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SuzieQ

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Like Bosox said, it is all about the personality/tastiness quotient, and a bit of history, too.

 

I think we started out not eating dogs because, once domesticated, dogs provided protection for home and the livestock that we ate, and it became culturally ingrained that only the worst sort of chinaman will eat a dog.  Cats don't have much meat, have claws, catch mice, and are portable and affectionate at times, and you can refer to the earlier comment again, only replace dogs with cats.

 

Everything else was either too catchable to get away from us, too stupid to get away from us, or is simply not cute or amusing or affectionate enough not to eat, or are pests in the field that ate crops and have to be killed, so why not eat the little bastards when you off them?

 

Meat tastes good and provides nutrients and protein in ways that veggies simply do not, and are a more efficient form of calorie loading than veggies.   Everybody needs both, or has to jump through monstrous hoops to ensure they avoid wasting diseases or PRI if they eat only veggies.  

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What bugs me most in this society of ours is factory farming - and only when we stop or in the very least eat a lot less meat and dairy will we get rid of torturous factory farms.

 

Factory farms seem to blow, but they are pretty efficient at bringing meat and milk to market at more reasonable rates.  I will pay a bit more to get free-ranging grass-fed meats and chickens and eggs, but not unreasonable amounts.

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They're all edible.

 

I would agree with SQ to an extent.  It is all pretty gory when you think about it, so I find it pragmatic to not think about it too much.  We live in a very contrived society, and I would hunt the meat if I could at this point in my life.  Since I cannot do that effectively in Brooklyn, I go to the death/grocery store and buy it instead.  I am cool with things this way for the time being.

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Most of the ecological problems and many of the social problems we have here on the earth today could be attributed to over-population.  Yet no one ever talks about population control.  Why is this not up for major world discussion and action, similar to global warming?

 

Well, the chinamen have started addressing it, a long time ago, actually.  Seems to be unpopular with excessively selfish people who want only the valuable boy babies, and not the valueless girl babies they keep having.  People will keep having babies, because we are too stupid not to have babies all the damn time.  Typically, the more stupid you are, the more babies you will have (unless you have a farm and want the free farmhand labor).

 

I only had one baby, that is plenty.  My vag still hurts from it, too.

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when I was in Pacific Fleet, I saw all that stuff getting eaten. Dogs and cats are definitely on the menu in the Pacific. Monkees, rats, lizards, grasshoppers (the Koreans make some awesome hot spicy fried grasshoppers, BTW)

 

What's hard to find actually is beef, and when you do find it, its expensive as all get out

 

The thing is that you can't make these sort of arguments about vegetarianism based on what people eat here in the states because, quite frankly, nowhere else in the world are people affluent enough to have the luxury to eat like we do here

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attachicon.gifWe still end life when we eat plants.  Is the only difference that plants don't have brains or a nervous system, so we don't think of them as higher life forms and don't assign human emotions and feeling to them?


How do we know plants are not as self-aware as animals or people? How do we know they do not have their own form of consciousness?
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I would agree with SQ to an extent.  It is all pretty gory when you think about it, so I find it pragmatic to not think about it too much.  We live in a very contrived society, and I would hunt the meat if I could at this point in my life.  Since I cannot do that effectively in Brooklyn, I go to the death/grocery store and buy it instead.  I am cool with things this way for the time being.

This is what's wrong - we should be thinking about it and we should also be doing something to change it.  

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SuzieQ, on 26 Feb 2015 - 11:47 AM, said:

This is what's wrong - we should be thinking about it and we should also be doing something to change it.  

 you mean like forcing everybody who doesn't think like you do to change the way they live?

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I'm eating a chicken sandwich right now 

 

I love animals too. What's more, animals love me. The wild animals on my property know me and are relaxed around me.

 

Last fall I even stacked wood in broad daylight with a deer hanging out about 10 yards away from me eating the corn I set out for the animals

 

you want to eat tofu, and that's great...but why do you feel like you have to force your way of life on everyone else?

 

do I make you learn how to shoot guns?

 

do I make you learn how to fight?

 

no, I don't because I believe that free people should live as they please

 

Its what America used to stand for

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I'm eating a chicken sandwich right now 

 

I love animals too. What's more, animals love me. The wild animals on my property know me and are relaxed around me.

 

Last fall I even stacked wood in broad daylight with a deer hanging out about 10 yards away from me eating the corn I set out for the animals

 

you want to eat tofu, and that's great...but why do you feel like you have to force your way of life on everyone else?

 

do I make you learn how to shoot guns?

 

do I make you learn how to fight?

 

no, I don't because I believe that free people should live as they please

 

Its what America used to stand for

 

I'd like to openly thank you for taking a completely opposite view of someone without insulting them.  Honestly, thank you.

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F_in Ray Of Sunshine, on 26 Feb 2015 - 12:19 PM, said:

'Round here we call that a "bait pile"......

 

 

yea, but here in PA we don't bait animals. I know that some states do

 

But I feed the geese and ducks at my lake, and anything else that wants to eat is welcome. I leave the geese to sort it out as they see fit

 

the point is that a deer won't relax around your average human at that distance in broad daylight and during hunting season. This was the Sunday of the first week of rifle season.

 

Its rare for deer to come up close to the house, and its very rare for them to stick around if you make any move at all

 

but I was stacking firewood! :huh:

 

she was a year old doe and she looked up, saw I wasn't paying her any mind, and just kept on eating. She hung around for a big part of the afternoon.

 

it was pretty neat :)

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Square Wheels, on 26 Feb 2015 - 12:21 PM, said:

I'd like to openly thank you for taking a completely opposite view of someone without insulting them.  Honestly, thank you.

 

 so can you see my point, then?

