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Animal Experiments - Worthwhile, Cruel or Both?


Sthira

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I love eating meat, eat meat at every meal, I think it's healthy for you.  The non meat eaters can't survive without their bottle of supplements. Now I can, and occasionally do the butchering, my heart is soft, so I take my lambs down the road and let my Amish neighbor who has a butcher shop to the job.

 

Dr Bennett

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Dr. Bennett,

 

I appreciate your contributions, but right about now I really wish we had the forum post feedback system enabled so I could politely express my disagreement with both your ethics and lack of evidence to support your claims for the health benefits of eating meat, while at the same time avoiding confrontation.

 

But I will give you credit. Your willingness to (on occasion at least) butcher your own meat shows an integrity and awareness that is commendable and quite rare among today's meat eaters. Good for you. Now stop eating the damn animals you meany. Seriously. How'd you like to be raised and slaughtered while still in your prime only to serve as someone's breakfast?

 

But leaving ethics aside (which I'm loath but willing to do) - If you'd care to provide credible evidence regarding the health benefits of eating meat relative to a well-planned, plant-based diet (which includes prudent supplementation of B12 in particular) I'll be happy to debate you. But you'll first have to overcome the mountain of evidence showing benefits of a plant-based diet free from meat, even in otherwise health-conscious individuals like the vegan, vegetarian, and omnivorous Adventists.

 

--Dean

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The non meat eaters can't survive without their bottle of supplements.

Guess what, Doctor, you don't get to survive, either.

 

Now I can, and occasionally do the butchering, my heart is soft, so I take my lambs down the road and let my Amish neighbor who has a butcher shop to the job.

 

So beyond eating the sheep that stare as you kill, do you with your soft heart know anything else?

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I have to chime in here even though I am reluctant. I grew up with hunters who butchered their own meat and I always had some respect for that in this sense. Many so called animal lovers eat meat and despise hunting and hunters. I literally know quite a few people like that. In my book they are hypocrites. If you are really into loving animals and all that but have no problem going to the neat meat counter and buying your package of meat with no remorse you certainly have no right to condemn those who at the least take the job of killing and butchering into their own hands. Vegans like Dean and Sthira Are to be respected because they are consistent in their ethics, but the multitudes of so-called animal lovers who buy their neat little packages and consume them are a bit of a mystery to me. Especially when they condemn those who are willing to do the dirty work. So in that sense I respect The Amish guy Dr. Bennet refers to and I would suggest that if Dr. Bennet loves his meat so much and has an opportunity to do the butchering he might just once try it and see where he stands then.

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You're right, Mike. I'd eat meat if I had to kill the animal, chop it up, and dispose of the unwanted pieces. Since I can't do that (soft hearted) I'd be a hypocrite to eat it. Plus, it's not healthy except in tiny doses.

 

But frankly, who wants to ring through another goddamned pointless vegan vs omnivore argument? Not only are these tedious, they also divide people, go nowhere, and don't change behavior, words oh easy words.

 

Now drag yourself into a chicken processing plant, a beef factory, a pig killing facility -- see it, smell it, hear it, taste it in the air, feel the terror on your skin, and I guarantee you'll stop eating factory meat. Unless you're psychotic. Most people have no clue, are willfully ignorant, just as the industry wants us to be. What did Pollan write that was so eloquent something like the walls of the meat processing business are now so high, it's so difficult to gain access, that no one knows shit anymore.

 

That's not to say no decent, humane small meat and dairy farms exist -- because they do -- and I'm happy we're slowly evolving, but I still don't support them with my own dollars and behavior.

 

Not that anyone gives a damned what I think anyway, haha, you'll behave as you see best for yourself. Ethical vegans have just seen and experienced and have been more affected by ugly truths of the meat and dairy businesses, I assert. We assert.

 

I have to chime in here even though I am reluctant. I grew up with hunters who butchered their own meat and I always had some respect for that in this sense. Many so called animal lovers eat meat and despise hunting and hunters. I literally know quite a few people like that. In my book they are hypocrites.

