to wonder WTF would it take for people stop eating "meat"

[ElenorRigby]

Just that really!

Mary, I have to be honest and say I know that isn't the case, and I know it's all possible, but I have forgotten the facts and figures and haven't got the time to look up all the detail! I understand anyone that thinks that is an easy get out, but if you are really interested, all the research is out there.

True, Hully! Plants experience spikes of hormone/electrical activity when a neighbouring plant is cut. Some researchers have called it a scream ...

I know...

grovel - if people didn't eat meat then farmers wouldn't rear these animals so I'm a bit about your comment that we might as well eat these animals since they are just going to get buried anyway.

I've just remembered that rearing animals for food uses a lot more land (for grazing) than would be used for grain production.

Good plan, Maryz - kill 90% of humans to make intensive farming unneccesary!!

Worryingly, I know vegans who think it's a good idea. They never seem to consider the implications, not even the logical progression that would lead to killing the creatures that eat food we wanted.

Come to think of it, this has to be the quintessential first-world problem, doesn't it?!

rearing animals for food uses a lot more land (for grazing) than would be used for grain production - Yep, is why meat provides higher food value, gram for gram. The animal's already converted the energy from the plants it ate.

Narsty old prairie grass.

So you are speciesist!

Is it (more) okay to eat meat if you don't care about fuzzy wuzzy hamsters and kittens?

I mean if I am fine with eating kittens then am I more or less morally reprehensible?

you are consistent yet sadly revolting

I worry a lot about cows. Clearly a lot of cows have lead reasonable lives involving grass, farting, shitting etc. that they would not have done if humans didn't find them tasty.

So if we can kill the animals humanely (not saying we do atm) then isn't some life better than none?

who can say? the cow? us?

I am actually fine with eating anything...insects, kittens, those fish stick things that could essentially be anything....even vegetables sometimes.

you are consigning a lot of proto-cows to non-existence by advocating vegetarianism...don't you think you should decide if that is morally sound first?

I think it is.

What is the controversy about Veal really about? Is it just that the calves are so young?

hully So you think it is better that cow never lived than that it should live, be killed humanely and then eaten?

Sorry, just read Worras post and answered my own question.

I presume the reason she put 'meat' in inverted commas is because what you are actually eating is the chopped up muscle and connective tissue of a murdered animal. Mm, nice.

I think the answer to your question OP is sadly contained within the replies on this thread. Some/many people are too stupid, greedy and selfish to ever stop eating meat.

Even though the meat industry is the single biggest contributory factor to climate change from all the millions of farm animals who produce toxic gases that harm the environment.

Even though there is absolutely nothing in a meat based diet that cannot be got from vegetables with the exception of vitamin B12 that can be taken in supplement form.

Even though you are contributing to the pain, suffering, and torture of thousands of defenceless animals who have harmed no one. Animals who feel pain, emotion and who want to live. Animals who often suffer horrific, painful deaths just so some selfish fuck who likes the taste of their cooked flesh can shove their bits of their poor chopped up bodies in their mouths.

Even though we are not 'meant' to eat meat - our physiologies resemble those of a herbivore far more closely.

Even though you are eating not only dead animal but all the hormones and crap that their bodies have been pumped with to make them good and fat so you can eat them.

Eating animals is morally wrong. There is no need for it, and it IS disgusting - you are absolutely kidding yourself if you think that taking the dead body of a mistreated animal, cutting it up and cooking it and putting it in YOUR body is anything short of cruel and disgusting.

I won't go into the dairy industry here as this thread is about eating meat, though I am a vegan. It makes me so angry and sad that so many people are too thick and greedy to face up to the horrible and cruel truth behind their food and continue to support the appalling cruelty behind their food - organic, local, it's all inhumane so don't kid yourself that just because it comes from Waitrose it's OK.

I know I'm wasting my words - as I have said, many people are too selfish to change their eating habits. But if you really, really believe that eating meat is OK, I dare you to watch this

T hen see if you stand by your dietary choices.

And if you do, by the way, you're a heartless bastard and I despair of you.

Everything that lives, dies.

If you live a pleasant life and die painlessly, and can have no knowledge of anything beyond your death (assuming there is no cow heaven, or indeed any sort of heaven), then how can that life be ethically wrong with respect to never living at all?

If we make the argument about humans, living in a logans run society of euthanasia at 40 years, does it become ethically wrong to have a child knowing that they will die before their natural life span? Or would each life have positive value in spite of it's early termination?

"But if the entire human population stopped eating meat, it would be necessary to produce a lot more grain/pulses/veg. Because for many people a lot of their calories come from meat and that would need replacing."

That's not true, because currently most grains are being fed to that 'meat'. Between 75 & 80 percent of soy goes to cattle for example.

I'm vegan because I don't think we're entitled to breed animals to commodify their reproductive systems and kill them simply for pleasure and profit.

I would eat roadkill if I fancied it, and would kill and eat an animal if I would die otherwise. Neither apply.