Animal rights - are they serious? Animal research & sustainable meat

[tek-monkey]

rant

Well said, put better than I could/would have. Besides, they taste nice.

 

[Gramaisc]

We, as omnivors MUST eat meat... if you don't you need to eat veggie stuff with added protein, calcium, iron, vitamin D and ESPECIALLY vitmain B12 which is ONLY found naturally in animals otherwise YOU WILL DIE.

Interesting that you bring up the B12 thing. A friend's child has homocysteinuria - an inability to metabolise B12. B12 can be obtained from bacteria. It seems that the mere 4 micrograms a day that you need can be supplied by the bacteria on fruit - so don't be too clean if you're a veggie. The average adult will have about four grams stored, thus about three years worth, but you only have around a month's worth when you're born and separated from the mother's supply.

What a knife edge we live on - where you must have just slightly more than none - or you will die...

 

[gon2seed]

Veggies

As a person who eat meat for the first time in 20 Years by choice! I feel it difficult to comment. When I became more switched on, I reverted to my normal dietary predilction.

While in hospital I still had the remnants of my meal, on the plate. "Have you eaten that?" said Mrs Seed. "Yep" said I. "You don't remember your a vegetarian do you?". "It's a shame that'. I enjoyed that, Ox Tail soup & Roast Chicken!" I won't tell you about when I forgot I had been vasectomised! It'll save you and Mrs Seed's embarrassment.

 

[shoes]

animal rights activist = (low IQ + lack of common sense + irritating) - (self esteem + social ability + usefulness to society)

QED,

As a person who cares deeply about animal welfare I take offence at that incorrect stereotype. I have none of the above 'qualities'.

Do you just care deeply about animal welfare or are you an actual activist?

 

[Vault_girl]

We, as omnivors MUST eat meat... if you don't you need to eat veggie stuff with added protein, calcium, iron, vitamin D and ESPECIALLY vitmain B12 which is ONLY found naturally in animals otherwise YOU WILL DIE.

Interesting that you bring up the B12 thing. A friend's child has homocysteinuria - an inability to metabolise B12. B12 can be obtained from bacteria. It seems that the mere 4 micrograms a day that you need can be supplied by the bacteria on fruit - so don't be too clean if you're a veggie. The average adult will have about four grams stored, thus about three years worth, but you only have around a month's worth when you're born and separated from the mother's supply.

What a knife edge we live on - where you must have just slightly more than none - or you will die...

Ooh I wasn't aware of this! I don't have anything against people choosing not to eat meat for whatever reason, I just don't agree with the whole "meat is murder" thing and those activists who go to real extremes to protest for animals. I feel the best way is to just buy free range meat and dairy products and buy cosmetics not tested on animals - if no one is buying these products there will no longer be a demand. I mean if rabbits are legally entitled to more space (for their size) than humans then I think animals are doing pretty well! (I love that fact and keep using it at every opportunity!)
I choose to eat meat, I don't like to feel bad about eating meat - we were obviously designed to eat it otherwise it makes it very difficult to naturally get all the nutrients etc we need to survive - and I'm quite against other people (mainly animal activists) making me feel bad for eating meat. If they choose to cut meat from their diet completly that is their decision and I respect that and wish they would respect other people's right to choose! It would be nice if all meat was free range in the supermarkets though. But that is just my opinion!

 

[tek-monkey]

I once convinced a veggie that eating steak was a good thing, because only one animal dies for lots of meals. A prawn cocktail on the other hand is almost genocide. She was a nice veggie though, would happily cook meat for others just chose not to eat it herself. The ones who tell you what you should eat generally get told to **** off, or in the case of a drunken BBQ once have sausages thrown at them til they shut up

 

[Trumpet]

I don't think it follows that all animal rights activists or even campaigners are necessarily vegetarian.

 

[tek-monkey]

I must confess to never meeting a real activist, merely people who tell me how displeased they are that I enjoy eating meat. They weren't very active about it at all, just rather irritating. Real animal rights activists I imagine are people like this, who are quite frankly barking mad and should be put down forthwith.

 

[shoes]

Ah yeah that's what i'm talking about. Bunch of cretins - they should get a job!

 

[tek-monkey]

Would you hire the sort of person who steals corpses to make a point?

 

[shoes]

Good point.

 

[kyoto49]

animal rights activist = (low IQ + lack of common sense + irritating) - (self esteem + social ability + usefulness to society)

QED,

As a person who cares deeply about animal welfare I take offence at that incorrect stereotype. I have none of the above 'qualities'.

Do you just care deeply about animal welfare or are you an actual activist?

No idea what an "actual activist is"? I try to live my life in a compassionate way towards all living sentient creatures. I don't buy cosmetics tested on animals, I don't eat meat and condemn the unnecessary cruelty involved in the factory farming industry. I don't keep caged animals. I'm against hunting, and the shooting of animals for sport. I' against fur farming.

