Thoughts On Vegetarianism

[bum]

I eat meat, whoopty fuckin doo. Others don't, whoopty fuckin doo. I respect othe peoples decisions that don't affect me, that's about it really.

Absolutely. Personal decision, guys. Personal.

For those who are suggesting you shouldn't eat meat unless you deal with the animal yourself - you don't really understand our hunter/gatherer roots, do you?

For those who are suggesting that there is no nutritional reason to eat meat - you don't really understand the source of a number of our evolutionary improvements since the days prior to our hunter/gatherer roots, do you?

 

[Brown_hound]

Absolutely. Personal decision, guys. Personal.

For those who are suggesting you shouldn't eat meat unless you deal with the animal yourself - you don't really understand our hunter/gatherer roots, do you?

For those who are suggesting that there is no nutritional reason to eat meat - you don't really understand the source of a number of our evolutionary improvements since the days prior to our hunter/gatherer roots, do you?

+12 Sir....

 

[Brown_hound]

so paying an assasin to do the dirty work is better? if you dont want the blood on your own hands then really should you eat meat?

You've missed the point.

I would happily kill livestock whether I needed to survive or not... I do recall writing that...

The point I'm trying to make is that as we've developed as society we've eliminated the necessity to do so... Why should we then 'have to'?

Oh BTW... we don't technically need houses to survive... Should we abandon ours?

I'm not normally sarcastic or this way inclined but the argument is silly...

We're all given a choice, and nobody can really argue here what is right and what is wrong...


Do not for a second dare to tell me though, that because I choose to eat steak, I have to eat cow liver, kidneys, tongue, tail or eyes.

The notion is absolutely ridiculous...

 

[Brewing_Brad]

The closer a person can get to the source of their food (whether farming or killing) the better. Not always possible I grant but somewhere I hope to get to one day.

I haven't read the rest of this thread yet, but I shall shortly, but I had to reply to this statement and say a wholehearted "**** yes!"

I grew up on a farm (as I may have mentioned previously) and have slaughtered my own meat from a reasonably young age. When I moved to the city, I moved away from the need to do so, but still remained conscious of the fact that the meat I bought plastic wrapped at the supermarket came from a living (possibly sentient) being.

My partner, Adam, on the other hand, grew up in the city, but held similar beliefs. He had never intentionally killed an animal (apart from bugs and things).

We went back to my parent's farm for Christmas and I asked my dad if we could have one of his prized Dorpa sheep to take back with us to stock our freezer. He said yes, on the condition that we kill it ourselves (he's getting on a bit and killing a sheep is hard work).

Adam and I had discussed the theory behind killing an animal for food previously, because we eventually want to raise our own, and he decided that if he was going to continue with the dream and, more importanly, continue being a meat eater, he wanted to be involved in the process from start to finish. So we rounded up the sheep and put them in the yard.

There were three "killers" as dad calls them, sheep whose fate was decided the day they were born male. Dad asked Adam to pick one. He did.

He chose the animal he wanted, killed it, gutted and dressed it (with my dad's and my brother's guidance) and now it's all nicely cut up into chops and roasts in the freezer.

He walked away from the experience a completely different man to when he started and for the better.

Now, when he cooks with the meat he is careful not to burn it or ruin it in any way because that would lessen and disrespect the animal's death. We both knew that animal when it was a living being and we respect it now in it's death.

That probably sounds like a bunch of hippy wank, but it's true.

I think the point I'm trying to make is; everyone who eats meat needs to be at least aware of the process behind the killing. If you can't do it yourself then at least watch a show like this one (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgKVg1uvwQQ)

My 2 cents.
Brad

 

[DUANNE]

youve got me wrong. im not saying you have to kill the animal yourself ,what i am saying is that if you would not kill an animal yourself then are you really of the right conscience to be eating it.if you dont like the thought of having to do it yourself and then buy meat from the supermarket then you have to realise that animal did die because of you just the same as if it was by your own hand.i never said you had to eat every part of the animal taht was another poster, but actually do believe that every part of an animal should be used in some meanignfull way even if it is as i believe you said blood and bone.i think we both agree with a few things and also disagree on some .

