[cite]Posted By: Off_it[/cite]Oh Jimmy, you're just being ridiculous now. If you can't communicate with a pakistani then that's your problem. You might not be able to speak the same language, but that's not the same thing.
Of course it's the same thing. I speak a different language to a Pakistani just as I speak a different language to animals. Animals do have, to differing degrees of complexity, languages.
P.S: Can you actually delete your own thread? I don't think you can.
Personally I think the slaughter of a human (who you can communicate with effectively) and an animal (who in my opinion you can't) are two different things, so don't quite see the link myself..
Also, using Pakistanis as an example: I can't speak their language so I can't communicate with them - does that mean I should value their lives less than someone who speaks English?
I did think as I wrote that about the language issue, and I have concluded that I can still communicate with someone like that through body language in a way I can't with an animal. I can also emphasise with another human's feelings and emotional state far more than with an animal, so I would treat them differently. (1)
Saying that, on your other point of wondering what would happen if animals could talk, I personally think it would be irrelevant for I think this debate is one of nature vs nurture. For example if we lived in a cannibalistic society, then we would be brought up in a place where eating human is the norm; as it is, we are brought up in a world where it is socially acceptable to eat other animals but not human. (2)
Anyway, we have digressed from the major issue. How stupid and money-hungry does Jason Donovan look in the Iceland ads? Quite why anyone would go to a certain brand of supermarket because he is in it's adverts wearing tights and suspenders is beyond me....
1a. Of course you can communicate with animals - some more than others of course but you can do so. Have you ever met an orangutan in the wild for example? Given the right education you can ask an orungutan to do a variety of tasks like rowing a boat across a river, putting on shoes, doing the washing up.
Using body language you can communicate even further.
1b. Of course you can empathise far more with a human being than an animal. In fact it is totally impossible to emphathise with an animal. To do that, you would have actually had to live as an animal. Just because you can't emphathise however, does not give you the right to treat a being badly. You don't use this line of argument with humans with whom you can't emphasise, so why does this change with animals?
2. The point is that we don't live in a cannabilistic society because we have developed in our reasoning. Eventually we will (I hope) do so with regards to animals (at least with regards to treatment if not the actual murder).
If animals could talk it would certainly not be irrelevant. How on earth could you possibly really think that? It would be as big a change to the human psyché as the discovery of life on other planets, if not bigger. And it would doubtlessly revolutionise people's attitude to eating animals. Could you really go out and have a conversation with a dog (I know this sounds absurd but its a means of challenging what people seem to think is acceptable) and then come home and eat another dog. We can already see that this is the case by the fact that people in the Western world are so against the eating of cats and dogs. Why is this? Because people feel that they have a bond / some form of communication with them. So animals being able to talk would be anything but irrelevant. What a most unsuitable adjective to choose!
I saw this thread and wondered what the hell can Iceland have done to draw 160+ posts...bloody hilarious argument!
[cite]Posted By: Oggy Red[/cite]Surely, a vegetarian just needs to be a bit more aware of what they need nutritionally?
A vegetarian diet will give the body everything it needs, providing it is balanced and not nutritionally deficient.
A meat eater won't necessarily think about what his body needs, as he will get much of his nutritional requirements from a meat meal - but will still lack many minerals and trace elements if he doesn't include vegetables and eat a balanced diet.
I've been a veggie for over 20 years and it's only been in the last five years or so that I've clocked how to eat properly so I get what my body needs. That's what my body needs and nobody else's does, so it's not for me to say what is good and what is bad for you. There are people that smoke 40 a day and drink like a (Mark) Fish but live to 90 without issues. Others can have one binge drink and wind up on a different kind of bier altogether.
Each to their own. I certainly wouldn't bother encouraging anyone to become veggie as it's all about personal choice. It's occasionally a difficult diet to keep up with (not so much in the UK apart from the occasional strange person that takes offence at it) but I'm always concious of what I am eating which is probably a boon to me. Drinking on the other hand.....
