BS: Vegans - mass murder or plants

Subject: BS: Vegans - mass murder or plants
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 28 Jan 18 - 12:49 PM

Think about it!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Vegans - mass murder or plants
From: Jackaroodave
Date: 28 Jan 18 - 01:01 PM

If you are concerned about the slaughter of defenseless plants, Bonzo, you should by all means become a vegan. Consuming plant nutrients directly requires killing far fewer than consuming them indirectly by way of animal flesh.

Subject: RE: BS: Vegans - mass murder or plants
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 28 Jan 18 - 01:17 PM

By no means will I go vegan, just another frenzied craze from the mangled left!

Subject: RE: BS: Vegans - mass murder or plants
From: Jackaroodave
Date: 28 Jan 18 - 01:34 PM

Well, then, you're in an ethical dilemma if your concern is the slaughter of plants. I suppose you could subsist on roadkill, or a diet of termites, without supporting the plant-murdering industries.

Subject: RE: BS: Vegans - mass murder or plants
From: Senoufou
Date: 28 Jan 18 - 01:49 PM

There are many what you might call 'frenzied crazes' all around the world Bonzo. People who have different ideas from you, people who think in another way, have their own unusual lives and so on.
You might find it helps if you adopt my own rather trite but sincere mantra:-

If they're not doing you any harm at all, let them get on with it.
Don't poke fun or get all frothy around the mouth.
Don't start to 'hate' anyone, either individuals or groups.
Save your condemnation for the truly evil and ill-disposed (lots of scope there!)
In short, Live And Let Live.

Subject: RE: BS: Vegans - mass murder or plants
From: Mr Red
Date: 28 Jan 18 - 02:03 PM

hold on there fellas, with rising temperatures, rising population, rising sea levels, plants less able to deliver on land that has not yet turned to desert - what are your options? Or should I say your grandchildren? Science will come to the rescue (you hope) but will you like the answers?

Locust burgers anyone? Hold the mustard - as far away as possible!

An insectival diet? More efficient source of protein, a well developed agriculture in places like Vietnam.

Me? I like my bacon. But one thin rasher per day puts me well below average, and even below moderate consumption.

Subject: RE: BS: Vegans - mass murder or plants
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 28 Jan 18 - 02:11 PM

I have had meat and/or dairy products every day in January, because nobody has a right to bully me into eating anything different.

Subject: RE: BS: Vegans - mass murder or plants
From: Will Fly
Date: 28 Jan 18 - 02:25 PM

I'm always slightly bemused by your posts, Bonzo. I've rarely encounterd anyone who seems so devoid of any empathy for beliefs, ideas or propositions which don't coincide with their own lifestyle.

I don't know whether to mark you down as a deliberate troller or just a compulsive quarreller with anything vaguely alternative.

Anyway, not someone worth arguing with in my book.

Subject: RE: BS: Vegans - mass murder or plants
From: Jackaroodave
Date: 28 Jan 18 - 02:25 PM

"Locust burgers anyone?"

There you go, Bonzo! You could consume "prairie shrimp" knowing you were saving acres of innocent herbage from their depradations.

Subject: RE: BS: Vegans - mass murder or plants
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 28 Jan 18 - 03:30 PM

Now now, chaps! Bonzo is a provocative sort of fellow and I sometimes think that he doesn't mean a bloody word of any of it, but he's cheery and he never insults anybody. Kudos, Bonzo, yer daft old bugger! If only all utter prejudice was so pure and sweet!

If you don't want to eat animals, that's great. But there's no need to get all evangelical about it. After all, we have omnivore guts, we can't chew the cud and it's next to impossible to get all the nutrients we need from plants (look up Vitamin B12). Without animals eating animals, ecosystems would collapse. Evolution relies on massive over-production of offspring and the struggle for existence. On top of that, there's marginal land that can't be cultivated for crops but which can support animal husbandry, land that's steep and rocky, with poor soils or which is very high up.

The fight should be to cut down on meat production and to ensure that far more land suited for crop-growing for human consumption is used for just that. In addition, both animal welfare and plant welfare should be top priorities. A huge proportion if the barley and wheat grown in the UK is of far too poor quality for human consumption. Too much fertile land is used to grow Miscanthus for biofuel, a scandal. There's a lot wrong with our means of food production, but don't blame it all on us meat-eaters. I eat a lot of meat and fish but I will not buy meat that doesn't meet the high welfare standards I demand. I won't buy unsustainable fish either. Vegan evangelism is just tiresome and repressive and its far too much of a black-and-white world view.

Subject: RE: BS: Vegans - mass murder or plants
From: Senoufou
Date: 28 Jan 18 - 03:42 PM

One of my nieces is a vegan (and a Buddhist!) and I must say she really looks well on it. Her skin glows and she has a lovely figure.
But she never 'evangelises' or harps on. When dining out with her friends and family, she quietly asks for the acceptable options on the menu. Her live-in boyfriend isn't vegetarian at all, and they seem to get on well together!

