It was inevitable. A link to the following video was posted in comments on my post about Lierre Keith’s book, The Vegetarian Myth, within which I was compelled to keep my nose buried for even more hours, last night. [Update: Major portions of the book are up at Google Books.]
In case you’re wondering, I do not give warnings about "graphic scenes." I simply presume the maturity and adulthood of my audience. Yea, it’s not pleasant to watch. I don’t insist that you do, but it is an aspect of reality.
So, here was my response to the comment, edited and expounded upon for additional clarity and oomph.
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Oh yes, greencare. I’m sure that video just makes all the mall-hopping teenyboppers just horrified!
They’re all then perfectly prepped for the guilt-inducing brain washing — to have their bodies ruined in the long term by undertaking a fantasy diet that explicitly rejects man’s biological nature and his requirements for optimal health.
And I don’t want to hear any bullshit about vegetarian or vegan “health.” The most valid data on that score is that comparing apples to apples, i.e., the anthropological record: that repeatedly and consistently demonstrates strong and robust skeletons and teeth amongst hunter-gatherers, in stark contrast to those diseased skeletons, rotten teeth, and even diminished stature of agricultural populations. This is not in dispute; and furthermore, there has never existed a vegetarian hunter-gatherer population, much less vegan.
Now, while I’m all for humane treatment of animals right up to the moment of death (and willing to pay for it), this video was not particularly shocking. I’ve hunted birds & deer and dressed both, fished, and raised broiler chickens and rabbits. I was the one (at age 13 -15 or so) who did the executions — axe for the chicks, club for the rabbits.
We endeavored to treat them very well during their lives, and to make their end of life very quick (as well as out of sight for those in wait). I have always abhorred animal trophies of all kinds. We were brought up to respect animals and that the only justification for killing them was for the food.
Now, as far as videos go, how’s this for cruelty:
Or this?
That last one shatters the myth that we’re evolved from strictly herbivore primates (of which there are none, anyway: think bugs). Yea, chips hunt other monkeys, rip them to shreds live, and then eat them, to great tribal celebration.
So, given that, I think humans offer a far better, more humane way for necessary prey to die.
The problem with you folks is that it’s all emotion and feelings with you. You are simply not dealing properly with the reality of human existence and the requirements for survival and happy flourishing.
In the end, y’all remind me of the born-again Christian fundamentalists I grew up around. It’s always about denial, penance, guilt — and over man’s very nature (’original sin’). Vegetarianism offers the very same unearned guilt trap, and there’s no mystery that it’s the young and as-yet dumb and ignorant where lies the biggest push.
In the end, you need emotion and feelings-based ignorance: the only life truly suited to the diet of a pea brain.
Great post. While one could argue about protein/carb/fat content of diets of various world cultures, one thing isn’t up for debate: none came this far without flesh. Tasty, tasty flesh.
I don’t find anything shocking about the video. I grew up on a cattle ranch and have watched/participated in slaughtering our animals since I was a child. We treat our animals with kindness and respect, and put them down as painlessly as possible. I have seen videos of slaughterhouses where the workers abuse and beat the animals and I find those disgusting, as anyone should.
I have stood right next to the butcher as he killed and butchered a steer I raised from a calf and fed out of my hand. If I didn’t kill him and eat him he would grow until his legs couldn’t support him any longer, he would die a long, miserable death and his carcass would be eaten by coyotes and buzzards. I’d much rather he lived a short, healthy life with a quick death and ended up in my freezer.
Oh, and if I happened to keel over in the pig pen or chicken house they wouldn’t hesitate to eat me either. The dog, however, would probably just bury me and save me for later. Such is life.
Very true there, Tammi. Without modern embalming and human burial practices, we all end up food for something.
I remember that with both the laying hens & the broilers, if any one got much of a blemish, they’re toast. The others will peck it to death and cannibalize the carcass.
Well put Richard.
It’s obvious that the commenter is exactly the audience that Miss Keith is trying to reach with her book.
Samething I say to naysayers of GCBC: “you clearly haven’t read it.”
-Bryce
i remember reading a comment on some youtube video a while back on how it’s ironic how vegetarians/vegans are only able to make that choice because of meat eating (which developed our intelligence/large brains)
Most of the vegetarians I know are small and frail.
Most people I know that eat meat are big and strong.
most of the vegetarians i know, i eat.
