After reading this point by Penny Mitchell; I have decided to branch out further away from the thread she chooses to ignore. Penny Mitchell Thanks Tricia for your sentiments!!!! I too am vegan.Perhaps I can ask you to also do some research as to why a lot become vegan. In simple layman terms, its for human and animal welfare. No need to fish or eat meat. I have read on this post about us trying to take away their food source by stopping whaling/fishing. Its not sustainable. A vegan diet WOULD solve mostly everything on these kind of topics. Agree or not, thats your choice Let me first repeat a point I love “There are more than 7 billion people in the world. Millions of those people take pleasure in causing animals pain. They don’t care about animals and it’s possible many never will. The idea that somehow billions of people will adopt “veganism” in a few years is unrealistic. Confined, abused, and slaughtered animals are omnipresent in the world. Short of a catastrophic environmental disaster that necessitates changes in animal agriculture or a sustainability issue of some other magnitude, we are engaged in a decades long battle to inspire the masses to choose compassion over cruelty. Our goal should be to make the world more humane, not to make it perfect because the former goal is achievable and will engage more people in the process.” I will try my best to keep this fact, not opinion. By modern day standards, I am vegan. By my own standards, nobody is. I will address points based on what vegans repeat constantly: 1. The animals suffer in the slaughter process Today it is no longer the question whether the animal is slaughtered humanely. What we should be questioning is why free range animals slaughtered with the latest and greatest technology is not only hard to find, but expensive. The means is there, and yet we don’t take it. Why? Because less modern methods are both cheaper, use less space and employees. We can no longer use the humanity in slaughter as an argument; we must instead look for ways of bringing down these costs and encouraging industry to explore new technologies by them being made available at prices in which they can still make a profit. Slaughter is a business, not a tool. It must be treated that way. In the end, the consumer will buy what is within his price range when he is hungry, it is a luxury to shop outside of those medians. When one slaughterhouse goes under trying to be humane, another opens up the road with more primative standards. 2. Plants are ‘greener’: I will make this easy by giving examples of this point being wrong. Plantations destroying habitat; Coconut farms wiping out entire island chains in the pacific ocean. Palm oil destroying habitat in Indonesia and Malaysia. Native rain forest burned therefore releasing mass amounts of Co2 into the atmosphere. Rice fields that steal the tigers hunting grounds and the prey it stalks in the process. Soybean farms to provide gluten free living and vegetarianism is now resulting in loss of habitat. Seaweed aquatation destroying habitats in oceans worldwide. Are you beginning to see a pattern? When habitat is lost, it has many implications. We remove a natural source of food from prey animals, i.e the grazing animals. Once prey items are not fed, the predators in those areas are not fed. Prey animals are well documented exploring human territory for food when we take theirs away, drawing in predators that often times kill humans in the process. The most affected are villagers in third world countries, who often cannot defend themselves or cannot kill these animals because they are sacred in their local tradition. Animals who do not move, or cannot move inevitably die out. Some links are below: ran.org/palm-oil coconutresearchcenter.org/soy-deception-article.htm tigersincrisis/habitat_loss.htm Not only that, it is not sustainable long term for the world to become vegetarian. WWF states “Agriculture is a major land use. Around 50% of the worlds habitable land has already been converted to farming land. Overall, farmland covers 38% of the worlds land area”. What does this mean for a vegetarian society? Not enough arable land on the surface of the planet, even considering vertical zonation. With residential growth and a new highway every second day, there is no room for cost effective vegetation. I would go on, but this post would become a book. Google is your friend. 3. It is better for you: I will keep this brief as it is open to much debate as to whether vegetarianism from birth or otherwise is good for the body. Healthy humans are those who eat little processed food, encourage their metabolism through exercise and keep their liquid intake to water and nutritious juices. This does not necessarily mean meat. Historically, vegetarianism has been used as a form of torture on prisoners of war. There is a reason we have canines, we are biologically made for consuming both meat and vegetation. I have found that as a vegetarian I cannot survive without supplements, and even then it can be hard to find a pill either not tested on animals nor not an animal by-product. Whether it is good for you or not is still a question we will not be able to answer until it has been observed on human patients over a lifetime. 