Subject: RE: BS: Vegans - mass murder or plants
From: Jackaroodave
Date: 28 Jan 18 - 03:45 PM

"Vegan evangelism is just tiresome and repressive and its far too much of a black-and-white world view."

And it's futile. No one was ever hectored into giving up meat or animal products.

But seriously, Steve, is repressive vegan evangelism a problem? I confess I've never ever witnessed an instance.

Subject: RE: BS: Vegans - mass murder or plants
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 28 Jan 18 - 03:51 PM

Well it isn't a concerted movement, for sure, but I have been preached at for eating meat a few times in my life. On one occasion it was by a rather beautiful young woman I was on a date with. The relationship ended abruptly when I pointed out that she was wearing leather shoes!

Then there's Morrisey...

Subject: RE: BS: Vegans - mass murder or plants
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 28 Jan 18 - 03:52 PM

Damn. Morrissey.

Subject: RE: BS: Vegans - mass murder or plants
From: Jackaroodave
Date: 28 Jan 18 - 04:11 PM

" I pointed out that she was wearing leather shoes!"

I used to wear leather for a while after becoming vegetarian in my diet. I think for a lot of people renouncing animal products is a gradual process.

And it's an unending one.

The thing is, if you're an ethical vegetarian or vegan you have to realize that every day you've failed to live up to your standards. Even the Jains, who've been working at it for thousands of years, expect purism only from priests who can devote their entire waking existence to avoiding harming other creatures.

So I can't see any grounds for us vegans to be self-righteous or smug--quite the contrary. We should be aware of our daily failure.

Subject: RE: BS: Vegans - mass murder or plants
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 28 Jan 18 - 04:28 PM

Allow me to invent a new eating category - treacleton, that is to say a lover of treacle pudding or treacle tart and custard!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Vegans - mass murder or plants
From: Senoufou
Date: 28 Jan 18 - 04:38 PM

Hahaha Bonzo! I'm a Crumpeton!

Subject: RE: BS: Vegans - mass murder or plants
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 28 Jan 18 - 07:24 PM

I have to speak up for vegan food. Some of it makes a very nice accompaniment to a steak or a Sunday roast.

DC

Subject: RE: BS: Vegans - mass murder or plants
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 28 Jan 18 - 08:30 PM

From the Beeb website today. I've pruned it a bit, not too tedentiously I hope.

Veganism has been described as the fastest growing lifestyle movement. For some concern about animal welfare leads them to actively campaign against all forms of the meat industry. But are some of those activists taking it too far?

"When you're being called murderers and rapists, that is overstepping the mark, for fairly obvious reasons," says Alison Waugh, a trainee farmer in Northumberland.
She has received death threats due to her work and told the Victoria Derbyshire programme other farmers are feeling threatened.

"Which is quite ironic from people that want peace for animals, but then they tell you, 'I hope you and your family go die in a hole for what you do,'" she says.
"You've got people storming the meat mart, spraying graffiti...that's when it's not OK, when you've got people worrying if their cows are going to be safe tonight."

...One activist group is called the Save Movement, which says it has a non-violent approach to campaigning. It has 42 groups in the UK and 100 worldwide.
Its activists hold vigils outside abattoirs and aim to turn the world vegan by sharing images on social media of the animals' treatment.

There have also been cases of activists standing in the meat aisles of supermarkets with graphic images and noises of animals being slaughtered...
But some vegan activists are calling farmers who have raised animals for generations murderers for killing animals, or rapists for taking their milk.
The National Pig Association claims its members "cannot sleep at night" because Save Movement members have allegedly turned up at farms and slaughterhouses at night.
The Association of Independent Meat Suppliers has met with the official National Counter Terrorism Police Operations Centre team to discuss how to respond to the movement.
Alison says she objects to the suggestion that farmers exploit their animals. "It's crushing when you take as much pride in your animals as we do.
"I don't think they can understand, or differentiate between the fact that different animals have different purposes. We have these companion animals and we have our livestock and there is a line drawn there."

'Sick society'

...But Joey disagrees with the UK's reputation as caring about animals. .
"Slaughterhouse workers are a product of a sick society who want to consume animal flesh."
He denies being an extremist, saying that people have to understand that what is happening to animals is extreme.
"If it were dogs in there, people's pet dogs, they'd be helping us, the public would be helping us stop those trucks, the public would be trespassing too." .

So, no-one was ever hectored, eh, Jackaroodave? Are you sure about that??