Total agreement, Mike. I've no problem with hunters. Some animals -- like feral hogs on islands -- need to be hunted to near eradication. But I do hate these dumb fuck "trophy hunters" who need to kill lions and black rhinos and precious species endangered. I dislike bow hunting since often the arrows don't kill, and the arrows only wound the deer, and they eventually die horrible deaths. Shoot all the deer you want -- their populations are fine. But don't kill songbirds and orchestrate captively raised northern bobwhite (quail) hunts just because you're rich and stupid. Actually, no, I take back my comments about quail hunting. I can make the argument that wealthy quail hunters have more or less saved much of precious longleaf pine ecosystem by preserving quail plantations. So killing millions of lab-raised quail is (arguably) a small price to pay for protection of a precious ecosystem that's home to thousands of species of rare plants, like pitcher plants, and rare animals like red cockaded woodpeckers, indigo snakes, flatwoods salamanders, gopher tortoises, gopher frogs, god I could talk your ears off about protecting forests. Usually I think the means justify the ends. But here the ends -- protect sacred forests -- justify the means -- kill innocent northern bobwhites for sport.
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I agree trophy hunting is stupid and yet one of the most wonderful human beings I know has a roomful of them! My own brother who lives in Montana and who has always been a passionate hunter. The guy is loved by almost everyone who get to know him. He never fights or argues, is always respectful, a great husband and father. He has gone so out of his way many times in his life to do for others including myself.

 

Again I quote Whitman:

"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes"

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For all you animal loving vegans out there, or even conflicted omnivores seeking to assuage your guilty conscience, one of my favor charitable organizations, Vegan Outreach, is in the final day of a fundraising campaign (ending midnight tonight 6/30/2016), which will double your impact through an anonymous match. They are hoping to raise another $8K to reach their goal.

 

If like me, you try to be an effective altruist like Peter Singer advocates, then I think Vegan Outreach is a great charity for you to give to. They hand out free pamphlets to college students and other young people on campus, at concerts, etc. While they may rely a little too much on anecdotal evidence, the folks at VO have determined that young people, are the most likely demographic to be receptive to the vegan message and change their eating habits. Also, many more animals can be saved by converting a teenager or young adult to veganism since they've got so many years of eating ahead of them.

 

BTW, Vegan Outreach is lead by Jack Norris, who many of us rely on for his in-depth analysis of vegan nutrition topics at his other website, JackNorrisRD.com. In fact, Jack got into vegan nutrition because he wanted to help animals as much as he could, and he recognized that the biggest cause of vegan recidivism is poor diet & nutrition causing people to feel badly while eating vegan, and fall off the wagon.

 

So vegans and meat-eaters alike, please go right now and donate to Vegan Outreach before their 'double your impact' campaign ends tonight.

 

--Dean

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Sorry if this doesn't have anything to do with animal experiments, but I'm not sure where else to put this... if it's too far from the topic, a mod is welcome to remove this post. A few days ago I spoke with a friend who is a big paleo advocate. I idly mentioned to him that it seems to me that there is no contradiction - at least in principle - between being vegan and paleo. He wasn't buying it, but somehow we got to talking about gelatin, and he insisted that we must all eat it regardless of diet. A day later he sent me a link to that effect:

 

https://chriskresser.com/5-reasons-why-even-vegetarians-need-gelatin/

 

None of the arguments in that link convinced me of the necessity of eating gelatin, but it did lead me to think about consuming animal products. At this point, there are just two animal products that are a regular feature of my diet: a small amount of canned salmon once a week, and a small amount of canned sardines once a week. Since there is so little in the way of animal products that I consume, I started wondering if it would be possible to eliminate them, without a huge amount of trouble and/or added calories. It would be an experiment in vegan eating for me, but more of an intellectual exercise than anything. I guess I am a pescetarian and thus pretty far away from vegetarian, not to mention vegan. I know Dean has strong feelings about the ethics of eating fish (goldfish tricks!). I don't have such concerns. My concerns center more around environmental issues of sustainable fishing; at this point the damage industrial fishing is doing to the environment is so extensive that I don't believe there is any "sustainable" level of fishing. The only option for diminishing damage is to stop eating fish products altogether (seems to me). Now, I'm not any kind of activist, so I've been only inching very slowly toward eliminating animal products (such as leather etc.) from my life, but I wonder if there are more focused discussions on substitutions.

