Eating meat if you had to kill your intake?

Talfuchre said:
Dexter,

I usually make the distinction of other sources of nutrition that animals are capable of feeling pain in the same way we are. I know the argument can be made that plants do respond to attacks - but they do not have nervous systems like we do, nor feel pain, like we do. In a way, I am trying to treat others like I would like to be treated.


However, 'good reasons' should not include 'because I can' and 'because I don't think about it'.

So, if I am going to cause an animal pain (the slaughtering process) I would like to decrease the amount of pain to include what I need to stay healthy and what I would kill were doing the killing. I am trying to decide for me, within what I think it right, how much meat I should eat.

I don't want to turn this into a debate over when life begins, who has rational powers (animals or humans), or when life should be ended. I just wanted to ask the question: How much would you eat if you were the one doing all of the killing.


TF
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If you are asking "how much meat" strictly from a nutritional stand point, there are countless books written on the subject, read up and then believe which ever expert you chose. But your not, your asking because it bothers you to cause pain, which is fine and I will not say anything bad about that. I will say that it is a personal decision that you will have to make for yourself, you are lucky to live in a time and society where you can make that choice.

If some of the things we prepare for come to pass there might come a time when you do not have the luxury of making that choice. So it seems to me to be prudent to learn the skills and steel yourself for that eventuality. Chris
 
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Certain humans don't eat anything with heartbeat and disapprove of taking any animals life even when it comes to thinning them so they don't all starve.
A mountain lion will eat you to survive and lick his chops when he's done.

We have 8 inches of fresh snow on the ground here, it's late February and in a primitive situation, your stock of stored grown food would be very low. There are 100 Canadian Honkers in a field behind me right now resting from flight. If my supplies were low, I'd take as many geese as I could, because it's cold and I can store the meat. I would thank The Lord for the food while cutting off the heads after the kill.

Like I said in a previous post "I suspect that our "Hunter/Gatherer" instincts would kick in and all thought of ethics would be out of mind should we be suddenly cast into the wild".
 
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Dexter,

Thank you for being so cool. I was worried where that was heading. I feared I opened up too large a can of worms.

I SIMPLY never thought about the PITA it is to simply kill and clean meat. I think my privileged status allowed me to not think in this direction.

I think the ramming down throats has gone both ways - and I am glad it is not a part of this discussion.

I tend to agree with the Atkins diet concept. It tends to be VERY hard on the kidneys in the long run - but a primitive diet is certainly NOT the Atkins. I think the primitive diet would be heavy on foraging for a long period of time - and then heavy on protein in spurts (when an animal was killed).

However, that is not what I was bringing up - just how much meat would I eat if I had to kill and process it all.

Chris,

Killing doesn't bother me. You have taken me out of context - killing for less than valid reasons bother me. I have no problem killing animals - and my experience in the Marines told me that I have no problem killing humans - when I have good reasons for doing so.

So - again - the question is - if I am going to kill - how much would I eat if I had to kill it all. I don't think you saw any 'squeamishness' in any of my posts. Ethics is not always about what bothers you. In fact, I would argue that the serious ethical decisions demand you do what bothers you because it is ethical to do.

Porcupine,

I agree - except I am not in a survival situation right now - thus the ethical situation. Were I in a SHTF situation - the parameters would change and thus the ethical questions would change. I would kill if I needed to save my family from harm - but I should not simply kill anyone on my lawn right NOW! ;)

Although - some of the salesmen on my door I would like to kill! ;)

TF
 
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Man, this is a thread for Lycosa! :p

My meat intake would probably decrease some, but I would begin to substitute turkey, fish, and venison for the larger amounts of chicken, pork, and cow meat I eat now.

Ounces per day? I have no idea. It varies a lot from day to day.
 
PorcupineMtns66 said:
I think that the answer depends on many variables. Weather, the season, your health, number of mouths to feed, availability of food in a given geographic location and if on the move, the unknown area your heading to. So many things factor into this.
I would obviously eat less. I wouldn't take a large animal and waste food knowing I only need a small meal x 3 unless I could keep the excess fresh and safe to eat.

I suspect that our "Hunter/Gatherer" instincts would kick in and all thought of ethics would be out of mind should we be suddenly cast into the wild.

