I love these arguments that go like this… “If everyone stopped doing for a day, it would .”

The truth is, no it wouldn’t. The world doesn’t work like that. Those animals are still getting fed whether you eat them or not. And if everyone reduced their meat consumption by 10%, those animals would still be slaughtered. Only instead of getting eaten, their owners would be killing them so they wouldn’t have to feed animals that they can’t sell. And the meat would rot in landfills. Considering how big the American cattle industry is, I can think of few better ways to destabilize a major portion of the economy.

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Let’s get a bit basic; we humans are omnivores, which means we pretty much have to eat a bit of everything. Our bodies will not fully function on strict diet of vegetables, any more then it can fully develop on a pure meat diet. As a whole, this country eats way too much red meat; unfortunately it is a cheep source of protein and is readily available. If grazing in a field of grass is your idea of good eating, go for it. Just don’t get all self righteous about it and start degrading those of us who still eat like humans were intended to eat. All things in moderation.

I find most of your arguments rather baffling, Arkannis. You can’t credibly claim that reducing meat consumption won’t, at least in the long run, reduce its production and thus the slaughter of animals. Furthermore, the entire US population could easily move to a vegetarian diet without risking death from insufficient protein. While there may be health advantage to eating meat, we don’t need it to survive. Both by choice and circumstances, countless humans across time and space have lived with little or no animal protein.The one place I agree with you is about hunger. As you say, that’s a problem of distribution, not production.

So, Arkannis, because cows are “dumb as rocks” it is OK to treat them inhumanely? By your logic, if a person has a suffient mental deficiency to make him as dumb as a rock, it is OK to put him in a cage, or in other ways not provide him with quality of life. I know you’re going to say, “you can’t compare an animal with a human.” But your argument is based on the intelligence factor and personality (“mean-spirited”). At what point do you decide which animals are smart enough not to be tortured? Or nice enough?

Let’s keep stuff in perspective. For a human to eat, something must die, whether be plant or animal. It has been said that an animal killed quickly tastes better; apparently the adrenalin in the blood stream taints the meat. But more to my point, why do people continue to put human emotions in the minds of animals. Oh I have heard the, “… it’s a living being…” argument. Well I don’t hear any protest from anyone when the cotton balls are literally ripped from the bush to make those designer jeans you’re wearing. What about when corn is harvested, the stalk is shredded and ground up and fed to those poor old cows. Lets all become Hindu, that way the cows can walk freely up and down the street, and when one craps in our front door, we can feel blessed by that cow.
Sorry for my factitious nature, but this whole thing is such a stupid argument. When an aboriginal people killed an animal they asked for forgiveness and gave thanks that the animal allowed them to kill it so they could eat. If you feel sorry for the cows or chickens or pigs, go to a slaughter house beg for forgiveness, and thank them for letting us kill them so we could eat.
This should stir up some crap…

This looks like the future of meat that will satisfy us all:

http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/why_in-vitro_meat_is_good_for_you/

Cac! I want the 30 seconds it took to read this drivel back! Geez.

Here we have a militant vegan who has been indoctrinated by her veganistic pedagogues to impose her view on others. Her letter is rife with ill-conceived conclusions and false information.
First, Alexandria makes the rather hackneyed statement of, “Taste should not be the deciding factor on whether you eat it.” I disagree. Try eating three grams of iron. From a technical and medical standpoint, it will cause not bodily harm, but it sure will not be appetizing.
Next, Alexandria attempts to bedazzle us with her shockingly large area of deforested land. When taken into perspective, her stated number equals 15,000 sq. miles. The land’s surface area of the earth is 57 million square miles.
Alexandria exposes her utter lack of knowledge when it comes to the American Beef industry (her aim is to change America, not China. Keep that in mind). She claims that the cattle and other animals used for food stuffs live lives of cruelty and confinement. Pray tell, Alexandria, to what cruelty are you referring? Let me first point out your self-contradiction, you claim that these animals are kept in cages, yet proceeded to state that they are exposed to extreme elements. Ask yourself, does that make any logical sense? No, you would not leave a commodity in a cage and then leave it where it is subject to floods, hail, extreme heat, etc. You further your delirious rant with, the notion that these animals are mutilated. What possible benefit could hypothetically be obtained by the harsh treatment and mutilation of your herd? This is simply a smoke screen that arrogant dilettantes employ so sway the minds of the uninformed. Finally, animals used for food stuffs are not executed; they have not been convicted of a capital crime.
Now to your ludicrous number of how many animals are killed each year in the U.S. Your stated number is 10 billion. If this number is correct, at the end of a decade, the U.S. would have killed 1 trillion animals. If you counted by one every second, twenty four hrs a day, it would take over 31,688 YEARS to count to 1 trillion. Does this give you an idea of the idiocy that went into your reasoning, Alexandria? Remember, not all animals that farmers and ranchers posses are sent to slaughter; several are kept for breeding, their produce (milk, eggs, etc.), and domestic reasons.
Now to your politically motivated arguments. Again, here you make boisterous statements with little substance. In 2007, the U.S. donated to Burkia Faso, alone, over 3,000 metric tons of food. The U.S. has donated billions of dollars to world food organizations over the past six years. However, most food that modern industrialized nations send to those nations with starvation is seized by power hungry tyrants and warlords and never reaches the people. Having U.S. citizens capitulate to the life-style Nazis’ demands is not going to solve world hunger.
How about you and the rest of the dirt-worshipers leave the rest of us alone? I challenge you to go overseas and kill to despots who are starving their people, which will help the hunger situation. I have to go and enjoyed a delicious double cheese burger with bacon.

