Put the animal through a lot of stress or worse and your meat will not be as nice. Perfect karma.
As for free-range, well same effect. Don't let anyone convince you that free-range food isn't better. Take chickens, it takes me about six months to get my young roosters big enough to eat, whereas commercial poultry farms kill them about six weeks old. To some extent that's down to different breeding, but mostly its to do with intensive feeding and rearing. As a result, commercial chickens are tasteless and texture-less, the meat is extremely fatty and not to mention the high residues of hormones and anti-biotics.
Something that tastes that awful can't be good for you. More bad karma.
Unfortunately, we don't have much choice but to eat this rubbish, because its the "economic" way of producing chicken meat. Vegetarianism is a perfectly sensible alternative.
The moral and ethical arguments are plainly irrelevant. Wojtek's analysis (under Subject: How to run a socialist society [was: Cuba's painful transition from sugar economy on 10:34 AM -0400 29/8/05) are applicable here.
"Being determines consciousness", as he puts it. The cultural justifications for eating or not eating meat are just a dressing on the main course. Vegetarianism is an adaption to material circumstances.
Coming from the cultural background that I do, it would be quite difficult for me to stop eating meat, if only because I haven't inherited the customs that would make it simple to survive on such a diet. I would have to work very hard to get all the nutrients I need, whereas someone like Ravi, who has never eaten meat presumably has dietary habits adapted to such a diet.
I don't. Also of course, I LIKE meat, its all I can do to resist the urge to express pity for someone who has never enjoyed meat. But Ravi would probably pity me my diet too. Its a cultural thing, different cultures are adaptions to different material circumstances.
Ethical justifications are total codswallop. So what if a chook has to die so I can eat it? Things die all the time, there isn't enough room on the planet for every creature that could be alive. In India, cows wander around half starved, the owners of such beasts would be prosecuted for cruelty to animals in this country, is it less cruel to condemn creatures to slow starvation than to to kill them? That's the choice here, not every chook that hatches can survive.
I presume that Vegetarianism has far more practical roots than ethics. maybe it isn't safe to eat meat in some tropical climates? meat does become poisoned with dangerous micro-organisms and unsafe to eat. I think that's more likely to be the explanation for it, as well as other cultural taboos like eating pork and some seafood. rather than originating in some high ethical consideration.
Me. I live in a temperate climate. I can safely slaughter meat, even without refrigeration. (Though it isn't safe in mid-summer to slaughter a large animal like a steer, which needs to hang for a couple of days. I've tried and some of the meat went bad.)
This time of year is great though. I got my hands on a couple of Fallow deer the other day, from a friend of a friend who farms them. Mates rates too. Oh joy, my freezer is stocked with venison again! Ravi, you don't know what you're missing. ;-)
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas
At 5:10 PM -0400 29/8/05, snitsnat wrote:
>OK. What I still don't understand is this:
>
>1. Justin (or whoever) can only eat meat if they kill it themselves
>or eat free-range birds and the like.
>
>why? I eat meat all the time and it's not venison or free-range
>chicken. Clearly, I can eat meat.
>
>:) But, what you mean Ravi is that I shouldn't eat meat if I want to
>be a lefty, right? Or, do you mean, if I want you to like me and
>approve of me, I shouldn't eat meat? I'm not being facetious. I'm
>serious?
>
>What fate will befall me, other than your disapproval and the label,
>"not a lefty," if I eat meat from Publix?
>
>
>2. Why is it a lefty concern? Specifically, why are animal rights an
>intrinsically lefty concern? If that's what you're arguing.
>
>Thank you for being patient. I know it's trying and I know it's a
>little disconcerting to be on the hot seat, defending views that you
>feel others don't support.