You probably thought that chickens were chickens. But for the past half century, there have actually been two kinds of chickens — broilers and layers — each with distinct genetics. We call them both chickens, but they have starkly different bodies and metabolisms, engineered for different "functions." Layers make eggs. (Their egg output has more than doubled since the 1930s.) Broilers make flesh. (In the same period, they have been engineered to grow more than twice as large in less than half the time. Chickens once had a life expectancy of fifteen to twenty years, but the modern broiler is typically killed at around six weeks. Their daily growth rate has increased roughly 400 percent.)
But nature isn't cruel. And neither are the animals in nature that kill and occasionally even torture one another. Cruelty depends on an understanding of cruelty, and the ability to choose against it. Or to choose to ignore it.
[cite]Posted By: jimmymelrose[/cite]Something to think about:
You probably thought that chickens were chickens. But for the past half century, there have actually been two kinds of chickens — broilers and layers — each with distinct genetics. We call them both chickens, but they have starkly different bodies and metabolisms, engineered for different "functions." Layers make eggs. (Their egg output has more than doubled since the 1930s.) Broilers make flesh. (In the same period, they have been engineered to grow more than twice as large in less than half the time. Chickens once had a life expectancy of fifteen to twenty years, but the modern broiler is typically killed at around six weeks. Their daily growth rate has increased roughly 400 percent.)
[span style=color: rgb(0, 0, 255);]
But nature isn't cruel. And neither are the animals in nature that kill and occasionally even torture one another. Cruelty depends on an understanding of cruelty, and the ability to choose against it. Or to choose to ignore it.[/span]
What's your point? Anyone here got a dog? I guess the fact that we've done exactly the same to dogs over generations (bred specific characteristics and traits into them for our own purposes - often resulting in horrifically high incidences of diseases and debilitating ailments specific to breeds) means that no-one should own dogs any more? Ditto Horses - who we breed to be fast to the detriment of all their other characteristics.
I love these arguments from 'moral' vegetarians. They're usually the same people who are against GM crops. They also usually live in the developed world, ratehr than the developing world (where people don't have the ready access to ridiculous quantities of ridiculously cheap food and - consequently - don't get all preachy and moral about crops being modified to be hardier against drought, or chickens being bred to grow bigger for economies of scale.
Vegetarians can't win any argument - from a health, moral or financial standpoint - so resort to 'shocking' facts to try and get their point across.
Personally, I couldn't give a shit about chickens. If mass-rearing produces chickens that are cheap, then who am i to argue with it?
Do you even understand what 'Halal' means? Or what it involves? Or that there are studies which have been conducted that show the 'traditional' method of slaughter of livestock in the UK (bolt-stun) causes as much, if not more pain to the animal as Halal slaughter?
Once again - ignoring the Daily Mail 'Won't SOMEbody Think Of The Children!!!" moral panic - the fact that dozens of companies have been 'outed' as serving only Halal meat and no-one appears to give a shit indicates that most people here don;t care one way or the other.
Leroy: I would have thought that using shocking facts does get the point across. If it's shocking to people then that means that they find it wrong. I ignore that you put the word in inverted commas as if to say that the facts are not really shocking because it seems that you would accept any level of cruelty acceptable on the basis that the produce is cheaper.
Why is cheap so important to you? Would you not concur that cheap food means low quality food? Just as any cheap product normally means low quality. Just as your 'cheap shots' at people when you are trying to have a discussion show your arguments also to be cheap. Perhaps you should try to have a discussion without always trying to patronise the other person, as I have just done to you in retaliation. Not correct of me, but rather inevitable.
Leftbehind: Are you trying to say that the Halal method of slaughter is better? I would say that it's worse and that you're getting the wrong end of the stick with regards to my arguments. I'm not talking about the method of slaughter; I'm talking about the living conditions of the animals.