I think Kloeppel has her facts straight on the number of animals slaughtered each year. See the following page:

http://www.upc-online.org/slaughter/2000slaughter_stats.html

So you are going to support Alexandria’s cockamamie statements by using a partisan, special-interest, vegan website? Very bromidic, Summer.

Their numbers come from the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service. Is that group also part of the insidious vegan conspiracy? How about the New York times? See the following article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/weekinreview/27bittman.html

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So, meat should not be eaten just because it tastes good?

And Alex wonders why no one takes vegies seriously.

She did not say meat should not be eaten because it tastes good. She said taste should not be a reason for eating it. There are many foods I find tasty but shy away from eating for various reasons, e.g. health, environmental or ethical concerns.

Graight: Of course it’s okay to treat them inhumanely. They aren’t human after all.

As for subnormal humans, until pretty recently, they were mostly shoved into jobs that rendered them as little more than working animals. Remember Lenny from “Of Mice and Men”? That was a pretty typical kind of employment that someone of that intelligence could expect as recently as the 1950’s. Now we make them work at McDonald’s, sweeping the floors. Is that an improvement? I tend to think that it isn’t. At any rate, someone with mental retardation isn’t going to have much quality of life in the first place.

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@The Ghost:

I totally agree with you on most of your points, but 10 × 10 billion is not 1 trillion, it’s 100 billion. We’d kill a trillion animals in a century.

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“I also noticed that there are some teeth in my head that tell me that I’m not supposed to be grazing on grass all day.”

How we are biologically built is irrelevant. The fact is that we CAN survive fine on plants alone. Vegetarians live longer than meat eaters. Perhaps there is a vitamin or two that you can’t get from plants products, but if necessary, they can always be manufactured in a lab and consumed as a supplement.

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I am skeptical of some of the claims expressed by the author, particularly of some the figures. However, I welcome the invitation to reflect on the effects of our actions as consumers and reconsider our habits, in this case meat consumption. It is discouraging to see that most people leaving comments on this thread seem to have already made up their minds on the issue and have nothing better to do than resort to personal attacks. I’d rather spend my energy and time doing a little research of my own on the claims presented here and reconsider my position on the issue.

A non vegetarian

I must say, I am completely appalled by the horrible responses from most people who replied to Alexandria’s article. As far as mean-spirited goes it might be nice to see Arkannis tortured by a cow after reading such heartless, ignorant comments. I have been a vegetarian for over two years now and so are my youngest children, ages 10 and 4. I liked meat. I liked the flavor of meat. Bacon cheeseburgers were my favorite. I do not think all cows and livestock anmals are treated cruelly, but from the videos I have seen, just a few that suffered the way they did was enough for me! In my opinion, if you all did not have some sort of guilt trip going on, the comments and points Alexandria made in her article would not have stirred up such narrow-minded contemptious responses. Not eating animals anymore is a choice I made and I feel proud. If you’re eating meat, that’s your choice but no need to be so hostile about it, unless, maybe, you don’t have the courage or commitment to make a decision that is definitely positive in many different realms. I applaud your response Marcelo.