 

[DUANNE]

I haven't read the rest of this thread yet, but I shall shortly, but I had to reply to this statement and say a wholehearted "**** yes!"

I grew up on a farm (as I may have mentioned previously) and have slaughtered my own meat from a reasonably young age. When I moved to the city, I moved away from the need to do so, but still remained conscious of the fact that the meat I bought plastic wrapped at the supermarket came from a living (possibly sentient) being.

My partner, Adam, on the other hand, grew up in the city, but held similar beliefs. He had never intentionally killed an animal (apart from bugs and things).

We went back to my parent's farm for Christmas and I asked my dad if we could have one of his prized Dorpa sheep to take back with us to stock our freezer. He said yes, on the condition that we kill it ourselves (he's getting on a bit and killing a sheep is hard work).

Adam and I had discussed the theory behind killing an animal for food previously, because we eventually want to raise our own, and he decided that if he was going to continue with the dream and, more importanly, continue being a meat eater, he wanted to be involved in the process from start to finish. So we rounded up the sheep and put them in the yard.

There were three "killers" as dad calls them, sheep whose fate was decided the day they were born male. Dad asked Adam to pick one. He did.

He chose the animal he wanted, killed it, gutted and dressed it (with my dad's and my brother's guidance) and now it's all nicely cut up into chops and roasts in the freezer.

He walked away from the experience a completely different man to when he started and for the better.

Now, when he cooks with the meat he is careful not to burn it or ruin it in any way because that would lessen and disrespect the animal's death. We both knew that animal when it was a living being and we respect it now in it's death.

That probably sounds like a bunch of hippy wank, but it's true.

I think the point I'm trying to make is; everyone who eats meat needs to be at least aware of the process behind the killing. If you can't do it yourself then at least watch a show like this one (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgKVg1uvwQQ)

My 2 cents.
Brad

i agree with the sentiment whole heartedly.pretty much what im trying to say but said a hell of a lot more clearly.

 

[Hatchy]

I like sweet potatoes & spinach. I'm glad that my Mum doesn't like either because if she did she would've ruined them for me like every other vegetable.

I really should grow some sweet potatoes & some spinach. I'd also like some pigs, chooks & a big sharp knife. Maybe a goat as well for wool & milk. Some bloke at a pub once told me that the male goats have better milk, can anyone confirm/deny this?

 

[Brewing_Brad]

i agree with the sentiment whole heartedly.pretty much what im trying to say but said a hell of a lot more clearly.

Ok, so I've finished reading the rest of the thread (and thanks BEERHOG for suggesting I write clearly...the few pints of homebrew I've had tonight would suggest otherwise!

But, after reading up until this point, the only addition I have to make is Offal. If you're a meat eater you don't have to eat it, but I reckon you're seriously missing out.

I belong to the school of thought that every part of the animal should be used if you can...if you have a need. Steak & kidney pie, tripe, heart soup, deep fried brains on toast! My mouth is literally watering!

In the past we've even go so far as to make braun (or as the french call it, Fromage a la tete - head cheese) from the head. The intestine have been strung out, dried and used as twine, hooves boiled down to make gelatine and my aunties have used the bladders as water bags (I'm also aboriginal) - admittedly none of this happened with the sheep we killed at Christmas, we didn't have a need.

But we did keep the heart, kidneys and liver. We even made mince out of the usually wasted bits. It was a pain to do, but we did it, and ya know, it tasted fuckin' great with our tacos!

Anyway, again my 2 cents.

 

[Brewing_Brad]

Some bloke at a pub once told me that the male goats have better milk, can anyone confirm/deny this?

Totally true! I sware! Same with the cows with only one teet! Best milk you've ever tried. Go on...go try it. You'll love it!

