Meat-eating and the industry

You are...

All-around meat-eater
28
53%
Minimal meat-eater
14
26%
Pescetarian
1
2%
Lacto-ovo vegetarian
5
9%
Lacto vegetarian
0
No votes
Vegan
3
6%
Other
2
4%
 
Total votes: 53

Varislintu
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Re: Meat-eating and the industry

Postby Varislintu » 2008-10-23, 8:53

For me the problem with how chicken and cows and pigs are treated nowadays is not really how they are slaughtered. It's their living conditions during life, the long distance animal transports, the idiots who hit and kick them for fun on the way... I do believe we humans are allowed to eat meat, so it's not the killing of the animal I have a problem with. It should be done quickly and with as little stress to the animal as possible.

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Re: Meat-eating and the industry

Postby Kirk » 2008-10-23, 10:30

I try to eat a varied diet which errs on the side of plant-centricism, but does not exclude meat or animal products. I also try to aim for the least processed forms of foods whenever possible. Whole grains over refined grains, real cheese over "cheese product," 100% juice compared to "juice cocktails" (translation: sugar, plus a smidgeon of juice), beef I buy freshly ground that day as compared to a fast-food hamburger, etc. Emphasizing less-processed foods naturally leads to a healthy, plant-centered diet, I've found.

Besides the actual issues of animal treatment (which have already been discussed well here), there are good reasons to focus on plants--their production for food has a smaller carbon footprint, heavy consumption of animal products (meat and dairy) is associated with poorer health and diminished longevity, and meat is comparatively more expensive per calorie. That last one is a big one! My boyfriend, a more frequent meat-eater than I, always comments when we end up grocery shopping together that my bill ends up being cheaper than expected since I tend not to buy much meat.

However, I find that personally, a meal usually needs some significant portion of protein for me to feel satiated. Just rice, bread, and veggies won't cut it and I feel hungry again not long after. Sometimes that means meat for me. But thankfully, there is also an amazing array of plant-based forms of protein which can satisfy--whether it be whole unprocessed things like nuts, beans, seeds, avocados, mushrooms, or more complex, prepared/processed forms of protein based on plants like tofu, peanut butter, soy yogurt, or hummus, to name only a few.
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Re: Meat-eating and the industry

Postby hreru » 2008-10-23, 10:48

Lada wrote:
hreru wrote:
Lada wrote:Humans eat for living, animals live for eating. And try to prove that it's not like that.

Try to prove it is like that. :nope:

what's the sence of your life? I hope nobody in this forum will answer "to eat".
Animals are driven by instincts, you can say that humans too (it's true for some of them in certain situations but it's not a universal way of our behavior), but we have something more, we have soul or if you don't like the word, call it intelligence/mind, we are not that primitive like infusoria or chimpanzee, though the last one is more developped, but still not like human - I mean mentally healthy humans without any psychic defections.

The eternal question? :D Well I'd say the sense of life is to live it. Another answer I also like is that the sense of life is to think of what the sense of life is (which I don't think animals do), but the first one is primary and animals cope with is quite well, while people sometimes go for the latter one, forgetting the first one.

If you think intelligence/mind is what is "the thing", that which should be achieved by a species, then I guess we are the winners, but you might choose different criteria. We are far more sophisticated then infusoria, but advanced sophistication doesn't automatically mean better quality. Something is good if it serves its purpose well. Hubble space telescope is more sophisticated than opera glasses, but I won't go and buy one if I want to go to a theatre. :) Seen like this, and if the sense of life is to live it, intelligence is not making us any better than animals.

By the way, I'm a meat-eater who doesn't care too much about if eating this or that is ethical or healthy. :hmm:

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Re: Meat-eating and the industry

Postby Hoogstwaarschijnlijk » 2008-10-23, 14:18

JackFrost wrote:Go ahead. I'll keep an eye on the news for a case of mass killing in the Netherlands.


