A Meat-Eater Defends Herself

I was just reading a blog post about the abuses at the Willet Dairy in New York. Of course there were plenty of comments from meat-eaters defending the dairy. Here is one from "Karen" (http://www.farmanddairy.com/news/got-ethics-us-dairy-industry-yes-we-do/14169.html):

"Get a life, if I want to eat meat, drink milk, have an egg for breakfast, it is my choice."

Yes, legally you have that choice. But morally it is not just your choice. What if some aliens came to Earth and decided to kill and eat your children just because they liked the taste? (They had plenty of other food they could eat.) Would that be just a matter of personal choice for those aliens?

So why is it any different when you decide to kill and eat a sentient being or enslave them in order to steal their eggs? You sound a lot like the slave owners in the South 150 years ago.

"Do you really believe this country can feed its self on veggies and fruit alone. Not hardly, and how long will it take before the environmentalists cry foul for the misuse of the land?"

The land can actually feed many more people when used for vegetables, fruits, grains, legumes, seeds and nuts rather than when it is used to feed animals. That is because it takes multiple pounds of plant protein to produce one pound of animal protein. Meat-eating in the wealthier nations causes the loss of rain forest for grazing land and also to grow soy beans which are mainly used to feed animals.

"So I think it is time the animal activists check their emotions at the door and let consumers have the freedom of choice and stop with the lies."

Well excuse me for having some emotions about the 10 billion land animals killed every year in the United States just because people like how they taste. I also didn't see any lies in the original article. De-horning and tail docking are done routinely to cows without any pain medication. I won't even talk about what dairy farmers themselves call the "rape rack", the fate of male calves, the short lifespan of farmed animals, etc.

Feb 4th ABC New Story on Losing Weight

By now nearly everyone knows that two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese. ABC News did a story the other night on weight loss and basically concluded that the only choices were two expensive weight-loss drugs with some nasty side effects. If you watch the ads during ABC News you will know that they must get a lot of their funding from drug companies so I guess their conclusion is not surprising. But it is not correct.

They should have pointed out that you can change your diet to eat fewer calorie-dense foods. Meat, eggs, and dairy all contain lots of calories but no fiber at all. This means that when you have eaten your day's calorie limit of those foods your stomach is not full and you are still hungry … so you overeat. The same also applies to highly processed foods made from white flour and sugar.

If you change your diet to eat fruits, vegetables, whole grains, seeds and nuts then you will fill your stomach before you have eaten too many calories. Combine this with just a little exercise such as walking a mile or two every day and you will lose weight.

I switched to a healthy vegan diet about 5 years ago and before I knew it I had lost 35 pounds without even trying. Since then I eat all that I want and have maintained my weight of 150 pounds (I am 6 feet tall).

Sure, switching to a whole-food vegan diet is not easy for everyone but it is a healthy choice that is good for you, the environment, and the animals. ABC News should have at least mentioned this alternative!

Foiled Again!

My wife's sister, who happens to be a nun, has been staying with us for a few weeks and I have been gently trying to steer her towards healthier vegan foods. She saw me making a batch of my morning muesli recipe and seemed impressed by all the healthy ingredients so I offered to fix her some in the morning.

Of course I was going to use my normal unsweetened soy milk but then she made a point of asking for hers with skim cow's milk... sigh. The muesli is tasty enough that she would hardly have noticed any difference but she has to have the d*** cow secretions!

I guess those casomorphins (protein fragments from the digestion of the casein in milk) really are addictive. And why shouldn't they be? The chemical structure is similar to morphine and the calf is supposed to be "hooked" on its mother's milk for the first 6-8 months. I am just annoyed that she had to specifically ask for cow milk because she wouldn't have noticed the difference and
then I would have told her afterwards. Phooey.

My comments are in black.

Meat as art: Boston-area gallery presents unique exhibit
By Ann Bagel Storck
for the Meatingplace.com

7/3/2008

An art gallery in Cambridge, Mass., has set out to show that meat can be
more than just a meal, it can also be a masterpiece.

Isn't it bad enough that we kill animals for food when we can survive perfectly well without eating meat? Now we kill animals just to play with their dead bodies as "art"?

The Pierre Menard Gallery is hosting "Meat After Meat Joy," an exhibit
featuring artists who work with meat as material, subject or both.

The title refers to a 1964 performance by Carolee Schneemann, which this
show displays as a projected black-and-white video that depicts men and
women frolicking amid plucked chickens, sausages and dead fish.

To me that is only one degree below people frolicking amid dead human bodies. Depraved.

The exhibit, which the Boston Globe called "viscerally unnerving and
occasionally daring," includes pieces such as a raw meat sculpture of an
American flag (with lard for the white stripes) by Betty Hirst...

