I know, it's just that you said that you were going to start eating meat when you moved out. I'm sorry if I offended you or any thing. Also, please don't tell me that I didn't read the other posts. I've read the whole dang thread.



No. We don't. And saying that "nobody likes vegetarians" and "they are so obnoxious" is just a stupid and ignorant thing to say. I don't walk around talking about why I'm vegetarian. This is a DISCUSSION thread. I'm discussing.

The reason why I said you where "obnoxious" was because you make it sound as if we all shouldn't eat meat. Just because we as a society have found other ways to get protein doesn't mean we have to use those resources. People in this world have a choice to eat meat or not to eat meat. That choice is theirs. Not being forced to do what others think. Oh and another thing too:



Do your studying next time that was for not killing people. Not animals. In fact in the bible people did eat meat. Before you try to use something from the bible, at least know what your talking about.

Call me whatever you want I don't care.

You have all rights to eat meat if you wish. I'm sorry if I made it sound otherwise. About the Ten Commandments thing though, I know it was about killing people. I was just trying to make a point. And by the way, I'm not going to call you anything. You have your opinion, I have mine.

You know what your right. I apologize for saying Vegetarians are Obnoxious.

You bring up a lot of great points Pigeon. Sad to say that because mankind always have a craving, urge, hunger, thirst or what ever else for what they desire is why we do what we do.

Also from reading your post, people who truly love meat will most likely find you offending. When reading them you sound really passionate but also express empowerment which feels like your forcing everything down there throat. I agree it would be terrific for an essay but when trying to convince some people, a more gentle or polite way of expressing your thought would be better when your are trying to convince those meat lovers out there.

Personally, I have nothing against vegetarians - I'm related to some - with two exceptions: veggies that try and convert you and people that eat fish and still claim to be vegetarians because it isn't possible to be more hypocritical.

I enjoy eating meat but I'm not opposed to meals that don't have any meat in. However, i do agree that the conditions that animals are kept in can be appalling which is why i try to only eat British, free-range meat so I know it has had a decent life.

Very good points, especially the one about plants not feeling (I can't really think about anything to say to that, heh). But yes, I believe meat is still needed. If vegetarians could plain and simply rely on tofu, than they wouldn't suffer from malnutrition illnesses or anemia. Yeah, eggs, milk and cheese also contain protein, but meat provides at least the greatest part of protein we need (actually, all of it). Still, eggs, milk and cheese are also animal sources, so we would still have to raise animals: the only difference is we wouldn't kill them in the end of the process.

I don't see the animal killing as a "humans are superior beings" matter, I never thought of it that way. But you can't deny that we have developed a rather advanced inteligence compared to our fellow thinking organisms. Otherwise we wouldn't be here. In fact, we wouldn't have created cattle raising itself: we found a clever way of easily obtaining food, even though the methods are cruel and disgusting, and THAT I definetly vote for changing. I mean, if we can provide painless death to humans (and pets), we can do the same to those animals.

I wouldn't exactly see a problem with raising those animals in decent conditions and killing them to obtain all the resources they can provide.

Vegetarian diet indeed brings health benefits, but, as I said before, it has to be controlled in order to be complete. It has to contemplate as many vegetables and grains and dairy products as possible, which wouldn't be a problem if the ingestion of meat (of any kind; people seem to only think about cows and red meat, when fish, for example, still exists, and it doesn't seem to be a problem for lots of vegetarians) was okay. It works for small groups and especially for people who can afford it; I can't see that as a world-wide phenomenom.

I still mantain my position of lowering the meat ingestion, as to reduce the risks of heart diseases and to lower the levels of fat, but not anulating it. If that happens, then we would have serious problems with the demanding expansion of agriculture, which leads to deforestation, reducing the size of wild animals' habitats and other environmental issues. And considering dairy products are still derived from animals, cattle raising would still exist, along with fishing.

I'm enjoying this discussion. Please don't stop.

First of all, I'm very sorry if I sounded pushy or anything. I wasn't trying to be rude. I just got sort of carried away. I understand why many people are not vegetarian. Many people have eaten meat their whole life. Many have a meat as their favorite food. It would be difficult, no, impossible for some to suddenly stop. I was slowly losing interest in meat anyway, so it was quite easy for me to stop. I hadn't eaten fish, crustaceans, or any other sea-dwelling thing in years (aside from the occasional linguini and clam sauce when my mom made it), mainly because having so many pet fish and about a million pet hermit crabs over your lifetime really gets to you (Plus, when I was a little kid, on some vacation to an aquarium me and my family took, we saw live shrimp, and I thought that they were so cute). I had gotten sick of McDonalds and other fast food at an early age because my mom was always at work for long hours, so my dad just got fast food. Lately (now that my dad is retired), my mom is working overtime nearly every night (except on weekends when she usually doesn't work), so I was basically living off of Apple Cinnamon Cherios and macaroni and cheese. Others who like to cook/have a parent who likes to cook meat, like fast food, eat out a lot, etc. would probably have a very difficult time stopping.