I also don't make a fuss about others eating meat, and many people I know don't know I'm a vegetarian. I don't sabotage hunts, or vandalise peoples cars who have a different opinion to mine.

I support the work of compassion in world farming, the wspa and others.

Does that make me an actual activist? I have no idea .

 

[Withnail]

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation is taking seriously the farming of creepy-crawlies as nutritious food.

Would this be more acceptable?

 

[Gramaisc]

A lot of our food preferences are simply cultural. Insects are quite efficient at converting themselves into food, I understand.

 

[shoes]

I don't sabotage hunts, or vandalise peoples cars who have a different opinion to mine.

Does that make me an actual activist?

No, see below:

the sort of person who steals corpses to make a point?

 

[henryscat]

I must confess to never meeting a real activist, merely people who tell me how displeased they are that I enjoy eating meat. They weren't very active about it at all, just rather irritating. Real animal rights activists I imagine are people like this, who are quite frankly barking mad and should be put down forthwith.

Drawing a parallel: an entire graveyard would have been dug up to make way for the third runway at Heathrow.

 

[Withnail]

More a parallax than a parallel.

Good point nonetheless.

 

[henryscat]

Eating animals does not cause significant harm/suffering to both animals and humans.

Really?

Factory farming - no suffering there then?

Dairy farming?

Link between diet and disease.

We, as omnivors MUST eat meat... if you don't you need to eat veggie stuff with added protein, calcium, iron, vitamin D and ESPECIALLY vitmain B12 which is ONLY found naturally in animals otherwise YOU WILL DIE.

Nope.

Lifelong veggie, and vegan for past 13 years and I appear not to be dead yet...

I know there will always be the minority who treat "meat" animals badly before they are killed but there are laws there to protect the animals on the whole from this

Factory farming isn't a minority of animals.

I don't agree with MUCH animals research - things like cosmetics etc. I'm not 100% against animal testing for life-saving drugs though. I know that there is the argument that there is no point as we can't fully forsee how the drug will react to humans just because it reacts well to lab mice but it is how we have been able to come so far with medicine - the mice can be reproduced quickly to hone the drug's effectiveness. I'm not too happy about all the genetic modification done to the mice for the testing but at the end of the day if I'm offered medicine which is going to save my life I'm not going to turn it down because when it was being developed it was tested on animals.

Nope. Animal research is flawed on ethical and scientific grounds. It misleads and harms animals and humans. Name a development in medicine that has come about purely because of animal research. A great deal of harm has been done where drugs were declared safe because they passed animal tests but have adverse affects on humans. Likewise drugs harmful to animals aren't always to humans. Animals are not a suitable model for humans. Penicillin would never have been brought into use based on animal test results (something Fleming himself stated...); Thalidomide - causes birth defects in humans but not in animals; AIDS research, held back years because of duff results from primate research, to name just a couple of examples.

Why the different view for cosmetics? As far as the animal is concerned suffering is being inflicted regardless of what's being tested.

 

[henryscat]

As Ghandi said
“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated”

Yep, the way in which people treat animals is also reflected in how we treat other people.

I'm not too sure about that.

Hitler was very fond of his Alsations.

How we treat people follows from how we treat animals. "Eternal Treblinka" by Charles Patterson is an extremely good book on the subject, if a seriously heavy read.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Eternal-Treblinka-Treatment-Animals-Holocaust/dp/1930051999

 

[tek-monkey]

Drawing a parallel: an entire graveyard would have been dug up to make way for the third runway at Heathrow.

Which is something I also don't agree with, both the graveyard and the expansion itself. I find it hard to compare the end result though, one makes a new runway the other tries to blackmail someone to stop a legal business. Ethics aside (as we all have different beliefs on right and wrong), one would be commiting a crime and the other wouldn't. Luckily the runway was never agreed though, so it didn't actually happen.

Nope. Animal research is flawed on ethical and scientific grounds. It misleads and harms animals and humans. Name a development in medicine that has come about purely because of animal research. A great deal of harm has been done where drugs were declared safe because they passed animal tests but have adverse affects on humans. Likewise drugs harmful to animals aren't always to humans. Animals are not a suitable model for humans. Penicillin would never have been brought into use based on animal test results (something Fleming himself stated...); Thalidomide - causes birth defects in humans but not in animals; AIDS research, held back years because of duff results from primate research, to name just a couple of examples

Animal tests are merely a later stage of medicine development, of course no medicine has come about purely because of animal testing. If it doesn't kill the animal, you give it a try on humans. I assume you will refuse any medication that was tested on animals at some stage in its development? I have no issues with animal testing for medicines, find cosmetics a bit pointless but I'm a bloke so its hardly suprising. If it makes us as a race more likely to survive, I'm all for it.

Also, out of curiosity, do you need to take any vitamin supplements along with your diet? When my sister got pregnant the doctor told her being a veggie was really not helping her child to be, and said she'd have to take all manner of vitamins etc. to help matters along. Just wondered if this is true of none pregnant vegans too?