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Originally Posted by kayleigh.
my dog goes out into my garden, picks up little animals, kills them and brings them home. What would a vegetarian do in this situation? It's only natural instinct to kill, as carnivores. I don't understand the statement bolded, if every animal had to walk on egg shells, being considerate. I'm estimating that nothing would exist. Isn't Vegan really unhealthy as you aren't getting the right amount of Vitamins/Minerals. My old Biology teacher told me Vegans were nuts, she didn't know how they could do it. I believe her words were "It's basically damaging".
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Quote:
Originally Posted by kayleigh.
In nature when animals kill animals how do you feel? If you'd feel uncomfortable feeding your cat something that it would find else where if it was in the wild?
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Hey keyleigh!
First, the short answer to your question about your biology teacher: she was wrong. Well-planned vegan diets, which include vitamin B-12, are healthful.
The issue of horse hair for violin bows relates to the larger issue of whether people are allowed to slaughter horses. This has recently been hotly debated here in the U.S. Many people, including myself, feel horses deserve a better end than being slaughtered for flesh and hair after having served humans throughout their lives.
I do not usually try to prevent carnivores from killing other animals...unless the prey is a pet or a human child! :-) I do wish nature were different, though. It may seem fine if you are the cat, but pretty horrible if you are the mouse. I can't forget the mouse, even as I am glad that the cat is alive. I do not want to kill an animal to feed a carnivore, including a cat.
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Originally Posted by Urban Hatemonger
Even if it was possible to feed my cat vegetarian food I wouldn't. I'd much rather it lived on fresh meat or freshly caught fish than some slop that's had god knows what added to it just to prove a point.
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Urban. Hello.
Yes, I agree with you that it is probably healthier for a carnivorous pet to eat fresh flesh than any kind of canned food, whether it is vegetarian canned food or is the flesh of rendered, slaughtered animals too ill or spoiled to make it into the human food chain.
Considering vegetarian pet food for a cat isn’t something I would do to try to prove a point, but instead to try to reduce my involvement in the hurting of others. If my pet cat could be well-nourished by and enjoy eating vegetarian cat food, I see only positives from that situation. Except for the slaughter-house owners and shareholders.
I actually would have no problem with humans being used as pet food!
As long as they agreed to this outcome in advance. Better than being saturated with toxic embalming fluids and buried in plastic caskets.
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Originally Posted by NumberNineDream
That has always intrigued me. People eat some butchered cow's meat everyday, but they are disgusted when they hear that the Chinese eat dogs. I'm not really pro puppy-eating, why are we also separating animals into classes.
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People in the U.S. can buy dog and cat meat, too, #9, and apparently do. Google “Puppymeat.” Why and how we separate animals (including people) into classes of killable and/or edible is a basic question that interests me, too.
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Originally Posted by kayleigh.
Dogs are seen as pets, that's why I think it's pretty sickening. Frying up dear old Brooklyn sickens me, and breaks my heart and that's just at the thought of it. Whereas I don't feel anything for cows. At all.
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Kayleigh, your feelings for a pet animal sound like the feelings I have every time I see a pig or a cow who will be slaughtered. I see them enjoying themselves and know people will end these animals' lives not for need, but for desire.
Should whether we kill an animal or not be determined primarily by how strong people's feelings are for that animal? Or should we use other criteria, too? And let’s say you felt for a wide variety of animals the same way you feel for dogs. How might this change your eating habits? What would you do, surrounded by a world where people felt nothing for dogs, cats, pet birds, piglets, or any animal you cared for? Would you continue to eat them, or would you find another way?
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Originally Posted by mr dave
you don't think a child growing up on a farm would see a cow as a pet?
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You are very right, mr dave, that children growing up on farms...even farmers...may view cows as a “pet” animals, which I’d say are animals you want to care for for their own sake, not just primarily to benefit people. Just like Cadrian said above when describing the pig he raised and named Junior.
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Originally Posted by boo boo
Altruism is a sham, at least as far as the actual term goes, it's mostly just an excuse for people to be morally imperialistic c*nts. I believe that everything that a person does is to feel better about himself or herself, a lot of people just don't want to admit this but that is the motivation for all the things that people do, even when you're helping others you're still doing it to feel better about yourself. Of course it's still good to help others, I'm just saying.
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I agree that altruism usually does feel good, and so is self-serving in this respect. The emotional payback I get from being vegan is that I feel I am living more consistently in line with a feeling I’ve had since I was little: I want to be kind to animals. Also, my not eating animals reduces slightly the number of animals raised as livestock, due to supply and demand.