Animals Meet Your Meat

Just to add, things can be graphic at times.
 
I like eating meat & won't become a vegan.
I prefer to get my meat from animals kept under acceptable circumstances, though.
 
Really! What are flesh eaters to do? A canundrum is at hands. Don`t cook your meat enough and you run the risk of e-coli. Now, cook it too much and prostate cancer may be around the corner. Oh, the adventurous and risky lives of flesh eaters!

A news report is out telling the dangers of barbecued meats linked with prosteate cancer.

News excerpt:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A compound formed when meat is charred at high temperatures -- as in barbecue -- encourages the growth of prostate cancer in rats, researchers reported on Sunday.

Their study, presented at a meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, may help explain the link between eating meat and a higher risk of prostate cancer. ...

The compound, called PhIP, is formed when meat is cooked at very high temperatures, Dr. Angelo De Marzo and colleagues at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore reported. ...

"For humans, the biggest problem is that it's extremely difficult to tell how much PhIP you've ingested, since different amounts are formed depending on cooking conditions." ...


Now, I know that the most probable replies to this will be from people who latch on to the word ?gmight?h above, as if that is their way out to keep justifying their eating meat in the face of dangers. So be it. Other than that, flesh eaters always have the old back up, ?gjust cook it properly between the dangers of overcooked and undercooked,?h or the ?gall is fine in moderation.?h

But, I have to ask, what is that summer charcoal smell of burnt flesh wafting through the air of back yards? Most certainly friends and family having a good time, ... along with the smell of prostate cancer and future x-rays, exploratory surgury, chemo, nervous friends and families in waiting rooms etc...


*Full news story HERE.
 
2 years is quite a deep grave to exhume for a thread, but since it died such a quick death...

One thing I've noticed is the lack of effectiveness of the "shock value" on people who have already established their eating habits. Showing them how things are might make them say "oh my god I never realized it was like this, I'll never eat meat again" will last about a month, if that.

Not to use him as an example, but Bossel's reply is quite common in the sense that nobody wants the animals they eat to suffer. But there's a huge disconnect between people in modern countries nowadays. Perhaps that's what this video is trying to address, but I think it's going about it in an ineffective way.
 
I would have to agree with Bossel.

As a kid, I cleaned fish often. Almost every week. I met them. I ate them. I also cleaned birds and small game. I hated it. I ate them anyway. We had a goat once. Had goat milk...and later goat meat. It wasn't a pet...but I was too young to remember meeting the goat. Ditto for the rabbits we briefly raised to make ends meet...and the chickens...and one hell of a mean goose who survived. We also watched the Castillo family raise and butcher animals chickens mostly, but also goats and the occasional cow-- next door. It was a big deal, followed by a big BBQ...all in East LA. Met them. Ate them.

Today I don't eat much meat at all. But it has nothing to do with some forced morality. I think everyone should know exatly what and how their food gets to their plate... that beef doesn't just come from the supermarket, but from an animal that was once living. I think we need to know how these animals are kept and slaughtered and then decide if it is a good thing from the information we have. I have decided to continue to consume my fellow creatures, but I believe it to be an informed decision.
 
nice gaijin said:
2 years is quite a deep grave to exhume for a thread, but since it died such a quick death...

Yes, much too quick. But, since I have the powers to resurrect, I have decided to revive it with some "shock treatment" to get the pulse beating again.

<STAND BACK> GO! <PAPUMP> AGAIN! <PAPUMP>
We got a beat!


One thing I've noticed is the lack of effectiveness of the "shock value" on people who have already established their eating habits.

Do you have a wide spread study with data on this? or Are you just musing about those in your daily life you have come in contact with?

Showing them how things are might make them say "oh my god I never realized it was like this, I'll never eat meat again" will last about a month, if that.

For some, yes. For others, no. I saw the video and would have to say I did not change back after "a month." Indeed, it left a deep impression. I am assuming that I am not so unique that it has not done so to others as well. This video is one of the most aggressively pushed to the forefront by PETA in the fight for educating people and getting more people to change their eating habits to that being a vegetarian diet. PETA`s membership and money pledges continue to grow. Obviously, they are pushing the right buttons for turning themselves into the largest AR orgs in the world and this video is an integrel part of that strategy.

Not to use him as an example, but Bossel's reply is quite common in the sense that nobody wants the animals they eat to suffer. But there's a huge disconnect between people in modern countries nowadays.

