Many herd anbimals, sheep for example, can see one of theirs being eaten nearby by some predator, and watch it calmly, eating their own grass. You aloso see it in Africa, with gazelles etc. Many naimals cannot link that view with their own fate, they are unaware of "me" and "death". Hens, however, can become angry or distrustful of humans. Not becasue sometimes some of them disappear and never get seen, but becasue ever ymorning that human guy walks in and steals their egg. Farmer can tell you that Hens sometimes have learned to somewhat hide their eggs, therefore, store it in a corner far away inside their box, etc.

The animals we talk off are highly developed to be able to feel basic emotions like panic, fear. Whether they get humanely treated or not is not decided by their emotional or intellectual capacities, but by the views of man by which he judges his own behavior. that's why your comments on the word "humane" is just meaningless wordplay, Haplo. animals may not "know" the difference between humane and inhumae ways of dealing with them, they still feel panic or pain. If you think different, then you never have dealt with animals closely yourselve! And their indocrinal system reacts to their emotional arousal states, with hormones oumped into their blood cycle where you can measure it, and that can make their butchered meat even a health hazard if not giving it time to reduce. The watchword here are stress hormones.

I once saw a film about a butcher travelling the land from farm to farm, and the way he killed animals on the farms. He had a way to deal with the animals and to treat them that they did not fear him, nor were suspicious of anything. They were calm and relaxed, lived happily one moment, and a minute later had peacefully brought from life to death. So, it is possible to kill an animal without terrifying it first. but that is not possible with long transports, mass farming, and butcher factories. And that's why I am against the meat industry. Needless to say that stress hormones are no issue in this example.

And on nature, I still need to see any predator out there bringing so much misery and terror over his prey and letting it suffer needlessly, like we can see it in the meat industry. sometimes, ther additon of a small electronic control, or an additonal human control step already could prevent many of the failings that I described before. They do not get implemented, becasue they would cost a damn little bit of money.

In past times, having meat was luxury. it happened rarely only. The poor sometimes never had it, the rich landlord only on festivity days. These days, sociological studies show, it has become different. Their is a statistical link between social class, and meat consumation. The mor eunedcuated the class, the more meat they eat. Because education correlates with social class, social class correlates with financial income, food habits correlate both with income and education. There is a strong trend for reduced meat consumation amongst better educated, middle and higher social classes. Today's poor", the lower class, consume more meat, and very often unhealthy lots of it - because meat has become so damn cheap, thanks to industrial mass production. the price wars between supermarkets that dump the prices even more, is telltaling. The rpices gets dumped. So gets the quality of our food.

Next time you pass a farm, hold for a while and watch the animals, and try to figure out if you could kill one of them with your own hands, and then deal with the cadaver until you got the steakl you desire so much for dinner. If you cannot do that yourself, if it is too hard a thing for you, then stop eating meat immediately. If you can do that, buy at a local source wehre there is no factory involved as far as possible, but the butcher does his job right in place, whereever possible. Admitted, that steak will cost you a bit more than in supermarket.

But the cause is worth it.

Today, milk cows are so "hightuned" that they tend to be kept in a constant pregnancy all live long - with the result that thos coindition eats their physical substance fromwmithin, theis skeleton, their mineral homeostasis, their organic system gets destroyed more and more just so that they proiduce that endless stream of milk. Turkeys get tuned to weigh twice as much as naturally, and more, so that they produce more meat, but their movement apparatus is not fit for that, giving them leg-related diseases, broken legs, and all kind of problems due to unnatural body posture and themselves being seriously handicapped to move around the way they would in a natural, healthy condition. for many industrailly used animals, most of their life is suffering, not only during transport and processing in a factory.

Help to reduce this. Eat less meat. Watch out for the quality of your supplier. It's good for your conscience, for your ethical authority, and for your physical health. That makes it a triple win decision.

P.S. I love the taste of a good steak. I die for a good goulash. And still I have meat just twice a month, and fish also twice or three times a month.

Sheesh look up the word electrocute. You are dead! :rotfl2:

Origin:
orig. stress var. of human

1. characterized by tenderness, compassion, and sympathy for people and animals, esp. for the suffering or distressed: humane treatment of horses.

2. of or pertaining to humanistic studies.

From Dictionary.com

You actually make my point for me Skybird, though perhaps I failed to make it clear. You cannot judge what an animal feels - because you are incapable of feeling what it does in the manner it does - so the only way to relate is to project your own understandings of fear and pain that you have - onto the animal - thus creating a sense of compassion for that animal. Yet it is a projection - and not real.

You make a great deal of the known abuses that can and have occured in factory farming - yet the ones you bring up are not the norm for the industry. Yes, animals are genetically altered to weigh more, grow faster, etc. But does it break all their legs? Obviously not - or every turkey you could buy would have broken legs. The real issues here is does a person feel it is ok to raise an animal purely for the intent to eat it, and if so - what level of "care" should that animal be provided before it is slaughtered.