IA: It's good that you want delicious chickens because those that are treated in an acceptable manner will turn out to taste better. If you eat factory farmed animals then the taste will not be as good. If you think it's important that they are kept as delicious as possible then you should be supporting, not mocking, my arguments.
[cite]Posted By: jimmymelrose[/cite]
IA: It's good that you want delicious chickens because those that are treated in an acceptable manner will turn out to taste better.
That's not true though. When I was small I had a pet rat. I took him everywhere with me and he ate only the the finest food. I really looked after him. I loved that rat.
When he died we ate him - and he tasted bloody horrible.
[cite]Posted By: jimmymelrose[/cite]
IA: It's good that you want delicious chickens because those that are treated in an acceptable manner will turn out to taste better.
That's not true though. When I was small I had a pet rat. I took him everywhere with me and he ate only the the finest food. I really looked after him. I loved that rat.
When he died we ate him - and he tasted bloody horrible.
Comments
Of course it's the same thing. I speak a different language to a Pakistani just as I speak a different language to animals. Animals do have, to differing degrees of complexity, languages.
P.S: Can you actually delete your own thread? I don't think you can.
1a. Of course you can communicate with animals - some more than others of course but you can do so. Have you ever met an orangutan in the wild for example? Given the right education you can ask an orungutan to do a variety of tasks like rowing a boat across a river, putting on shoes, doing the washing up.
Using body language you can communicate even further.
1b. Of course you can empathise far more with a human being than an animal. In fact it is totally impossible to emphathise with an animal. To do that, you would have actually had to live as an animal. Just because you can't emphathise however, does not give you the right to treat a being badly. You don't use this line of argument with humans with whom you can't emphasise, so why does this change with animals?
2. The point is that we don't live in a cannabilistic society because we have developed in our reasoning. Eventually we will (I hope) do so with regards to animals (at least with regards to treatment if not the actual murder).
If animals could talk it would certainly not be irrelevant. How on earth could you possibly really think that? It would be as big a change to the human psyché as the discovery of life on other planets, if not bigger. And it would doubtlessly revolutionise people's attitude to eating animals. Could you really go out and have a conversation with a dog (I know this sounds absurd but its a means of challenging what people seem to think is acceptable) and then come home and eat another dog. We can already see that this is the case by the fact that people in the Western world are so against the eating of cats and dogs. Why is this? Because people feel that they have a bond / some form of communication with them. So animals being able to talk would be anything but irrelevant. What a most unsuitable adjective to choose!
How about a chimpanpizza?
This is the best sentence I have ever seen published on Charlton (sorry, Korean) Life.
In conclusion we shall agree to disagree Jimmy...
Cheers for the reindeer feedback.
Off the top of my head:
beef,
chicken,
pork,
lamb,
deer,
wild boar,
ostrich,
crocodile,
impala,
snails,
frog legs,
snake.
I'm sure there's loads more if I put my mind to it.
All of the above except snake (but I probably would) plus...
reindeer
bison
kangaroo
alligator
some sort of wildebeast thingy can't remember the name
hamster.
(btw, I don't recommend the rice wine braised cold pigeon, defeathered, but everything else intact)
Allegedly you have also consumed spiders and other insect life albeit unvoluntarily.
If you've eaten at KFC you can probably add a fair few other things that once may have been household pets.
I've been a veggie for over 20 years and it's only been in the last five years or so that I've clocked how to eat properly so I get what my body needs. That's what my body needs and nobody else's does, so it's not for me to say what is good and what is bad for you. There are people that smoke 40 a day and drink like a (Mark) Fish but live to 90 without issues. Others can have one binge drink and wind up on a different kind of bier altogether.
Each to their own. I certainly wouldn't bother encouraging anyone to become veggie as it's all about personal choice. It's occasionally a difficult diet to keep up with (not so much in the UK apart from the occasional strange person that takes offence at it) but I'm always concious of what I am eating which is probably a boon to me. Drinking on the other hand.....