 

[philw]

I am a vegetarian, I only eat things that eat grass :icon_cheers:


I personally don't care if people are Vegetarian / Vegan / Freegan it is there choice to do that

my main issue are the people that have an issue with what I choose to do and eat and try to spend ages telling me how bad and wrong I am for eating animals



also re cats I love cats, ( I just couldn't eat a whole one )


and there is a big different to animal welfare and animal cruelty a lot seem to get that confused

 

[Zizzle]

It's interesting to hear peoples morals and justifications.

For me it's not about killing a sentinent animal and all that stuff.

I like a few here grew up in a family butchering our own sheep, beef, and poultry. We knew what those animal ate.

You do know your alive when you run a sharp knife across the jugular of an animal bigger than yourself.

In recent years I have greatly reduced my meat intake.

The reasoning is pretty simple. Firstly, it's just not sustainable to eat meat every day. We are part of a lucky few out of the 6.5 billion who can. The planet just doesn't have enough resources to support everyone doing it. Yes you are getting more than your fair share.

But mainly because I moved to the USA. The mighty dollar reigns supreme. Their meat industry has bought and owns the US Gov FDA. The industry has killed people here with bad beef with little to no consequences.

The image of the family farmer is mainly a myth propagated by marketing departments. Industrial agriculture is the norm - animals pumped full of growth hormones and anti-biotics. Industrial production means automation, which mean imprecision, which means sh!t gets on the meat. To get around that, it is irradiated to kill the bacteria. You are literally eating shit.

Drive across the US and you see the massive feedlots and far as the eye can see. Bulldozers drive around full time piling up the cow pats. It stinks.

Parts of the animals are routinely feed back to them. Mad cow anyone?

Cows have evolved to live on grass. But in the feed lot they are fed grain and a lot of (cheap, gov subsidised) corn. To save a buck and make them grow fat quickly.

The worst part is that marketing has convinced people that "Grain fed" beef is better.

The pork industry has poisoned a lot of the water courses. There is a lot of nitrogen and phosphates in the pig/poultry crap. It leaches into the rivers and into the ocean. The extra nutrient causes blooms which deplete the oxygen. Which hammers the fish stocks.

We've all seen picture of battery hens. You know what, free-range doesn't mean what you think it does either. They are just jammed into a big shed, doesn't mean they can actually move any more. There are too many of them. And besides that, they are pumped with hormones that grow their meat faster than their bones can support, so a lot of the time they can't walk anyway.



Now I'd like to think that things are different in Australia, and I'm sure they are to some extent (hey I still know some family farmers who raise beef). But I'm sure the trend is the same.


These days, since SWMBO is a pescetarian, we eat fish about once a week and that is it as far as meat goes. Now fish production is not really that different to the other meat industries. It hammers the environment, has bad chemicals (mercury, PCBs).

But the vege production situation isn't much better either. Ever heard of Monsanto? I'm sure a large proportion of what i eat is GMO and sprayed with round-up.
People in the US have been food poisoned due to fertilizer on their lettuce and tomatoes. Much of the fresh produce is grown so fast as to have very little nutritional value. A lot of it also come from south of the border where regulation is pretty much non-existent. God knows what they spray on it in central / south america to keep pests off before selling it as "organic" to some middle man in the US.

You are being fed whatever is cheapest to produce by some mega-corp. And probably barely within the law/regulations. Well that is until they throw enough lobbying money around to get the rules relaxed.

I know what you are thinking, crazy cynical hippy? Maybe.

But you know what, you should probably know better. You probably know what it is like to have a choice of crappy bland mass produced expensive lagers and told via marketting that they are the best in the world.

So what's the moral of the story?
Cut out the mega-corps.
Grow your own. Brew your own. Join a co-op.
Don't stick your head in the sand and follow the other sheeple.

 

[InCider]

A poll would be good - carnivorous vs omnivorous vs herbivorous brewers.

 

[zebba]

A bit of lambs fry (liver) in a rich curry adds an extra element that is to die for. As does chicken liver in any mince-based italian sauces. George Calomborous' restaurant also does a kick ass sweet bread... mmm....