:)
i kill and butcher grassfed lamb, bison, fowl and game constantly. when done properly and with skill (bullet, then throat cut), there is little drama.
one thing, though: the apprehension never goes away, even with a simple lamb kill. i think its a throwback to our past, when there was some danger in the hunt… maybe.
personally though, i never buy animals from anyone but local farmers, whom i trust. every piece of meat in my house is processed by my hand. i don’t like abattoirs. i’m not sure why this is. it may not be rational, and i’m not a bleeding-heart or mystic, but there seems to be a glibness and lack of respect for the animal.
Admittedly, most comments on YouTube videos are pretty dumb, but some of those beggar belief. I always refer vegan friends back to the master that is Dilbert
In my country it’s tradition to “slaughter” the fattest pig on Christmas and all the family participates. It’s a ritual, a pretty fun one if I may say so.
Not to mention the other important celebrations when we would cut a calf or 2-3 chickens…
Given the choice, I reckon most of those animals would rather die in the abattoir than at the hands of a wild cat.
See that thing they hit the cow on the head with before it collapses? It shoots a piston into the cow’s head about two inches through the skull. If you’ve seen the movie “No Country for Old Men”, Javier Bardem’s character goes around killing people with one of these things powered by compressed air. The ones I have seen are powered by bullets. The bullet explodes inside the chamber and shoots piston into the skull of the animal. Given the alternatives, it’s a pretty respectful way to kill an animal – grandin.com/humane/cap.bolt.tips.html
I used to work in an abattoir during my university holidays. I’ve killed more animals than I’ll ever eat in a lifetime. The plant I worked at used to process 600 cattle a day. It always amazed me how efficient that place was. Meat used to just pour off the production line like clockwork. Every part of the animal was used. Even the blood was used to fertilize the neighboring farm paddocks.
Since we’re linking to YouTube video, here’s a scene from “No Country for Old Men” where Javier Bardem’s character uses the bolt stunner powered by compressed air – youtube.com/watch?v=Y9nN3XNs2yY.
Lucky for me no one will pull that trick on me. Unfortunately for the cows in the abattoir they haven’t seen the movie so I don’t reckon they’d see what’s coming!
Impressive but I am not going to buy this, it is full of fallacies:
First and foremost, it is naturalistic fallacy that goes like “if a is natural, than it is good”. most animals practice incest and rape and infanticide. Following your line of logic it is absolutely natural for us to do the same.
Another problem with references to “nature” is the heterogenoeous practices and actors in nature. why baboons and not bonobons, among which the most common sexual intercourse is among two females and they are absolutely peaceful.
Lastly, you are making a strawmen fallacy in sayin that “t’s all emotion and feelings with you”, Singer for instance has a pure utilitarian approach, which goes like “applying the principle of utility to our present situation, esp. the methods now used to rear animals for food and the variety of food available to us, leads to the conclusion that we ought to be vegetarians”.
Last, but not the least, carnivore primates in nature don’t raise the other species or hunt with guns. Because humans have more consciousness of their deeds, they should have higher ethical standards to avoid harming other creatures. Regan’s emphasis on the lack of guilty intent in animal behavior must be reminded. Peoples kill while they don’t need to kill, and they learn ignore the guilty feeling that they ought to feel.
greencare
who says you should feel guilty for killing an animal? I don’t feel guilty. I am often humbled by the experience of killing an animal for food, but I never feel guilty.
Tin Tin
If you think eating a vegetarian diet results in less harm to other species, and less death of individuals, you definitely have not read the book and don’t have a clear understanding of the effects of agriculture, particularly raising grains and beans.
Further, you exhibit “good-bad” black and white thinking, which as Richard already pointed out, falls in with dogmatism, not reason.
Regarding sexual practices, what appears “natural” for one species can destroy another. For example, STDs exert a selective pressure against promiscuity in humans not found in other species. Humans figured out long ago that incest damages reproductive success in human communities (hence its prohibition in successful cultures).
You accuse Richard of naturalistic fallacy. But Richard did not say, “if A is natural, A is good.” He said, “if A is natural, A is natural.” You bring in “good,” an ethical judgment, as unecessary baggage in this discourse.
Like most ethical issues, the issue of eating animals, like Don said, is not as black and white as vegetarians like to make it out to be.
