Registered: Aug 2000
Location: I don't fukn' know!
Posts: 5137

inhumanity

OK.

I eat meat. All kinds.

I have no problem with hunting either (provided you eat what you kill).

But this bothers me. alot.

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[*]The agony starts when the animals are hauled over long distances under extreme crowding and harsh temperatures. Here is an account from a worker assigned to unloading pigs: "In the winter, some hogs come in all froze to the sides of the trucks. They tie a chain around them and jerk them off the walls of the truck, leave a chunk of hide and flesh behind. They might have a little bit of life left in them, but workers just throw them on the piles of dead ones. They'll die sooner or later."

Once at the slaughterhouse, some animals are too injured to walk and others simply refuse to go quietly to their deaths. This is how the workers deal with it: "The preferred method of handling a cripple is to beat him to death with a lead pipe before he gets into the chute... If you get a hog in a chute that's had the shit prodded out of him, and has a heart attack or refuses to move, you take a meat hook and hook it into his bunghole (anus)...and a lot of times the meat hook rips out of the bunghole. I've seen thighs completely ripped open. I've also seen intestines come out."

And here is what awaits the animals on the kill floor. First, the testimony of a horse slaughterhouse worker: "You move so fast you don't have time to wait till a horse bleeds out. You skin him as he bleeds. Sometimes a horse's nose is down in the blood, blowing bubbles, and he suffocates."

Then another worker, on cow slaughter: "A lot of times the skinner finds a cow is still conscious when he slices the side of its head and it starts kicking wildly. If that happens, ... the skinner shoves a knife into the back of its head to cut the spinal cord." (This paralyzes the animal, but doesn't stop the pain of being skinned alive.) And still another, on calf slaughter: "To get done with them faster, we'd put eight or nine of them in the knocking box at a time... You start shooting, the calves are jumping, they're all piling up on top of each other. You don't know which ones got shot and which didn't... They're hung anyway, and down the line they go, wriggling and yelling"(to be slaughtered while fully conscious).

And on pig slaughter: "If the hog is conscious, ... it takes a long time for him to bleed out. These hogs get up to the scalding tank, hit the water, and start kicking and screaming... There's a rotating arm that pushes them under. No chance for them to get out. I am not sure if they burn to death before they drown, but it takes them a couple of minutes to stop thrashing."

The work takes a major emotional toll on the workers. Here's one worker's account: "I've taken out my job pressure and frustration on the animals, on my wife, ... and on myself, with heavy drinking." Then it gets a lot worse: "... with an animal who pisses you off, you don't just kill it. You ... blow the windpipe, make it drown in its own blood, split its nose... I would cut its eye out... and this hog would just scream. One time I ... sliced off the end of a hog's nose. The hog went crazy, so I took a handful of salt brine and ground it into his nose. Now that hog really went nuts..."

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: A New England
Posts: 9187

Interesting title you chose for a thread on 'animal' cruelty.

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A closed mouth gathers no feet.

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: GA
Posts: 6969

i dont eat meat for several reasons.
i only buy free roaming chicken eggs, and organic milk products farmed from cows in small farm type atmospheres rather than clogged diseased dairy farms.
i dont have a problem with people who hunt or eat meat.
i just dont agree with torturing any living thing for my own benefit. i can survive quite well *you should see my belly and ass* on veggies and other things without meat in my diet.
i highly recommend a veggie lifestyle.
you will live longer!


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"Brains are an asset to the woman in love who's smart enough to hide 'em."- Mae West

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: I don't fukn' know!
Posts: 5137

quote:

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Originally posted by Goatboy:
Interesting title you chose for a thread on 'animal' cruelty.

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: A New England
Posts: 9187

Part of my point was that animals aren't humans.

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A closed mouth gathers no feet.

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location:
Posts: 4501

I don't know the comparative cost of kosher meat versus buying meat at a co-op (yes, some do sell safe meat...bless them), but kosher is another way to go. The killing is quick, safer (cleaner), and less painful than anything animals have to go through in a large slaughterhouse. Case in point, at the Jew's last stand in Masada, when the entire stand committed suicide rather than submit to Roman rule, they had the kosher butchers kill everyone so that it would be less painful.

I buy organic milk and butter, and free-range eggs and chicken as often as I can afford, but back when I had a better paying job, I only bought organic animal products. They also taste better...nothing like a sunny-side-up egg followed by a glass of milk when both taste incredibly fresh.

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Deny closure. Honor ambiguity.

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Registered: Not Yet
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wow, How inhuman !! I love hambugers and steaks. My thoughts when eating is not how the animal died but on how good this teasts. Now, I'm going to be thinking of screaming cows when I bit into that buger, but I'll still eat it.

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sing while you may

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Los Angeles, Ca
Posts: 2113

Does anyone with any type of a brain still believe what PETA says?

They tell college kids to drink beer, not milk. They stalk elementary kids outside of their schools trying to get them to read "their" info on why they shouldn't drink milk either. They have turned to desperation in order to push their cause of ending all animal use.

Oh, you like fish? Count that out too, PETA has a new campaign, "Fishing Hurts".

I don't care if you are a vegetarian, vegan or a meat eater. Just stop trying to BS your way into getting me to quit what I do. (that was directed at PETA)

CAL

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"The desert is my church, and hunting is my god."

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Registered: Feb 2001
Location: Oakland-ish
Posts: 6036

I have been on many sides of this issue.