I gotta agree with the "if you couldn't kill it yourself" argument. If you eat it, then you are responsible for it's death. If you can't pull the metaphorical trigger yourself, but don't think twice about drawing the knife across the grilled remains then you're not much of a moral thinker.

 

[Ronin]

For those who are suggesting you shouldn't eat meat unless you deal with the animal yourself - you don't really understand our hunter/gatherer roots, do you?

Hi guys,

I quoted you bum, but many people have misunderstood my post, maybe because it was a long one and not everyone read it. :lol:

I never said that you must deal with the animal yourself. That you must hunt and kill the animal yourself, I specficially said that I recognise modern life has no place for that. My point was that I believe you should be capable, capable, of pulling the trigger and getting your hands dirty. I know a lot of people who could never kill anything, yet happily eat meat.

Brewing_Brad's post is brilliant and I believe that is how people who eat meat should behave. I understand that not everybody has access to that sort of experience, but if you can't bring yourself to do what he and his friend Adama did, why are you eating meat? It does actually cause the death of an animal, you just don't need to see it?

Thanks to everyone who's posted opinions and for keeping it civil. It is amazing the passion that this topic can generate from both sides. My decision was very personal, and quite unique I believe. I simply believe that consumers should know (and care about) the consequences of their consuming. I'm sure I don't know everything about the consequences of my decisions. I don't know where the copper for the circuitry in my plasma TV came from. But where I can be informed, I like to be.

James

 

[Ronin]

youve got me wrong. im not saying you have to kill the animal yourself ,what i am saying is that if you would not kill an animal yourself then are you really of the right conscience to be eating it.

Yes, there's been a lot of misunderstanding about that point.

There's a lot of people who choose to remain ignorant about the consequences of eating meat (ignorance is bliss, after all), and they are the people I can't understand.

For those of you who have informed yourself about how the meat ends up on your plate and are still OK about eating eat, I have no problem whatsoever. As long as you care about it.

James

 

[Ronin]

We've all seen picture of battery hens. You know what, free-range doesn't mean what you think it does either. They are just jammed into a big shed, doesn't mean they can actually move any more. There are too many of them. And besides that, they are pumped with hormones that grow their meat faster than their bones can support, so a lot of the time they can't walk anyway.

I'm lucky enough to be only two steps from where I get my eggs, and we've had long discussions with the person who runs the fruit market about the conditions of the chooks. He actually swapped suppliers recently because one of them had better conditions for their animals.

These days, since SWMBO is a pescetarian, we eat fish about once a week and that is it as far as meat goes. Now fish production is not really that different to the other meat industries. It hammers the environment, has bad chemicals (mercury, PCBs).

Since becoming vegetarian, I've actually toyed with the idea of eating fish from time to time, but it was these sort of figures that stopped me.

But the vege production situation isn't much better either. Ever heard of Monsanto? I'm sure a large proportion of what i eat is GMO and sprayed with round-up.
People in the US have been food poisoned due to fertilizer on their lettuce and tomatoes. Much of the fresh produce is grown so fast as to have very little nutritional value. A lot of it also come from south of the border where regulation is pretty much non-existent. God knows what they spray on it in central / south america to keep pests off before selling it as "organic" to some middle man in the US.

I am lucky enough to do my veg shopping at a place that makes as much effort as possible to buy local. Even still, we are in the process of getting together as big an area as possible to grow our own.

Great post,

James

 

[Ronin]

You've missed the point.

lol, I think you missed a few too, I'll do my best, by Beer Hog has said it quite well too.

I would happily kill livestock whether I needed to survive or not... I do recall writing that...

Good, then you are the sort of person that I believe has the right to eat meat

The point I'm trying to make is that as we've developed as society we've eliminated the necessity to do so... Why should we then 'have to'?