As for Galar's points: You are right about many things. I'm sure a lot of vegetarians suffer from protein-deficiency related illnesses, and meat has a lot more protein than things such as milk, eggs (I actually don't eat eggs either), etc., but there are vegetarian foods with a lot of protein as well. Boca Burgers (yes, I'm back on the stupid Boca Burgers...) almost have the same amount of protein as normal burgers, with (I think. I'm not looking at the box right now, but I know that the protein was very close to a normal burger) no fat or cholesterol. Of course, it doesn't taste as good as a normal burger, but it's surprisingly not as bad as you'd think.

I will admit as well: We are much smarter than other animals. Even the parrot (believed to be, aside from humans, the most intelligent animal) has only the intelligence of a six-year-old human, and perhaps, if animals were killed more humanely and kept in better conditions, me and several other vegetarians would not have at least as much of a problem with meat. Also, the "humans are superior" argument wasn't aimed towards you, but towards individual who actually do view animals as "stupid critters", and you can't deny that those don't exist. I didn't mean that the act of us killing animals for food was simply for the sake of showing our "superiority". To tell you the truth, when writing about that, I was thinking of my brother who constantly refers to our cat as "stupid", and says chickens aren't animals, "they're food". But I still am not quite happy with the idea of a species being as existing to be raised and killed. Maybe it's just me, because I am a huge animal lover, but I just feel weird about it.

About it being a world-wide phenomenon, I can't in the present see it as being one either. You do have to carefully watch what you eat to make sure that you're getting enough protein. I agree with you, expanding agriculture would cause in deforestation, which I am definitely against. Again, I repeat, I don't think that everyone should be vegetarian. However, in the future, there may be more solutions to our meat addiction. Fishing, I am still against, but if cows were only raised for milk and allowed to live out their full lives, to me it wouldn't be as much as a big deal because they are not being killed by us, and again, as long as they were kept alive in a clean, humane environment.

You bring up many excellent points yourself.

P.S: Pokemaniac apology accepted. But reviewing my post, I guess I was a bit obnoxious, so I apologize as well.

Well, I see no problem in eating meat, Lions eat meat, bears eat meat, crocodiles eat meat, sharks eat meat, I also read that a cow ate a chick on the newspaper.
But I prefer veggies, they taste better (Onions...Yum...) and I detest lamb.
[pointless]I also recently noticed that fish tastes like chicken.[/pointless]

Ah, I see. I do understand the "animals being raised to be killed" reason you pointed, but even though I'm an animal lover myself (<3 Animal Planet, heh), that doesn't seem to get to me that much; or, at least, not as much as it gets to you or others.

I also frown upon some people's view of animals being stupid, like, "just animals"; I did scowl some boys on my street that were shooting rocks at birds. I don't know, this animal cruelty does get on my nerves, but it's not the same as the vegetarians' views, I don't know why.

Geez, this subject IS difficult. I'm lacking ideas now. D:

I too frown upon those who believe that animals are of lesser intelligence and/or inferior. I strictly believe that their lives are just as, if not more valuable than each of ours.

Being the vegetarian that I am, I believe and accept that I'll suffer from protien deficiencies later on in my lifetime, but that doesn't really bother me. I've grown to believe that other animals' lives are more important than mine (call me freak all you want, I won't care the slightest). I'm not planning on giving my vegetarianism up any time soon, and I strongly believe in animal rights.

Having that said, I won't try to force my opinion down onto other people, but I hope that some people can think about what they're doing. I'm not trying to force anyone to quit eating meat, and I'm fine with those that do. I'm just voicing my opinion.

...Cal, you took the words out of my mouth! That's basically how I feel too. I think that the animal's lives are more important than mine. Now, even if they started killing animals in a humane way, I still would stay vegetarian (though the idea of meat wouldn't disgust me as much). Also, since I've become vegetarian, I've tried (and discovered that I love) a bunch of foods that, before I became vegetarian, I would have refused to eat.