This thread will probably get some to think about the amount they are consuming each day. We tend to eat twice what we really need at a sitting. Cutting back is not good for the beef and poultry industries but good for our wastelines!
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In case you missed this, these are my thoughts about intake.
 
Thanks Porcupine. I did miss it.

I only HOPE I have those instincts. I tend to look around for food - and imagine what it would be like to starve! ;)

TF
 
Ethics would go, and instincts might return, but skills would not be there for everyone right off the bat. Hunting is not rocket science, but it does take some work to be able to succeed reliably.
 
I would eat very little meat if I had to kill and process it myself. Part of the reason I don't hunt is because I don't like game meat anyway.

I have absolutely no problem with hunting, I just don't like killing stuff especially if I'm not eating it.

I'm a supermarket meat eater I guess. ;)
 
Talfuchre said:
Chris,

Killing doesn't bother me. You have taken me out of context - killing for less than valid reasons bother me. I have no problem killing animals - and my experience in the Marines told me that I have no problem killing humans - when I have good reasons for doing so.

So - again - the question is - if I am going to kill - how much would I eat if I had to kill it all. I don't think you saw any 'squeamishness' in any of my posts. Ethics is not always about what bothers you. In fact, I would argue that the serious ethical decisions demand you do what bothers you because it is ethical to do.
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Sorry, I didn't mean to. It seemed to me that you were not wanting to eat meat because of the pain it caused on other living things, which in my mind is a consideration. I want to kill as cleanly as possible with as little suffering as possible, animal or human. And I absolutely detest wastefulness. I do enjoy shooting jackrabbits, especially with air rifles and handguns and I do kill much more than I consume. I guess I justify it with keeping the screwed up ecosystem in balance, which is also an ethics discussion.

I also did not mean to imply that a paleo diet was in line with an adkins diet, just different ideas.

So to answer, if I had to kill all of my own meat and still had access to modern convienences, I don't think it would change my diet at all. I have the skills and time to process my own, probably 60% I already do. I am still at a loss for how ethics is involved in this though. Chris
 
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One thing that I would do would be to immerse myself in animal husbandry. I would MUCH prefer to go into my feedlot and select what I am going to eat rather than chase it down over 10 miles or so... If you get my drift.
 
Runningboar,

Great reply! Thanks for your honesty. This is helping me process this. I hadn't thought about so many of these issues.

TF
 
The essence of the question:

Finally I asked Chief Jamino what I had come all this way for. "Why did you eat people? Was it ritual, where you had to destroy an enemy completely so that he doesn't attack you in the spirit world?"

"No", he said. "In former times before the whiteman come, there were many men but not much meat. And so we kill men for eating."

And that's all I really wanted to know.


J. Maarten Troost - Getting Stoned with Savages
 
Mnnedham,

Is that quote right? Many men - but not much meat? Many men - as in many men in his tribe - but not much meat to feed them? White men - are meat in this sentence?

Wow.

TF
 
mneedham said:
The essence of the question:

Finally I asked Chief Jamino what I had come all this way for. "Why did you eat people? Was it ritual, where you had to destroy an enemy completely so that he doesn't attack you in the spirit world?"

"No", he said. "In former times before the whiteman come, there were many men but not much meat. And so we kill men for eating."

And that's all I really wanted to know.


J. Maarten Troost - Getting Stoned with Savages
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Reminds me of that movie about the airplane crash in South America.

Please note ... nothing in any of my posts was meant to be confrontational...... it's hard to covey things properly online. This is a great thought provoking discussion!
 
Talfuchre said:
Mnnedham,

Is that quote right? Many men - but not much meat? Many men - as in many men in his tribe - but not much meat to feed them? White men - are meat in this sentence?

Wow.

TF
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That is correct. According to Troost, cannibalism was widely practiced in Fiji at one point (and maybe until the 1960s?). The chief indicated that they hunted men from their enemy tribe (the large nambias), they would capture a man who was found foraging/hunting, club him to to death and fire up the grill. Apparently, many early missionaries and visitors from Europe (long pork) were also eaten. The cannibals had their own set of ethical/cultural standards, they ate the whole man (wasting nothing), and women were not allowed to eat men. The question that was gnawing at Troost (pun intended) was why eat men at all?
 
in my trade the weather leaves me unemployed a bit each year, and there's 6 children in my home now, and i personally harvest as much game as possible, and when i cant i buy meat buy the half.

if i had to eat only what i killed and cleaned, i'd eat just the same ammount, last year we consumed 3 deer before the spring thaw ever came.....i even can some to preserve it but it never lasts, we love it.

canning would be a way to preserve the meat, and could be done in a primitave setting provided some resources were available.
 
