Eating meat if you had to kill your intake?

gdtrfb said:
A live chicken is worth much more than a couple of meals.
Click to expand...

For what??? Chickens are food, what other worth do they have. Never seen one fetch a ball or pull a load. About the only thing I can think of is to fertilize my yard with their composted crap but I do that now and still eat them, so that doesn't count.

I'm really at a loss, please let me know how they are worth more than a few meals. My family raises chickens so I am sure they would like to know too. Chris
 
I initially thought you added the knife stipulation because this was a forum of knife enthuisiasists. I do see your point that using a gun can distance a person from the kill but I dont think that makes it less ethical. It seems to me if you were intent on eating meat while minimizing pain to animals, the gun would be the perfect choice. If you chose to fish instead and caught as many fish as it took to equal the meat of one deer, would you not have caused a significant more amount of pain? Ive been using the excuse for years with my wife that I hunt because I have to feed the family (its just the two of us). This scenario would only validate my excuse and give me more time to hunt and thus eat more meat.
 
runningboar said:
For what??? Chickens are food, what other worth do they have. Never seen one fetch a ball or pull a load. About the only thing I can think of is to fertilize my yard with their composted crap but I do that now and still eat them, so that doesn't count.

I'm really at a loss, please let me know how they are worth more than a few meals. My family raises chickens so I am sure they would like to know too. Chris
Click to expand...


Hey Chris, you know those little white & brown golf ball-sized things they leave around? You can eat those. :D

-- FLIX
 
FLIX said:
Hey Chris, you know those little white & brown golf ball-sized things they leave around? You can eat those. :D

-- FLIX
Click to expand...

:p :D

In Chris's defense, maybe the original wording should have been "laying hen."
 
FLIX said:
Hey Chris, you know those little white & brown golf ball-sized things they leave around? You can eat those. :D

-- FLIX
Click to expand...

Still food, however you what to justify it, your still eating chicken. And what about when they quit laying or you get too many roosters, sounds like chicken and dumplings time to me. ;) Chris
 
Many people forget that chickens do indeed stop laying eggs after a time. After that point in the pot they go. :D
 
Talfuchre said:
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?
Click to expand...

Currently, I'm almost vegetarian, not for any sentimental reasons though. Knowing that I'm omnivore and animals kill each other for food, too, then WTH.

To your question:

I'd kill animals to feed myself or my family, but preferably in a hunting circumstances. Meaning exactly: I will locate my prey and kill it from ambush with a single clean shot.
Why: compared to what happens in meat processing facilities this is the best possible death to have.
Heck I'd love to be slain by one clean unexpected shot myself rather than to suffer in hospital, old, unable to care for myself, etc.

If I have to kill an captive animal, I'd not use a knife, because the animal will know what you are going to do and get scared and stressed. I'd just shot the cow from an ambush for fast and painless death, too. May sound crazy but since I know I need meat to survive, I don't want my prey to suffer unnecessarily.

EDIT: Chickens excluded. Sorry bleeding hearts but a hen gets a neck twist. BTW it's much better to kill and eat big animals like cows and pigs, because you have less deaths per the same amount of people fed. :)
 
Talfuchre said:
My problem is not with the ethics of killing and animal - but given the fact that I NEED a lot less protein that I currently intake - I am using the parameter of 'eat what you would kill - if you had to' as a standard for how much I SHOULD consume now.
Click to expand...

One comment to this: concerning your personal protein needs and intake, this is your own fight, pal, but I'm not here to judge you or anybody else.
Talking ethics, I'm not even judge anyone who would go and pay somebody else to kill an animal for him since he himself can't do it properly and eat all the meat he can or more.

I'd have a problem, though, with a person who would not eat all the meat on her/his platter. Because it's ethical if you kill (or have killed) something then eat it, thanking to any god you happen to worship or to the animal for giving its life so you can feed or whatever (both the animal and the God don't care anyway), but what makes me pissed up is killing something and then wasting the meat.
I can't stand these well behaving ladies and gentlemen who find it necessary to leave half of their food on their platters after they finished eating, just because some idiot told them these are good manners.

And please don't get politically correct on me and don't say you didn't want people start arguing about it. Yes you did and there is nothing bad about arguing if the people are sorting something between them, it's a normal social interaction. If you are educated enough to teach ethics you are not stupid and you knew exactly that this topics is what it is and that the grasseaters and corpseeaters are arguing on the web ad vomitum since 1970 or what's the official start of the computer age, all the day long.
It's just our f*cking problem that we decided to live in a society where a conflict is strictly forbidden. What the fuck? Political correctness is one big bullshit and it will never replace normal civil human behavior because it is unnatural. And yeah we can argue and yeah we can even shout at each other because this is normal human interaction - as long as it's contructive.
 