 

Specifically I'd be interested in reading about vegan substitutions for the small amounts of salmon and sardines I consume. It is my suspicion that there are no simple answers, and that the real answer involves completely upending my entire diet and in fact lifestyle - I suspect that in order to take the place of the fish, I will need to re-think it all, sort of like a Rubik's Cube, sure it seems just one small square is out of place, but in order to move it to the right place you might have to move all the other squares too. So too here - everything must be re-thought just to eliminate the small amount of fish, including shopping and storage practices, not to mention cooking, meal timing etc. A giant upheaval. Which is why I have stayed pescetarian, more out of inertia than from ideological conviction; my lifestyle has evolved over many years like encrustations of stalagmite formation, thousands of small and big adjustments. To mix my metaphor, it is now like a big ship that would take a long time to turn around. But I'm thinking. Anyhow, any reading resources or advice would be welcome.

 

Re: ethics and ideology. I don't eat red meat (or fowl) for health reasons, but also because I don't want animal suffering. If it could be guaranteed that the animal doesn't suffer, and health was no concern, I suppose I don't see why ethically it would be wrong to consume meat. If it's the equivalent of falling asleep and simply never waking up (for the animal). Alas, there is no way to guarantee that with animals, so apart from health considerations, I don't eat meat for ethical reasons. The environment is the other consideration - like I said, I feel the damage has been too large to kid ourselves that we can continue fishing. But it's not an ideological position insofar that if there was a surefire way to avoid certain issues, I don't see (apart from health) why it would be ethically wrong - example, lab-grown meat: what's the ethical objection there? Or even to give a gruesome example, what if you could grow a cow without a brain, and then use it for food... no suffering involved. Of course, there may still be environmental considerations (for some lab grown meat they use petroleum products as base), but again, it's not black and white. Which is why I don't stand strong on any kind of ideology "it's always wrong to eat meat", but conditionally ("fine, as long as there is guaranteed no suffering or excess - compared to alternatives - environmental cost").   

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Tom,

 

I understand your greater concern for sustainability than for the suffering of individual fish themselves. Fish are far away from us on the tree of life, and therefore hard for us to relate to.

 

Honestly, if it is going to turn your world upside down, it might not be worth it for you if sustainability is your only concern. If two small fish meals per week are the only animal products you eat, with one of them sardines, seems to be like you've got a pretty small environmental footprint already. 

 

But my question for you is - what do you think you are getting from the fish you eat that you will have trouble replacing? The primary nutrients would seem to be the long-chain omega-3s, which you can get from algae oil, the calcium (from the bones) which you can get from plants or supplements, the (heme) iron, which you can get from plants supplements in better form than heme, the choline which you can get from plants or supplements if you think you need extra, and the protein, which you probably get more than enough of already from legumes, nuts, seeds, vegetables, etc.

 

Are there other things you think you're getting from the fish? 

 

Regarding lab-grown meat. I've got no ethical objections to it, at least once they figure out a way to avoid having to continually replenish the stock of cells from real animals. But even when they solve that issue, I'm just not sure I'd want to add it to my diet. The heme iron, methionine, phosphatidylcholine in meat aren't things I think I'm missing out on, and would rather avoid getting too much of.

 

--Dean

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Re: missing stuff from fish - I generally prefer consuming the whole food, if there are documented benefits, rather than attempt to divine what it is in the food that is actually responsible for the benefit and then trying to take those in isolation or even substitutions. The reasons are obvious - we simply don't know enough about nutrient interactions to make confident judgement as to what is a definitely equivalent substitution. Pescetarians generally come out at or near the top of health/longevity charts, often ahead of vegans. However, this is a bit of a question begging, because after all the whole point is to find substitutions, so I made the preceding point on purely philosophical grounds. I do not intend to use this argument to avoid looking for substitutions, but simply to point out the limitations of such attempts at substitutions - in other words, I accept that perfect substitutions that are nutritionally equivalent or superior are not likely, or more precisely we can't know how well they compare. Moving on.

 

Both salmon, and especially sardines are excellent sources of vit. B12, and also marine omega-3 FA. I fully understand that both B12 and omega-3 FA are available in supplemental form, but this is where it gets tricky. Assuming - and this is not a small assumption - that one can trust the supplement makers of omega-3 (that it is not rancid, adulterated or otherwise compromised etc.), studies have repeatedly shown how eating fish for equivalent amount of omega-3 FA results in much better benefits than taking omega-3 as a supplement. Now this may be due to many other things, including other beneficial elements of fish, but it's worth noting that we simply don't know - same as with B12, we simply don't know if there is a difference in getting it from a complete food matrix vs supplement makes a difference. Given the history of taking isolated supplements vs whole food - the cautionary principle says: you're taking a risk.

