I thought I'd start another 'ethics' thread, this time discussing meat. I'm not vegetarian. If you are vegetarian, please let's have your view too.

How much do you care about the meat that you eat? Does it matter to you where it came from? Do you care if the animals were treated humanely? Or is it just a matter of taste - of the meat, that is?

My own view is that the industrialisation of agriculture has produced some abominable practices that should be reversed. I'd like to hear your opinions.

Here is a link on poultry, but be warned that some of the content on some pages is pretty unpleasant

http://www.poultry.org/suffering.htm

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A good start would be to eat organic certified meats (and vegetables) from local farms that you can actually visit and observe for yourself. Some of the factory farm feed lots here in the US are hellish nightmares filled with excrement lagoons , downer cattle and managers with no appreciable connection to the land. Corporate agriculture suckles from the public teat, so they should be held to the highest standards of environmental and ethical practices--this is emphatically not the case. Interestingly, the politics of food is one of those curious issues where the many folks on the Right and Left can find common ground.

I like Meat.......

PETA to me means "People eating tastey animals"

No reason for torture....kill them quick...and keep things clean.....don't think that is too much to ask for....or expect.

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"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche

They cannot be strangled. If cloven-hooved, they must be dense with hair, not nekkid like a man. If from the sea, they must not have legs and must have scales. There's more.

having been a farmer, dairy for close to 20 yrs before my present situation, I have raised and slaughtered cows and pigs, and have observed that most if not all americans would starve if they had to kill and process their own meat...

Meat comes in neat little plastic pkgs in the rear of the supermarket.

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You're sure riight about that. Folks who live in and around farms have a whole different way of looking at life and death as compared to folks who scrounge their food at Albertson's.

I recall walking with a goucho into a small herd of kids (baby goats) and he asked me which one I'd like to eat. I pointed and he grabbed that sucker up and slit it's throat like my wife grabs a chicken carcass from the freezer.

"Baaah" on minute and parilla the next. Whoa.

B

For once I can identify with this guy!


My family relies on hunted game almost entirely and that goes right down to the wild asparagus and mushrooms harvested in the spring. My interest in smoking and curing my own meats is mainly to push my families subsistence to the next level, if I master smoking and curing I can make better use of Geese, Squirrel or even crow and helping it keep better.


Bar-none if there were no super market we would have no problems making bread, or harvasting produce and meat to survive.

Milk products might be a problem though with the exceptions of a few fridge mishaps I don't think I could make cheese.

Perhaps this makes me a hypocrite, but I'm thankful my meat comes in plastic packages.

morrels mmmmmmmmm..

I was a veggie for a while, after visiting a chicken and veal farm, and reading a lot regarding cancer rates and their correlation to certain types of meat and/or dairy products.

Now, because I have to travel internationally and never know what I'm going to have for a meal, I eat meats. I try to make sure they are local and organic to a large degree.

But, when I went to a chili cook-off here in town, I consumed beef, pork, chicken, duck, deer, turkey, lamb, ostrich, and alligator all in the span of a few hours, and I can't vouch for the organicness of any of them...

I generally avoid most dairy, but I'm lactose intolerant so I've got a good reason. gelato is granted a pass.

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I try not to thnk about it much. I worked in a butcher shop once and what they did to it before selling it was pretty messed up as well.

Fish I don't worry about to much. If you've ever been diving you'd know that if we don't eat that grouper, another fish will.

Yum!

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Enough about me, how are you doing?

mrs azimuth and i learned to use meat sparingly during the "lean" years of our marriage....it was more of a garnish than anything. As times got better, we continued our habits as before. we just haven't had the desire for meals designed around a meat dish.

except for my once daily cherry coke, i think we eat in a healthful manner and we seem to be well.

Yup, what am I Ted Nuggent? I'll take my steak nicely cut and packaged thank you very much.

Just yesterday I was wondering if I should teach my 10yr old daughter to hunt. I haven't hunted in years, but it seems to me to be one of the better ways to obtain meat to eat. I think the disconnect between the life and death of the animals we eat and our own lives is not conducive to good relations between humans and the rest of nature. I think Med Mech is doing good although it's probably not feasible to feed all the world's population that way so Z's point is well taken. But it is a big stretch to expect large corporations to care about animals when the general trend seems to be for them to care less and less for the workers they employ.

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I like meat, especially a good steak. Just don't make mine horse steak...




JUST SAY WHOA! TO HORSE SLAUGHTER!

Eating meat . . . I grok that.