Alberich,

Let me tell you a story. I had a review last week in my class where my vice president told me I am an excellent professor but I should stop cursing and making fun of my students. Political correctness is not my strong point - nor is it a strong point of any philosopher.

With that said - on the internet I have witnessed questions I have asked devolve into shouting matches more times than I can count. This board is a haven for me where I want to ensure a question that I asked doesn't not turn into any sort of shouting match because of a misunderstanding.

There is a large difference, my friend, between the Greek concept of arguing (both parties putting forth their positions and an evaluation takes place where the more logical position is decided for) and what most American's view as an argument (both parties getting louder instead of more logical until both parties quit - neither having changed their minds).

Shouting is most often not constructive when it comes to placing ones position. On the internet, where tone and body language are absent, getting 'loud' is almost always counterproductive.

So, to clarify, I wanted people to argue - but I didn't want them to argue - if you catch my drift.

I can't think of a more un-politically correct person than a former Marine, fulltime Philosophy professor - and I almost take it as a compliment that I have controlled myself so well as to confuse you in this thread. ;)

TF
 
Having grown up on a farm and standing there as a couple steers I hand fed were butchered, I can say that those steaks were great. Chickens were usually dispatched with a hatchet although my grandmother just twisted their necks. Having said that, my meat intake is about 8-10 oz a day now, sometimes half that; cutting back a bit might actually be a good thing assuming veggies were there to compensate.

Raising chickens for eggs and culling the non-producers for meat would seem to make sense.
 
Sadly there is not enough philosophers around these days, obviously.

Concerning Greek and American (not that I know how Americans argue) ways: you actualy describe something which is not teritorrialy specific (I'm running into a language probs at this point). What you call a Greek way I know under a "constructive arguing" label, what you call an American way I know like "securing my position in hierarchy" thing.

Note that the hierarchy fighting is actualy not about arguments and it's not intended to be - the "hierarchy fighter" just gets verbally agressive on his opponent until the opponent gives up - and that's the very politically correct point of this way of verbal abuse - the other guy will never dare to openly disagree again.
PC prophets want exactly this. To silence their opponents, preferably by emotive attacks (like "so you call me a liar?" or "are you a nazi/racist to say such a thing?") and ad hominem attacks. Thats not arguing, really.

But this is the old story about common terminology. Let's say that arguing is derived from argument and once the arguments are missing, then it's just worthless yelling. Or at least this is how I name the two different, let's say, discussion approaches.
But it's the contents, not the form, which is important. PC people are all about the form, which is characteristic by a hysterical conflict evasion. Conflict is seen almost as a life threatening situation because we have, naturally, to be all very chummy and friendly, and it's "solved" accordingly, mostly by "global war" means.
But enough of that - I believe I understand what you wanted to say, and, hopefully, viceversa.
 
We are predators, as evidenced by the fact we have canine teeth and both eyes are in the front of our face. We also have a digestive system which is on the short side of medium length (we do NOT have a long digestive system, as militant veggies would have us believe). This means that we are designed to consume protein primarily, but can survive on bird and rat food in a pinch. The Greeks named it protein, literally first-food for a reason.

I like fruits and veggies, but fruit doesn't grow here, there's a short window for veggies, and what ends up being shipped here is often undesirable. Plenty of meat walking and swimming around here though, so in a survival situation I'd be eating even more meat than I am now. Worked well enough for the Eskimos and indians up here for millennia.

Not sure how I'd hunt it without a rifle, although I have read a bit on the principles of spear hunting. I've dressed out enough game to not be bothered by cutting through flesh and being sprayed by blood.

Frankly, I find hunting to not only be the healthiest way to eat meat, but also the most responsible and natural.
 
I pretty much eat ONLY "wild" meat that I've killed and processed, and I don't really eat all that much meat. So I guess nothing would change for me.

My freezer is full of venison, ducks, geese and fish from my hunting and fishing. I eat wild game as a healthy alternative to domestic raised meat which I assume contains unhealthy hormones, drugs and chemicals. These animals never had any experiences of a natural existence.

There is certainly no ethical problem for me. I wonder about the ethics of people who rely on having someone else kill their food for them --animals that were never allowed to live a natural life-- and then condemn me for hunting.

Stay sharp,
desmobob
 
Alberich,

I understand you fully. Sadly I understand a Czech better than half my American born students! I agree with you - get loud - get passionate - but don't get stupid! :)

H2H,

I have always heard that our digestive system was on the long side of medium. Shortest are straight carvnivors - longest are straight omnivores. I think the 28 feet we have (on average) is pretty long - and it makes me wonder if that has led to all of the colon cancer we have (too much red meat). However, I don't know. Do you have any data to point at? I don't! :)

Bob,

Your last sentence makes a great point.

TF
 
Assuming nothing else changes aside from no more commercially available meat, I'd probably eat less red meat. I might start raising some chickens to compensate.

