TheRPGSite

So I have been seeing this in peoples sigs, some sort of campaign for animal rights and such.

so to answer the questions:

Yes, I fucking do.

In fact I worked on farms, even a slaughter house for short while. Bottom line is that without all the methods used now for raising and butchering animals, there is no way in hell the demand for meat could be met. Period.

So unless half or more of america stops eating meat, don't expect any changes.

Ok, Rant over.:D

Quote from: McrowSo unless half or more of america stops eating meat, don't expect any changes.

Which is exactly their agenda. Now we're getting the "cows produce more greenhouse gasses than all the cars on the road" line to add another angle on the "no meat" bandwagon.

Quote from: WerekoalaWhich is exactly their agenda. Now we're getting the "cows produce more greenhouse gasses than all the cars on the road" line to add another angle on the "no meat" bandwagon.

Thats the funny thing, there is now way in hell that Amercians in any great numbers are going to change their eating habits.

The other thing is some of the reasoning is just plain fiction.

I love animal rights activists...




























...but I couldn't eat a whole one. Badum-tush.

My food comes from the neighborhood KROGERS store nearby  - OR- the food court in the mall.

  If I cook anything - the ingredients came from KROGERS (maybe BIGGS, WAl-MART, or Target)


- E.W.C.

Here's a quote from one of those anti-meat websites:

QuoteThe most significant assault on their welfare is fast growth.(11) The poultry industry has used selective breeding and growth-promoting antibiotics to produce birds whose bodies "are on the verge of structural collapse."(12) To put their growth rate into perspective, the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture reports, "If you grew as fast as a chicken, you'd weigh 349 pounds at age 2

no shit? Wow, who would have guessed that? Chickens grow faster than humans? Are you surprised as much as I?

for gods sake, chickens in the wild grow nearly as fast as that.

Also, I don't remember seeing any "structural collapse" in the barn, nope not a single chicken lost a leg running around the barn.

Mike the Headless chicken (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_the_Headless_Chicken)

While we're on the subject of nutty animal right's folk - here's that little polar bear cub some of them said should be killed rather than raised in "captivity":


http://tinyurl.com/2fsahs

I think if this were TBP those pics would require a chorus of "kyoot!"'s. The one with the back feet in the air is on my desktop for now.

yeah, I saw that one.

how stupid. Kill the cub because it is sooooo wrong to raise it unnatuarlly.:rolleyes:

These poeple must have really boring lives or somthing.

Quote from: McrowMike the Headless chicken (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_the_Headless_Chicken)

:eek:

I've BEEN to Fruita, Co. and never heard of Mike before. Wow.

Quote from: Werekoala:eek:

I've BEEN to Fruita, Co. and never heard of Mike before. Wow.

Mike is way cooler than the two headed calf our town had.:D

Quote from: McrowMike is way cooler than the two headed calf our town had.:D

We had a headless chicken once, but then he got elected to a higher office...

-clash

Quote from: Werekoala...little polar bear cub...

That is dangerous cute.

Quote from: McrowIn fact I worked on farms, even a slaughter house for short while. Bottom line is that without all the methods used now for raising and butchering animals, there is no way in hell the demand for meat could be met. Period.

So unless half or more of america stops eating meat, don't expect any changes

Yeah, I see where you are coming from.

I want to make it clear that I am not any kind of animal activist. I eat meat. I love meat. And in my family, we often kill our meat (once I'm out of the city this will be true again for me).

That being said, America eats way too fucking much of everything, including meat.

It is true that there is no way in hell the demand for meat could be met. It's also true that the demand far exceeds the needs in North America.

I don't approve of PETA or any of that crap. I do think that there are way to many city-dwellers who have absolutely no idea how their meat is produced and could gain from the knowledge. They could also gain from visiting farms and seeing exactly how we grow food and such.

I look at some of my friends... they eat three, four times as much as I do, especially meat-wise. They keep telling me how they need that stuff for a tough day but I can lose them on any hike, any task. It is surprising how little food a person really needs. That is, surprising to many people in occidents who are used to rampant over-consumption.

I think it's great that you are speaking from firsthand experience. Just offering a slightly different point of view here. We're mass-producing more meat than we really need. It ain't good for nature, for the animals or for the people stuffing themselves like pigs.

Quote from: Mcrowfor gods sake, chickens in the wild grow nearly as fast as that.

