To think if you had to kill the animal yourself you wouldn’t eat meat

[Starchime22]

First off I’m not vegetarian, although I’m starting to lean that way, (as in, I eat fish, and occasionally meat if I’m in a restaurant, but never buy or cook meat myself) so it’s not my intention to criticise or goad omnivores.

But I’ve been thinking about how I’d have no problem killing a fish to eat, (and have) but definitely couldn’t kill a cow or a pig, and probably not a chicken. I’m not sure how many people could, really.

Is it right to eat something you couldn’t bear to kill yourself? Or watch being killed? I’m not saying it isn’t, just interested in what people think.

@Thistlebelle
@ikeepaforkinmypurse
Not true. Read this article, 97% of soya crops are fed to animals. This crop could be feeding the 850million individuals that go hungry in the world.
www.independent.co.uk/voices/five-things-would-happen-if-everyone-stopped-eating-meat-a6844811.html

So curious how do you see the transition to world-wide vegetarianism happening then? Do we keep the animals currently being kept for meat until the end of their natural lives? When they die of age or illness, do we then eat them, or should we just incinerate them? Or maybe we should just have a cut-off date, after which all our beef cattle, sheep, chickens, etc. are all killed en masse? Because that is what it would take. And in the event of this mass cull, are we meat eaters then allowed one final carnivorous feast, or should we just incinerate the carcases (which has an environmental impact)?

And economically speaking, how do we cope with the resulting unemployment and its consequences?

Utopia isn't such a simple thing. Far better for us to realise that most of us could do with eating less meat (hence our family's frequent vegetarian meals) and make the transition gradually. Which is best achieved without militant preachy vegetarians getting people irritated. If you want to make people change their minds, don't be like the vegetarian equivalent of the Jehovahs knocking at people's doors, be more subtle.

I’m vegetarian and I wouldn’t kill an animal to eat it.

If it came down to survival and I / my family was starving then I would probably eat fish. I was taught to fish as a child, I have killed and filleted fish before so I could do it if I had to but I would prefer not to (also I don’t like the taste of fish).

I couldn’t kill a large animal and if I had the option of chickens then I would keep them for eggs rather than kill and eat them.

@curiousmoi - The animal did not want to die.
How do YOU know what the animal wanted or didn't want?? How do you know what animals think of their life span or what happens at death? In my experience, the animal lives and one day, it dies. I'm imagining now that the animal lived (happily hopefully), it's taken somewhere and it falls asleep (death). In the UK, at least they try to make the death painless.

To kiri, rebel and all others who think it is 'universally' cruel to eat animals -
Many of us humans will die miserable deaths - terrible sicknesses, road traffic accidents, torture to murder etc. We have plans on how we would like to die. Please stop thinking that animals are planning how they would like to die and whether they want to grow old and be cremated.

Personally, my background is from a culture that believes that animals are made to live with us and to nourish us so that when WE die, we get buried and nourish the soil that nourishes them - or by being eaten directly by the animal. So we treat the animal well in life, accept it's nourishment and give it back when we die. In my culture, you refusing to kill and eat the animal is cruel and not allowing it to fulfil its destiny. You're the cruel one (in that culture).

Now, we're in the UK and I'm not forcing anyone to believe any of what I've said and I'm not thinking you're daft for not accepting it. Your beliefs are interesting but they are yours alone.

What I think is important is the welfare of the living animal. It doesn't keep suffering for every time you chew it. Just like I think the LIFE of the human is the important bit - not just that they die, because we all will at some point.

@insideoutsider
How do YOU know the animal did not want to live??
Of course it wanted to live!!!
Why would it not want to? Do you seriously believe cows spend their whole life longing for the day their throats are slit instead of nurturing their calf's and living a life free from torture? That's messed up, sorry, but it is.
Cows in the meat industry get killed between the ages of 15-20 MONTHS, outside of the meat/dairy industry cows live for 20-25 YEARS! They don't just "lay down and die", they're killed, when they're still babies.

Of course animals want to live. That's called survival instinct. We all have it. Let's not get all anthropomorphic about it.

Oh and yes, I think it's cruel that calves are taken away from their moms. Where I grew up, we don't have mass farming so, and we don't eat the young of animals. Keeping the calves with their parents will ensure they are fed, raised and kept safe in their family unit until their grown enough to raise their own family units. By which time the older animals are ready to be killed for food. And we eat the whole animal - including all organs and skin (except hair).

It's an 'abomination' to eat the blood of the animal so the blood must be drained. So, I have never eaten black pudding and never will. We don't drink fresh animal milk either as the calves would be drinking that. So I could never drink UK fresh milk but I eat and drink milk products like ice cream. I don't pass judgement on those that do or don't - that's their preference. My UK born children drink milk and eat cheese and I prepare it for them.

I've only said all the above just to show that there are billions of people in the world and we have differing beliefs on how we view animals. Some are vegans because they view animals as gods to be worshipped and they would wonder what we were on about, keeping dogs on leashes and keeping them as pets when they should be roaming free. And if an animal mauled a child, they wouldn't be putting the animal down.

