Vegans/vegitarians

I'm a poor college kid that lives mostly off instant ramen noodles. Unless that has some meat bi-product in it, I guess I could be considered a vegetarian.

 

I think there is only one vegetarian ramen option, and when I ate ramen I remember its package color was teal

 

In Australia, yes. In the US, it's 10 to 1 your beef spent most of its life (with the exception of the first ten months or so) in a tiny, cramped feedlot. It's almost impossible to find free-range meat where I live, and completely impossible to find affordable free-range meat.

Dairy cows will not, in fact, produce milk anyway. They will produce milk only if they have recently given birth, and to maximize production, the calf will be taken away almost immediately, which causes the cow and calf considerable emotional distress. Most dairy farms force their cattle to give birth far more often than is physically healthy, burning them out after a few years.

However, my main objection to the purchase of eggs and dairy products lies in the inconceivably horrific treatment of egg hens and dairy cows in the US. If it's almost impossible to find free-range meat here, it's completely impossible to find free-range dairy or eggs. Even the local hippie store doesn't carry any. I buy my eggs from one of my professors who raises chickens, and mostly go without milk, cheese, or butter. Especially insidious is the fact that eggs labeled "free range" or "cage free" may in fact still come from chickens in incredibly cramped conditions, subjected to debeaking and all the other hideous factory farm practices provided the chickens have a theoretical ability to leave their coop.

I have no objection to honey.

 

I've spent my whole life wanting to go veg for a multitude of reasons, but I've never worked up the guts to actually do it.

I think I'm going to start by being a pescatarian this summer, and hopefully working up to going full on veg, maybe even vegan.

My only problem is I struggle with bad anemia, but I'll see how it goes.

 

Reading these arguments make me laugh. First of all, just imagine how many things die in one day. Then realize how many deaths are NOT caused by humans.

See, I didn't set up this thing. If you have to kill for food, then so be it. If you like eating meat and drinking milk, so be it. What I never can understand is the whole paranoia over eating meat. People get too over-emotional over it. I don't see cows giving a shit about what's happening to other species. And what about plants? They're alive too and I've damn well have heard of plant rights. It's absurd. We need to learn how to treat each other right as a species first before even stepping foot outside that because, unlike most species, we're capable of critical thinking. We can do things outside of just natural instinct.

As soon as cows figure out how to build a rocket ship to the moon, I'll perhaps earn some respect for them and stop drinking milk. Until then, I need to go buy some Ovaltine.

 

I can't speak for all vegetarians and vegans, but my decision not to eat meat and animal products is not based off a reverence for life, but a deep regard for the capacity to suffer. Animals, especially higher mammals, have that capacity. Plants do not. They cannot feel pain, do not have emotions, and certainly cannot think. Animals have an immense capacity for suffering, and modern farming practices, at least in the US, create an amount of suffering that is unbelievably horrific.

 

I don't find that unbelievably horrific, though. Do I think the slaughtering business could be handled more "ethically"? Sure, maybe. But does it matter? Well, that's the debate.

 

Slaughterhouses are nothing. I'm talking about the day-in day-out business of factory farming. Keeping several hens together in a tiny cage so small that they have to have their beaks cut off to keep them from cannibalizing each other, depriving them of space to dustbathe--an instinctive need--so that they rub their bellies raw on the mesh floor of their cages; keeping dairy cows in tiny enclosures and forcing them to repeatedly give birth, which is a major strain on their health, then taking away their calves almost immediately after birth, which causes severe psychological distress; confining sows, which are as intelligent as dogs, in gestation crates so small that they can neither sit down nor turn around; and I'm assuming you already know how veal calves are raised.

No, my concerns on animal suffering are not specific to the slaughterhouse. If anything, the slaughterhouse provides a blessed relief to a life that has been nothing but confinement, pain, and torment since birth.

 

I just can't find myself to care too much. I know what you're saying and understand where you're coming from but I just see them as animals/food. It's just how the world is set up; survival of the fittest. We're omnivores.

 

I have no objection to eating meat. I have an objection to the way in which livestock are raised. That's a very different objection.

 

Fair enough.

 

"Survival of the fittest" is a misquote. Darwin said "natural selection" meaning evolution chooses which biological traits will allow a species to continue. It's survival of the genetic traits of any species, nothing to do with who eats what.

 

In the US animal cruelty laws don't apply to agriculture.

 

I'm a vegetarian, ever since I watched a video showing how people treat the animals, I can't eat meat without thinking of that.

 

that's how i stopped eating fish: in school i saw a video about the fishing industry and was disgusted by how disrespectful people are of other living things.

 

I'm a flexitarian. I really can't avoid meat on all days, but I avoid it when I can. It's hard when I live in a family full of meat lovers, then I love raw tuna, chicken, and occasionally beef. I do eat TONS of veggies though and definitely eat more vegetables and fruits than meat.

 

i just became vegan im loving it i dont miss meat or anything like that really ive come to realize they have vegan substitutions for like everything so its really not that hard to be vegan and it makes me feel better to know that im not participating in consuming animal products considering how they are treated