 

But the bigger argument is that both salmon and sardines are packed with nutrients, of which you mention also calcium, iron, choline. There are others, like vit. B3 (sardines), iodine, vit D etc. - again, the argument of supplements vs whole food applies, but now I want to address vegan substitutes: the biggest factor is nutritional bang for the calorie-hassle-effort buck. Those small amounts of salmon and sardines are incredibly compact packages of very bioavailable minerals and vitamins - both in size, but also in the hassle factor. In order to make up for the iron or calcium (to pick just there two) from vegan sources (which may not be as bioavailable), you really have to pile them on. This represents a lot of effort (shopping, cooking, storage, consuming/chewing) compared to buying  and opening a small can of fish and splitting it with your spouse. For some, it may even be a question of money, and not trivial amounts (based on percentage comparison). This is what I meant by having to completely re-orient your entire diet and lifestyle in order to accommodate that "small" change - you have to re-think how you shop, cook, store, and eat, from top to bottom. It's throwing out a routine that took years to develop and tons of time spent in research - R&D costs that are now down the drain. That's A LOT of effort for really small amounts of fish. It's not that it can't be done - just that it has substantial costs in many non-obvious ways. Now, I understand that for someone who already has a vegan lifestyle, it is not a big deal to substitute this for that once you are already set up that way without a big disruption to your routine - you already have your giant salad and everything worked out from shopping/food acquisition to food preparation, storage and consumption. But for someone who has built their entire food and lifestyle workflow around different principles, it is a big change indeed - the Rubik's Cube situation, everything needs to be re-jiggered, re-thought and researched (shaving a whole country full of yaks).

 

Re: lab-meat - right, I was just addressing the ethics of it, not the nutrition; even if I had no ethical or environmental concerns about red meat consumption, I'd avoid it on health grounds.

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Tom,

 

I agree with you that it is unquestionably more hassle and more expensive to avoid all animal products, including and perhaps especially fish - which are rather unique in their nutrition profile and beneficial nutrients (along with a few downsides as well). Given your very modest consumption of fish, your diet is almost certainly no less healthy, and arguably perhaps more healthy than a strictly vegan diet. Even in terms of sustainability, it would be hard to argue that two fish-meals per week is harming the planet significantly more than a strictly vegan diet.

 

What motivated me many years back to go from a pesco-vegetarian diet very much like yours to a strictly vegan diet was definitely not health. It was compassion for the animals. But as a side benefit of going vegan, I will note that I experienced a palpable and unexpected increase in my sense of peace and well-being as a result of the switch. I guess I hadn't realized it, but subconsciously I'd been feeling conflicted and guilty for years over the incongruity of my professed love of animals and my willingness to eat them for dinner. When I switched from a low level of animal product consumption to complete abstinence, that cognitive dissonance disappeared, and I was left with a feeling that can best be described as a sense of 'lightness' - like a burden I'd been carrying for many years was suddenly put down.

 

Your mileage may vary. 

 

--Dean

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Taurine is generally lacking in a vegan diet. Methionine is also lower and it is crucial for the synthesization of taurine along with cysteine and B12. Fish is an excellent source of Taurine and also phosphatidylserine among other nutrients plants lack. It seems to me that the consistent findings that fish intake is associated with better health outcomes than fish oil supplements may in part be related to these and other nutrients including the aforementioned and selenium etc.

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Ok now I will swing back to the conversation at hand and in response to Dean's fish compassionionate links and insistence that we should extend compassion to these creatures. I have one interesting point on that and it came to me out of nowhere just now, but of course the seed was planted by Dean. IAC, I was thinking of my youth and the aquarium craze I went through and yeah I felt considerable compassion for my fish. And before that time there was the whole frog, salamander and tadpole craze when I was in the age range of about 7-10 or 11. The fish thing was during my teen years. Frogs I held in almost reverential fashion. I really just loved everything about them and enjoyed listening to their crazy croaking or peeping as the case may be depending on the type. Hurt them-never ever! Eat them maybe-hmm... Not the ones I caught and played with certainly absolutely not!! The same goes with the fish I kept, but if my mom made a tuna sandwich, zilch no feeling or emotion. Two points here. Young people tend to be much more enamored with animals and I am certain feel closer to them and want to relate to them. This may have something to do with their innocence and more direct and less abstract encounter with living things.

