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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To think you can be an animal lover and eat meat?

566 replies

MyOtherUsernameisaPun · 08/05/2018 13:47

I know I'm going to be flamed, have donned protective gear...

But I think that it's hypocritical to eat meat and claim to be an animal lover. That isn't to say meat eaters don't deeply love their pets - I fully accept that they do! But I think that in those cases they only love certain animals, not animals generally.

We know that pigs are far more intelligent than dogs. We know that cows form close social bonds with specific individuals within the herd. We know enough to confidently state that there is no reason to separate pets from any other species except that we are conventionally accustomed to doing so.

I think everyone is free to make their own choices and whether or not I approve of them is totally irrelevant. But I don't think there is any logical grounds for a meat eater to claim that they are an animal lover when they're happy for some kinds of animals to suffer and be killed.

OP posts:
myfriendbob · 10/05/2018 17:33

See, you say that, but I can't believe you. How can you be a massive foodies when you won't eat all the best food?

You may be fine with it, but I wasn't and neither are most people who truly love food.

pigmcpigface · 10/05/2018 17:51

The problem is that people like you see meat as 'all the best food' and it's not! Grin If you only ever have meat dishes when you're out at a high-falutin' establishment, how are you ever going to know different? My friend (who is a confirmed carnivore) is even coming round to the idea that vegetarian cooking really sorts the women from the girls in the kitchen - it takes more skill, and more finesse to do a carrot dish well than to grill a steak. (And before someone guffaws at the idea of carrots ever being high end, I had an amazing dish of carrot pickled in a Japanese sauce at the weekend as part of
a tasting menu, and it was gorgeous).

Honestly, I want for absolutely nothing.

Blackandwhitepostcards · 10/05/2018 17:52

Oh balls, I just wrote a really long reply and it bloody disappeared, argh! Anyway..
scrowy see my last post about being indoctrinated in a tradition for generations and generations. It goes for eating as well as farming meat. It’s difficult to break away from something you and your family have always known and been part of.
Ive know a lot of farmers over the years who’ve been devastated by the fact that they rear, respect and care for animals only to lead them to slaughter. It’s broken them.
But of course not all farmers feel this way and I don’t think farmers who feel no guilt are heartless. I wouldn’t call them animal lovers though.
You talk about your dh caring for your female lambs and that’s really lovely but what about the lambs unfortunate to be born male. Are they awarded the same compassion? Are they led to slaughter with their brothers?

Sorry for my emotive language but I’m fed up of society being fed these images of farm animals being happy creatures, free to roam pastures, walking merrily unawares to their deaths. It just isn’t the reality. I think people need to educate themselves on the realities of farming. If then they still choose to eat meat then that’s absolutely fine, no judgement from me. But I see and hear so many inaccurate ideas from people about what goes on in the farming industry and it makes me cross.

pigmcpigface · 10/05/2018 17:55

Also, sometimes the vegetarian dish is ACTUALLY BETTER!

Case in point: I was at my friend's wedding (also a huge foodie), at one of the best restaurants in London, and they had this amazing dish of very old madeira (like, 100 years old) with consomme. The carnivorous option was with duck. Mine was with porcini mushrooms. Mine was way, way, WAY nicer than the meat option, and even the meat eaters agreed.

BlackandWhitePostcards · 10/05/2018 17:59

Another thing I find weird is when people will happily eat burgers or sausages or ham so things that don’t look like the animal they’re eating - but will freak out when presented with a whole cooked chicken or something with a bone in or some blood. It’s like they bury their heads in the sand and pretend that they’re not actually eating animals. Either eat them or don’t but don’t eat them and kid yourself that you’re not because the shape of a burger doesn’t resemble a piece of a cow Confused
Also, I love my food and could never be vegetarian if veggie food wasn’t very nice. Even when I ate meat I didn’t particularly like the taste.
As for us needing meat as humans as some posters said upthread, the vegetarians I know tend to be slimmer and fitter and generally healthier all round than my omnivore friends. Hadn’t the world health organisation deemed meat a carcinogen? (It might just be red meat?)

myfriendbob · 10/05/2018 18:02

The problem is that people like you see meat as 'all the best food' and it's not! grin If you only ever have meat dishes when you're out at a high-falutin' establishment, how are you ever going to know different?

see , now thats bollocks, and you're making assumptions. Where did I say I didn't eat lots of vegetarian food AS WELL as all the meat? I didn't. I eat everything, vegan, vegetarian, meat, fish, all of it. And you don't.

How would you know the veg option is better, when you never try the meat? You don't. You can't compare two things when you only know about one.
I love vegan and vegatarian food, I'm just miserable if I can't have all the other food as well. So you can take all of that back.

BoneyBackJefferson · 10/05/2018 18:14

pigmcpigface
Also, sometimes the vegetarian dish is ACTUALLY BETTER!

Case in point: I was at my friend's wedding (also a huge foodie), at one of the best restaurants in London, and they had this amazing dish of very old madeira (like, 100 years old) with consomme. The carnivorous option was with duck. Mine was with porcini mushrooms. Mine was way, way, WAY nicer than the meat option, and even the meat eaters agreed.

1/ its all subjrctive

2/ I really really hate mushrooms so for me it wouldn't have been better.

derxa · 10/05/2018 18:32

It was pointed out that had these lambs been outside they would have died very quickly as they had no mother and therefore no food source - this was quickly dismissed by claims that they would have learned to fend for themselves.... some people have no idea about how it all works. So very true. The efforts we go to to look after our sheep would be incredible to some. At the moment our sheep and lambs are enjoying the first good grass of the season. It's fair to say I love them but some will be killed for meat.
OP we can't grow all the plant species that you love to eat in this country. It's poor people in other countries that do.