They still have chickens in the wild?

I know there are still wild turkeys - and not just the booze.

It's cool to see a flock of them walk wander across the property...

Consonant Dude's got it, I reckon.

That PETA are a bunch of loons does not mean that any concern for animal welfare is to be dismissed out of hand. As I see it, by god's command or by process of evolution, we humans are put in a position where we can do great and terrible things to the world. With power comes responsibility, that's what we're granted the power for. A parent is not granted power over their child so they can abuse the child; a prison warden is not granted power over the prisoners so they can extort and beat them; a teacher is not granted power over their student so they can fill their head with rubbish; and humans are not granted power over the earth and all the living things in it so they can destroy the lot.

Mccrow is absolutely right that the only way to meet the current Western demand for meat is with current abusive disease-encouraging farming methods. But it's also true that a lot of this demand is manufactured. If all the McDs and KFCs in a city were to be closed down overnight, I don't think there'd be protests in the streets. It's there so people have it.

Another point is that we're very wasteful with the food we do it. Across the developed West, about 1/4 of food is simply thrown away. That's dinners we didn't finish, stuff we put away for later and forgot about and let go off, stuff we bought because we thought we'd have it and then decided not to, and so on. A certain amount I think is unavoidable, you're never going to eat every gramme that goes into your fridge or cupboard. But 25% seems rather high. In my own home, I grow vegetables, so discarded food goes to the compost pile, and in this way returns to us in edible form again a few months later. Better than its going to landfill...

Supposing you could reduce your wastage from 25% to 10%, you'd save 15% on food bills, and that'd be 15% less land which has to be put under cultivation, or cattle butchered, and so on. Given that since WWII 2/3 of the corn and 1/3 of the wheat produced each year in the world has gone to feeding livestock, and given that demand for corn-derived ethanol is growing... it may come down to a choice, you can drive your car, or you can eat your burgers, but you can't do both. Reducing wastage and meat consumption can ease the pain of that decision...

Isn't natural selection a bear?  Humans don't damage the environment, we change the environment like all living and even unliving things do.  Sadly, as humans we recognize that changing the environment limits our species chance of success.  We try our best at resource management based on economics, politics and anthropomorphic views of the environment.  One person's pest is another person's living creature, even though everytime you flush the toilet you make it more habital for one organism and less habital for another.  There needs to be balance but what are you as an individual ready to give up to have it?  

I'm probably the worst environmental person ever.  :(

Quote from: James McMurrayThey still have chickens in the wild?

yes, there are still wild Prairie chickens in the midwest.

I read this on Friday night, and I’ve been thinking all weekend how to respond, so here goes.

Quote from: McrowSo I have been seeing this in peoples sigs, some sort of campaign for animal rights and such.

As far as I know, I’m the only one with this link in my sig.

Quote from: Mcrowso to answer the questions:

Yes, I fucking do.

Good. I’m glad you do.  

I didn’t.

I’d like to tell you how I came to put that link in my signature.  

Up until the first of this year, I didn’t really think about it. I was happily eating cheddar bacon dogs and meat lover’s pizzas.   I was one of those city-dwellers Consonant Dude mentioned. I had some vague awareness that animals lived on big farms and were driven to slaughterhouses when the time came, but I had a picture of a nice happy farm like the one in Babe, and that was ok. That’s what those kinds of animals were there for.

It started with a joke.

I have a chihuahua.  My fiancé and I joke that he looks like Piglet from the Winnie the Pooh stories. On one particular occasion, we joked that maybe we should get a real pig as a pet to be his brother.  She said it would be too big, so I went on a pet adoption site to show her that there were small pigs that could actually make decent pets.

While I was on the adoption site, in the description for one pig it was noted that he had been owned by someone who wanted to raise him for some holiday dinner, but for some reason they had decided not to and had given him to the adoption group.  He was a cute pig, so we made appropriate cutesy noises and said how glad we were that he wasn’t going to be eaten.  

And that’s where it started.

For some reason that pig’s story stayed in the back of my mind, and a couple days later I started to think about him, and wondered what would have happened to him if his owner had kept him.  I guess the fact that he was being adopted as a pet may have had something to do with it-maybe the blurring of the line between “pet” animal and “food” animal is what made it stick with me.  