I haven't followed this long discussion anymore, but I must warn linguaholic that I am not tasty so please don't kill me :wink:

I looked at my eggs and they had a two on them. I'm glad it wasn't three :wink:
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Re: Meat-eating and the industry

Postby dorenda » 2008-10-23, 15:52

Vogelvrij wrote:I looked at my eggs and they had a two on them. I'm glad it wasn't three :wink:
It's not allowed to sell category 3 eggs in the supermarkets here. :)
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Re: Meat-eating and the industry

Postby JackFrost » 2008-10-23, 16:47

Stacy and Varislintu: You said it perfectly.

loqu: How sweet of you to think of me. <3
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Re: Meat-eating and the industry

Postby Sarabi » 2008-10-23, 21:18

I am so happy I met a vegan on my floor today. We're going to make a vegan floor dinner with coconut milk ice cream and maybe some vegan minestrone or pizza or... we'll see.

By the way, just want to point out that lately I have discovered that cookies, brownies, pancakes, French toast, and so on..... all have eggs. And butter. And unless you made them yourself, you probably have no idea where they came from. Better to avoid them altogether, if you ask me. Unless you like to cook, of course.

I looked at my eggs and they had a two on them. I'm glad it wasn't three :wink:

That doesn't impress me. Many cage-free chickens are still mistreated, having their beaks seared off because they still live in cramped quarters. To be happy about that would be like saying I'm glad someone was tortured by Americans rather than in Auschwitz. There is a difference, but it's hardly rosy.

I chose to emphasize 'ethical meat eating' because I know most of Unilang is meat-eaters. But I have several reasons why I don't eat meat. From experience, becoming vegetarian is easy. Becoming vegan is very tricky. I think it would be as tricky to become an 'ethical meat-eater' as it is to become vegan, but not speaking from experience. For those who prefer ethical meat eating (and 'ethical,' let's keep in mind, is always relatively speaking), how do you find out which meat is ethical? There have been mentioned the EU numbered eggs and the UK organic, but what else is there? I am having a hard enough time trying to figure out where dairy and eggs are hidden in so much processed food. With meat-eating, the thing that I see as being tricky is not just the fact that there aren't necessarily labels, but I've heard (and I do intend to find the best sources, but there's a lot to research) that even on organic/free-range farms, the male chicks are considered 'useless' and sent to the slaughterhouse. The male chicks may be thrown alive into a grinder.

I chose to pick my battle with animal torture, and I still think it's more important than the dying itself (everyone dies). However, I don't think that animal torture is going away so easily. Now, here's the good news: "Numerous experts agree that battery cage confinement contributes to a number of welfare problems—and such concerns have prompted many European countries to ban this system of confinement altogether. And barren battery cages will be phased out of the entire European Union by 2012." Of course, this is far ahead of animal rights in the U.S. Well, maybe not that far. Doesn't make me feel complacent about this at all.
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Re: Meat-eating and the industry

Postby proycon » 2008-10-24, 10:29

I selected "other", I do eat meat, but only "ethical" ecological meat, where animals did not spend their lives in tiny cages, but instead roamed around more freely and naturally. We happen to have a special ecological butcher around the corner ( http://www.degroeneweg.nl ). Oh, and even then I don't eat pork, I find them too intelligent and sentient to eat (yes, I discriminate). And since ecological meat is at least 4 times as expensive at 'normal' meat, I don't eat that much meat.

In buying fish I also try to pay attention to select cultivated fish or fish that is not endangered, for which there is a nice list (dutch):

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I also take care to select "ethical" eggs, but I don't each much of that anyhow. Nor do I drink milk (milk is for babies :P ), and I don't care much for cheese either :)

What is hard and almost unavoidable is the fact that there are so many animal products in a lot of things, and it's hard or impossible to find out the actual origin.
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Re: Meat-eating and the industry

Postby Hoogstwaarschijnlijk » 2008-10-24, 13:00

Sarabi wrote:
I looked at my eggs and they had a two on them. I'm glad it wasn't three :wink:

That doesn't impress me. Many cage-free chickens are still mistreated, having their beaks seared off because they still live in cramped quarters. To be happy about that would be like saying I'm glad someone was tortured by Americans rather than in Auschwitz. There is a difference, but it's hardly rosy.