I suppose it is fitting that the country which kills the most animals, about 10 billion per year, should completely waste some of them to reproduce its own flag. Yes an American flag made of meat says it all ... we are the cruelest nation to animals of any in the world ... and proud of it. Sigh.

Terry O'Neill on Animal Rights

In a recent article in the Vancouver National Post Terry O'Neill says:

"Along with its decadence, the drive to confer human-like rights on animalsis also both obscene and trivializing: obscene in its misguided focus on dumb beasts at a time when there is so much human misery in the world; trivializing in the fact that it elevates the fight for animal personhood to the same level as that of the Famous Five or, for that matter, pro-lifers’ continuing campaign to have unborn children declared legal persons. How ironic and sad it would be to see animal rightists succeed where pro-lifers have failed."

What's wrong with a "human-like right" for sentient creatures to live their lives without being killed for the pleasure of someone else?

And as for "dumb" beasts, does that mean mentally handicapped humans shouldn't have a right to their lives? Denying the right to live its life to another creature just because it is a different species is called speciesism. It is just like denying rights to others of a different race (racism) or gender (sexism).

And why care at all about animal rights when there is "so much human misery in the world"? Well how about the misery of 800 million starving humans? Do you realize that the world would have plenty to feed those people if so much food didn't go to feed livestock? It takes many pounds of grain to produce one pound of meat -- so meat-eaters are contributing a lot to human suffering.

And is it really trivializing to compare the plight of 20 billion (yes Billion) land animals raised in horrible conditions and killed every year just for human pleasure to the struggle for women to get the right to vote?

Earth to meat eaters, what are you thinking?

Hey, meat-eaters, don't you know that you are damaging your health, making the world's food shortage worse, fouling up the environment, and causing misery and suffering for animals?

On health the evidence is clear. Check out T. Colin Campbell's book The China Study (http://www.thechinastudy.com/). The people who eat the most protein, especially animal protein, get the most heart disease, cancer, and obesity.

Milk and cheese are just as bad. No other animal drinks milk past infancy, and it is even more bizarre to drink the milk of another species! Nature designed cow's milk for baby cows. It has three times more protein as human milk, and much of the protein is in the form called "casein" which is commonly used as glue and is difficult for humans to digest.

Cow's milk also contains many hormones including a very potent growth hormone called IGF-I that happens to be identical between cows and humans. The high level of this growth hormone is nature's way to cause the calf to gain hundreds of pounds in its first year. All those hormones are concentrated in cheese because it takes 10 pounds of milk to produce 1 pound of cheese. Americans are eating more cheese than ever. No wonder so many are obese. There is also considerable evidence that IGF-I promotes the growth of cancer cells. What would you expect when humans adults consume powerful hormones designed to promote very rapid growth in infants? There are many other problems with milk as Dr. Kradjian outlines nicely in his famous "Milk Letter" to his patients: http://www.notmilk.com/kradjian.html

And of course, as Dr. Milton Mills has shown, the human body has all the features of a dedicated herbivore, not an omnivore and not a carnivore. You don't even have to read the article, just check out the table summary at the bottom. See: http://www.vegsource.com/veg_faq/comparative.htm No surprise that if you put lots of meat into a body that was designed to eat plants you get a lot of colon cancer (the number two cancer in the U.S. and other countries with high meat consumption).

That's all that I have time for now. I will be back soon to address the world food shortage, the environmental impact of animal agriculture, and the ethics (karma) of needlessly killing animals just for one's pleasure.

Compassionate carnivores?

I have just noticed an article by Joanne Laucius in the Ottawa Citizen on Monday April 28th entitled "Meeting your Meat - Being a Carnivore is Back in Fashion as Long as It's With a Conscience".

In the article she talks about Susan Bourette's coming book called "Meat: A Love Story" and other people (some former vegetarians) who now think it is OK to eat meat as long as the animal has been treated decently and slaughtered "humanely". She mentions a $30 million showcase farm where the "free range pigs dine on slugs and acorns".

Sure, that is a lot better than antibiotic-laced animals eating cheap feed who never see the sunshine in factory farms, and the much higher price of such meat would certainly cut way down on meat consumption, at least for most of us non-millionaires, but is it really ethical to kill an animal just because you like how its meat tastes? I don't think so!

Suppose some aliens came to the Earth who were as far advanced beyond humans as we are beyond cows or pigs. Would it be OK for them to kill teenage humans just because they liked how humans tasted? How about if they fed the children a fine diet and let them have "free range" until their 20th birthday? What if they waited until the humans were 40 or even 60 years old before killing them? Right, it doesn't matter. If the aliens could survive on other plant or "replicator" food then it would be wrong for them to kill humans just for their enjoyment.

The human body is that of a committed herbivore (see http://www.vegsource.com/veg_faq/comparative.htm) so humans clearly have no ethical excuse for killing any other sentient beings just for pleasure.