had in months was bought out of a little butcher shop up in the mountains that only buys from locally ranched cattle. But I lack the chest freezer to store mass quantities, and I don't think driving 3 hours each way to buy meat is the most sustainable approach.

I eat very little fast food, but I must admit this has more to do with taste and the way it makes me feel than morality or even health.

Originally Posted by Gulp

I understand your cognitive argument, and that's why I haven't been arguing that animals have the ability to understand their deaths. Animals have the ability to understand fear and pain. If you have two buttons in front of you, and you choose the one that causes fear and pain to an animal just because you can, then that to me is excessive and unnecessary pain. I'd rather push the other button if it's all the same or better.

Any my response is, first, that it's not all the same; the animal only exists if it's raised to be eaten. So, there's at least three choices:

1. Living on a ranch, eating grass/hay and sleeping on grass/hay all of his/her days, and being killed quickly and relatively painlessly without seeing it coming.
2. Spending most of his/her life standing in cow dung, eating corn out of a trough and dealing with digestive issues as a result, getting shot up with antibiotics to avoid infections caused by tight living conditions and fecal matter, and getting killed in a stressful, somewhat painful way.
3. Never living at all.

I think most cows, if they had the capacity to respond, would pick option 1. After all, you get to live the life a cow was meant to live, if only for a time.

(As an aside, if I could only eat one type of meat for the rest of my life, I'd pick ostrich. Fantastic stuff.)

[Oh Yeah! I'm Here]

Well, to lighten this arguement, I'd like to ask for tips.

*Johhny walks into his kitchen. He goes to the counter, looking for a snack. On the counter he sees a basket. In the basket is the vegetables from his garden. They are small and do not taste good. He loves vegetables, and knows they taste better than that. He looks sad. Suddenly a man appears.*

"What's gotcha down, Johhny?"

"Well, Fred, I planted a vegetable garden back in spring, but its not doing very well. I try and be eco friendly by using a rain barrel to collect water, to water the garden, but my garden still seems to grow bad produce. The soil seems to be dead, no nutrients. What vegetables should I plant to renew the soil? In what yearly pattern should I plant them? What is the best way to irrigate them? What are some good, general tips for a vegetable garden, and how much space do I need for it?"

"Well, Johnny, those are a lot of questions. Let's see what the audience has to say..."

[SuperflyTNT]

FYI - I 'tinkle' every couple of nights into my flower garden and it's an excellent source of uric acid and nitrogen. My Azaleas are growing like wildfire!

[ollie]

Originally Posted by SuperflyTNT

FYI - I 'tinkle' every couple of nights into my flower garden and it's an excellent source of uric acid and nitrogen. My Azaleas are growing like wildfire!

Neat. And they're OK with it applied directly from the, um, hose without dilution?

[SuperflyTNT]

"Hose" is accurate.

Yes, it's not like cat or dog urine, which has a very high PH and will burn plants. If you're burning plants with your pee, go see a doctor - you're acidic and it could be a sign that you don't drink enough water!

[Bobofdeath's Dad]

To answer the question of this thread's title.

I had a salad for dinner last night. Lettuce, onion, ham, pepperoni, bacon bits, cheese, and thousand island dressing. It tasted great and yes the bacon bits did make it better.

[ollie]

Originally Posted by Bobofdeath's Dad

To answer the question of this thread's title.

I had a salad for dinner last night. Lettuce, onion, ham, pepperoni, bacon bits, cheese, and thousand island dressing. It tasted great and yes the bacon bits did make it better.

I'm sensing a theme emerging.

[Oh Yeah! I'm Here]

I think bacon bits are nasty. The taste is just weird. Of course, I think bacon is nasty also...

Thanks for the advice Ollie.