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

[ElenorRigby]

Just that really!

www.ciwf.org.uk/farm_animals/cows/dairy_cows/default.aspx

Commodification of reproductive systems. Killing the animal when it's no longer 'productive'.

Nah. Don't like it.

I've been and got my steak! I wanted to know about the place it came from and my butcher told me all about it, including the name and address of the slaughter house. Oddly he also said he'd been for a visit but that it had upset him!

Wow, Strop, impressive! I think you should give your butcher a swift plug on here :)

Hully, it's funny how we don't call the meat after the animal. Nearly all other languages do.

Hully, it's funny how we don't call the meat after the animal. Nearly all other languages do.^

But we do - in the French that the Normans brought with them. The animal name is Anglo-Saxon, the name of the meat is the French for the animal.

He's pretty good garlic. Always knows the details of the animals that come in.

Hully I know what you mean, I do usually say what we're eating. Burgers become mulched cow. DD finds it amusing.

I'm a meat eater. Having said that, I try to eat free range meat from small producers who don't use intensive farming methods (luckily, I have a few friends who are small scale farmers). I also try to eat as much of the animal as possible - pigs ears, kidneys, livers, oxtail etc. I can't say I stick to this all the time - but when I can afford it, and it's possible, I do. Apart from anything else, the meat tastes better.

One thing I've always wondered - why is it considered to be more cruel when we farm animals, feed them up, and then kill them humanely, than if we didn't farm them and let nature take its course, which means they'd either die of disease, or be prey to some predator - both of which strike me as worse ways to die, although more 'natural' I suppose.

Murder is, by definition, the killing of another human being. Using the word to refer to the killing of animals is inaccurate, and that annoys me :)

Well, IMO, you have very convenient "perceptions" then. It certainly doesn't incline me to give your opinions much weight when your perceptions are so blatantly partisan.

I remember being upset as a child about meat and trying to go veggie but my parents wouldn't let me.
In my early twenties I went vegan for two weeks (I can't remember my reasons!) but I didn't know how to eat that way and gave up. Became almost embarrassingly pro meat-eating.
Then slowly I began to become defensive when encountering vegan arguments, questioned myself, and went vegan again - this time with more information. Internet has recipes and stuff.
So I must have always been thinking about it all at some level, since childhood.

"why is it considered to be more cruel when we farm animals, feed them up, and then kill them humanely, than if we didn't farm them and let nature take its course, which means they'd either die of disease, or be prey to some predator "

Because we breed them in such large numbers in order to make the most profit. Killing wild animals for our own survival would be a different matter.

Hully, it's funny how we don't call the meat after the animal. Nearly all other languages do.

Chicken, fish, lamb, rabbit, pigeon, pheasant... isn't it about equal whether they are recognisable animal names or derived from the French ones?

"Killing wild animals for our own survival would be a different matter."

I'm not being antagonistic here, but could you explain why? Hunting an animal surely causes it more stress than a captive bolt to the head would, or electrocution even? Is it better to allow animals to die (slowly) of disease, injury or starvation than to keep them safe and well fed until we want to eat them?

Yeah, I've just trawled through translations of various animals & meats in various languages (am putting off work!) English and French came out evens - we use a different word when the French do - while Danish, German and Italian stick to the name of the animal.

I made an ill-conceived point. Procrastination is the mother of weak argument, at least it is right now!

"Killing wild animals for our own survival would be a different matter."

I don't see this as clear-cut. It implies that it's okay to kill for food as long as it takes a big effort. I find that slightly bonkers! Do you reckon a businessman who's paid £2k to go on a deer shoot has more right to eat venison than someone who bought it from the butcher? If I go and kill a duck from the river, am I more entitled to eat that duck than one I bought from Aldi?

There's a thought: my local river has ducks!

Nothing would stop me eating decent British-bred and reared meat from my local butcher, and certainly not some of the laughable assertions made on this thread.

As someone born and bred in the industry and who has spent my professional life within it, I'm comfortable with eating meat as described above. Are slaughter houses nice places? No - but so long as the animals are treated with respect, held in decent lairage facilities until their time comes, and correctly stunned, it's not cruel (which is not something I would say about halal and kosher slaughter).

We breed and rear our own cattle - they spend spring, summer and part of the autumn at grass then the winter in large straw yards with ad lib silage and a daily morning feed of concentrates. There's no abuse or cruelty, the cows and calves stay together until weaning at six-nine months, and they are slaughtered locally - we take them there ourselves and they go straight in, no hanging about. We're not hobby farmers either - we have hundreds of them.

Family members breed and rear sheep under similar circumstances; we have neighbours with free range chickens which have open access to several acres of land throughout the day and proper perch barns at night - again, not hobby farmers, there are thousands of them. Other neighbours rear pigs in large straw yards, hundreds of them.

No matter what the anti-meat brigade say, the majority of meat and dairy in this country is done ethically.. Are there bad apples? Yes, of course there are - and most of them get caught (unlike on the continent)

If we needed to eat animals, then killing them would be necessary. Obviously as humans we could try to do that as humanely as possible.

We don't need to eat them; we breed them in huge quantities for profit (mainly through artificial insemination). It's more cruel to start a life for the sole purpose of exploiting it.

we breed them in huge quantities for profit (mainly through artificial insemination)

Stats for that?

Because it was my understanding that most beef and lamb in this country is not produced from animals which have been inseminated to my knowledge and, no disrespect intended, I suspect I know more about farming than you.

The dairy sector does use AI widely, partly as dairy bulls are notoriously dangerous and difficult to manage in a system which requires cattle to be brought in and out to pasture twice daily.

As I sort of joked about earlier, if an alien species who were our 'superiors' invaded and started to farm us, then we wouldn't be best pleased. Especially if they didn't need to - they just could and enjoyed how we tasted and we couldn't do bugger all about it.
Some might be kinder to us than others, some might fatten us up or overbreed us using cruel methods, but as a concept it's distasteful. Just because we can do something doesn't mean we should.
The aliens would probably think our emotional reactions to being used in this way were not proper elevated emotions like theirs though. ;)

"The dairy sector does use AI widely"

Nah. Don't like it.

I think that, although we can survive without eating meat, it is in our nature to eat it - hence our teeth and digestive system, which are those of an omnivore not a herbivore. I'm wondering if the objection is not so much to eating meat, as to farming it, or does anyone see it as morally wrong to eat meat which has not been farmed - and if so, why?

LadyFT:

I don't like animals being exploited like this: you don't mind and indeed make money from it.

We're hardly going to agree, stats or no stats.

That's true, but I'd prefer if you didn't make untrue assertions which might mislead other people who are interested in seeing both sides of the debate

So, still saying beef and sheep comes from AI?

I would eat roadkill. Just don't fancy it. I thought when I went vegan from hardcore carnivore I'd be looking for ways to eat meat.
But I've gone off it. Tastes change.

I found your post reassuring, LadyFT. Thank you.

My apologies. Mainly in the dairy industry then.
But there are other concerns aren't there?
www.ciwf.org.uk/farm_animals/sheep/welfare_issues.aspx

Why do many consider it better to hunt than to farm?

Can I go and kill a duck now? It's nearly dark, I'll have to get a move on