4. Being vegan means you love animals; This is one of the biggest selling points to those who are compassionate, and looking for a cause to follow. A faith if you will. Once you have left the life of a normal omnivorous human, and want to seek some companionship in the world of a compassionate living, many are lead astray by this lie. You will find that David Attenborough, a man most passionate about all living beings on this planet, and very much knowledgeable of the natural world and its eco-system, is infact omnivorous. “I think that if there is such a thing as biological morality, you might say that we evolved as omnivores. We dont have long guts like a cow to digest nothing but vegetation. We have molars, which are there to grind up, but we also have canine teeth, which are good for eating meat. So I think that, biologically, we evolved as omnivores and not as vegetarians. However, as I get older, I get more and more distressed about what I discover about the way that animals are killed [for meat]. There are other reasons for being vegetarian as the world starves – you can get much more sustenance from vegetation than from feeding that vegetation to animals and eating the meat. But I am not a vegetarian myself.” By making such a hard to attain goal, or implying a guilty conscience onto an animal lover we are then discouraging that compassion we so need to further the animal welfare movement from where it is now. We should not be implying hatred towards anybody who eats meat and resentment for our own kind, but the balance between sustainable, economically viable and humanity in all slaughter and animal derivative processes. We should be spreading knowledge, hope and passion rather than hate, anger and negativity. Being vegetarian means that you don’t eat meat, and that is all. As one myself, and only for reasons such as the pang of guilt in my own mind eating it, I know it is not the only way forward for humans to learn to love thy neighbour. 5. Humans are destructive and evil While this may be true in many cases, we cannot as mentioned above encourage this novice. To create resentment is to create inaction. We must inspire passion. The first step toward compassion for animals, is to encourage compassion for human beings. Humanity develops a naturally occurring emotion in humans that will often spread beyond our own species, and flow on to others. We cannot cease the abuse we inflict on animals until we cease the abuse we inflict on mankind. As with an employer scolding an employee, we must encourage positive reinforcement and constructive criticism. Preaching to your colleagues about what a dick your boss is doesn’t teach anything but resentment, as with preaching how horrible humans are. We as a species are not destructive, we are innovative, imaginative and magnificent. We must use our strengths to our advantage, not enhance our weaknesses such as greed and lust. Animal rights activists are some of the most violent, hateful people I have met on the planet. I need not go on for examples here, they are everywhere. 6. Animal testing is no longer required: Human technology is booming. We can now grow human skin cells, and are researching various practices such as growing completely new organs for humans in need of a transplant. Modern day testing methods are edging away from using animals as the test subject. Scientists who are now realizing the implications and bad reputation of doing so are exploring various methods of research that branch away from this. Religion is holding back the use of stem cells, the basis of many medical research theories. It is therefore impossible to remove animals from this process without then using human patients. Historically, animals have been beneficial in medical breakthroughs; and in time we have seen that a few animals are spared for the rest of its species and of course our own. It is important to remember that animals are not always harmed in testing processes. E.g. the intelligence of octopus was only discovered by creating tanks in which the animal is faced with a problem and must solve it if it wants the food reward. It has also been discovered that an octopus will use its arms to measure a hole to get out of its tank, and if its arms do not fit it will not attempt an escape. It has therefore proved that forethought is possible in an octopus, and that it has awareness of itself within its environment. This could not have been done without the testing of these animals in laboratories worldwide. Vetenarians understand the need for test subjects when researching new vaccines and procedures for animals across the world. Heart worm was once considered untreatable within dogs, and now we actively treat the condition to which the success rate is very high specifically because of animal testing. We must remember everything has its advantages and disadvantages. While some methods of animal testing is cruel, in most modern testing that could not be more further from the truth. Unnecessary animal testing in the cosmetic industry is wasteful and produces inconclusive results. This method of animal testing is no longer viable, and should be moved on from altogether. It must also be noted that make-up brands who have claimed themselves cruelty-free have been slammed by ARA for using research used in the past on animals, which has been discouraging businesses from following their lead. Tests such as these so monumental to a vain society should be made available to make-up companies, so that further testing is not warranted. Cruelty-free is trending, and should be encouraged by the consumer. 7. Animal products should be replaced with synthetic products: Plastic is well known for taking hundreds, sometimes thousands of years to break down within our environment. Most synthetic material is not biodegradable, and when discarded by man takes centuries to leave the environment. It must be remembered that not all synthetic replacements for animal products are better for the planet, oftentimes it is worse. Cruelty-free fur is on the market, but many of us are afraid of hate from our peers as there is so much misinformation around the fur trade. We must not discourage fur, only the inhumane practices that are slowly being outlawed or abandoned. One video of a sad rabbit being skinned while still twitching, does not mean all practices are this way. Leather has historically been a staple for mankind, helping us through winters and building shelter from the harsh winters across the world. Leather is also a by-product of the meat industry, and wastage of an animal destined for slaughter should not be encouraged. Leather has an important place in modern society, especially in vehicles and apparel in first world countries. I am sure there are many more points to add, but I feel many will have stopped reading by now. I have only provided brief outlines of pretty broad spectrum cases in which deserve more detail and attention. Feel free to add any of your own points.
Posted on: Sun, 30 Mar 2014 16:36:02 +0000
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