You probably thought that chickens were chickens. But for the past half century, there have actually been two kinds of chickens — broilers and layers — each with distinct genetics. We call them both chickens, but they have starkly different bodies and metabolisms, engineered for different "functions." Layers make eggs. (Their egg output has more than doubled since the 1930s.) Broilers make flesh. (In the same period, they have been engineered to grow more than twice as large in less than half the time. Chickens once had a life expectancy of fifteen to twenty years, but the modern broiler is typically killed at around six weeks. Their daily growth rate has increased roughly 400 percent.)
But nature isn't cruel. And neither are the animals in nature that kill and occasionally even torture one another. Cruelty depends on an understanding of cruelty, and the ability to choose against it. Or to choose to ignore it.
Taken from this book
I love these arguments from 'moral' vegetarians. They're usually the same people who are against GM crops. They also usually live in the developed world, ratehr than the developing world (where people don't have the ready access to ridiculous quantities of ridiculously cheap food and - consequently - don't get all preachy and moral about crops being modified to be hardier against drought, or chickens being bred to grow bigger for economies of scale.
Vegetarians can't win any argument - from a health, moral or financial standpoint - so resort to 'shocking' facts to try and get their point across.
Personally, I couldn't give a shit about chickens. If mass-rearing produces chickens that are cheap, then who am i to argue with it?
Here is the full list of Nando stores that ONLY use Halal:
We currently have 52 restaurants serving Halal chicken, which I have listed below.
London (within M25)
Balham, Barking, Bayswater, Beckton, Bethnal Green, Brixton, Croydon Valley Park, Dalston, Feltham, Hounslow, Ilford, Kilburn, Kingsbury, Park Royal, Shepherds Bush, South Harrow, Stratford, Stroud Green, Tooting, Wembley, Whitechapel, Wood Green
Birmingham
Star City
Manchester
Oxford Road, Trafford Centre, Parrs Wood, Ashton Moss
Leicester
Freemans, Highcross, Granby Street
Other
Bristol – Aspects Leisure, Bolton, Bradford – Leisure Exchange, Coventry - City, Fareham, Glasgow - Springfield Quay, Huddersfield, Leeds - Cardigan Fields, Liverpool - Queen Square, Luton, MetroCentre, MetroCentre – Garden Walk, Middlesbrough, Nantgarw, Newcastle – The Gate, Oxford - Cowley Road, Preston, Sheffield Valley Centertainment, Slough – Queensmere, Slough – High Street, Wakefield, Wolverhampton
Once again - ignoring the Daily Mail 'Won't SOMEbody Think Of The Children!!!" moral panic - the fact that dozens of companies have been 'outed' as serving only Halal meat and no-one appears to give a shit indicates that most people here don;t care one way or the other.
I care about chickens. I think it's important that they are kept as delicious as possible.
Why is cheap so important to you? Would you not concur that cheap food means low quality food? Just as any cheap product normally means low quality. Just as your 'cheap shots' at people when you are trying to have a discussion show your arguments also to be cheap. Perhaps you should try to have a discussion without always trying to patronise the other person, as I have just done to you in retaliation. Not correct of me, but rather inevitable.
Leftbehind: Are you trying to say that the Halal method of slaughter is better? I would say that it's worse and that you're getting the wrong end of the stick with regards to my arguments. I'm not talking about the method of slaughter; I'm talking about the living conditions of the animals.
IA: It's good that you want delicious chickens because those that are treated in an acceptable manner will turn out to taste better. If you eat factory farmed animals then the taste will not be as good. If you think it's important that they are kept as delicious as possible then you should be supporting, not mocking, my arguments.
That's not true though. When I was small I had a pet rat. I took him everywhere with me and he ate only the the finest food. I really looked after him. I loved that rat.
When he died we ate him - and he tasted bloody horrible.
Are you a Spanish waiter called Manuel?