Agreed.

Perhaps that's what this video is trying to address, but I think it's going about it in an ineffective way.

Disagree. This video is one of PETA`s most succesful and longest running video. It is one of the cornerstones of their fight against factory farming and many have been moved by it and it has helped to cause thought on the issue resulting in change of eating habits. Again, it did me and I am sure I am not the only one amongst the nearly 1 million official PETA members -- not to mention many who are PETA supporters but just not paying members.

*Those visiting this thread for the first time, go to post #1 to watch the video.
 
As shocking as the video is, i've seen worse. Cows have it worse now days with the invention of " 0 grazing". "sigh"...But those are all bactery, barn range and intensive farmed animals. Free range and organic is often a completely different matter- organic means that the farmer cannot feed the animal chemicals that induce weight gain, and the foods fed to the animal cannot consist of other animal products(there are some other things too that an organic license will benefet the animal but i can't remember them from the top of my head for now). Free range is obvious- animals are let outside to roam around in feilds. Barn range is really no different than battery range though, the only difference being the animals in question are in a barn instead of a cage inside a barn, but they are often crammed into so many thousands they have even less space than battery farmed animals at times. Intensive farmed animals mainly refers to the foods and chemicals the animals are fed and the methods used to make them produce whatever their they are there for.
A peice of meat that looks healthy does not mean a healthy animal, if the scars the animal obtained during its life, mental and physical, appeared on the meat i am sure most people would not even touch it. But there are still signs if you know where to look for them- when i was a child i used to eat bacon for breakfast a lot, often when i was cooking the rashes/slices of bacon i'd notice their were hard muscle like lumps in the meat, somtimes as hard as bone; at the time i just assumed it was a part of the pig, what i didn't know is it was cancer. The vast majority of barn range, battery and intensively farmed animals get cancer from the chemicals and foods they are fed. From a human perspective, what is worrying for us, is that these high cancer causing chemicals are often not digested thoroughly by the animal and end up in our plates.
I was brought up on a farm, amoungst some of the animals we kept, we kept chickens(their numbers would range between 12 and 50), mainly as pets but also for their eggs and meat. One thing that really strikes my heart about battery and barn range chickens is the conditions they are kept in. Chickens are full of life. They care for their chicks for around 6-9months after brooding on the fertilised eggs for between 1 and 2months. The mother hen talks to her chicks, believe it or not, they actually have a language of sorts and use different sounds to comunicate with each different sound meaning different things, the chicks get accustomised to their mothers voice while they are still in their eggs as they can hear her as she talks to them, so when they hatch they can recognise her. I learned to recognise various sounds the chickens used between each other as a child as i spent much time with them, most "words" they use consist of "i'm warm and happy(often used by the chicks)", "i've just layed an egg!", "somthings wrong/i'm distressed!", "i'm confused", "i'm angry with you", "whats up?", "i'm hurt/depressed" etc. They are certainly not dumb animals.
They can recognise each other, by appearance and sound, they also remember each other in the long term, females will often use this when looking for a rooster to join as they work out which rooster treats them the nicest, naturally a rooster will fight with other roosters to impress the females, females that like him will join his group and follow him around. He may show her places where there's good food, or find good sites for nesting so she has somwhere safe to lay her eggs(he may even go so far as shaping out a nest for her), or offer her protection from other chickens that try to bully her. In return she'll let him mate with her, although this isn't always assured and he may have to further impress her with his appearance by "dancing" or displaying his strength in some form or another. Chickens enjoy dust bathing and sun bathing, socialising, enjoying good food(they'll eat practically anything, they are not confined to seeds and insects, when i was a kid i used to make them treats like giving them poridge and bannanas, or soggy dog biscuts and meat) and raising chicks. There is a lot to chickens.
But yeah, we deny them of all of that when we barn range or battery farm them. A mother hen will never see her chicks just as much as they will never see her- chickens can live up to 14 years old(i know this because i once had a rooster that lived to ths age), but the average life expectancy for a battery chicken is between 6months and a year average. It is painful for them to lay eggs, usually a normal chicken lays an egg every day or 2, somtimes less, and takes a 3-4 month break from laying during the winter depending on the weather. Battery chickens lay dozens of eggs a day due to the chemicals they are given. I once worked in a scotch egg factory, they used battery farmed eggs, one of my jobs once was to remove the deformed eggs- before then i had only once seen once deformed egg before, but now i saw hundreds every day (like ones with sandpaper sharp calcium deposits on them, or ones with undigested chicken food in them or no yolks- i even once found a peice of wood in one once). The chickens must have been very sick to lay eggs like that...
I could go on, but you get the jist of things i take it. We treat battery, barn range and intensively farmed animals incredibly inhumanely, like we are demons of hell. But do i blame the farmers who do this...? No. Partly because you cannot blame people for not having morals, but mainly because its the governments fault, for legalising and seriously incouraging this way of farming, and also the consumer, who refuses to open their eyes.
Macdonalds, sure it taste great, i used to eat it many years ago before i found out how badly many farm animals are treated, but where the heck to you think they get cheap animal products like that? Its all battery, intensive and barn range. I think teh saying holds true, that you are what you eat- especially if you are aware of this and could afford not to eat it :eek:kashii: .
 
