The Fascinating Turnip

Well, here's a thread that's fun for the whole family:

• How many of you are vegetarians?
• To what degree? (ie ovo-lacto, vegan...etc)
• Is it just a matter of not enjoying meat, or do you feel there's a principle behind the whole thing?

There you go, discuss

Mojo

(Insert Vegangelica's essay here )

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Last.FM | Echoes and Dust

VEGANGELICA

I wrote a new essay, just for this thread, mojo!

Erica’s “Why I’m a Vegan” essay:

I have been a vegan for over 10 years and an ovo-lacto vegetarian for 10 years before that, primarily because I don’t want people to hurt animals and take away their one chance to live. Being vegan means I avoid eating and using animal products, and I try to treat all animals, including humans, kindly.

I became vegetarian and then vegan for emotional reasons. I cared for pet parakeets when I was a child and considered them my friends. I began to feel uncomfortable eating their close relatives. My circle of concern and the value I place on other species’ lives widened and widened. Just as I love living, I want non-human animals to have the chance to live as long and full of lives as they can, unharmed by me or other people.

Gradually, long after becoming vegetarian, I learned that plant-based diets have health and environmental benefits, too.

Many people may be unaware that well-planned vegetarian and vegan diets are healthful and can be superior to diets that include animal products such as meats, especially red meats, as is described in the American Dietetic Association 2009 Position Paper on Vegetarian Diets (Vegetarian Diets).

Many people may also be unaware that plant-based diets benefit the environment (and people) by reducing the global warming gas emissions, fresh water usage, pollution, and topsoil destruction caused by animal agriculture (please see “Livestock’s Long Shadow” (2006) by the United Nations, FAO, ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/010/A0701E/A0701E00.pdf).

Several of you made the argument that eating meat is “natural” and thus morally acceptable because humans are omnivores (able to eat plants and animals). This argument has never been a convincing one to me.

People can choose all sorts of behaviors that are “natural,” but just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should. For example, infanticide, eating “pet” animals, and cannibalism are all natural. However, my ability to digest flesh does not decide for me whether I eat a cow, milk, eggs...or you, for that matter. Humans naturally have the ability to make ethical choices. I can decide...naturally...not to eat any animals.

Some people argue that vegan diets aren’t “natural” because vegans need vitamin B-12 supplements. Vegans do need vitamin B-12, which occurs in nature in bacteria, the source of all the vitamin B-12 in animal products. Luckily, humans discovered methods for synthesizing vitamin B-12 cheaply in large quantities, just like humans have discovered methods for making many other "unnatural" things we use: cars, refrigerators, computers, and vaccines, to name a few.

A small bottle of vitamin B-12 providing a 28-year supply costs only $4. If you feel veganism is unnatural because you need to eat vitamin B-12, then to be consistent you should avoid all “unnatural” things, like vaccines. I choose not to ignore the benefits of being vegan and vaccinated. And I not only survive, but flourish. If veganism weren’t natural, then I wouldn’t be alive on earth, part of nature, right now.

I view the eating of animals as a cultural practice that continues among wealthy humans in developed nations for two reasons only: people like the taste of the animals and are encouraged to treat animals as if their feelings and experiences of life do not matter, as if their lives have no value except as a commodity. Meat-eating cultures make it hard for people to learn about the benefits of plant-based diets. The only benefit that I can see from having a meat-eating diet is that it would give me a chance to eat Urban Hatemonger. (That was a test to see if he is reading.)

As others have stated in this thread, killing non-human animals and eating their flesh is not murder in a legal sense, yet I do feel that killing animals is murder in an ethical sense. I feel it is wrong to kill beings who have feelings and an experience of life. When I look into the eyes of animals, I see them looking out at me. However that experience of sentience (awareness) feels for them, I do not want to end their one chance to have what I value so much: the feeling of being alive.

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MAStudent

My aunt had a laspo apso. A cute little dog.

It got really old, though, and had growths on it. Its time was near.

So my dad, believing in the "Of Mice and Men" and "Old Yeller" philosophy, accepted that he had to put it down for her.

So he took it outside and (we live in the country-ish) dug a grave for it, got it all ready. Then he wrapped his pistol in a towel so it wouldn't be too loud for the neighbors, aimed it at the head....and shot it in the ear. It moved its head.

Then it was moving around. He was trying to aim through the rag. Shot it in the face, but not a good one. Finally had to just get rid of the towel, but then the dog was moving all over, but looking at him for help, too.

He shot it like 9 times in the face before it died. Man! That sucked.