I started to wonder about other pigs, pigs that were raised for food, and for whatever reason I decided I wanted to know more about them and what went on to get them from the farm to my plate.  And since they aren’t the only animals we eat, my curiosity extended to other farm animals.

I did some looking around online, and one of the first sites I came to (for good or bad) was that of a group associated with PETA (chooseveg.com if anyone is interested). They had a video called Meet Your Meat, which I watched. And I was speechless, and horrified.  I don’t want to start listing out all the horrible practices that they were presenting as commonplace, but it boiled down to millions of animals that are basically living a life of incredible suffering pretty much from birth up to and including death.

I’m a sensitive guy I guess, especially when it comes to animals. I treat-and almost think of-my dog and cat as if they were my kids.  I can’t imagine doing to them, or any dog, cat, or other animal, a fraction of what I saw on this web site.  I’m not talking about just keeping an animal penned up and killing them for food, but the awful living conditions and cruelty inflicted on them.

Now as I said, this group was associated with PETA, and to put it politely, they don’t have a reputation for being the most sane group around, so I wasn’t sure what to do.  I didn’t know if I should believe everything they said, but if even half of what they said was true,  I didn’t want to have anything to do with it.

So I did what made the most sense to me at the time-I stopped eating meat or any animal products immediately, until I could determine whether what I had seen was true.  I started looking around more, but I didn’t know who I could trust.  There were other sites that talked about the same thing, but I didn’t know if they were animal rights nuts with an agenda deliberately slanting things or out and out lying to bring people to their side.

I finally thought to look to the Humane Society, who have a better reputation and seem to be more stable and rational than PETA, and from them I found out that a good bit of what I had seen was in fact true.  I’m satisfied for now with the facts as presented by the HSUS, so I decided I needed to make my meat ban permanent.

And that’s my story. I’m not an activist or an animal rights nut (at least I don’t think I am). I’m just an ordinary guy with a soft spot for animals who found out more than he wanted to know, and had his heart broken by it.  I didn’t know what to do at first, and I'm still trying to sort out my feelings and educate myself about it.  What I do know is that, like I said above, I didn’t know where my food came from, and if I didn’t know, there are probably other people out there who don’t know either, people who might not like it either.  

If you do know, and it doesn’t bother you, great, no problem.  It just really affected me to find out about it, and just like anyone who’s had a life-changing experience, I wanted to share it somehow.  I didn’t want to be preachy about it and lecture people, so I thought a link in my sig was a good unobtrusive way to do it, so that if anyone was interested they could click on it and find out, and if they weren’t interested they could just write me off as a nut and move on.

Quote from: McrowIn fact I worked on farms, even a slaughter house for short while. Bottom line is that without all the methods used now for raising and butchering animals, there is no way in hell the demand for meat could be met. Period.

If that’s the case, then despite the slightly hostile nature of your rant, you are actually someone I’d like to hear from. If you worked on a large factory farm, I’d be very interested in hearing your first hand account of how the animals are treated, if they really do suffer as much as the websites I’ve looked at make it sound like.

Quote from: McrowSo unless half or more of america stops eating meat, don't expect any changes.

I know that with the current demand for meat, a lot isn’t going to change.  There’s a saying that is popular with a lot of protest groups, “Not in my name”, and I’ve sort of adopted it.  It means that, while I may not be able to make any huge changes, no one is going to mistreat or abuse an animal because I created a demand for it.  It doesn’t solve the problem, but it helps me sleep a little better.

EDIT: Let me reiterate, I don't have a problem with animals being raised for food. It's the suffering and cruel treatment they have to endure their whole lives that bothers me.  Since all this started, I have sought out and found companies that do commit to treating animals well, and I happily consume their products.

Quote from: JimBobOzConsonant Dude's got it, I reckon.

That PETA are a bunch of loons does not mean that any concern for animal welfare is to be dismissed out of hand. As I see it, by god's command or by process of evolution, we humans are put in a position where we can do great and terrible things to the world. With power comes responsibility, that's what we're granted the power for. A parent is not granted power over their child so they can abuse the child; a prison warden is not granted power over the prisoners so they can extort and beat them; a teacher is not granted power over their student so they can fill their head with rubbish; and humans are not granted power over the earth and all the living things in it so they can destroy the lot.

This sums up my thoughts almost perfectly.