I spent some of my childhood on a cattle ranch. I never saw the animals slaughtered but I knew that was an inevitablity. This was 30 years ago, things were different. Our cattle roamed the fields freely eating grass and hay. I don't ever recall them being give any injections or additives to their diet. The cows were milked by hand, the chickens ran free in a large fenced area, the pigs ate our table scraps and we played with them like pets. While they were with us, they had a pretty decent life. I do not know the details of their slaughter, and I am sure it wasn't pretty, but I am glad that they didn't live out all their lives in shabby inhumane conditions.

Things are different today in the commercial farm. Unless you buy free range meats and eggs you know the animal you are eating has had a miserable life and perhaps it's death was a relief.

I personally don't want to take part in that. I am not that desperate for cheap meat, and to have it at any cost. Unfortunately, the hidden costs of that burger you are eating is HUGE. Why do you think the texas cattlemen sued Oprah Winfrey over her remarks that she would never eat another burger again? They are scared that if people know the truth about what they are eating and how it is produced and the real costs of producing it, they will stop eating it. Oprah had on a very vocal guest that day, Howard Lyman. He was a cattle rancher, he spoke out about it. He gave a pretty compelling argument about the dangers of the meat industry. The cattlemen can't deny it so they sue. They lost.

I was a vegetarian for about 10 years and a vegan for a chunk of that. I didn't really miss meat, dairy or eggs. My diet was good, I was healthy. I did not do it for humane reasons, I did it for health, I got very sick for awhile and cutting all the crap out made me well again. I now eat free range chicken and eggs, and dairy. I feel that having some "meat" is healthy for me, but I don't have it every night. Most of my meals are still vegetarian. I eat wild fish sometimes, salmon. I won't buy the farmed garbage. I pay more but I feel morally it's right and healthwise it is the only choice.

I really don't have trouble with hunters who kill for their dinner, at least the animal has a chance. It's not like shooting fish in a barrel which is essentially what modern farms are. I disapprove of trophy hunters, end of story. Get a camera, macho man.

One last thought... I remember being on the Underground in London, it was rush hour and the car was quite packed with people. There was advertising on the car, and one of the ads read something like this: "Imagine you are packed into this car with so many people you can't move. You are in the cold and dark, you can't lay down, you have been travelling for hours, you are hungry, tired and terrified. People are shitting and urinating everywhere, you are standing in your own waste. Occasionally someone in the car dies. You continue your journey into the night... Welcome to the life of a farm animal being shipped across Europe for slaughter."

That really stuck in my head. I know I have to kill to eat, even the carrot dies. But I don't have to torture the things first. It's all about MONEY, the almighty dollar, the bottom line. Greed hijacks a person's heart and steals their conscience. Who gave us the right to treat ANYTHING on this planet like that?

some links:

Howard Lyman http://www.vegsource.com/lyman/
http://www.milksucks.com/
http://www.earthsave.org/

and that's all I have to say about that...

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"if you never take it seriously, you never get hurt and if you never get hurt you always have fun"

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location:
Posts: 4501

Howard Lyman came to Indiana University to speak, when I was a sophmore. At that time, his info was not widely known, and the room was not exactly packed with people. For the most part, he was preaching to the converted, but giving compelling reasons to stop wasting land resources and to stop abusing livestock in the name of feeding people. He saw the land he'd grown up on go to waste, thanks to using fertilizers, insecticides, etc, which he learned about as an ag major in school.

One thing he did freaked me out then, and it freaks me out more now, since I've been studying rhetoric for the past few years. He made the claim that he only needed to sleep about 3-4 hours a night, since going vegan. That reeked too much of Oprah-isms (wonder why she's all into Deepak Choprah?). I found it even more ironic that he appeared on her show because of that. There's just something about using the "everything will be all right if you just..." that frightens me...it's like mind control or something.

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Deny closure. Honor ambiguity.

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: I don't fukn' know!
Posts: 5137

quote:

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Originally posted by CAL:
Does anyone with any type of a brain still believe what PETA says?

They tell college kids to drink beer, not milk. They stalk elementary kids outside of their schools trying to get them to read "their" info on why they shouldn't drink milk either. They have turned to desperation in order to push their cause of ending all animal use.

Oh, you like fish? Count that out too, PETA has a new campaign, "Fishing Hurts".

I don't care if you are a vegetarian, vegan or a meat eater. Just stop trying to BS your way into getting me to quit what I do. (that was directed at PETA)

CAL

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Registered: Oct 2000
Location: Dumbfucksville!
Posts: 12164

We should only eat animals that have died from natural causes!

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: Myrtle Beach, SC
Posts: 15178

quote:

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Originally posted by GoFuckYourselves!:
We should only eat animals that have died from natural causes!

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Registered: Oct 2000
Location: Dumbfucksville!
Posts: 12164

quote:

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Originally posted by Roshigoth:
I think it's quite natural that an animal die when it's throat is cut. Don't you?

It would be very unnatural if the animal survived...

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Registered: Jan 2001
Location: New Jersey. USA
Posts: 670

I eat 1 meal a day or so.

I have not eaten breakfast in years. I just am not a morning person at all. I digress quickly though

I do not think that we should hunt animals at all. For sport only makes it worse.
I guess some people get an ego trip from killing something with their high-powered rifle. Whatever does it for them.
I eat meat. Not much though, I try to avoid it as much as I can. I think I'll give up eating meat, just to see how long I last.
I'm just a hypocritimous I guess.

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Everyone is a failure in some way. I am just a generic one.

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