Personally, I’m not sure where on the scale of morality of eating animals lies, and nature is not just “animals” and “plants”. There’s an entire graduation of biology out there. Invertebrates? Is a grasshopper “suffering” if I pull it’s leg off? A sea sponge if I cut it with a knife? What is does pain mean without self-awareness? Where do I draw the line? Central nervous system? A flatworm has a full CNS. Is it “suffering”, when I rip it in two? At what point am I applying the human experience to another thing?
To me it’s like abortion. I have no ethical issue with abortion in the first three months, I’m entirely against it in the last three months (unless the mothers life is in danger), but the middle 3 months I’m entirely stumped, as there is no hard line.
Honestly though, if I did decide that eating cattle, even free-range cattle, was unethical, it’s one way I’d decide to live unethically as I believe whole-heartedly that our biology is built to eat meat.
I think the ethics are an important thing to discuss, though.
PS: B&W thinking leads to vegans who write articles like the following, where he seriously discusses “reprogramming” wild predators to protect the species they now eat, while providing them with a source of meat grown “in vitro”.
Oops, here’s that article:
hedweb.com/abolitionist-project/reprogramming-predators.html
Oh brother. Well, here’s what Lierre Keith has to say about such ridiculous fantasies in chapter one of the book:
“Those impulses and ignorances are inherent to the vegetarian myth. For two years after I returned to eating meat, I was compelled to read vegan message boards online. I don’t know why. I wasn’t looking for a fight. I never posted anything myself. Lots of small, intense subcultures have cult-like elements, and veganism is no exception. Maybe the compulsion had to do with my own confusion, spiritual, political, personal. Maybe I was revisiting the sight of an accident: this was where I had destroyed my body. Maybe I had questions and I wanted to see if I could hold my own against the answers that I had once held tight, answers that had felt righteous, but now felt empty. Maybe I don’t know why. It left me anxious, angry, and desperate each time.
But one post marked a turning point. A vegan flushed out his idea to keep animals from being killed—not by humans, but by other animals. Someone should build a fence down the middle of the Serengeti, and divide the predators from the prey. Killing is wrong and no animals should ever have to die, so the big cats and wild canines would go on one side, while the wildebeests and zebras would live on the other. He knew the carnivores would be okay because they didn’t need to be carnivores. That was a lie the meat industry told. He’d seen his dog eat grass: therefore, dogs could live on grass.
No one objected. In fact, others chimed in. My cat eats grass, too, one woman added, all enthusiasm. So does mine! someone else posted. Everyone agreed that fencing was the solution to animal death.
Note well that the site for this liberatory project was Africa. No one mentioned the North American prairie, where carnivores and ruminants alike have been extirpated for the annual grains that vegetarians embrace. But I’ll return to that in Chapter 3.
I knew enough to know that this was insane. But no one else on the message board could see anything wrong with the scheme. So, on the theory that many readers lack the knowledge to judge this plan, I’m going to walk you through this.
Carnivores cannot survive on cellulose. They may on occasion eat grass, but they use it medicinally, usually as a purgative to clear their digestive tracts of parasites. Ruminants, on the other hand, have evolved to eat grass. They have a rumen (hence, ruminant), the first in a series of multiple stomachs that acts as a fermentative vat. What’s actually happening inside a cow or a zebra is that bacteria eat the grass, and the animals eat the bacteria.
Lions and hyenas and humans don’t have a ruminant’s digestive system. Literally from our teeth to our rectums we are designed for meat. We have no mechanism to digest cellulose.
So on the carnivore side of the fence, starvation will take every animal. Some will last longer than others, and those some will end their days as cannibals. The scavengers will have a Fat Tuesday party, but when the bones are picked clean, they’ll starve as well. The graveyard won’t end there. Without grazers to eat the grass, the land will eventually turn to desert.
Why? Because without grazers to literally level the playing field, the perennial plants mature, and shade out the basal growth point at the plant’s base. In a brittle environment like the Serengeti, decay is mostly physical (weathering) and chemical (oxidative), not bacterial and biological as in a moist environment. In fact, the ruminants take over most of the biological functions of soil by digesting the cellulose and returning the nutrients, once again available, in the form of urine and feces.
But without ruminants, the plant matter will pile up, reducing growth, and begin killing the plants. The bare earth is now exposed to wind, sun, and rain, the minerals leech away, and the soil structure is destroyed. In our attempt to save animals, we’ve killed everything.
On the ruminant side of the fence, the wildebeests and friends will reproduce as effectively as ever. But without the check of predators, there will quickly be more grazers than grass. The animals will outstrip their food source, eat the plants down to the ground, and then starve to death, leaving behind a seriously degraded landscape.