I went to the gorcery store last Friday - to a specific market here in town as they have the best deli and bakery for a large grocery store, better than any of the chains.  Anyway....

I had to pick up eggs to, so without thinking a grabbed a dozen, checked for breaks, and left.  When I got home my wife noticed there was no date on the eggs - which is odd.  The thing I noticed was that the business was touting that the chickens who provided the eggs were (I can't remember how it was put) raised and lived on a farm that fed them natural foods and gave them space to roam.

Now this didn't surprise me as I've seen the "free-range chicken" stuff for years. My assumption is that there's a market out there of food produced by people who don't practice what you, Tech, feel is inhumane. I say this all out of respect for your position that you don't want to support practices you feel are bad.  The wonderful thing about the market is that if there's a need, chances are somebody is filling it.

So I'm guessing you could find just about any animal-based food product that uses stock treated more in line with your comfort zone. It might take some more research and pain-in-the-ass factor of going to different stores, but if it's the practice not the principle...

Just a thought...

Me?  I know there are animals living in shitty situations only to be slaughtered so that I could have the pot roast I had this weekend. I'm OK with it.

And now I'm hungry...

...and you're making me hungry.
 Cut that out - I had a big dinner last night.


- E.W.C.

Technomancers story makes me think if Dennis Leary:

All the cute and cuddly animals over here... everyone else, get on the bus. You're fucking meat on the hoof.

First time I had rabbit it was because a sibling had gone out to use his awesome leet bow skills in the real world and shot himself a cute widdle bunny wabbit.  That was the last time he ever shot a bow.  I enjoyed me some fried rabbit (taste's like chicken!).

Which of the two of us do you think would survive in the wild without grocery money?


Of course, the million dollar question is? Does it matter? Will we ever need to have that callous insensitive nature necessary to turn a living thing into a consumable resource?  Or is it some sort of antiquated throwback to a more primative state.

Cue Unnecessary Farscape anecdote....

I continue eating meat, desite the bad conditions of animals, because I want to encourage good animal husbandry.

So I eat much less meat than people usually do.

Let me explain. The current demand for meat, grains and so on means that farmers must adopt factory-style methods, rather than being artisans. An artisan is someone who has a range of skills and products, takes time and loves their work. They take a lot of work to produce a decent amount of stuff, but they use stuff very well. The guy making furniture in his garage uses less timber to make a desk than does say) Ikea. And the farmer who has a couple of cows, a field of wheat, a vegetable garden and an orchid, that guy takes quite a lot of work to produce a decent amount of stuff.

Or put another way... in nature, what one thing takes away another adds, what's waste to one is food to another. For example, wheat takes nitrogen from the soil. So if you grow wheat in the same place for years on end, the soil runs out of nitrogen, and there's less wheat each season. But then there's beans, and beans add nitrogen to the soil. But if you plant beans year after year, the nitrogen buids up, the bean plants grow tall but don't produce as many beans. But if you plant wheat one season and beans the next, the wheat takes nitrogen away, and the beans add it, and it all balances, and you get lots of wheat and lots of beans each year.

But the demand for wheat and beans is such that farmers will tend to produce just one. And so the wheat farmer has to add nitrogen to the soil from somewhere else. Historically - and still, in much of the world - the farmer would leave some land fallow, and graze cattle on it - they'd eat grass, and turn the grass into manure which broke down and added nitrogen to the soil. But if you do that, you can only have half your fields under wheat at any one time. Sure, you get a good yield of wheat from those fields, and a good yield of beef or milk - but not as good a yield as when you specialise, and only lay down wheat, or only graze cattle. So the farmer just adds nitrogen in the form of artificial fertiliser.

This leads to what we call a "monoculture" - just one thing being grown. Thing is, year after year the same plants in the fields - diseases build up, and vermin come in. So then the farmer has got to use pesticides and herbicides and fungicides, more chemicals. But hey, it's easier to deal with just one crop than several, since you need one kind of equipment for wheat, another for beans, another for cattle, and so on. So what we get is that a monoculture is labour-efficient and resource-inefficient. It doesn't require many workers, but uses lots of energy and resources.