I've researched various diets and noticed that most "common knowledge" about them is wrong, even when it comes from "experts."

Atkins is a good example. This diet has three phases, the Induction Phase which is the one with only 20 grams of carbs per day, then the Ongoing Weight Loss Phase where the person starts adding carbs until he no longer loses weight, then backs down a bit, and then the Lifetime Maintenance Phase where you add the carbs, mainly fruits and vegetables, to the point where you don't gain more weight. Most Atkins critics think the entire diet is the Induction Phase, which Atkins admits is unbalanced. IMO it is more something for people who have a lot of weight to lose.

Another example is the Zone. EVERY thing I've read or have been personally told critical of the Zone was wrong. They all confused it with Atkins. The diets are very different both in content and effect. Barry Sears considers ketosis dangerous while Atkins advocates it. Everyone who has personally told me how bad it is brought up "health" reasons but when further questioned they all turned out to be PETA-types who were against eating meat When further questioned, most even admitted that it had nothing to do with health but was an "ethical" issue and they just used "health" to get "unethical" people to act "ethical."

The Zone diet is not high in protein compared to the typical American diet, just lower in carbs. The basic idea is to eat as much protein as you can fit in the palm of your hand, and fill the rest of the plate with green vegetables, and maybe have a piece of fruit. That's not a lot of protein, carbs, or fat.

Another issue is that not everyone is the same metabolic type, so one diet won't work for everyone.
 
I haven`t hunted a day in my life. I`ve not killed many animals in my life. I`ve not slaughtered many animals in my life.
If i had room for a few animals, and for these animals to be my food, i`d actually up my intake by a rather staggering amount, as my problem nowadays is the way meat is prepared and hung in traditional abattoirs. That is, the meat isn`t hung for long enough, and it`s packed in specially formulated gas packets, to keep the meat looking red for as long as possible. It can also sometimes be treated with different additives to make it appear fresh, even if it`s been thawed and frozen a dozen times.
This is why i don`t eat much meat. Simply because i don`t want to support an industry where animals aren`t fully utilized, not to mention that the meat is not properly aged.
(Note that i live in Norway, and that your country may differ in its laws.)

Back to the topic. If i were to kill my own meat intake, and i had the room to have livestock, or a way to hunt for food, i would. Most definately.

(Sorry if i missed part of the thread, as i only read through a few posts before i just had to answer.)
 
To answer your question, I would eat the same amount I do know. Perhaps my answer would be different under a specific context though. (I would have no problem spear fishing, as I used to do it (poorly I might add).

"I posed this question to my class. Image all of the meat preparers suddenly disappeared - and you had to prepare your own meat from kill to table. Further imagine that you had to (safely for this thought experiment) kill your quarry with a knife (I didn't want to divorce my students from the kill). How many of you would eat the same amount of meat?"

I'm a vegetarian (on and off 20yrs and on recently 2+), but eat eggs, dairy, fish (some), shellfish (less and less these days). I never had a problem processing fish, shucking clams, shrimping, etc. I used to love to shoot, but I've never hunted. I wouldn't know how to process game. I have no problem with those that eat what they kill, but I don't see much 'sport' in hunting. I do, however, have somewhat of an ethical problem with factory farming in situations where animals get treated like dirt, are stacked on top of each other, trudge through their own feces, etc. We have a farm membership and pass several of these lots every time we go out to harvest.

Whether you hunt, fish, or farm it is important to know where food comes from, and how it gets from field to table. This is lost in much of the 'modern' population as is the notion of true cost.
 
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SouthernCross said:
I would eat as much meat as I do now.

As a matter of fact I kill and process a fair bit of the meat I eat now :D

Cuttingofftheribcage.jpg



Kind regards
Mick
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Droool...
 
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