Again, make no mistake - I am not ok with mistreatment of animals regardless of the destiny that awaits them. But each person must decide for themselves - when it comes to food animals - what mistreatment consists of. Is it being herded onto a truck for transport? Is it being overfed? Is it being manipulated so it grows to full size in 6 weeks (as chickens are dealt with), etc...

The reality is - if you eat meat then there exists a demand - and where there is a demand, abuses to fill that demand are possible. The same applies in any other area - bank loans, gas prices, etc. There are laws that govern what is "societally" acceptable regarding factory farming - at least here in the US. Purchasers of such animals - when notified of abuses - stop dealing with companies that do not abide by the guidelines. Workers are fired when they act outside those guidelines.

In 2003 - PETA launched an 18 month investigation into chicken processing.... out of all the processors they dealt with - they found one instance of mistreatment at one location. While they were appalled - because of their own views regarding animal rights, by the "standard" workings of the industry, all but one investigated entity was within the guidelines.

Like PETA, you may disagree with what the laws are regarding the treatment of food animals - so work to change it. But don't take the worst (and rarest) instances to try and pain the entire industry with.

I disagree - your paying others to do something you may not be willing to do yourself. Unless you want to use the same logic that you should start composting your own crap - or stop taking dumps - because someone is keeping the sewer system running for you - so you don't have to. Maybe you shouldn't go see a doctor as you haven't been willing to go through medical school and watch a human cadaver be cut up? :doh:

For the record - I love venison. You can't buy it at a grocer or at most meat markets or butcher shops. I want venison, I go out and as my lady says, kill bambi. I dress it, with all the gore that is involved. I do the same thing with bear. So ultimately I could chop off that chicken's head and pluck it, or slaughter the cow or pig for a steak or a slab of bacon.

If your not happy with how animals are treated - then work within the system to change the rules that apply. The only other options are to accept it for what it is - or act like a moronic idiot (not that you would) like the leader of sea shephard, violating laws.

Sky is sadly quite right in a lot of things, one only has to look at the Bernard Matthews Turkey Baseball incident not so long ago to know that there is a lot of cruelty in the meat trade, often long before they get to the slaughterhouse. Psychological trauma too, really if one had to compare, it would be to that of a concentration camp, the creatures as they go into the house know that death is coming, they can smell the fear and the blood and if the end is quick then they are lucky.

Back during the foot and mouth crisis and subsequent disease outbreaks in livestock over the last decade or two, there were plenty of stories of cows being burnt alive because the herds were so large that the bolt gunner missed a couple. You do get desensitised I should imagine, if you are carrying out dozens of shootings a day, it's either that or you quit your job or go mad.

The only thing we can do is do what we can with what we have, if you see a cat limping at the side of the road, don't drive on by, stop and see if you can catch it and take it to the vets, likewise with any animal. You might not be able to save it, most wild animals will die of shock after being rescued so sometimes it's hard to know what to do, but domesticated animals are a bit more resistant to human contact (though no less vicious when in pain). If you ever have a chance to work in animal care and you care for animals, then do so, although it's a world of heartbreak as much as it is a world of satisfaction and love.

I'm a meat-eater, I could never be a vegetarian, even though I know how my meat gets to me and chances are the stuff that is in it (particularly the mass manufactured stuff that you buy in cheap in most supermarkets) is probably not that healthy for me. I cannot change this, but I can care for the animals I have and the animals I find.

It's a bloody sick world in places, and yet, in other places it's a very kind and caring one. Ying and yang.

Well stated Oberon - your right - there is a balance.

On the Bernard Matthews Turkey Baseball incident - I looked it up - and that is exactly what it was - an incident - not the norm. That is what gets me on this discussion.... the only thing people can point to are the singular incidents in which people break the law (note that the people involved in the above incident were sentenced under the law to punishment). If these type of happenings were the standard in the industry, alot more people would be losing their jobs and facing legal actions - but the fact that they don't shows that these horrors are isolated incidents. Abysmal - but its not just the company that controls here - if abuse happens - it becomes a legal matter. That doesn't actually happen alot. Sure, some abuse goes uncaught - but to claim the entire industry is nothing but abusive, and then using isolated occurances to paint such a picture, is wrong.

Haplo, you only need to miss 1% of the animals when they get shot with a bolt cannon, or get deadened with agents or electricity- that "exception from the rule", that 1% over one week makes hundreds of tortured animals in every dman huge factory there is. Or do you think below a certain size factories suddenly operate flawless in these procedures...? Now do the maths: from nation to continent, from week to month to year.

We do not talk about some hand-selected factories chosen for anti-meat campaigning because they are so bad. We talk about an industry-wide norm, a regular case in the business. You ncould as well want to argue that traffic accidents are an exception from the rule. they are not, they are part of the rule. Cities and metropoles even calculate with fixed accident rates when considering traffic planning. not just the bad and evil metropoles, but all of them.