The old way was a "polyculture" - many things being grown. You'd grow wheat, then beans, then leave the land fallow, then graze cattle on it, then grow wheat, then beans, and so on. You'd milk the cows and make cheese. You'd have a vegetable garden and feed some chickens on the scraps. If you had heavy land and grew lots of root vegetables, you might have some pigs, they eat anything and have lots of piglets, their natural instinct is to push their muzzle into the ground and look for roots and things to eat, so they're actually good at ploughing your ground for you. But it takes quite a bit of work to maintain all those different animals and crops. But then, it doesn't take much resources - you don't need all those pesticides and so on, diseases don't build up because you're varying things. So what we get is that polyculture is labour-inefficient and resource-efficient.

If you eat a lot of meat, you're encouraging a monoculture of animals, and a monoculture of grains to feed them, and animals locked up in pens for their whole lives. If you don't eat any meat at all, then you're encouraging a monoculture of grains to feed yourself - the calories and protein you're not getting from meat, you have to get from grains etc instead, so they need to grow them for you cheaply.

Whereas if you eat a little meat, and a mixture of fresh fruit and vegetables, you're encouraging polycultures. Why should we encourage polycultures? Well, because they're labour-inefficient and resource-efficient. What does it mean if we support a "labour-inefficient" industry? Well, we'll create jobs. What does it mean if we support a "resource-efficient" industry? We'll use less resources. And here in the developed West, we have high unemployment and we're using more resources than the world has to give us. So polycultures are what we should support, if we want to create jobs and stop fucking up the planet.

That means we eat a little meat. The normal Australian consumption is about 100kg a year, or 220lbs. That's half an adult cow. That means that in Australia, they have to slaughter ten million cattle a year to feed us - or the equivalent in poultry, pigs, etc. So they need monocultures for that, and terrible conditions for the animals. Me and my woman's consumption is 10kg a year of meat each. That's equivalent to ten chickens, or one adult cow between twenty people. The cattle can live off land left fallow, they don't need to buy in heaps of grain to feed them. At that level, farmers can have polycultures.

I'm happy to exploit the Earth. I just want us to exploit it in such a way that we can exploit it again tomorrow. That means old-style mixed farms with cows and chickens and pigs and fruit trees and vegie gardens and fields left fallow and so on. Doesn't mean we all have to become farmers. Well-managed vegie gardens can produce 10lbs per square foot a year (twice that if the person is talented and active). A person can have all the vegetables they need from 100 square feet of garden beds, which take about an hour a week to maintain. So a farmer working a 40 hour week could feed 40 people, including themselves. So we don't have all become hippies and live on the land.

Of course this means you'll be eating fresh fruit and vegetables instead of processed packaged stuff, which will no doubt be a great tragedy, as the rate of heart disease and diabetes drops, and we spend less money on healthcare. Why would we want that?

So what I reckon is that we should eat as though they were already farming the way we wanted them to. I want them to have old-style polyculture farms so I eat about 220 grammes (8 ounces) of meat a week, and lots of fresh fruit and vegetables. If everyone does that, then farmers will stop cramming food down the gullets of animals stuck in concrete pens their whole lives, and stop laying down fields of wheat in or out of season. Buy as though things are already the way you want them to be, and over time, they'll end up the way you want them to be.

Market power, baby.

Edit: Incidentally, polycultures are not only labour-inefficient (create jobs) and resource-efficient (save the Earth), but since one day the oil's going to run out, and all that fertiliser production, and the manufacture of the pesticides, herbicides, etc - that all takes oil. So the more polycultures we have, the less oil we use, and that buys us more time to adjust to having no oil at all. Sow change is always easier to adjust to than quick change, so that's a good thing.

So that's another problem eating less meat helps solve.

And of course, if we use less oil, then we can tell the whole Middle East to go fuck itself, which means less wars, and less shame in associating with barbaric despotic regimes.

There's more than that we need to do, but hey, everyone's gotta start somewhere. Better a little than none at all.

Attitudes in the UK changed when we discovered that the food industry was feeding cattle their own brains, which led to BSE and to at one point estimates that potentially millions of us could be infected.

Thankfully the numbers seem to be vastly lower, but at one point some theorists thought there was a real possibility we'd basically just ended British history.  The more mainstream views still thought we were talking a serious epidemic, the actual outcome seems to be pure luck more than anything else.

It makes you think a bit more about what you eat.

As for chickens facing structural collapse, well documented.  Force fed animals kept in factory conditions with their legs collapsing under them.