Well, luckily I wasn't happy about it then, right? I hoped it was clear that I just mentioned that I payed attention on my eggs this time. I didn't know the 3-kinds weren't sold in the Netherlands, but that seems like a good thing.
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Re: Meat-eating and the industry

Postby Boes » 2008-10-24, 13:59

Sarabi wrote:
I looked at my eggs and they had a two on them. I'm glad it wasn't three :wink:

That doesn't impress me. (...) To be happy about that would be like saying I'm glad someone was tortured by Americans rather than in Auschwitz. There is a difference, but it's hardly rosy.


I find the above statement to be in rather poor taste. :?

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Re: Meat-eating and the industry

Postby Eoghan » 2008-10-24, 14:29

Boes wrote:
Sarabi wrote:
I looked at my eggs and they had a two on them. I'm glad it wasn't three :wink:

That doesn't impress me. (...) To be happy about that would be like saying I'm glad someone was tortured by Americans rather than in Auschwitz. There is a difference, but it's hardly rosy.


I find the above statement to be in rather poor taste. :?


Sarabi, if you want us to take you seriously please stop comparing the meat- or egg eaters among us to dictators, concentration camps supporters etc. No one will ever take you seriously if you persist on speaking before thinking.

Yes - we know the situation is bad, but no, eating egg 2 instead of egg 3 can NOT be compared to the supporting of American torture instead of Nazi torture.

Either use thought-through arguments and win your battle, or for all that I care, keep on saying stupid comments and end up being perceived as a national of cuckoo-land...

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Re: Meat-eating and the industry

Postby Babelfish » 2008-10-24, 19:10

BezierCurve wrote:
Are we sure that it's not entirely reaction and we're just imposing our own emotions onto the animal?


I'd say it is also a reaction in our own case, sometimes with very strong physical symptoms. Since emotions such like fear or pain are very basic, I assumed that they are experienced in similar way by say, pigs. You don't need to have a very sophisticated ego to be scared.

Reviving this sub-thread :evilgrin: I can even go further and doubt that other people experience the same feelings - in particular pain - that I do. They can tell me they're in pain? Yes, if we have a common language. Otherwise, how am I to know that, if they're just shouting and crying? :whistle: And I have no problem to extend that to animals. If they appear to be writhing in pain, I assume they are.

Also, we have a couple of cats at home, and I always feel that people who think animals have no consciousness surely have never raised an animal :D Each of them has its own personality quirks, its own likes and dislikes, changing moods, I don't think it can all be explained by automatic reactions and instincts.

* I remember having read that emotions are controlled by a part of the brain called the limbic system, which only exists in mammals; well, just now I've check Wikipedia for the correct spelling of 'limbic' and found that exists in reptiles too :roll: This doesn't concern just "high-level" emotions such as love maybe, but also fear and pleasure which are very basic. I don't know what this means for animals without the limbic system, but then again, nobody does yet...

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Re: Meat-eating and the industry

Postby DelBoy » 2008-10-25, 13:20

Babelfish wrote:
* I remember having read that emotions are controlled by a part of the brain called the limbic system, which only exists in mammals; well, just now I've check Wikipedia for the correct spelling of 'limbic' and found that exists in reptiles too :roll: This doesn't concern just "high-level" emotions such as love maybe, but also fear and pleasure which are very basic. I don't know what this means for animals without the limbic system, but then again, nobody does yet...


This isn't entirely true - to say that the limbic system 'controls' emotions is like saying that mouth controls language.
The limbic system is involved in, among other things (such as memory, and essential body functions such as heart rate, breathing, sleep cycle), involuntary physical responses to external stimuli (such as increased/decreased heart rate and rate of breathing, sweating, heightened/decreased sensitivity, etc.). These physical reactions in themselves are very useful, for example in a threatening situation (for 'fight or flight' reactions) or for mating (sexual arousal), but we can't call these physical responses 'emotions' - they only become emotions when we use our experiences, expectations, social and environmental cues (among other things, perhaps even language) to interpret them as such.
(I remember reading one interesting study in which they had men crossing a rickety old bridge over a high gorge and asking them how they felt afterwards (usually scared) while taking measurements of their physical responses (increased heart rate, sweating, etc). Then they had some other guys cross the same bridge, but this time, halfway over the bridge, they were approached by a beautiful young woman who flirted with them, and afterwards they usually said they were excited, not scared, even though their physical responses, as controlled by the limbic system, were identical to those who said they were scared).