But really, shopping in a supermarket for my food takes enough time as it is. Hunting would be mostly out of the question, except for the occasional squirrel that comes into range from my house. I just haven't the time or inclination.
 
I go up and down- mostly depending on what's available. I have a housemate who works the butcher end of the local food co-op, and in addition to testing knives, she often scores ridiculous things (like 9 turkeys for $45). Her husband seriously considers himself hungry, NO MATTER HOW MUCH HE EATS, if he doesn't have meat with all three meals, but I'll often eat meat once a day, or maybe twice or maybe thrice or none. Depends on what's around. And we often eat meat more than people would think we do because we make a point of buying whole birds, goats, lamb, ducks, and such and stretching them out- a turkey stock soup, even if it technically has no meat in it, is still turkey.

I see NO change at all if I had to kill every bit of it. Preserving aside, you get a big elk, you eat meat for a while. You run out of all that's not preserved, you skip a few days until the next bunny stew.
 
Talfuchre said:
I agree with you - get loud - get passionate - but don't get stupid! :)
Click to expand...

I'd like to add one more thing.
Politically correct argumentation is not stupid, in fact. It's perfectly rational. But it's not fair. It's well done propaganda in fact. Believe it or not, commies used and are still using the same ways. It's a softer form of brainwashing. They will try to deform your way of thinking by twisting the common words. Hard to explain that properly for me.
And even people who are not yet fully contaminated do adopt the "mainstream" ways of social interaction because the others expect it and would get either confused or angry when adressed another way.

A very good example of that is ever present tendency to selfcriticise. Commies loved to make people criticise themselves, as well as traditional Christian church did. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Like that.
Today we feel that it's polite to approach the "sensitive" conversational topics - or just to present ourselves - this way. May be either a way to soften the overal feelings by giving a clear signal that we are on the "right" side and we will not enter the real argument and verbal conflict, or whatever.

An good example is what McCain said after losing the elections: "You did great, people, it's my failure." Now that's obviously a lie. Was he saying he didn't do his best to win? Did he mean he was not fit to be a good president? So WTF?
The same thing is the very popular criticism of one's own nation and people. Like "We [add a name of a nation here] are [add a degradational remark here]". First of all, this is obviously not true, since the people are basically the same everywhere. So why to mention some obvious human vice and pretend it's nation specific. I don't want to be personal (because you just used what is generally accepted as a polite way of expressing yourself and I take it as a politeness from you) but I want to use the "American way of arguing" as a good example. It's not typicaly American - it's simply stupid and so very international - people do it everywhere and all the time, because people are, plainly, mostly stupid.
Commies supported that a lot to make people in their empire feel less territorial.

That said, I know that one would - if the language barrier is missing ofc - understand better people with similar education and social background than his fellow citizens from different social level. But this is not the point of this. The point is a high level propaganda alert.

The point is, if you people are reading it, please try to look for politically correct manipulation in your behavioral patterns and politically correct propaganda and so called mems around you and try to reject it even if it makes you to get labelled as impolite, agressive, or evil. Because this is a totalitarian - commie - way of controlling people and once detected around you you better get prepared. Not that people who encourage this way of thinking in us are all commies, they just want the same thing - that their TRUTH is a law and nobody dares to oposse it and most importantly discuss it and raise arguments against it.

EDIT Yeah I'm paranoid and simply scared shitless that commies would return. Labelled either as commies or anything else. Just some goddamned gang with one universal truth shooting others who won't agree and obey. I tell you people everything in Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984 is perfectly true. It's not a fable, it's about reality. There is not a single thing which is not realistic in that book. Well yeah smartasses animals do not talk but I'm talking the behavior, OK. :)
And that bastard Marx said that the commie revolution must win at the same time in the most powerfull industrial countries in the world to be succesfull, and I have a very strong feeling that you guys who spent the Cold war on the good side of the Iron curtain are begging to have the commie experience firsthand, so PLEASE learn from the very recent history and don't let these "good kind folks who have seen the Truth and know what is good for you and you will suffer if you dare not to obey" to win. Europe is fuckin going this way and I'm affraid that America is not much better.
 
Last edited:
Did I misread the question? Was the question would we eat more or less meat if we had to "get bloody" to do it? The actual killing of an animal with a knife? Or was the question would we eat more meat than we do now if we had available food that was killed and then had to butcher it ourselves?

These are interesting distinctions, I am going to ask a few of my co-workers today how they feel about it.
 
desmobob said:
There is certainly no ethical problem for me. I wonder about the ethics of people who rely on having someone else kill their food for them --animals that were never allowed to live a natural life-- and then condemn me for hunting.
Click to expand...

I must agree with desmobob.
We kill our own meat too most of the time. It is for this reason of ethics as much as for health reasons. We made a point of teaching the daughter, "this is where meat comes from and you should take responsibility for what you eat."
I imagine we would eat the same amount.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top