I eat meat, but increasingly I try to source it to farms and producers which grant the animals some dignity during their lives and which feed them on stuff which isn't likely to lead to platelets forming in my fucking brain and causing me to die.

I'm funny that way.

Fuck Peta, the existence of cretins like that doesn't mean animal rights is not a real issue.  My main issue with Peta is they make the rest of us look like crazy people, since Peta is far more about hating the human than respecting the animal.

Me, I'm for respecting the animal.

These may not be thinking creatures, but they are capable of suffering.  Our food industry is predicated on avoiding the mass consumer learning what their food endures before it comes to the plate, I don't support that kind of intellectual dishonesty and I'm glad that increasingly others don't too.

Oh, and JimBob's posts are right on the money, solid stuff all the way through.

Quote from: TechnomancerEDIT: Let me reiterate, I don't have a problem with animals being raised for food. It's the suffering and cruel treatment they have to endure their whole lives that bothers me.  Since all this started, I have sought out and found companies that do commit to treating animals well, and I happily consume their products.

Exactly so.

And not in my name is right too, we don't have to ourselves support this treatment.

I mean, I'm as hypocritical as the next guy, I eat McDonalds sometimes for Christ's sake, but I'm trying.

And not in my name is an important principle, but then I once got suspended from school for refusing to participate in a vivisection as I argued it had no educational merit as conducted at my school and refused to condone it by participating.  Edit:  I got the same suspension as some boys who set fire to a teacher's car, which shows how much schools hate it if you question their authority, or how much they didn't like that teacher.

Good stuff all around, from JimBob, Technomancer, and Balnibus to name a few.

I eat FAR less meat than i used to, but primarily for health reasons.
I like animals more than most humans.
I'd rather see Inmates experimented on than animals.
I appreciate that groups like the Humane Society, Animal Control, and the ASPCA are out there...because of people like this (http://www.dailysentinel.com/news/content/news/stories/2007/02/28/justice.html). and this (http://www.kltv.com/Global/story.asp?S=5547305).

In my perfect world, there's a guy out there not unlike the Punisher (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punisher) that finds these people, puts them in a concertina-wire cage and makes them fight to the death, then shoots the survivor in the head.

But i digress..."Not In My Name" works well.

Um, I in no way support experiments on inmates.

Inmates are people, often from unfortunate backgrounds, they're not all child murdering sociopaths and I don't think they deserve inhumane or degrading treatment.

Quote from: BalbinusUm, I in no way support experiments on inmates.

Inmates are people, often from unfortunate backgrounds, they're not all child murdering sociopaths and I don't think they deserve inhumane or degrading treatment.

Certainly not saying you do...that's on me.

I'm not saying that animals are not being treated badly. Some are, but most of those,IME, come not by fault of the farmer. Most of the farmers I know treat their animals very well, after all a sickley cow doesn't sell for much @ the auction. They are well feed, generally get vet care when needed. generally farmers don't beat the animals. Some due use hormones and such. So, what I'm saying is that the farmers generally  treat their animals well. It just doesn't pay not too. Poorly treated animals prduce less milk or eggs and meat animals tend to show signs of being abused (like ulcers and such) that will lower their price.


Where the abuse comes in is @ the slaughter house, which is a big part why I only worked there for a short time.

Cattle are killed with what they called a "cap hammer" which is basically a special hammer with a .22 LR round in it and when you hit them in the head the shell goes off. This is supposed to killed them instanly, but often doesn't. The round is to small, heck I have seen 9mm have a hard time killing a deer with a head shot. Worse yet, the slaughter house doesn't want to waste another shell so they just start processing the animal while it's still alive. Not to mention the filthy holding areas that the animals have to stay in while waiting their time. Wounded animals many times are just left to suffer and die.

Thats where my problem with the system comes from.

I take it you've not seen the footage from Bernard Matthews (a major European turkey producer) farms of hands playing football with living turkeys then?

Quote from: BalbinusI take it you've not seen the footage from Bernard Matthews (a major European turkey producer) farms of hands playing football with living turkeys then?

I'm not saying all farmers are on the straight and narrow, just that the majority  are not quarter as bad as they are made out to be. I have no idea of how or if farming is different in outside of th US.

Quote from: McrowI'm not saying all farmers are on the straight and narrow, just that the majority  are not quarter as bad as they are made out to be. I have no idea of how or if farming is different in outside of th US.