...curiousmoi those animals would still need to be fed even if humans didn't eat them. I mean, if they have a right to life then they have a right to food. The idea of using all the soy currently produced for direct human consumption doesn't make sense, we can't just replace meat with soy, they don't have the same calories or nutrients before getting into how soy is one of the most common allergies. It would be far more kind to animals to let much of the land to grow soy to go back to nature, particularly where the rainforests have been attacked.

If we're looking at the most environmentally friendly, then a vegetarian diet including dairy products and/or eggs is the best followed closely by a diet with 20% meat, 40% meat, then veganism, followed by omnivorous diets with more meat. There have been several studies on this, Here is one from 2016 that has the information publically available.

As I said before, people will make the choices from what they can. I really only have issues with the larger 'everyone should be vegan' organizations that lobby for legislation that has made legal hunting harder while having done nothing to help people in those communities have more affordable and more accessible access to other foods. To me, a lot of cruelty in the wider part of food issues gets shoved under the carpet too readily by treating whether or not people eat meat to be the ultimate food ethical issue.

No total hypocrite here. Love meat but couldn’t actually kill a fly. And I mean that I have never ever killed anything knowingly. I trap spiders and wasps etc.

Cooking a roast as we speak so yes I get you op. Utterly hypocritical but there it is.

curiousmoi - You're not an animal. YES YOU ARE. What, because you live in a house with a tv and have a car, you think you're not an animal? Look into how complex the living structures of ants and bees are. Sorry, look in the mirror. YOU ARE AN ANIMAL.

Do you seriously believe cows spend their whole life longing for the day their throats are slit ... and you think cows are sitting in the fields THINKING that their throats will be slit? Like I said, I'm in support of animal welfare and want all animals to live well and 'happy'. I think you think cows are thinking what you are thinking.

Re dying: Whereas the animals did NOT have a choice in the matter And you have a choice in how you die? Who gave you that choice? No living being has a choice on when they die.

I just watched a documentary where some kids in some remote part of the world have been happily catching locusts (that came in a swarm, ravaging their farmlands) and their mom was teaching them to fry it. They were so happy and she explained that this will be their only source of protein for a while. They were very poor with no livestock. I really wonder how all these 'eat no animal' people would view that cruel family feeding themselves on locusts.

I have nothing more to contribute to people who will always think it's wrong to eat animals. It's such a different view point to mine.

curious my (slightly fanciful) first post was about maintaining a vegetarian diet in the U.K. if society completely fell apart.

IE If we were all responsible for gathering our own food.

So in all likelihood it would be difficult to access crops grown for animals (depending on where you live). Protecting them might be extremely difficult too.

You’d also need to get large groups of people organised pretty quickly to immediately start planting sufficient crops post apocalypse (assuming you had the skill). And the first winter would be very very lean if you weren’t prepared to hunt rabbits, deer, squirrels etc

@insideoutsider
That's interesting, I have never heard of a vegan that worships animals as though they are gods....
I can see why you might see that as a bit odd, especially refusing to put an animal down after mauling a child.

Thistle in that scenario I would have no problem at all. I know how to kill them, skin them, cut them, preserve them, cure their skins, make tools out of their bones - in short, waste as little of each animal as possible. I also know edible plants and fungi from poisonous ones. Life post-apocalypse wouldn't be comfortable, but our family would cope. I can make flint tools too.

You'd definitely have to form communities with other people though - some form of society would soon start up again. What it would look like - well, I suspect much of it would be extremely dystopian.

pointy you sound like an excellent person to know in a crisis!!

I read Forstchen’s “One Second After” and it gave me the willies.

And you are right pointy I suspect you might need to be prepared to kill people let alone animals.

I could kill a fish, but I agree no mammals or birds - I’d just faint. Although I have plucked a chicken and gutted a fish ... I just always faint at blood.

I’m guessing it’s also because a fish seems less sentient, it’s not a land creature and I even it’s movements are completely alien ... whereas a sheep or cow has joints similar to ours and their eyes show ‘emotion’ unlike fish.

I would like to think all animals in an abattoir are killed humanely and quickly. Sadly, I do not think that is the case. There have been too many "under cover" stories and pictures of animals being abused.

Also no matter how quickly an animal is killed what about all the others waiting their turn? I believe they know that something awful is happening and must be terrified.

My previous dog refused to walk down a certain street (3 different streets and times) and only afterwards did we find out there was an abattoir in the roads. He also refused to walk down a market in France where (we found out later) live chickens were being killed. He literally dug his heels in and refused to move. When we tried to get him to move he started howling.

He obviously sensed fear/death or whatever.

I kind of get what you're saying, but equally I couldn't be arsed to dig up potatoes, so does that mean I should never eat chips THIS!!

I probably could, but I couldn't be arsed to do that after work.