strongvoicesforward said:
Do you have a wide spread study with data on this? or Are you just musing about those in your daily life you have come in contact with?
I'm afraid I have no numbers for you, but I was told this by a professor who has much in his curriculum about the dangers, toxicity, and general unhealthfulness that arises from the way we farm and raise livestock. Over 25 years he has had countless students come to him with the same exultations of conversion to vegetarianism after realizing the horrors of the meatpacking industry, only to slip back into those eating habits by the next term. He adjusted his curriculum to slowly acclimate his students to such truths to reduce the "oh my god how did i sign up for this hippy liberal ****" factor, and found a higher "success" rate of students willing to make geniune efforts toward cutting meat out of their diet.

Personally, I find that there are behaviors that are constructive, and behaviors that are destructive. It seems that PETA wants to right the wrongs of humanity towards our animal neighbors, but even righteous motivation doesn't make for constructive behavior.
 
I know that animals aren't stupid. I get urges to go vegetarian sometimes. I dunno if that would do any good. I can't eat a piece of chicken while I know it could have been a mother that communicated with it's babies before ending up on my plate. It's a bit depressing too.
 
Thor said:
I know that animals aren't stupid. I get urges to go vegetarian sometimes. I dunno if that would do any good. I can't eat a piece of chicken while I know it could have been a mother that communicated with it's babies before ending up on my plate. It's a bit depressing too.

I am happy to hear you considering it.

Our choices do have the ability to lessen suffering. To offer life through amnesty and mercy, rather than extinguishing it for reasons that are satisfied with substitutes, we can make a difference.
-------------------------------------------------
*For those joining the thread at this point, be sure to at least go to and read post #1 to catch up.
 
Thor said:
I know that animals aren't stupid. I get urges to go vegetarian sometimes. I dunno if that would do any good. I can't eat a piece of chicken while I know it could have been a mother that communicated with it's babies before ending up on my plate. It's a bit depressing too.

I'm not a vegetarian, but i eat very little meat (really just beef, maybe once a month or less). I know SVF will disagree with me here, but i don't its wrong to eat animals as long as they are treated well and their basic requirements are attended to properly (like given good healthy food, allowed to live outdoors, allowed to have their social and health needs attended properly like if the animal gets sick its taken to a vet and treated and not left to rot etc), and are killed in a humane manner.
Some of the methods of slaughter/euthanasia are relatively humane shown in video, some are not at all (by "humane" i mean the time it takes to kill the animal and the amount of stress/suffering it causes)-I would personally say bolt guns are quite humane, as they kill the animal instantly when used correctly (a bolt gun is essentially a gun that shoots out and retracts a metal bolt in a split second, destroying the animals brain and thus killing it instantly), while slicing the animals throat and letting it bleed to death is incredibly inhumane IMO, it causes a huge amount of suffering and takes a very long time to kill (i "think" it can be up to 30mins with some large animals like cows or pigs) the animal. If i had a choice to be killed by a bolt gun or having my throat sliced when my time was up, i would choose a bolt gun in an instant.
So, know your animal and know its killer. The only place i buy meat from (except from one exception this year), is my local butcher, because they are able to tell me which farms the animals come from, what breeds of animals they were, and what slaughter house they went to. And don't just settle for organic or free range, only settle for both, as only that way will you know for sure you are getting somthing better than battery, intensive, barn range or GM farmed animals or animal products. When it comes to animal products, you must also consider that practically all the lovely things like eggs, milk, lard and gelatine that end up in the cakes, chocolates, fast food etc are all barn or battery range. So just giving up the raw products is only a start.
I admit i'm not perfect, i try very hard to act on my beliefs, i find it very easy not to eat things like chicken, eggs, pork (i gave up pork relatively recently after a long phase of cutting it out, been 2months now since i last had it) etc but its the other products like cake and chocolate that i find difficult to stop eating. I've been steadily giving up one thing at a time now though for the last couple of years. I'm not sure where all this is going to lead though, i'm not aiming to become a vegetarian or anything. I would eventually like to give up all meat apart from pheasant (very rarely ever get to eat it, but it is so lush, and is not farmed at all where i get it from) and some types of fish.