So we can say that an animal is having similar physical reactions to certain stimuli as we do, and of course it's only natural for us to anthropomorphise and say that they are feeling sad, or happy, or angry, or scared...... but we can never truly say that an animal experiences emotions, as we do. (would you say that an amoeba fleeing from a predator is frightened??)
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Re: Meat-eating and the industry

Postby Babelfish » 2008-10-25, 16:56

DelBoy wrote:So we can say that an animal is having similar physical reactions to certain stimuli as we do, and of course it's only natural for us to anthropomorphise and say that they are feeling sad, or happy, or angry, or scared...... but we can never truly say that an animal experiences emotions, as we do. (would you say that an amoeba fleeing from a predator is frightened??)

No, I wouldn't attribute any emotion to an amoeba (a real one, not the forum member :lol: ), I assume its behaviour is simple enough to be explained as something automatic. As for more complex animals, at least ones with obvious brains - well, we can never truly say that they don't experience emotions as we do, either, can we? Unless we develop telepathic skills :roll: But I can't even say for sure that another person experiences emotions the same way I do, I just assume that because they behave as if they do, that is - they behave similarly to me. So, unless one doesn't believe in evolution or sees some other very clear-cut difference between humans and animals, a difference beyond just the level of complexity, I see no reason to assume that an animal feels pain or fear etc. differently than me if it behaves similarly.

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Re: Meat-eating and the industry

Postby darkina » 2008-10-25, 23:05

Sarabi wrote:By the way, just want to point out that lately I have discovered that cookies, brownies, pancakes, French toast, and so on..... all have eggs. And butter. And unless you made them yourself, you probably have no idea where they came from. Better to avoid them altogether, if you ask me. Unless you like to cook, of course.


This is really hair-splitting but... discovered? Like, you never really thought about it, or you seriously didn't know...? :?
(isn't French toast a toast cooked in egg, or am I mistaken...)

Not that it matters but it surprised me... :hmm:
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Re: Meat-eating and the industry

Postby KingHarvest » 2008-10-26, 5:00

Yes, French toast is just slices of bread fried in a concoction of egg, cinnamon, milk, and butter (this varies slightly by where you are).
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Re: Meat-eating and the industry

Postby Sarabi » 2008-10-26, 6:20

Vogelvrij wrote:Well, luckily I wasn't happy about it then, right? I hoped it was clear that I just mentioned that I payed attention on my eggs this time. I didn't know the 3-kinds weren't sold in the Netherlands, but that seems like a good thing.

Yeah, good is relative anyway. Just confused by your wink...... nevermind. I accept 2 as preferable to 3 and thank you for caring.

proycon - that's cool. I'm glad to see you have successfully managed to find more ethical meat!

What is hard and almost unavoidable is the fact that there are so many animal products in a lot of things, and it's hard or impossible to find out the actual origin.

Yeah..... that's why I find it much easier just to not eat the products in the first place.

This is really hair-splitting but... discovered? Like, you never really thought about it, or you seriously didn't know...? :?
(isn't French toast a toast cooked in egg, or am I mistaken...)

Yeah, I never thought about it. I did bake a couple of times years ago, which I recall involved butter, but cooking was never my thing... thinking about ingredients! I know, it surprises me in retrospect, but then again, my pescetarian friend tried to offer me cookies yesterday... I was like, "Do those have butter or eggs in them?" He told me he'd never thought about it before.

Eoghan, still off-topic (no need for others to read, unless you want):
Either use thought-through arguments and win your battle, or for all that I care, keep on saying stupid comments and end up being perceived as a national of cuckoo-land...