The other point wrt eating animals it seems to me is that meat and fish purchased and cooked are almost a total abstraction which encourages no compassion whatsoever. I would venture out on a limb and guess that the compassionate ones who refuse even abstract portions of meat out of compassion are simply more aware and conscious types who reflect on their own behaviors more acutely and who are innately compassionate. The innate aspect I think is an important distinction because with the example of say a hunter who kills, slaughters and eats his own meat; I think it safe to say has little innate compassion for animals because in his case it ain't about abstraction and distance.

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^^^ yes Yes YES! Brilliant post! Especially about (some) younger people being more intimately connected to wildlife. And by wildlife I also mean ecosystems -- which are even more important than individual plants and animals -- we love the individual animals but also their homes. They live within nets of interconnectivity. Increasingly urbanized people (and I'm one) are removed from dirt, streams, rivers, oceans...

 

About hunters all of them being not compassionate -- I disagree. Some are; some are cool. We've all gotta do what we gotta do to survive. It's the convenience aspect that we rebel against, and this is mostly a political issue imho. It's the ole bull shit that congress subsidizes their meat and dairy friends, and I say let's shift subsidy to the collard people. It'll save animals, ecosystems, force fat addicted people into better health so the rest of us -- a shrinking minority of non-obese peeps -- aren't forced into paying their big hideous medical bills.

 

So much is going on with this issue -- it necessitates straying "off topic" because off topic is usually just free flowing conversation. Loads of engineers here, and y'all like control and dam building those wild rivers for electricity at the expense of every other wild creature...

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Empathy, sympathy, compassion and ethics are all separate things. F.ex. I might strongly dislike a certain culture/religion, and therefore have zero sympathy, but nonetheless I would never do anything to harm (would indeed defend from harm) members of that culture/religion on ethical/political grounds - the whole "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" attributed to Voltaire (but actually written by E.B. Hall). Same with various disgusting (to me) bugs - my disgust would not dissuade me from defending them and their environment. I generally like almost all animals (certain creatures like bedbugs, some cockroaches, fleas, etc. excepted), but that's not the reason I'd defend them and their environment. And I too have the oddly outsize liking and sympathy for frogs - I just love them, and would go to great lengths to defend them... I even contributed funds to a zoo in Europe to help fund their frog and amphibian program. Frogs are the best!

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Neal Barnard is a hero. The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has been behind the scenes fighting for decades to end use of unnecessary animal testing in the med school complex. Two schools were holdouts, but not no mo!

 

Leave animals alone!

 

And so now, would-be doctors in training will learn to treat their future human patients (such as it is) without further harming and killing animals in order to learn their crafts (crafts which will increasingly be replaced by robotics and AI, I'm believe, which is part of why I chose myself not to attend med school, pay all that money, assume all that debt, be forced by pharmaceutical industries into...)

 

Anyway: celebrate: it's not small, this:

 

http://www.pcrm.org/med_school_victory

 

All U.S. medical student training is now animal-free

 

Dear Physicians Committee supporter,

 

I have momentous news to share. After more than three decades of perseverance by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, we can now announce that the days of using dogs and other animals to teach medical students are finally over.

 

When I was a medical student at George Washington University, I refused to participate in a required "dog lab," and I vowed to end these laboratories. Well, the last two known hold-outs—the Johns Hopkins University and the University of Tennessee—have both made the decision to end the use of animals in their medical schools, which means that all medical schools in the United States and Canada are completely free of animal laboratories in teaching. We have won this fight.

 

In 1985, when I founded the Physicians Committee, most medical schools required students who were eager to learn how to treat and heal to instead kill their first patient. Dogs were injected with various drugs to see the physiological responses or cut open so students could perform minor surgical procedures. At the end of every dog lab, the animal was killed.