I just read a good article on Stephen Decatur in a recent issue of Sea Classics (Vol. 43 No. 05). It should still be on the shelves until June.

It also features a kick ass article on the Chinese Navy and the new Coast Guard Cutter. :up:

Well there you have it Skybird - we should - using your logic - get rid of cars simply because "accidents" are the norm - and those kill people! If you have ever been at the scene of an accident - especially a horrific one - humane isn't a term you would use. I mean we could even go so far as to say that someone has a non-fatal accident - the stress, terror (during the event), fear (having to deal with the husband/wife, insurance company, legal matters etc) - not of this could be considered humane. That just the non-fatal accidents - much less the ones where someone gets flattened or squished or pinned only to die later....

I know your not advocating for the end of meat eating - but this idea that you can use statistical analysis to say that certain activities are bad just wont hold up. A single abuse is bad - we don't disagree there. But then again - when there are rules in place that make every reasonable attempt to kill - as nicely as possible - the animals we eat, and the people who get caught breaking those guidelines are punished, I am perfectly ok with that. We cannot create a "perfect" world, but the industry and government have done their due diligence in making what must be done to meet demand as "humane" as possible.

In the end - this comes down to a very similiar queston to that we deal with on Islam. It becomes a "them or us" issue - because getting everyone to switch to vegetarianism isn't a realistic solution. So then it is do we spare the chicken and make the people go without - or do we slaughter the chicken so the masses can be fed. Granted - it doesn't have theological issues - but it boils down to that same "us or them" question - and I will - barring unforseen circumstances - always fall on the side of US. In the case of this topic - the US (aka - meateaters) simply need to insure due diligence is done so that abuse - vs mistakes that can be corrected, are not the norm. The rules in place do that. The punishment for those caught being cruel demonstrate that. So I can sleep well at night after digesting my pork, poultry or beef.

Statistics give probabilities on how likely something is. If they are done competently, their reliability is high. If they are incomptenetly done, it is not.

We do not talk about "single abuses". We talk about tens if not hundreds of thousands of animals. I have read/seen calculations done - on the basis of the design of according machines - saying that up to 15% of chicken (great variations here due to many different systems), 1% of pigs and up to 5% of cows and cattle are effected by failing methods to deaden them before the slicing or brewing begins. In extreme cases, their agony can last for up to 15 minutes. This is not abuse in the meaning of "intended", it is accidents happening due to carelessness, failure due to tiredness, stress and time pressure, or animals resisting, for example when shooting cattle with a bolt pistol - the animal struggles becasue the head is not properly fixed, and the human operating the device does not find the exact location on the skull to put the pistol on. Or times certain measures need to become effective are not respected due to general time pressure and the pace of the automatted processes, letting animals win back consousness while they bloody work on them already has begun.
Right that is not the case in possible completeness, there are too many holes, for shorttermed profit interests, and reasons of dumping prices.

Often they are not punished. It also is not about intentional violators, but design flaws in the system.


Let'S leave Islam out here, that comparison is a bit far fetched.

Feed the mass with healthier food (which btw would be more environment saving, btw). Meat once was luxury, when it was more expensive to produce than crop and vegetables. Today meat is so cheap in the supermarket that it has become the new mass food of the social low class, studies from Britain and Germany showed that very clearly since a couple of years. But it is not cheap at all when considering the envrionmental and energy long tiem costs of producing meat in a process of mass production like today.

The masses must not be fed with meat to that high degree like today, Haplo. Doctors even warn of that. Almost very doctor will tell you to be restrictive and modest in your meat consummation.

My mother excels in cooking with different tyopes of crop, btw. she produces immitations pof meat proucts that by looks and taste and tactile feeling you almost cannot differ from a "Hackbraten" (meatloaf?). She has fooled guests repeatedly. I admit, basing on fresh vegetables and fruits and crop and corn, is more expensive than depending on meat in your cuisine. It is more time-consuming to cook that way. It produces kitchen work. But it simply is the superior food.

If rules allow animals to be genetically chnaged so that their unchanged legs must carry double twice the wieght they have been designed for and so every step means pain and in their short life they built deformations in their skeleton; if the rules allow milk cows being turned into hightech machines that destroy their own body and destroy their own body chemistry more and more in order to squeeze three times as much milk out of them than naturally they would do; if the rules do not prevent the failing rates I mentioned above - then your trust in these rules is unjustified and sounds more like a self-reassurance, an excuse made to not consider any chnages at all - especially not chnaging your own behavior. this kind of rationalising consummers often show when being confronted with unpleasant facts. Advertising industry poicks these patterns up and makes maximum (ab)use of them in the next campaign. and from one campaign to the other people get told that now all of a sudden everything is in order, is better, and no problems exist. Great!

"Du bist was Du ißt."