Your thoughts are so thought through. You haven't explained what is wrong with my analogies except to say "can NOT be compared." An egg doesn't seem extreme to you, but it does to me. They only "can NOT be compared" because you refuse to compare them, not because of anything inherently incomparable about them. Since you care so much about arguments, why don't you actually try to understand the argument in my analogy instead of pre-judging everything I say just because it's unpleasant to you? My arguments are not always well-thought through (I can point to some in this thread), but as I've just demonstrated, neither are yours. If you don't like my use of extremes, then ignore it or explain why instead of trying to make my argument look bad by attacking my character. I hope this response was "sane" enough for you, Mr. Sanity.


Hey, Babelfish, birds have limbic systems, too!
On sentience, I think plants are not sentient, but animals are. Here's why: animals have advanced central nervous systems, while plants do not. Where do emotions occur? In the brain. Where does self-awareness occur? In the brain. Plants do not have brains. Pigs do. Chickens do. Cows do. Turkeys do. Furthermore, pigs, chickens, cows, and turkeys all speak a language I can understand, an emotional language. Humans cry out when they're in pain, not as some emotionless response to having a limb chopped off or something. So if a pig squeals, why should I expect this to be any different?

Plants, by contrast, have "reactions" as living beings, but they have no central nervous system with which to consolidate any kind of coherent experience. Plants can't feel anything because they lack the apparatus we have to feel something, and they never evolved to have this apparatus because they probably didn't need it. It would be evolutionarily excessive for them to have emotions if they can't run away from anything (fear/pain), attack anything (anger), nurture their young (love), roam about in tribal bands or herds with the need to take care of injured beings (compassion). And the same with self-awareness. I don't think that plants have self-awareness in the sense of being able to think about their actions. They just have built-in reactions that they perform in certain contexts with no choice. An emotion is also a built-in reaction, but it is an emotion because of what it forces us to do psychologically: to CHOOSE to run away, to CHOOSE to attack something, to CHOOSE to nurture our young, to CHOOSE to take care of each other. And as someone else has pointed out in this thread, what's remarkable about humans is not only our highly complex way of experiencing things psychologically, but also our capacity to choose.... to choose to accept that other animals have emotions or not. In short, I assume that brains developed emotion as a way of making up for the ambiguity that comes with being able to choose. Because it is uncalculated, irrational, it allows us to make preformed decisions about how to act while at the same time allowing us to make rational decisions.

Obviously, you have to draw the line somewhere unless you want to get metaphysical. It's got to be somewhere between single-celled organisms and humans. But why we would draw the line at humans I don't know.

After you shoot a nail in the head and killing it in snap, you can deblood the cow right there. No need to slit its throat while still alive.

Okay, I just found a [great] video (called Earthlings, narrated by Joaquin Phoenix) with footage of a guy shooting pigs in the "head", or rather in the eyes and any other place on the head. As he's shooting them, he sings, "Oh, I missed you. I missed you, honey. But I'll get you again!" as in he missed but still hit (the wrong place). In the video, Joaquin explains that the steel bolt gun was designed to reduce pain, but the video shows me something that might be less bad (and I don't say "better", as there's nothing good about it) than slitting the pig's throat and letting it writhe for a long time. However, he's shooting them in the face! And they lie there squealing and writhing! So I want to see your "nail in the head" on video where it's "killing in a snap" because that's clearly not the case here. Those vegans weren't exaggerating when they told me meat companies just want you to think they're humane.

Speaking of which, I was looking at a bottle of milk last night and noticed that the name of the company had "Maid" in it, referring to the cows as maids. Is there supposed to be something in that that makes the consumer feel "at home" or old-timey or something? What a marketing ruse.

Watch that video, by the way - it's about human dependence on animals! Phoenix defines "speciesists" alongside racists, sexists, and so on. If you think my analogies of chicken cages as concentration camps are extreme, Phoenix compares speciesists to Nazis. And yes, Phoenix has played insane people in movies. I'm not surprised that he's brave enough to narrate a film on the greatest horrors of mankind.
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Re: Meat-eating and the industry

Postby Steisi » 2008-10-26, 8:04

Sarabi wrote:On sentience, I think plants are not sentient, but animals are. Here's why: animals have advanced central nervous systems, while plants do not. Where do emotions occur? In the brain. Where does self-awareness occur? In the brain. Plants do not have brains. Pigs do. Chickens do. Cows do. Turkeys do. Furthermore, pigs, chickens, cows, and turkeys all speak a language I can understand, an emotional language. Humans cry out when they're in pain, not as some emotionless response to having a limb chopped off or something. So if a pig squeals, why should I expect this to be any different?