The lesson here is obvious, though it is profound enough to inspire a religion: we need to be eaten as much as we need to eat. The grazers need their daily cellulose, but the grass also needs the animals. It needs the manure, with its nitrogen, minerals, and bacteria; it needs the mechanical check of grazing activity; and it needs the resources stored in animal bodies and freed up by degraders when animals die.
The grass and the grazers need each other as much as predators and prey. These are not one-way relationships, not arrangements of dominance and subordination. We aren’t exploiting each other by eating. We are only taking turns.
That was my last visit to the vegan message boards. I realized then that people so deeply ignorant of the nature of life, with its mineral cycle and carbon trade, its balance points around an ancient circle of producers, consumers, and degraders, weren’t going to be able to guide me or, indeed, make any useful decisions about sustainable human culture. By turning from adult knowledge, the knowledge that death is embedded in every creature’s sustenance, from bacteria to grizzly bears, they would never be able to feed the emotional and spiritual hunger that ached in me from accepting that knowledge. Maybe in the end this book is an attempt to soothe that ache myself.”
Last night my wife and I were sitting in the backyard, she was playing with her Iphone and was shooting birds that are eating from my grape vines. I hit one and it made a screech and my wife gave me the boohoo face and said it was sad. Fast-forward 15 minutes, I’m in the kitchen cooking dinner and I hear the pellet gun go off. I walk out there and she is holding the gun, “There was like 5 of them, how do you load this thing?!?”
By the end of the evening the kids had gotten in on the action with the Airsoft guns. Good, clean family fun!
So you plant something that will attract birds and then you shoot the birds. Have you considered netting? I find your behavior cruel, unnecessarily wasteful, and disrespectful of nature. The cavalier attitude toward killing these birds is repulsive to me.
greencare,
True to form for most vegetarian pea brains, you had to bring up Singer and his nonsense.
Here’s a nice zinger from that asshat:
“”When the death of a disabled infant will lead to the birth of another infant with better prospects of a happy life, the total amount of happiness will be greater if the disabled infant is killed … killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Very often it is not wrong at all.”
Good luck with using that idiot for your arguments, pea brain.
Dave
MICHAEL VICK has, according to his lawyer, agreed to plead guilty to federal dogfighting charges against him.
Over past weeks, there’s been an enormous amount of coverage of the dog-fighting operation sponsored by Atlanta Falcons quarterback Vick, who, along with three other men, has been indicted on federal felony charges.
The details of the charges claim that Vick sponsored illegal dog fighting, gambled on dog fights and permitted acts of cruelty against animals on his property. The talk shows have been filled with talking heads from the “humane community” condemning dog fighting and calling for Vick to be punished. Nike and Reebok have suspended products endorsed by Vick.
Please let me be very clear from the outset: I think that dog fighting is a terrible thing.
But I must say that the Vick case rather dramatically demonstrates what I call our “moral schizophrenia” about animals.
That is, if one thing is clear, it is that we do not think clearly about our moral obligations to animals.
In this country alone, we kill more than 10 billion land animals annually for food. The animals we eat suffer as much as the dogs that are used in dog fighting.
There is no “need” for us to eat meat, dairy or eggs. Indeed, these foods are increasingly linked to various human diseases and animal agriculture is an environmental disaster for the planet. We impose pain, suffering and death on these billions of sentient nonhumans because we enjoy eating their flesh and the products that we make from them.
There is something bizarre about condemning Michael Vick for using dogs in a hideous form of entertainment when 99 percent of us also use animals that are every bit as sentient as dogs in another hideous form of entertainment that is no more justifiable than fighting dogs: eating animals and animal products.
There is something bizarre about Reebok and Nike, which use leather in their shoes, suspending products endorsed by Vick. They’re not going to allow a guy who allegedly tortures dogs to endorse products that contain tortured cows.
In one of my books about animal ethics, I introduced a character named Simon the Sadist, who derived pleasure from blowtorching dogs. We would all regard such conduct as monstrous because we all agree that it is wrong to inflict “unnecessary” suffering on animals – and pleasure, amusement and convenience cannot count as satisfying the “necessity” requirement.
But then I asked the further question: How are those of us who eat animal flesh and animal products any different from Simon? He enjoys blowtorching dogs – we enjoy the taste of flesh and animal products. But we and Simon both kill sentient beings (although we may pay others to do the dirty work) because we derive enjoyment from it.
