What kind of country does this?

[Torvald Von Mansee]

Originally Posted by TLAM Strike

For a few minutes?! Damn... I got zapped by a fuse box breaker once for a few seconds and it left my hand tingling for an hour but that must have been horrible. You must have been lucky to survive?

Well, yes. It certainly seemed like several minutes, and I'm told it probably was. My hand was clenched around a faucet, and the current was coming from somewhere else in the house via the pipes. I couldn't unclench my hand!!!

[Skybird]

Pigs in meat factories get slaughtered by electrocuting them first to make them unconscious, before they get hooked up and spilled with boiling water (to help removing the bristles). It is estimated that this works only in 99% of the cases. That means one in hundred may be brewed while being all conscious.

Also, chickenget hooked up on the line with their legs, and their heads then gets dunked into a liquid that is meant to kill them or to deaden them. Again, some of them struggle so hard that while the line moves through the space with the tub they manage to keep their heads out of it. This has as a consequences that they move fully conscious into the next section. Go figure.

Etc.

Staff in such fsactories tends to have become insensitive, too, working under time pressure. I hgave occasionalyl seen horrifying pictures of humans treating animals like any dead matter. Lifting cattle with cranes and the limb being ripped out of the joints, or using cattles tick at their gebtials to make the animals crawl off the lorry on four broken legs, on its ankles. It'S ashaming, and horrifying.

People eat that plenty of meat only becasue they are not aware of what is haüpüening inside these factories. If they would be, you would have an exploding number of vegetarians, I'm sure.

Considering how resource-intensive it is to produce one kilogram of meat, there is even less excuse for the mass-production of meat in indutrial ways.

I havew been vegetarian for over ten years, then eased it a bit. I eat meat only rarely, and when so, I buy from a local farmer where the slaughtering is done in a small farmer's collective, not in one of these industrial animal KZs. Saves the poor creature the stressful transports and the horror of experiencing hell and pain.

I am most radical in my willingness of what to do with these factories.

[Aramike]

And **** off in advance to a certain Finn who will come in here and say: "Well, the U.S. does a, b. c.." Two wrongs don't make a right.

Okay, I rarely agree with your politics, but...

[Aramike]

Skybird:

While your accounts of animal treatment are most disturbing, and while I don't deny that such barbarism exists, I have to say: to paint the entire industry with such a broad brush is disingenuous.

I love animals. While I'm an avid shooter, I have never been able to bring myself to hunt. I have to turn the channel whenever I see commercials displaying animal cruelty in an attempt to solicit donations (although I do donate to organizations such as the ASPCA).

I also acknowledge the fact that human beings are, by nature, omnivorous. Indeed, I enjoy most meats greatly. Furthermore, mankind is a NATURALLY EVOLVED tool-maker, so I don't fault companies for finding efficient means of slaughter...

...so long as they aren't inhumane in doing so. And, quite reasonably, most companies (at least in the US) go to great lengths in creating the most humane processes possible for animal harvesting.

My point is that there are both extremely inhumane and humane ways of providing the meat that the human body naturally hungers for. To color the entire industry (and suggest that one's own vegetarianism is an appropriate response) as one of dispicable corruption doesn't quite give the complete picture.

Nature is a harsh, unforgiving state. In our evolution, humans must not forget that we are part of that nature, and while we can work to minimize its mercilous ways, to attempt to eliminate them is pointless.

[Skybird]

1. If staff works under time pressure, they make mistakes. You cannot avid it. A recent docu snippet on , just days ago, mentioned that 1% amongst pigs. And that is not referring to any special factory, Aramike. You cannot avoid it.

2. If you are exposed 6 hours a day to such things, you get desensitized, too. Everybody would. This is also a thing you cannot avoid.

3. There are alternatives to a diat heavy with meat. Healthy alternatives. It simply is not true that you cannot eat healthy without heaving your daily dose of "fresh bloody meat". I am not on a crusade, Aramike, I eased my earlier vegetarian lifestyle like I described - but I avoid buying factory meat in the supermarket or at regular slaughterers, but buy almost directly sat the source. Also, I eat meat rarely only. Admitted, that way it is not cheap. But there is a reason why supermarkets offer meat so cheap. That reason is careless industrial mass production - and that kind of production has no room for wasting time with too caring sensibilities regarding animals. And we know today that that kind of meat production also has drastic envrionmental costs (and I am not talking about methane, but ressources consummed, water for example). Whereever you have slaughtering factories, you must assume that regular horrifying events like described above, take place, and never will be avoided. Becasue the number of animals moving through these hells per day, range in the many hundreds and thousands.

4. The human body does not hunger for meat explicitly, we are no canrivores, but omnivores. If vegetarian food in sufficient diversity is available, we can löive by that all alone excluisvely, and healthy. But it is time and cost-intensive to do so and needs a lot of knowledge. Better is vegetarian diat coupled with accepting anmila produced products like milk, cheese, eggs. Note that industrial mass prodcution of eggs with chicken in huge factory cages currently gets banned in europe, it is already forbidden in Germany, I think. And that is good. the interest of the suffering and tortured creature weighs heavier than the profit interest of the producer - in this context I would say that is an ethical imperative.