 

if I don't expect you to live like me, and I sure as hell don't want to live like you, then why is the liberal's first response to try and force everybody else to live they way that they say?

 

If I'm not forcing you to live like I do out here in the country, then why do you think your city ways would be good for me?

 

the thing is that forcing everybody to think and live like you narrows the human experience. It is morally wrong and it goes against everything this country was founded on.

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What bugs me most in this society of ours is factory farming - and only when we stop or in the very least eat a lot less meat and dairy will we get rid of torturous factory farms.

.

...here in the Valley, we have the beginnings of a non factory food supply, based on the local growers and a year round growing season for produce.  The markets at which the stuff gets sold have spun off a local meat industry, at which I can get chickens that run around eating bugs, and a there's local guy over in Yolo who raises pigs without antibiotics.  That guy loves those damn pigs. Grass fed beef and lambs, it's a murderous cornucopia of clean meat.  There's even a rice farmer who raises some ducks and butchers them every now and then.  Quail and pheasants come from someone else.

 

But I'm not certain how viable the model is for the rest of the country, with longer, fiercer winters.  It ought to work in theory.  It used to work.  The stuff costs more though.

 

When we had the room and raised some chickens, the key to eating them after they egg production dropped off seemed to be to never name them.  :)

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It's kind of illegal in NY. Doesn't mean it doesn't happen, but it is illegal.

 same here in PA. If you have a big piece of private land, sure, its illegal to bait deer, but its also trespassing for the Game commission to be out on your land to catch you doing it

 

sort of like at my lake, you don't need a fishing license. Technically you do, but if we're being that technical, its trespassing for anybody to come out and check, too

 

its funny to watch the geese who are the permanent residents here. They are so used to me that I can walk right by them with a machete in my hand and they won't even stand up.

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Page Turner, on 26 Feb 2015 - 12:43 PM, said:

.

...here in the Valley, we have the beginnings of a non factory food supply, based on the local growers and a year round growing season for produce.  The markets at which the stuff gets sold have spun off a local meat industry, at which I can get chickens that run around eating bugs, and a there's local guy over in Yolo who raises pigs without antibiotics.  that guy loves those damn pigs. Grass fed beef and lambs, it's a murderous cornucopia of clean meat.  There's even a rice farmer who raises some ducks and butchers them every now and then.  Quail and pheasants come from someone else.

 

But I'm not certain how viable the model is for the rest of the country, with longer, fiercer winters.  It ought to work in theory.  It used to work.  The stuff costs more though.

 

When we had the room and raised some chickens, the key to eating them after they egg production dropped off seemed to be to never name them.  :)

 

I can assure you that there is nothing anyone in California could teach a Pennsylvanian about farming 

 

we have had all of that right here in the Susquehanna Valley since 1735 and we do it better

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You can get local beef in my town.  It's pasture fed.  I feel pretty good about eating that.  We even have a greenhouse Tilapia farm.  They grow greens above the fish and the fish water feeds the veggies.  Very cool operation.

 

To suggest that we only eat what we can kill is sort of unrealistic in a city situation.  That would be like me suggesting that vegetarians should only eat what they can grow themselves.  Again, kind of unrealistic for most of the population.

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This is what's wrong - we should be thinking about it and we should also be doing something to change it.  

 

 

 you mean like forcing everybody who doesn't think like you do to change the way they live?

 

What SuzieQ has been doing in this thread and elsewhere is to raise some discussion points. And it has been working, since we are responding and considering what she has to say. She is not demanding behaviour changes. 

 

Unfortunately, some will see her point about meat — or any other points which challenge conventional thinking or behaviour — as an attempt to force change. This is a mistake. There is merit to opening up a discussion and considering various ideas, even if those ideas make us uncomfortable.

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one thing about that corporate farmed meat...my sister had breast cancer, and she has to stay away from that sort of meat because the hormones they shoot in the animals to make them grow like bodybuilders on steroids can trigger certain cancers

 

I can't believe that the FDA allows that stuff to be used, but I guess if it is only dangerous to some of the population, the US government stamps it "Approved" and its on the grocery shelves by morning :(

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I can assure you that there is nothing anyone in California could teach a Pennsylvanian about farming 

 

we have had all of that right here in the Susquehanna Valley since 1735 and we do it better

.

...I think you misunderstand my reservations.  I was a degenerate hippie living in a group up north of the Twin Cities in MN for a few years back in the early 70's, and even with all that surrounding farm land, we had trouble feeding ourselves year round because of the very short growing season.  In season, with the long days, a couple of our guys managed to run a small truck farming operation, selling the stuff at the farmer's market down in St Paul. We did all the canning stuff, etc, etc.  We even had a root cellar.  I'm not saying it can't be done, but it is definitely a lot easier here in the Great Central Valley............until we run out of water. :(

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Unfortunately, some will see her point about meat — or any other points which challenge conventional thinking or behaviour — as an attempt to force change. This is a mistake. There is merit to opening up a discussion and considering various ideas, even if those ideas make us uncomfortable.

 

 

 

and in the America I once knew, I would agree with that. But I now have a government telling me what I am supposed to believe. The US government deems that they have the authority to tell me what a marriage is, for example.

 

We have a government that will force me to buy health insurance whether I need it or not

 

that will force me to hide that I am Christian so I don't "offend" anybody

 

a government that will tell the people down the road from me that the earth dam build in the 1700s is now all of a sudden not acceptable and therefore must be rebuilt...

 

 

this is a government that is ALL ABOUT telling me which way to pee

 

so I no longer trust that this is a simple conscience raising discussion

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...I think you misunderstand my reservations

 

 

oh, I did misunderstand. I thought you thought that California is the only place that has locally grown meat that isn't full of chemicals

 

We have the Amish and Mennonite farmers here where I live.  They consider salt to be a chemical additive

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