Cadrian

I seen my uncle kill a cow like that one time... They tied it to a telephone pole and shot it with a .38 pistol behind the ear. It just wouldn't die.... He Unloaded and Loaded the pistol once before it finally gave out.

Ive seen deer die in seconds from one buckshot pellet hitting it in the throat but that Cow with 5 to 6 close range pistol shots to the head was something terrible.

We had a dog once named Bush.... that I dont know what happened but wondered back up to the house one day after about a week of being gone. Someone had shot him in the face.... The dog was missing half his jaw. It looked like some sick **** called our dog up and shot him in the face. The dog lived for like a year and half before he went missing again and we never seen him. The dog always frightened everyone who came over and never seen it before. It looked like a Zombie Dog from a movie.... But he was just as playful as a normal dog.

I don't know what I was getting out with these stories but it always kinda let me know a Will to live is something powerful. The most amazing thing I seen was a Deer that pretty much gutted from a rifle but ran about 150 yards with out any of its vital organs.

ProggyMan

So...Ever swatted a mosquito?

Neapolitan

no, but I ate chocolate cover ants before

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VEGANGELICA

Good goddess! What a horrible death for the dog, MAStudent. And that must have been awful for all of you, too, since your dad had hoped to quickly and painlessly kill the dog so he or she didn't die slowly from tumors and possibly painful cancer.

How did your dad react? Did he wish then that he had taken the dog to the vet who could have quickly and painlessly ethanized her by lethal injection, or perhaps have recommended letting nature take its course? Death by old age is not always painful.

Hi #9! I doubt anyone who called herself a vegetarian would eat any animal, including crabs and lobsters.

ProggyMan, I brush mosquitoes away...gently.

I see your underlying question as a very important one: how do we go about deciding what value another being's life has to us? This question is important for how we treat not just non-human animals but also humans, and people can't even decide on an answer for that! For example, some people feel killing humans in war is acceptable, even innocent bystanders who are "collateral damage."

My decisions about when to kill any animal are affected by my perception of whether it is a threat to me and whether there is a way to get away without either of us being harmed. If a man were standing in front of me, planning to gun me down, and I as a police officer drew my gun, I hope I would try to maim the man rather than shoot to kill. This goes for an attacking human and an attacking tiger and an attacking mosquito.

My full answer about mosquitoes is that if I am outside, I brush them away and run away a little. If one is biting me, the damage/possible infection with West Nile Virus is already done, and I brush the plump, blood-engorged mosquito away. Sometimes, if a mosquito is hovering near me at bedtime indoors, I do try to kill it because I fear that it will bite me in my sleep, though I transport live flies and spiders outside of my home to release them since they are no significant threat to me.

Heh heh...as a child I used to go into a strange store with a friend at a mall and stare at a jar of chocolate covered ants because we were so perplexed and disturbed and disgusted.

Oddly, the thought of eating ants seemed weird but I turned right around during most of my childhood and ate cows or pigs without thinking much about them at all...until I started looking closely in the butcher's case or at someone's dead leg that I held in my hand. Culture is a strong force that puts blinders on people, I feel.

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Sansa Stark

I'm a former vegan, current ovo-vegetarian. I got lazy with what I ate when I was vegan, and ended up anemic, with these huge ugly bruises all over my body. That being said, it is totally possible to live healthy on a vegan diet, if you're not a lazy ass. I've been vegetarian most of my life though, because I think it is disgusting to eat, not just to mention the cruelty part.

Oh, and ovo vegetarians are ones that eat stuff with egg or eat eggs. I'm lactose intolerant.

I ****ing hate PETA though, I don't believe anyone should force their dietary beliefs on anyone else. I get a lot of flak for my vegetarianism just because of what they force on people, they make vegetarians and vegans look bad. Plus, they kill animals. I also really hate people who find it necessary to tell me "Oh, hey I ate a steak!". Hey, great! I don't give a ****! So really, I don't bother people who eat meat, as long as they don't bother me about NOT eating it.

Militants also bug the **** out of me, because no, mother****er I am not going to make my cat eat vegan/vegetarian cat food. He's a ****ing cat, he can eat whatever the hell he damn well pleases. I was called a bad vegan for this, irony of ironies.

The Fascinating Turnip

Exactly, people who shove vegetarianism down others' throats really tend to annoy me. And i believe that meat, as fur, is sometimes necessary for survival. If we consider Yakutsk, for example, those people definitely need fur, or else they'll freeze to death.
I respect you immensely for choosing not to eat meat and not being self-righteous. Also, you were called a "bad vegan"? Is there some kind of union you join when you decide you wont eat from specific food groups?...