Subject: RE: BS: Vegans - mass murder or plants
From: Senoufou
Date: 29 Jan 18 - 01:00 PM

It's interesting that we wouldn't eat animals we look on as more 'our friends', such as horses and dogs. There was outrage a while ago that horse meat was found in supermarket packs labelled 'beef'. (Quite right, at least the contents should correspond with what's on the label!) The anger was more horror at the idea of eating our equine mates than the deception.

I love meat, but I know abuses go on. We have two Congolese friends who used to work slaughtering turkeys, and it wasn't pleasant, to put it mildly
. There's an abattoir quite near to our village, and I don't like to see the pigs or calves peering out of the lorries that drive through its gates.
I suppose if the pigs have had a nice life (the ones round here live in miniature Nissen huts out in the fields, and wallow around in the mud) and are dispatched swiftly and painlessly, I suppose I have no problem.

Another thing that upsets me is lobsters still alive in restaurants.
One selects a victim, which then killed to order. I'd pay just to spare its life!

Subject: RE: BS: Vegans - mass murder or plants
From: Jackaroodave
Date: 29 Jan 18 - 03:00 PM

"So, no-one was ever hectored, eh, Jackaroodave? Are you sure about that??"

Steve, I said no one ever became a vegan because they were hectored, so it was pointless to do so.

I think that those kinds of actions are supremely counterproductive and marginal within the tremendous growth of vegetarianism and veganism. They remind me of the Weather Underground during the Vietnam War: Functionally, they were agents provocaeurs for the other side.

Subject: RE: BS: Vegans - mass murder or plants
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 29 Jan 18 - 04:20 PM

I don't knoe about Hector, but have people become vegans because they were Rogered?

Subject: RE: BS: Vegans - mass murder or plants
From: DMcG
Date: 29 Jan 18 - 05:43 PM

I can't remember if it is Jonathan Swift or one of Lewis Carroll's less well known works, but one of them has a satirical section where people went vegetarian, then started worrying about the lives of the vegetables, so they decided they could eat meat and vegetables, but only if they had died naturally. Immediately there was a outbreak of cows "running over cliffs" and such like. So many avoided that and ended up with vegetables had to be rotting....

Subject: RE: BS: Vegans - mass murder or plants
From: Jackaroodave
Date: 29 Jan 18 - 08:54 PM

Good one, Bonzo!

DMcG: One winter in the early 70s a friend of mine was visiting the Hare Krishna compound in Moundsville WV, near where we were trying to homestead. In the bitter cold, he came across one of the leaders spraying water on a feeble old cow tethered to a fan--so that the cow would "die of pneumonia" but he would not have "killed" it.

Subject: RE: BS: Vegans - mass murder or plants
From: Mr Red
Date: 30 Jan 18 - 11:09 AM

Vegetarians and vegans have the ear of the service industries. Even nut and gluten allergies get a consideration.

But if you don't want onion you, basically, you don't eat in restaurants or buy ready meals. They sell wot they sell. OK, I don't buy.

Am I allergic? No but my wallet is. But don't ask what they put in the product, they haven't got a clue**. Labels are, at best, in small type. And usually tucked behind the fold in the wrapping.

** a pickle is a pickle. Right? Not an onion! (I ain't joking)

Subject: RE: BS: Vegans - mass murder or plants
From: John P
Date: 31 Jan 18 - 05:07 PM

So, no one likes vegans that preach, but making rude comments about them on a music website is OK? Jeez, there are a bunch of creeps here. Grow up.

Do you like people who preach on any subject? Why not complain about preachy people rather than vegans? I know many vegans, none of whom preach about it or put others down, or really want to talk about their diet at all. Extrapolating from preachy vegans to all vegans, which this thread has done, is a giant logical fallacy.

You know, meat-eaters bitching about vegans, while claiming the vegans bitch about meat eaters, is an activity that is remarkably lacking in thought.

Subject: RE: BS: Vegans - mass murder or plants
From: Jackaroodave
Date: 31 Jan 18 - 05:59 PM

Well, John P, like Ann Elk, I have a theory about that.

I think that most people are made uncomfortable by animals' suffering, and they will go to some lengths to avoid it. The originator of this thread puts in time, effort, and expense in rescuing abandond dogs.

I know plenty of meat-eaters who would never hunt game, much less hang up a pig and cut its throat. In Maine, there are organic farmers who help eke out their meagre living by providing tours and workshops. I don't know of any slaughterhouses or egg factories that do the same.

And I think that even if they buy their meat wrapped in plastic and their eggs washed clean and boxed, they are aware of the suffering that precedes and makes possible their meal. Repressing this awareness has a psychological cost, and as a defense they displace their discomfort onto those who remind them of this fact. The macho bravado about meat eating that you see in some of these posts stems, I think, from the same discomfort.

So these outbursts actually give me some hope--that when such posters step outside the arena, they'll drop the pose and give some thought to their motivations.