5. Also note that I said I buy at a local farmer show becasue the slaughtering there is done outside industrial meat factories. The cattle neither suffers a long, stressful transportation, nor does it enter one of these hell factories.

No such factories. Meat production getting reduced massively. Cattle beign slaughtered at location and for local demand only. That'S what I argue for. I am no ideologic crusader wanting to ban eating of meat alltogether, but after having been on both sides of the fence I made a reasonable compromise with a very much redcued coinsummation level of meat, and taking care of where I get it from. I encourage everybody to do like me. It works well for me.

Eating plenty of meat, reguarly, is no issue of physical need, not at all. But a question of taste, and habit. Both can be changed.

People hate changing themselves. Not doing so for many is a matter of principle. Usually only pain and medical problems make them rethink former habits.

In the end, it again comes down to my former statement: if people would know by having seen it with their own eyes what is happening inside these factories, many would skip meat from their dining card alltogether immediately. That'S why I would make it mandatory that every school class of 16 year old an above once during school career must move through one of these factories. It also would be a very substantial measure of pro-environmental-protection education, and it does not need many lessons! Needless to say that there is a very huge and powerful meat lobby. there is a reason why all slaughtering factories and chicken mass cages don'T know the English word) get so totally and systemtically shielded and hidden from the public. They do not want people to see. It's better they only see the clinically clean 250 gr package of rosy bloodless meat covered by cellophane. It's so nice and tidy and harmless-looking.

All this in other words: if you cannot will to kill and do the bloody work with your very own hands, then you should not eat meat. Many people only eat meat just becasue they are spared fromt he dirty stuff taking place before the steak lands on their table, in that nice and good-looking arrangement with potatoes, vegetables and maybe a tasty sauce.

[Torvald Von Mansee]

Originally Posted by Aramike

Okay, I rarely agree with your politics, but...

Our politics may diverge, but we can agree on two things.

One - This guy was a badass:



and Two - he was right!!!

[TLAM Strike]

Originally Posted by Torvald Von Mansee

Our politics may diverge, but we can agree on two things.

One - This guy was a badass:



and Two - he was right!!!

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.

Originally Posted by Skybird

Pigs in meat factories get slaughtered by electrocuting them first to make them unconscious, before they get hooked up and spilled with boiling water (to help removing the bristles). It is estimated that this works only in 99% of the cases. That means one in hundred may be brewed while being all conscious.

Once when I was a kid we had a couple pigs here, at some point they were to be butchered.. the guy came in and shot one... It didn't die fast or quietly...

That seriously traumatized my young mind... and to this day I don't eat pig meat, and its only recently I've been able to force myself to be around people eating pig meat without getting utterly pissed off and storming out of the area.

[Jimbuna]

I was once zapped by a Taser electrode because I wasn't quick enough letting go of an idiot when the 'breakaway' command was give

We both become quite attached to each other for a couple of seconds

[Reece]

Electrocution is horrible, as an electrical mechanic by trade with degrees in industrial electronics I have been electrocuted many times, hazard of the job, once for around 30 seconds continuous I was held in it's grip. It's an unusual experience though, your vision oscillates at the mains frequency, here in Australia it is 50hz, your brain works but in slow motion, it is very hard to concentrate, I remember thinking that my time was up, I was standing at the time and fell to my knees then sort of laid down, my face then began to short circuit to the ground but in falling also broke the grip I had to the appliance that had the fault and broke the circuit. Never want to go through that again!!

[CaptainHaplo]

Ok, there are huge differences between animals euthanized because of overpopulation/no adoption and animals that are bred and raised purely for the purpose of becoming food. There is a marked contrast between an animal that is (by the majority of the world) considered suitable for making into a pet and an animal that is grown with the express intent of its future consumption.

With that said, I find it abhorrent that any animal be intentionally mistreated, either in life or at its death. There are other ways to euthanize that remain cheap. A 1 cent bullet to the back of the head would insure the death of a dog or cat while allowing them to leave this life with no pain of fear. Its obvious that Mexico has a surplus of bullets at the moment...... but thats another topic.