But, yeah, what you do in life is your decision and totally up to you.
 
I would also like to add some more things i learnt and noticed from chickens during my life with them.
Another thing that i noticed that proved to me they were intelligent animals was their ability to work out things and their care for each other at times. For example, the chickens really liked dog food. On the farm, for most of my life, we had 2 dogs in particular (both female black labradors). The first and oldest one was muffet, she really was a pig of a dog- she would eat practically everything and often as much of it as posible given a chance (i even saw her try to eat a cow pat once), her body kinda looked like a pigs as well, not really the typical image of the atheletic, slender and graceful loyal labrador image :blush: . The second dog was rissa(pronounced "ry-sah"), she was a very beautiful labrador, quite shy and very kind hearted and loyal, she never had much of an apetite though. We used to feed them together at feeding time, but soon muffet started gobbling down her food so she could eat risca's before she's finished, so we had to start feeding muffet indoors and rissa outdoors.
The chickens soon realised rissa was been fed dog food, so they tried to steal it, but they wern't really sure how to approach a dog (rissa had a heart of gold, she would never kill any animal deliberatly, but the chickens were naturally suspicious of her). So what they used to do, is come together in a group of around 12+, and slowly move towards her. Rissa would soon notice their advance and pick up her dog bowl and move it away, but the chickens would corner her. When she was cornered she would run for it, and the chickens would rush to her food bowl and gobble up whatever food was left lol. They were only minature bantam chickens, so they were just bigger than say, pigeons, but rissa actually become quite nervous of them even though she could have easily taken them all down- their ability to organise themselves into a group and follow through a plan to get food over a much bigger adversary proved to me that they were very intelligent little birds :49: :30: :30: .
Chickens also were very nice to each other at times(the only times they wern't was when the roosters were fighting, or in the case where 2 hens had a lot of chicks and one of the other hens chicks got mixed up with theirs, they would peck the chick to chase it away, but this was only natural instinct and often depended on the individual hen as they all have different personalities, they were often very tolerent of each others chicks when they didn't have too many to look after though other than that and the hens with chicks would often hang out together :50: ). Chickens that liked each other would often groom each other by gently picking off any parasites like skin mites around each others heads where they otherwise could not get them; they really like having their "ears" stroked! Chickens actually have ears, but its more like a sensitive peice of skin on either side of the head covered by special feathers, i used to stroke their ears when i was a kid as they really liked it and would often fall asleep on my lap while doing this :bluush: .
 
They are tastey when its all with over though... there sacrafice's are not in vein.
 
Tokis-Phoenix said:
I'm not a vegetarian, but i eat very little meat (really just beef, maybe once a month or less). I know SVF will disagree with me here, but i don't its wrong to eat animals as long as they are treated well and their basic requirements are attended to properly (like given good healthy food, allowed to live outdoors, allowed to have their social and health needs attended properly like if the animal gets sick its taken to a vet and treated and not left to rot etc), and are killed in a humane manner.

I very much support you here. The gap between 'good and 'bad' here is most definately between free range meat and factory farmed meat not vegetarian and meat eater. I feel that AR and AW organisations are failing to promote free range meat and other products enough. What does annoy me is people who say 'I would be vegetarain but I would miss meat too much' but then are still buying factory farmed meat!

The meat-your-meat video worked for me, but I was already slowly becoming a vetgetarian at the time. Realising how some animals are treated just kind of 'solidified' the change. I agree with nice gaijin saying that a sudden change to vegetarianism is likely to result in a return to meat eating. I would say the most effective way is to slowly cut out meat, and replace that which is still being eaten with free range meat.
 