That may be true for Farmer Johnson or Rancher Bob who own a couple dozen acres down the road, but the big factory farms that supply companies like Tyson or Perdue are a different story.  The assembly line mentality doesn't allow much if any consideration for the well-being of the animals, just get as many heads in and out the door as you can as quickly as possible.

Also, my intent was not to be hostile but to clearly point out that this seems to be some sort of uninformed crusade by some animal rights groups.

Most of the people involved are those who would like to have the world free of people using animals for food.

I wasn't speak of techno or any other poster specifically because I think most of the average folk, me included, don't mind animals as food as long as the whole process is humane as possible.

That said, is there really a truely human way to process an animal? I'm not sure there is, but a reasonable effort should be made.

Quote from: TechnomancerThat may be true for Farmer Johnson or Rancher Bob who own a couple dozen acres down the road, but the big factory farms that supply companies like Tyson or Perdue are a different story.  The assembly line mentality doesn't allow much if any consideration for the well-being of the animals, just get as many heads in and out the door as you can as quickly as possible.

Well the thing most people don't know is that most of those large companies actually have contracts with farmers to purchase direct from them.

For instance:

I worked for BAER Poultry CO, in the chicken barn. They sell their chickens to Tyson (or atleast they did when I was there). They also sold turkeys to Butter Ball. A lot of the local turykey farmers sell direct to Jenny-O.

I don't think the companies generally own their own farms.

On the package, it says that my soylent green is made locally.

Wow, a product made in america and delivered fresh to my store. What could be wrong with that?

Eh,...whatever.  I still say my food comes from the local KROGERS store.
 If I lived closer to Ted Nugent - might have taken one of his  classes or camping trips so that I could  learn to kill my own game.  According to my aging father , I was pretty damn good shot with a rifle and shotgun back when I was 11 or 12 years old. Always scored better on targets than he  did or my grandfather.

- E.W.C.

It comes down to what you as a consumer can tolerate whether in cost or convenience.  Living off a vegetable garden, hunting & fishing, and utilizing the local farms is a wonderful option back home but it's next to impossible here.  Inhumane treatment of animals is not a good thing but it doesn't exactly keep me awake at night.  Nature has a way of treating organisms inhumanely.  Where do you as individual feel comfortable drawing the line?

Everything on this Earth lives at the expense of other life.

Some of the practices of factory farms are less than humane, and as such I do prefer, when I can, to buy locally raised meats and such, but beyond that, I eat meat, period.

I've seen the PETA rags, seen the pics that are supposed to scare me into never eating meat again, and honestly the only thing about it that bothers me is just that I doubt much terribly high quality meat comes out of animals raised that way.  Does badly by the food quality.

Animals raised well with good care make better food.  Which is why the Japanese make the best beef in the world, but also why it costs a bloody fortune.

Hunting animals for food is not a big thing in Europe, the whole hunting trip with dad thing is culturally American (well, the Aussies and Canucks may do it too for all I know, but we sure as hell don't).

In Britain it's almost certainly illegal, in any event the necessary guns definitely are.  We have way strict gun control laws.

The Penn & Teller show  "Bullshit!" did a good episode last night about obesity and the diet industry  that touched on some of these topics. If they re-run ...I'll try to tape it.

 They made some interesting points.

- E.W.C.

Quote from: GunslingerIt comes down to what you as a consumer can tolerate whether in cost or convenience.  Living off a vegetable garden, hunting & fishing, and utilizing the local farms is a wonderful option back home but it's next to impossible here.  

Again on the internet we've got someone saying, "oh my God, if it's not black, it must be purest white!" No, we have shades of grey.

It's not either brutal factory farms or everyone lives on the land once more. There's a sensible middle ground, as I described, with farmers running old-style mixed farms. Those are very productive. It would mean that we'd have something like 5-10% of the population working on farms rather than the current 2%, but given that most of the Western world has effective underemployment rates of 20-35% (not unemployment, underemployment), and given that many of the undermeployed and employed people both would be delighted to live in lower-density semi-rural areas, I don't think that's a problem.

You also perhaps don't realise just how much of your food is produced locally. Outside the outer suburbs of many major cities across the developed West are large horticultural areas. In Cuba today, and in the UK and USA in WWII, nature strips and suburban backyards, roofs of apartment buildings and the gardens of government buildings were all turned to fruit and vegetable gardening, and small-scale livestock.