I know this sounds insufferably smug, but it's the response that their outbursts provoke in me.

Subject: RE: BS: Vegans - mass murder or plants
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 31 Jan 18 - 06:22 PM

Well, John, you and I are usually on the same wavelength. I don't want to insult anyone on account of their entirely personal choices in life. I've said dozens of times here that a person's belief in God, for example, is one hundred percent their business. To me, it's irrational, but we wouldn't be human if we didn't allow some irrationality into our lives. After all, I think that Liverpool FC are the greatest phenomenon on earth. The problem comes when those who hold those beliefs feel the need to spread them to others, to pressurise us into accepting them. Personally, I think that veganism is a tainted philosophy that could be harmful both to individuals and to the planet were it to hold sway. I've already given my reasons in this thread. I don't want to hear, as a bloke with an omnivore gut, about fluffy little bunnies, luvvy-duvvy pink piggies, chuckie-hens, baa-lambs or whatever, any more than a lion, a buzzard, a wolf or a killer whale want to hear about fluffy little bunnies, luvvy-duvvy pink piggies, chuckie-hens and baa-lambs. Emotions are one thing. Ecology is an entirely other.

Subject: RE: BS: Vegans - mass murder or plants
From: John P
Date: 31 Jan 18 - 06:38 PM

Steve, I repeat:

Extrapolating from preachy vegans to all vegans, which this thread has done, is a giant logical fallacy.

Tainted philosophy? Dangerous to the earth? Dangerous to people? You're daft, and you certainly didn't give any reasons for thinking that, other than that there are some militant vegans around. Here's a hint: The militants are a small minority of vegans, just like people on the fringes are a small minority of any group. Most vegans really don't care what you eat. They, like most people, are too busy paying the bills, fixing the roof, playing with the dog, and going to work.

Subject: RE: BS: Vegans - mass murder or plants
From: Jackaroodave
Date: 31 Jan 18 - 06:42 PM

"I don't want to hear, as a bloke with an omnivore gut, about fluffy little bunnies, luvvy-duvvy pink piggies, chuckie-hens, baa-lambs or whatever"

The argument from cuteness sort of breaks down when you get to turkeys ;-)

I do think, though, that our preferences are strongly influenced by our feelings about particular beasts. For example, in my student days, our impoverished household would buy horsemeat, but some full-fledged meat-eaters wouldn't touch it because of their fondness for the species. Others might balk at dogs or cats for the same reason.

But, as you say, "Emotions are one thing. Ecology is an entirely other." I couldn't agree more. (Although I also agree with Hume when he says, "Reason is, and only ought to be, a slave to the passions.")

Subject: RE: BS: Vegans - mass murder or plants
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 31 Jan 18 - 06:59 PM

Thing is, John, I don't make that extrapolation. There is a mindset afoot that we meat-eaters should feel guilty because we eat meat. The correct mindset should be that we meat-eaters should eat less meat, should eat high-welfare meat and should not eat rain-forest meat or other ecologically-unfriendly meat. That is a very legitimate challenge, and a perfectly valid challenge, to us carnivores, and a very hard one to meet, and I accept it in full. That's very good. But there is a rather burgeoning movement afoot among evangelical vegans, and their fellow-travellers, that we shouldn't eat meat at all. The religious equivalent is that we should all be Muslims, or Christians, or whatever your personal predilection is. Well tough shit. The obstinate fact is that my gut is an omnivore gut. So's yours, and so's every vegan's on this planet. It's you who have to make the argument, not me.
.

Subject: RE: BS: Vegans - mass murder or plants
From: John P
Date: 01 Feb 18 - 03:55 PM

Steve, I'm glad you're not talking about all vegans. I agree with you about evangelical vegans, or, really, evangelical anything. My response to evangelical vegans is no response at all -- I just pay them no mind. If they get directly in my face I'll back them down.

Calling veganism a "tainted philosophy" because there are a few jerks among the vegans is a rather strong statement, though. Veganism isn't tainted. Evangelicalism, of any kind, is.

Subject: RE: BS: Vegans - mass murder or plants
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 01 Feb 18 - 05:21 PM

As a philosophy purely for oneself, it's immaculate. As soon as it's prescribed as a cure for the ills of the planet, it just isn't. It's too black and white, and some of it is plain wrong. There are hundreds of millions of people on this planet who subsist because the only possible choice for them is animal husbandry. They may live on marginal land or they may need the animal dung to fertilise whatever land they have for crops. Millions of farmers in the third world can't remotely afford to buy artificial fertilisers or hope to improve their soil in any other way. There is a conversation to be had about the ways we use our agricultural land and about how we reduce meat consumption. But veganism is a matter for you as a private individual only, not a solution for the planet.


And I have an omnivore gut. Awkward, that one!