Thunderthief said:
They are tastey when its all with over though... there sacrafice's are not in vein.

Would you really want to eat animals that live and are treated like that though? Would you really want to eat animal that has been pumped full of chemicals and hormones, covered in untreated ulcers/fungal deseases and parasites?
Do you have any pets?
 
KrazyKat said:
I very much support you here. The gap between 'good and 'bad' here is most definately between free range meat and factory farmed meat not vegetarian and meat eater. I feel that AR and AW organisations are failing to promote free range meat and other products enough. What does annoy me is people who say 'I would be vegetarain but I would miss meat too much' but then are still buying factory farmed meat!
The meat-your-meat video worked for me, but I was already slowly becoming a vetgetarian at the time. Realising how some animals are treated just kind of 'solidified' the change. I agree with nice gaijin saying that a sudden change to vegetarianism is likely to result in a return to meat eating. I would say the most effective way is to slowly cut out meat, and replace that which is still being eaten with free range meat.

Thankyou for your support :) . The way i see it, the biggest problem here is how we treat animals that are intended for farming purposes/our consumption in some way or another- you cannot destroy the demand for meat, its a natural part of our human diet and people will always want it, so there will always be people that support our demand for animal products. But we have no real reason or justification to treat animals so badly, i know that england (the country i was brought up and live in) could live easily without the likes of battery, intensive, barn range, 0 grazing and GM farming etc.
Battery and barn range farming and all the other nasty forms of farming are turning into buisness giants now days, the few farms that still try to keep the old values and try to practice good farming and animal management are finding it more and more difficult to compete with the bad farming giants.
Most of it comes down to what the consumer demands- people want cheap, perfect looking food. Cosmetic value demands in supermarkets when it comes to plants/veg and fruit are becomming harder and harder to attain to for the farmers. Potatoes for example, simply do not grow into nice bulky round similar sized shapes- most grow pretty randomly into any odd size or shape. A lot of the traditional varieties do not have long shelf life or hardyness, so they often suffer badly in the transportation and packaging processes. So farmers have to grow GM potatoes covered in pesticides, and only use specialy modified varieties that are already used by the farming giants to have any chance of selling any. I heard the story of one local farmer who had a contract with a large supermarket(tesco's) for selling potatoes, he grew organic ones, one year the supermarket rejected 50,000 potatoes just because they were not round enough! He lost thousands of pounds, he ended up feeding the potatoes to his cows...
But do i blame the supermarket? I cannot, because its the consumer who controls these things- if the consumer wants perfect shaped potatoes, then thats what the market supplies and the consumer gets, and any farmers who cannot meet these demands loses out. Supermarkets and importing cheap foriegn foods is killing thousands of good farms over here every year because they can no longer survive these issues...Did you know that there are actually 800 varieties of apples that do not end up in our supermarkets because their shelf life is too short(i.e. do not last for more than 2months), but only 8 varieties do? How many apple types can you name? Real strawberries should not "bounce" when dropped, but they all do now because they have been bred to because it increases their lastability :eek:kashii: .
The price of meat is what fuels the bad animal farming practices though...The only way you can get peice of chicken or beef for a couple of pounds or less, is to use the nasty intensive farming methods. People get what they pay for though. What people don't seem to comprehend is that by buying these food products they are only fueling an extremely immoral and inhuman way of buisness/farming. The way i see it, if you want to make a difference, you don't have to be a vegetarian, you don't have to go to protests or rallies or only wear hemp clothes and eat soya, you don't have give up eating chocolate or whatever, you don't have to even give up eating meat- one of the biggest and easiest ways you can start making an easy difference, is next time you buy eggs for example, instead of buying the 20p battery chicken ones, pick the 30p free range ones off the shelf instead and buy them. 10p's difference can make a lot of change, and can save a lot of pain. You don't have to give up bad farmed products completely, but for every one that you stop buying, and for every good farmed product you buy, you are making difference.
I totally support those who are against bad farming, but i think many people find the demands made by such supporters too daunting- what i think we tend to forget, is that little differences still count. I think we should try to support good farming, to help make a better world for animals and people. I think this would also be a realistic approach too, as we can never extinguish the demand for meat and animal products in our race, so we might as go about such things the right way, at the very least, a better way :cool: .
 

This thread has been viewed 30605 times.

Back
Top