to ask vegetarians

[advance01]

whether it was reasonable to respond in this way.
Made a comment about burning hand whilst roasting sunday lunch.
Received a reply from a "friend" who said "more ouch for unfortunate animal you were roasting"
I felt this was quite rude but not sure if I am being objective as not vegetairian myself.

Has anyone heard the beat poem 'Storm' by Tim Minchin?

... Just interested to know whether the same people who (having clearly identified themselves within my earlier comments) chose to take offence, are also offended by this...?

I wasn't offended by any of the above. I read the poem with interest. It is certainly not my view (I work in oil and gas and rather like pharmaceutical companies) but enjoyed it a lot as a way of understanding points of view.

Maybe it was a bad joke.
May I just point out that few of the vegetarians I've known ate that way for animal rights or cruelty reasons? Or had any opinion about how other people chose to eat. Too bad some folk are zealots about it.

Oh, I get it, do you think you're being witty surprise?!

Yes I have seen Storm. I love it, it's very funny.

However Storm is not a parody of hippies or people who make consumer choices based on ethics. It's a rant against bad science. It's parody of naive know-it-alls who jump on conspiracy theory bandwagons based on zero science, and then preach them to other people.

He certainly wasn't having a go people who do things out of principle, for sound ethical reasons.

I think you have spectacularly missed the point on that one.

for those of you who haven't seen it.

She is well within her rights to comment. To think that animals don't suffer or that they are 'killed humanely' is just totally ridiculous.

I am not vegetarian, btw.

As one identified by littlesurprise, I'll second aufaniae.

Plus, I'm now a regular meat-eater (our own animals too) and am a committed empiricist at heart (much more likely to find me eulogising on MN about the value of the scientific method than saving fwuffy animals ). Not really anything like Storm. Sorry.

Just sounds like a joke to me, but it is the kind of thing me and my friends (mix of veggies, vegans and meat eaters) would say all the time. The next response would probably be something like "at least it died for a good cause, I was hungry!" or a comment about the suffering of vegetables etc.

Only you know the person well enough to judge the tone. If it matters I'm veggie.

I don't think that's true, musicismylife. The thing about FB and Twitter and all social networking in fact is that it gives people often the mistaken impression that they have the right to comment about things which are really none of their business. You could argue back I suppose that in posting that she had burned herself, the OP had made it everyone else's business, but where does it end then? Perhaps the person who thought Tom Daly had let his Dad down by not winning gold really thought it was his business when he commented on Tom's Twitter page.

It all comes down to good manners I guess.

That remark really served no purpose OTHER than to be rude. It wasn't going to suddenly convert you, was it? And she'd have known that. Therefore, the only reason she said it was to make you feel bad about eating meat. My veggie 13-yr-old has better manners than that - and the sense to know that an attitude like that isn't going to create any new vegetarians.

If someone asks my dd why she doesn't eat meat, she will give a polite and well thought out explanation, which I know has a few of her friends thinking about turning veggie. Otherwise, she keeps her mouth shut and doesn't alienate anybody. (She also has plenty of responses to the Poor Carrots "jokes" as well.)

Being vegetarian may, on many levels, be the right thing to do, but being right isn't everything, because a sanctimonious attitude is likely to have the opposite effect.