This is interesting; it sounds like you're ok with killing something for food if it can't physically show you it hurts. If it can cry out in pain or resemble a human's behavioural response to pain, you won't eat it, right? There's some people, like fruitarians, who believe that killing plants for food is just as bad as killing animals and choose only to eat fruit (possibly only fruit that's already fallen off a tree).

You wrote:

Obviously, you have to draw the line somewhere unless you want to get metaphysical. It's got to be somewhere between single-celled organisms and humans. But why we would draw the line at humans I don't know.


Why draw the line at plants? I mean, some people draw the line at fruit, some at plants, some eat meat but probably don't want to eat humans ;) The reason that most people aren't fruitarian of course, is that it's nutritionally deficient as a diet. (This is the same reason I'm not a vegetarian, btw). But morally, why is it more 'right' to draw the line at plants?


So I want to see your "nail in the head" on video where it's "killing in a snap" because that's clearly not the case here. Those vegans weren't exaggerating when they told me meat companies just want you to think they're humane.


Why do you have to see a video of it? I doubt there's much footage of it around, since activists want to spread the image of meat-eaters and the industry being cruel heartless monsters who roll around in blood all day :ohwell: Filming as humane methods as possible wouldn't do anything for their cause.

Speaking of which, I was looking at a bottle of milk last night and noticed that the name of the company had "Maid" in it, referring to the cows as maids.


Are you sure they're referring to the cows as maids? Usually where I've seen it, it refers to a milkmaid who is a woman which milked the cows and then sold their milk. I would find it extremely odd to think they were talking about actual cows.

Watch that video, by the way - it's about human dependence on animals! Phoenix defines "speciesists" alongside racists, sexists, and so on. If you think my analogies of chicken cages as concentration camps are extreme, Phoenix compares speciesists to Nazis. And yes, Phoenix has played insane people in movies. I'm not surprised that he's brave enough to narrate a film on the greatest horrors of mankind.


Wow. You think that someone who has recited some lines on a camera has somehow gained the 'authority' to judge the rest of us? We aren't 'insane', and we aren't Nazis. Saying that is a complete insult to everyone who suffered under the Nazi regime, not to mention everyone who has been a victim of racism, sexism, etc. and I'm afraid the majority of people will *not* take you or Joaquin Phoenix seriously all the while such contrasts are made.

As I said before, it depends on where you draw the line. Someone might think you're an 'insane Nazi' for picking plants. :noclue:

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Want to resuscitate: German
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En usko humalaan.

Boes
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Real Name:Boes de Loper
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Country:NLThe Netherlands (Nederland)

Re: Meat-eating and the industry

Postby Boes » 2008-10-26, 8:36

Sarabi wrote:Your thoughts are so thought through. You haven't explained what is wrong with my analogies except to say "can NOT be compared." An egg doesn't seem extreme to you, but it does to me. They only "can NOT be compared" because you refuse to compare them, not because of anything inherently incomparable about them. Since you care so much about arguments, why don't you actually try to understand the argument in my analogy instead of pre-judging everything I say just because it's unpleasant to you?


You seem to be missing the point here. The point was that you shouldn't make certain analogies in the first place. You say animals have feelings, well let me tell you; so do humans.
Last edited by Boes on 2008-10-26, 8:36, edited 1 time in total.

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nighean-neonach
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Re: Meat-eating and the industry

Postby nighean-neonach » 2008-10-26, 8:36

It is interesting how the newly converted are usually the most radical and fervent about their cause :)
Writing poetry in: Scottish Gaelic, German, English.
Reading poetry in: Latin, Old Irish, French, Ancient Greek, Old Norse.
Talking to people in the shop in: Lithuanian, Norwegian, Irish Gaelic, Saami.
Listening to people talking in the shop in: Icelandic, Greenlandic, Finnish.


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