 

We worked hard to stop these labs for two reasons: first, the obvious cruelty to the animals was unconscionable. Second, when medical students are trained like this, they come to believe that killing animals is somehow essential to medicine and science. That had to stop.

 

At many medical schools, students who refused to participate were penalized or even expelled. At the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (the U.S. military's medical school), students could be court-martialed for refusing to take part in the animal labs.

 

Often we worked directly with medical students and faculty—like those at Harvard Medical School—to replace animals. Other times, we used the law, like when we helped a University of Colorado student sue her school for requiring that she participate in the dog lab. At other schools, we held demonstrations with celebrities and other physicians. We put up billboards. We also held on-campus presentations and discussions. Over the years, as we brought the practice into the public eye, schools switched from dogs to less popular animals, hoping to mute criticism.

 

Recently, we knew of just two medical schools that were using animals to teach students—the University of Tennessee and Johns Hopkins University. Last month, we shared the great news that, after years of pressure from us and recent criticism by Maryland lawmakers, Johns Hopkins finally dropped its animal lab from the surgery clerkship curriculum. Well, that decision had ripple effects. We pushed hard on the University of Tennessee, which decided to follow suit.

 

I should clarify that this is the end of animal use in medical school courses. That's a great thing. But animals are still used in more advanced training (in surgical and emergency medicine residencies, for example), and there is an enormous amount of animal use in basic research, unfortunately. We are continuing to work in those areas as well and are steadily winning those battles. But as of now, at every medical school in the United States and Canada, students will get their M.D. or D.O. degrees without ever even being allowed to harm animals.

 

Thank you for your dedication to creating a more compassionate future. We could not have achieved this milestone without you.

 

Sincerely,

 

Neal Barnard, M.D., F.A.C.C.

 

President, Physicians Committee

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Hi Sthira thanks for your wonderful post,

 

For the record I did not mean to say Hunters were not compassionate people. See my reference to my brother who is very compassionate . I guess my point was a comparative one. What makes a hunter enjoy the process of killing, slaughtering and eating an animal when they could easily choose not to. They may be more decent in some ways than a committed vegan, who might be a son of a bitch in many ways like How they actually treat people. I know many hunters and most of them are very decent people. I know a professor who is a strict vegan and yet he can be quite insensitive in how he deals with his colleagues.

 

Hence my wonder at the poetic wisdom of Walt Whitman:

 

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes

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  • 2 weeks later...

Dear ALL,

 

I guess I'd like to add a related thought -- I feel that all Life is amazing, and valuable -- not just animals.  Definitely, plants are as complex and remarkable -- and so are fungi, and non-eukaryotes (such as bacteria, archaea etc.).

 

All life exists at the expense of, or in support of, other living things. 

 

A mammal eats a fruit.  Is he/she killing something?  Yes; all the cells in the fruit are being destroyed.  But, he/she is doing service to the parent plant -- he/she is helping the plant reproduce.

 

Of course, this symbiosis developed by evolution.

 

Examples and morals get increasingly confused:  a wasp stings a spider, paralyzing the spider, and simultaneously preserving its body, keeping it alive but paralyzed.  Then, the wasp injects its eggs into the paralyzed spider.  The spider remains alive for a long time, while the larvae of the wasp slowly devour its body [kept fresh and nourishing to the larvae by the preservative injected into the spider].

 

The spider, the wasp and the larvae are all "cute little animals with faces".

 

Go figure.

 

  --  Saul 

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^^^ The idea is that we as thinking and feeling animals should limit causing unnecessary suffering in other thinking, feeling creatures.

 

Oh but u wanna talk killing fruit cells and habits of.pompilid wasps...

 

Why is this so complicated. That's not a question; we know precisely why people choose to make it complicated.

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  • 1 month later...

 

There will never be peace in the world while there are animals in our bellies.

 

I am not as gung ho about animal welfare as Dean is but the industry sure can put a laughable spin on things sometimes.

 

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/tim-hortons-a-w-jbs-beef-1.3718417

 

"Ranchers use these substances to increase the size of the animals, reduce the amount of feed required and help animal welfare by fighting off diseases, among other reasons."

 

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/beef-hormones-benefit-environment-1.3717068

 

The story is from the Calgary Eyeopener, indeed.  The science is behind it.  Cabbage is loaded with hormones.

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