As for the "mass production" factories that Skybird castigates, he misses a few points. Lets take Chickens for example. Its obvious they do things different in Europe, because in the US the chicken is killed with a large, V shaped electically conductive knife. As the V lowers, at some point one or the other side will touch the chicken, shocking it into unconsciousness. the knife continues to lower, seperating the chicken head from the body. There is no ability for the chicken to avoid being shocked, so it cannot avoid being unconscious when it is killed. Is it fearful at the time? Very likely though there is some arguement about how we as humans relate to fear compared to less developed animals. Regardless, its safe to say that most of the animals do suffer from some level of fear during the process. Now lets look at the same process at a "collective" farm of the style Skybird suggests. While its true that the animal does not suffer any (unknown amount) of trauma due to transportation, someone has to chase the bugger down in the yard or pen. Chickens don't like to be chased. Nor are they entirely stupid - as they get less trusting of humans when humans regularly come take one of the group, never to be seen again. So now you have a free range chicken that is running - literally - for its life (whether it knows it or not). How humane. Catch it, and carry it to wherever your going to chop its head off. Ok, now instead of getting knocked unconscious, you have a bird who is laid across a chopping block, pinned and neck exposed, flapping like crazy trying to get away, until someone drops the ax on it neck. Forgive me if I don't see the "humane" part of this.... As for "mishaps" - no way someone with the axe could be off on their aim at all is there, maybe miss the bird entirely or just nick it?

The reality is that both sides have their positives and negatives - and when you decide to eat meat, your going to have to accept that the animal you are eating could have felt fear and pain at the end of its life - regardless of the source.

Lets deal with that word - humane. See anything familiar in it? Its the word HUMAN - and is rooted in assigning human emotions to animals as if they were capable of human consciousness. Nothing wrong with that, but it can also be overdone, because animals are not capable of human thought. They do not deal with fear the same way humans do, because they lack the ability to cognitively do so. Fear in an animal is purely a flight or fight response, whereas humans can modify that response with reasoning. Still, I do think we should protect animals from as much suffering as we can.

But before this whole thing dissuades you from eating meat, just think of nature as well.... is it "humane"? Ever watch Discovery planet? I think the gazelle that gets pulled down by lions probably felt quite a bit of fear, as well as pain, in its final moments. The fish smacked from the water and thrown onto dry land can't feel real secure when it struggles to breathe and can only flop around on the ground. What of the sheep slaughtered by wolves or coyotes? Or even worse, the animal that falls in an accident, breaking its leg and thus slowly starving while in constant pain? I could go on and on with such examples, but the point is obvious. Life by its very "nature" often ends with fear and pain of one type or another. The same is true for many humans as well (of you doubt this, go to a local hospital).

Even if every person on the face of the planet were to go fully vegan (vs vegetarian) today, it would not end the pain and suffering of all animals. It would help, admittedly, but it is not realistic or accurate to paint with broad brushes a huge segment of the food industry out of a sense of what amounts to personal shame over what you ingest. Is the system perfect, no - but being humans, your kind of foolish to expect a perfect anything.....

[Skybird]

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.

[Buddahaid]

Originally Posted by Reece

Electrocution is horrible, as an electrical mechanic by trade with degrees in industrial electronics I have been electrocuted many times, hazard of the job, once for around 30 seconds continuous I was held in it's grip. It's an unusual experience though, your vision oscillates at the mains frequency, here in Australia it is 50hz, your brain works but in slow motion, it is very hard to concentrate, I remember thinking that my time was up, I was standing at the time and fell to my knees then sort of laid down, my face then began to short circuit to the ground but in falling also broke the grip I had to the appliance that had the fault and broke the circuit. Never want to go through that again!!

Sheesh look up the word electrocute. You are dead!

Once when I was a kid we had a couple pigs here, at some point they were to be butchered.. the guy came in and shot one...

Shot one? I hope you mean a bolt gun.

It didn't die fast or quietly

Really you want a pig to bleed well so you don't want it to die fast.

But how about a question on animal welfare for those worried about the animals.
What do you do when you catch a fish?

[Torvald Von Mansee]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Pigs in meat factories get slaughtered by electrocuting them first to make them unconscious, before they get hooked up and spilled with boiling water (to help removing the bristles). It is estimated that this works only in 99% of the cases. That means one in hundred may be brewed while being all conscious.

Also, chickenget hooked up on the line with their legs, and their heads then gets dunked into a liquid that is meant to kill them or to deaden them. Again, some of them struggle so hard that while the line moves through the space with the tub they manage to keep their heads out of it. This has as a consequences that they move fully conscious into the next section. Go figure.

Etc.

Staff in such fsactories tends to have become insensitive, too, working under time pressure. I hgave occasionalyl seen horrifying pictures of humans treating animals like any dead matter. Lifting cattle with cranes and the limb being ripped out of the joints, or using cattles tick at their gebtials to make the animals crawl off the lorry on four broken legs, on its ankles. It'S ashaming, and horrifying.

People eat that plenty of meat only becasue they are not aware of what is haüpüening inside these factories. If they would be, you would have an exploding number of vegetarians, I'm sure.

Considering how resource-intensive it is to produce one kilogram of meat, there is even less excuse for the mass-production of meat in indutrial ways.

I havew been vegetarian for over ten years, then eased it a bit. I eat meat only rarely, and when so, I buy from a local farmer where the slaughtering is done in a small farmer's collective, not in one of these industrial animal KZs. Saves the poor creature the stressful transports and the horror of experiencing hell and pain.

I am most radical in my willingness of what to do with these factories.

OK, you're going on my ignore list. I didn't need to know that ****, *******.