So I was thinking about Galar's point on agriculture (without meat, we would need more fields for crops which would lead to deforestation) yesterday after my last post, and I realized something: Earlier in this thread (one of the first posts, I think), DatVu said that livestock consume 80% of our crops. Around when I first announced that I had gone vegetarian, my dad told me an interesting statistic. Neither my dad or myself can remember the exact statistic, but it was something along the lines of "for every pound of beef, 10 pounds of our crops are used to feed the animal". Technically, if livestock is consuming 80% of our crops, and for every 10 pounds (again, don't quote me on the exact number) of crops in that 80%, we are only getting one pound of beef (for cows at least), then wouldn't using that 80% on ourselves actually reduce the amount of crops needed?

And one more quick point: When people use the point of other animals eating meat, why do they always use carnivores? Carnivores, even more than other meat eaters, really do need meat. If you used an omnivorous animal, your point would be more comparable to the situation of humans eating meat (though either way, I have made my counter-point of animals eating other animals several times, and it applies to both carnivores and omnivores).

PS: Shiny Latios, I've never heard that story of a cow eating a chick. That's kind of weird...

Edit: Actually, I think bears are omnivores, so I guess not all of the points about animals eating other animals are about carnivores.

i was vegetarian once...
i lasted like one month.

but those people are real passionate of their beliefs...

i think there is nothing wrong with them.

You can't be a vegetarian and live in Texas. I personally don't have anything against eating meat.

Mmmm steak

I dont think that animals are of lesser intelligence. So what if they cant do math, start fires or send rockets to the moon- thet dont have to and neither do we. it dosent mean there not smart. Scientists want you to believe that animals dont have feelings or even that they can think for themseves. They say this to further their agenda so they wont have to feel bead about hurting them. I do not and will not believe in dumbing down animals.
Vegatarians have a right to say what they want but the decision is always yours and yours alone.

I dont like meat but i have to eat it while I live where i live. I plan to go vegatarian when i move out. For myself and for the animals

what ever you eat wheather plant or animal something gives it's life to to give you the energy to live

if you don't eat meat b/c the animal was treated poorly, then don't eat meat that was treated poorly. Eat the free ranged animals that live better and are not feed antibiotics

And if that is your reason for not eating meating then you should not be eating plants that are sprayed with harmful pesticides and grow emzymes for the same reason

as for trying to convert people... it is a sign of being unsure of what they are doing, just piont out they are eating harmful pesticides and that they should do something about that before talk to you

But for some people, it's not just because they treat the animals horribly, which they do (dear god those pictures are scary), but the idea of killing another animal that feels pain/feels emotions, when you can live without having to do it. I mean, if you can go without killing something, why kill? Maybe if we needed meat, but if you ask me we don't, or else all of the world's vegetarians and vegans would be dead.

Even tho I agree that they re treated terribly, I still eat meat. I believe that animals were CREATED for us. Period. Post count plus one.

I think eating meat is fine, as long as the conditions the animals are kept in and the slaugtering methods are "humane". I was going to be a vegitarian once, but steaks are too good. I try not to eat fast food meat, as it isn't that good anyway, so I see no purpose in that.

First of all, we are animals. Secondly, we were not the first living organisms to be created on this planet; this unquestionably disproves the "animals being created to serve humans" theory.

He never used he word SERVE. He is most likely christian, like me, and the Bible states that humans have dominion over the animals. And you know perfectly well what he meant when he said "animals". You sound like a reporter.

Ugh. We're animals too, but let's not turn this into a religious debate, shall we? Instead, I'll try and make a point from your perspective: If animals were "created for us", does that give us the right to totally disrespect them? Let's say you get caught in a thunderstorm, and you are near a house. The person who owns the house says, "come in". I don't know about you, but I'd thank that person to death. We kill animals, we take milk from them that should be going to their kids, we take their eggs, we make clothing out of them, the least we could do is show them some respect! ...and give them decent living conditions! But if you ask me, saying that animals were "made" for us is like saying certain people exist to serve other people...

Eggs- doesn't hurt them

Milk- They would die if they aren't milked regularly. Trust me, the kids are cared for. The kid has its fill, then we get the rest. By the time the kids i hungry, she'll have more milk.

killing them- ok, that could be seen as wrong.

Clothing- Again, not hurting them

Living Conditions- Those should be improved. Slaughtering should be painless, and they should live well during their life. I agree with you here.

so I assume you eat nothing that comes from an animal? ok, lets go again

Milk-
Machines=bad
If they are milked by hand (Some are) it's ok. as for kids, fine. I'll give you that.

Clothing-
Hide- If you are getting meat from them, you might as well make use of the hide too.
Fur- I agree
Wool- (this is what I thought about when you said clothing) A wooly sheep won't do so well in summer.