Lweji · 10/05/2018 18:38

people believe the lives of farm animals are happy ones - that they frolick in fields and walk nonchalantly to their deaths

Animal lives in the wild aren't happy ones, or happier than farm animals, anyway. They have to find food, compete to eat and reproduce, and try to escape predators. It's stressful and it's often short.

Many people are also deluded about how animals live in the wild.

derxa · 10/05/2018 18:39

Foreign meat will still come into Britain - probably from places with lower welfare standards than here. That's the truth.

Blackandwhitepostcards · 10/05/2018 19:14

Well yes lweji, of course. But we as humans aren’t complicit in this. It’s nature. We as humans are breeding animals to be killed. It’s not the same as the natural order of things in the wild.

SinnyLou · 10/05/2018 19:23

Ugh. I've been vegetarian for 28 years and heard all of these arguments time and time again. For me it has always been a personal choice and I do not judge or really care how other people choose to eat. Every vegetarian and vegan I know in real life is the same however there are those highly vocal, sanctimonious ones such as the OP that give us all a bad name. OP if you want to be vegan just do it, why the working up to it? Is this why you're on here? Are you feeling a little guilty and justifying not being vegan by preaching to meat eaters to make yourself feel superior? Really unnecessary post

londonrach · 10/05/2018 19:32

Of course. I dont understand the question!

londonrach · 10/05/2018 19:33

Vegan cake is yuk and only fit for the bin.

Curiousmoi · 10/05/2018 20:08

@myfriendbob
neither are almost people who truly love food
Oh for gods sake. There is nothing to "truly love" about eating rotting animal flesh.

I think we as humans have gotten to the point where we selfishly believe the world would go to shit without us, when In actual fact it would thrive.

Animals agriculture is the leading cause of climate change.
Without us, animals would live off the land without being fed fillers, their babies wouldn't be forcefully removed from them and they wouldn't be pumped by machines, instead, their babies would drink the milk that was made for them and they would live freely.
This is not impossible.
There's a reason previous posters have called this idea a fairytale! Because you can clearly see this is the preferred way of living. A fairytale is supposed to idealised and idyllic, and that is how animals could be LIVING.
This obviously isn't going to happen anytime soon due to societies obsession with eating animals.

Just because we have the ability and the resources to exploit these animals does not mean we are somehow superior to them.
I believe, in 100 years time people will look back at this generation and all we have done to animals in disbelieve.

Curiousmoi · 10/05/2018 20:15

@Lweji
So, animals living in the wild living in woodland would rather live in a cage being fed fortified grains?

You see, competing for food IS part of nature, going to Tesco's/the butchers and buying a packet of sausages is not!!
You didn't chase the animal and pounce on it like any other true omnivore/carnivore.

Also, how do YOU know that animals would rather live in a barn/cage.
Even pet dogs would probably rather live outside in the fields hunting rabbits! THAT'S nature.

myfriendbob · 10/05/2018 20:43

Oh for gods sake. There is nothing to "truly love" about eating rotting animal flesh

Of course there is. There is a multi billion pound industry that says so. You are out of your mind trying to argue there isn't.
I LOVE eating animal flesh, like billions of other people. WTF are you even talking about?

Charolais · 10/05/2018 20:52

Nobody who eats meat is an animal lover. They are stinking hypocrites.

I live in the U.S in an area where both men and women hunt - it’s the kind of hunting where they sneak around and shoot deer, bob cats, coyotes and anything else they can kill legally. These fuckers call themselves animal lovers. If that is how they love something I’d hate to see what they do to things they hate. The dating sites here often read, ‘I’m a big animal lover. Hobbies; Hunting’ - with a picture of the dumb bitch holding up the head of a dead deer.

As for the people saying cattle don’t suffer a day in their lives - well what the fuck do you think goes through their poor minds when they are loaded into a trailer, hauled to a slaughter house and then have to smell the blood, the shit, the fear of the other intelligent loving animals that are being killed so you can feed your greedy fucking faces.

My mother called herself an animal lover & she wore fur. One day someone stuck a sticker on the back of her fur jacket that said ‘Bitch’ which really offended her. I asked her how she believed the animals become fur coats. I made her think about it and she never wore fur again, although she continued to eat dead animals.

If someone told me they hated animals and that is why they eat them I’d have more respect for them.

CoteDAzur · 10/05/2018 20:52

"There is nothing to "truly love" about eating rotting animal flesh."

You would be correct if the meat everyone is eating were actually rotting Hmm

Do you not realise how ridiculous that sounds?

CoteDAzur · 10/05/2018 21:05

"Animals agriculture is the leading cause of climate change."

You are not just wrong. You are spectacularly wrong.

The leading cause of climate change is CO2 (Carbon dioxide), due at large to combustion of fossil fuels in cars, factories and electricity production.

BlackandWhitePostcards · 10/05/2018 21:22

Cows produce methane which effects the climate 23 times more than co2.

SpikyCoconut · 10/05/2018 21:23

Being literal, no. You can love SOME animals and eat meat. You cant love ALL animals and yet think It's okay to consume a product of their suffering and torment.

CoteDAzur · 10/05/2018 21:28

Methane traps a lot more heat than CO2 but we produce MUCH less of it, so CO2 is indisputably the #1 reason for climate change - as everyone knows, except Curious.

CoteDAzur · 10/05/2018 21:34

"You can love SOME animals and eat meat. You cant love ALL animals"

Who does? I don't even like all PEOPLE.

So? What's your point?

Curiousmoi · 10/05/2018 23:35

@CoteDAzur
Animal agriculture generates 14.5% of all global greenhouse emissions, this is greater than all transportation combined...