Yes this is the point that many have misunderstood. You should be able to. You should be capable of. You should have no squeamishness about putting the gun to the side of the head and pulling the trigger, because that is what you are doing when you pick up the nicely wrapped steaks from coles (and possibly worse, I'm sure the cheap stuff you get from safeway and coles is pretty far from best practice). Nobody ever said you have to actually do it.

And it's good that we've dissassociated our food source from our plate? I believe it's one of the worst parts of our society.

We're all given a choice, and nobody can really argue here what is right and what is wrong...

Yep we are all given a choice and it's about whether you will be a blind consumer or an educated one. I personally believe that blind consumerism is not one of the highlights of modern life. I'm not trying to tell you what is right or wrong, my deciding to eat meat was a very personal decision and I am trying to explain that decision to provoke some discussion.

Do not for a second dare to tell me though, that because I choose to eat steak, I have to eat cow liver, kidneys, tongue, tail or eyes.

The notion is absolutely ridiculous...

I personally don't see the difference, eating meat is eating meat. Why not eat as much as possible of the animal.

James

 

[Malted]

I'd like to delve deeper into the original issue. So how about cruelty free beer? What does it mean?
Should it be (animal) cruelty free beer, or beer that contains no traces of animal?

(1) Just because it does not contain traces of an animal, is it ok to say that it is (animal) cruelty free?
To expand this: Should we consider the potential impacts upon living things of the processes involved in making beer? As in what may happen to animals during the course of production of the inputs that go into beer. Should we consider the bigger picture right from soil through to bottle, or should we just look at what is actually in (or not in) the bottle? I say - Think bigger, for gawds sake, just think! Please disagree with me, if you have thought about some sound reasons why. Please also understand that your actions (or what you eat or drink) have bigger consequences (affect more things than just you and the thing you're consuming). There are quality posts from others in this thread that clearly outline such potential impacts.

(2) The most important aspect is: what else does a statement of cruelty free beer say? It says a lot more than at first glance. I think a lot of folks only gave it a first glance and did not think about it. Cruelty free beer is implying that because part of an animal is in a beer (most likely a by-product used as a fining agent of sorts) that animals suffered cruelty. Ergo, this statement implies that it is 'cruel to kill any animal'* and we do not support using any parts of dead animals in our beer.

*I personally do not believe that such a philosophy can be supported (is not truthful). In some cases, the way in which an animal is treated or dispatched may be legally considered cruel, but you just can't say in all cases.

So I got bagged for questioning non-meat eating philosophy. Do you see that it is intrinsically linked to the statement of 'cruelty free beer'? I do not believe that you can rightly say that killing any animal is wrong (cruel) and that you should not use any part of a dead animal in beer (or consume it). Nor do I believe that beer should be marketed this way.

Not a lot of folks said, do you know what, maybe they are saying that cruelty free beer means that they are also saying that it is wrong to kill animals, that is not a clear cut argument and probably should not be associated with beer.

If you want to say 'beer that contains no traces of animals', that is a supportable fact. It is not argumentative; it is not making any moral claims. Conversely maybe you could say, may contain traces of animals that did not suffer cruelty.


If someone makes some moral claims and associates this with beer, am I not able to question those morals and the associated underlying morals?

If you want to imply something about the relative morals of dispatching living animals for human consumption and roll it up into a statement such as 'cruelty free beer' - well that will probably evolve into a debate of non-meat eaters vs meat eaters and become a pretty interesting thread.

So you don't agree with my views, that's fine. Have I at least explained them clearly?

 

[Brown_hound]

@brownhound:

You don't have to.

I have no inclination to make you or anyone ese do what they don't feel they should short of not killing others to make their bedroom look pretty.

I believe those things in regards to how they affect my own behaviour and conscience which was the point of my first post.

I have my conscience and everyone else hopefully has theirs. I make no claims to anyone else's conscience or behaviour.

:beerbang:

 

[Brown_hound]

A poll would be good - carnivorous vs omnivorous vs herbivorous brewers.

Fire one up big fella??