VenusInBlueJeanz
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Registered: 06-2006
Location: Pennsylvania
Posts: 46
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Vegetarians still kill animals by the food they eat
I was reading a website called The Naive Vegetarian and stopped to think about this paragraph:
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Dear Dr Groves
I agree with most of your points concerning the poor reasoning of most vegetarians. As a fairly observant zoologist, pathologist and sometimes farmer I can add even more.
As you and I know, most vegetarians are motivated, at least in part, by their view of the immorality of exploiting animals. Most of them, of course, are city dwellers who have never had the opportunity to till, plant and harvest a field with a vegetable crop.
Crop agriculture, even if inveterbrates are excluded, is devastating to small amphibians, reptiles, nesting birds and mammals. Even the occasional larger mammal is injured during the cropping process. Unavoidably, the plow destroys burrows and young. Harvest machines kill some animals directly and expose others to the tender mercies of predators. Many times, I have watched as coyotes and hawks follow my tractor feasting on the victims of the plow and reaper [hey, but it is nice for these predators].
Really, how could it be otherwise? Vegetables and cereals are the foods of many animals. For rodents, crops are a real bonanza in terms of food and shelter. They multiply rapidly which only increases the tally during field preparation and harvest.
To my thinking, there is little question that raising animals for meat, especially if they are not fattened with agricultural products, is far less devastating to animal life than is agriculture. If one acre of land produces one sheep a year for slaughter, one life is taken. If one acre of land is put into cereal production the cost in just mammalian life can be measured in the dozens or more.
Of course, animal death due to cropping is "invisible" and therefore doesn't happen. Lamb chops in the market are visible and vegetarians weep for the victim. I know that these realities have no impact on animal-rights types -– they are not nearly so concerned with animal death and suffering as they are with animal death and suffering due to deliberate human actions. Their emphasis is, in fact, not on animal welfare but on the control of other human beings.
Ron B
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So, if a vegetarian's reason for why he is a vegetarian is because he loves animals, wouldn't this knowledge make that reason invalid.
Is one cow's life more important than one mouse? A life is a life. How about one cow's life as opposed to dozens of other animals lives?
Also, if all these small animals are killed during the harvesting of the grain, isn't there some animal "product" mixed into that grain inadvertantly?
Is this grossing anyone else out besides me? :hebejebes
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7/25/2006, 9:47 am
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Kat12
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Registered: 07-2006
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Re: Vegetarians still kill animals by the food they eat
being veggie, imo, is still better. I mean, if we eat meat, not only is that animal being killed, but agriculture is still needed to produce ITS food--a double evil.
This guy just sounds like another of those "you can't save the WHOLE world, so why try at all" types.
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7/26/2006, 12:06 am
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fyvel
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Registered: 03-2005
Posts: 77
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Re: Vegetarians still kill animals by the food they eat
I agree with Kat. This guy's whole logic is flawed. There simply isn't enough land available to put it into use to grow meat animals this way and even come close to meeting demand. The only way his theory would work would be if a lot of people became vegetarians, or if those who didn't severely reduced their intake of meat. As it stands right now, it still takes a LOT of plant material to grow animals for meat (23kg of grain to produce 1kg of meat? how is that effective?). So still, by eating a vegetarian diet by reducing the lives of animals killed by crop harvesting as well.
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8/6/2006, 4:36 pm
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fyvel
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Re: Vegetarians still kill animals by the food they eat
On another note, there is a lot of bad and misleading information on that site. Anything on it should be taken with a grain of salt.
Example: They claim that humans are pure carnivores, which is absolutely ridiculous.
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8/6/2006, 4:40 pm
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