According to reports, authorities removed from Vick’s property a “rape stand” used to hold dogs for mating. “Rape racks” are used to hold cows for impregnation. When a dog is involved, we are troubled – when a cow is involved, we ignore it.
Michael Vick may enjoy watching dogs fight. Someone else may find that repulsive but see nothing wrong with eating an animal who has had a life as full of pain and suffering as the lives of the fighting dogs. It’s strange that we regard the latter as morally different from, and superior to, the former. How removed from the screaming crowd around the dog pit is the laughing group around the summer steak barbecue?
We are all Simon.
We are all Michael Vick.
In a conversation yesterday, someone said to me, “how am I ever going to watch an Eagles game and see that guy without thinking about those dogs?” My response: “How can you enjoy an Eagles game while you’re eating a hamburger or a hot dog made from animals who had a life and death every bit as horrible and unnecessary as Vick’s dogs?”
He did not have an answer.
Ho boy, here we go. Here come the crazies. Do you seriously think that spamming us with an article from another site is going to win us over? How about linking to it and making some points here that we can address directly?
The problem with the “unnecessary” suffering argument is that we’re not eating meat (just) because it tastes good. We think that it IS fundamentally necessary and entirely healthful. Do you even know what this site is about? We think that meat and fat are two of the healthiest things you can eat.
To sum up: killing pasture raised animals (or hunting animals for food) is not unnecessary, but pitting dogs in brutal combat is.
Unless somebody wants to disagree with me on that one lol. It’s your site, after all, Rich. :)
Yea, I have no patience for that line of “argument.” The reason meat “tastes good” is because it is integral to the natural diet of an evolved human being.
These people are doing nothing more than wishing reality away, and that’s why they sound like such idiots.
I have never conversed with a vegetarian / vegan where I was not struck with the realization that I was dealing with someone, intellectually, on the level of a fundamentalist Shiite or born-again Christian in terms of their plain old grasp of reality.
They live a mystical fantasy.
I’ve always referred to mysticism as: the stupidity disease.
“There is no “need” for us to eat meat, dairy or eggs.”
First, don’t tell me what I need. Second, go fuck yourself all day long.
And don’t post again until you can write in your own words, current and relevant.
Wow, what a friendly crowd. Are you sure the natural hormones in meat aren’t messing with your endocrine system causing violent mood-swings? No one needs meat, not just you, don’t feel special. How’s this for current and relevant: hunting is for queers, as only faggots love meat as much you all. Should the penis be removed from your rectum and long enough for you to straighten up and speak- Don’t. Nothing good will ever come out of a mouth used to suck shitty dick all day or a brain contaminated by said fallice fecal matter. (I would try and use intellect to reason with you, alas there is no reason to believe there is either here.) Peace.
Go away, loony tune.
Continue on in your infantile fantasy.
Peace is Coming For You~
ironic handle you’ve got there, judging from your suddenly not so lucid post. Gandhi would frown on your lack of discipline.
also, i wonder if the term “peace is coming for you” has a subconscious reference to the need for the left to impose a statist morality that clashes with the morality that says, “leave me alone”.
go in peace… just go.
actually, f:)ck off, ken doll. your girlfriend wants an alpha, and is looking at me.
remember, little man: Ken comes with Barbie, but Barbie comes with GI Joe.
@”Peace is coming for you”
Oh… the irony…. THE IRONY!!! Love it.
Interesting stuff. The videos of the Lions and the Chimps remind me of something my sister in law, who is a biologist and professor, once told me. She said, “nature is amoral” (as opposed to immoral). That really struck a chord in me and has never stopped informing my view of the natural world and our place in it. Nature is indeed amoral.
Morality is a construct of our brains and a luxury of our unique human existence. We need morality to survive in our complex human societies. But when it all comes down to survival, and nothing else, it’s all about “eat or be eaten”. I’m not for being immoral by any means, but understanding the amorality at the root of all animal existence seems important to remember when informing ourselves as far as diet is concerned.
Peace is coming for you,
I think you need to read the Vegetarian Myth by someone who was living in fantasy land like you are.
books.google.com/books?id=_KGWcPH41qYC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_summary_r&cad=0…
I am shocked that there weren't tribes of vegan hunter and gathers
Ha. Funny thought.
—
Richard Nikoley
https://freetheanimal.com
– Sent from my iPhone