It's possible in temperate and tropical zones for a person to supply themselves with much of their food from quite a small area. The Australian Bureau of Statistics tells us that the average Australian consumes 163kg (360lbs) of vegetables, 122kg (270lbs) of fruit, and 73kg (161lbs) of red meat  a year.

Three plots of 10m x 1m (3x 108 sq ft, or 324 sq ft in all) can provide 540kg (1,192lbs) of vegetables a year. This will feed to gross obesity a single person, feed to slight overweight a couple, or feed well a couple and child. Allowing for paths around the three garden beds brings the total area to 42m2, or 450 square feet. A single person can eat well with just on garden bed, or 150 square feet. By comparison, an average bedroom in a house might be 4m x 4m, or 172 sq ft.

Setting up the three garden beds would take most of a weekend, and cost a day or two's wages in materials, depending on how fancy you want to get. After that, about 2-4 hours per week will be required to sow, water, feed, mulch and harvest the plants. If you have just the one garden bed, it'll be a short day to set it up, half a day's wages for its materials, and an hour or so's work a week.

So if you have garden area the size of a large bedroom in a temperate or tropical zone, a spare day's wages and a spare weekend to set it up, and a couple of hours a week, you can have all of your non-meat nutritional needs supplied.

I am not saying that everyone should do this; but many people can do it. We don't have to live like Grizzly Adams. Once you've eaten meals cooked entirely from things you've grown for a few months, relying on supermarkets for your food starts to seem like relying on the government for money - you'll do it if you have to, but if you've a choice, you'll look after yourself. To my mind, a person who has garden space in a temperate or tropical zone and does not produce their own food, is no better or worse than a person who can do paid work, and chooses to watch daytime tv and eat pizza instead.

I can be in farm country in less than 15  minutes driving time going either north or west of where I live.

 Ohio is still  a good percentage rural farm country - even after all these decades.

- Ed  C.

Quote from: JimBobOzTo my mind, a person who has garden space in a temperate or tropical zone and does not produce their own food, is no better or worse than a person who can do paid work, and chooses to watch daytime tv and eat pizza instead.

So you're not saying a person should do it, but if they don't, they're just lazy SOB's....

I mean it's cool if you're not intending to say that, but you just did.

Because, you see, some of us work, instead of watching TV and eating pizza, so that we can buy food instead of having to grow it ourselves.  There could be various reasons - lack of desire, experience, success in past attempts, zoning laws, preference to use the space for a pool to lay about, or a play areas for the kids, or a flower garden for the wife, etc, etc, etc.

Do you have a list of approved reasons why we could not have our own garden so that I can see if I'm just a lazy SOB or not?

Quote from: JimBobOzAgain on the internet we've got someone saying, "oh my God, if it's not black, it must be purest white!" No, we have shades of grey.

Sorry if you took it that way.  I was merely describing vastly different situations from my own experiences of living in rural Pennsylvania to urban Hawaii.  I didn't mean for the way I grew up to be taken as the extreme of what you were talking about.  Different areas, different circumstances.  Agriculture is pretty much non-existant in Hawaii because of the cost of real estate.

Quote from: James J SkachSo you're not saying a person should do it, but if they don't, they're just lazy SOB's....

I mean it's cool if you're not intending to say that, but you just did.

You're assuming that I think people who could work, but don't, are lazy SOBs who should in some way be punished. I don't.

There aren't enough jobs to go around these days. So if someone doesn't want one, they shouldn't be forced to do it - they'll be taking the place of someone who really does want one. I'm happy to have the state pay people A$200 a week to do nothing. We already pay others thousands to do nothing. Hell, the CEO of Tabcorp (gambling corporation) was sacked because of the (relatively) poor stock performance of the company - and when sacked, got a "performance bonus" of A$3.3 million. He was sacked because of poor performance, but got a performance bonus. That'd be like being sacked for smacking someone in the head, but being given an Employee of the Month certificate on the way out. When millions and billions are being wasted on rich bastards who don't deserve or need it, I honestly can't find it in myself to worry about a few hundred bucks wasted on some guy who'd rather watch Oprah for $200 than dig ditches for $450. I just don't care.

Likewise, I don't care if you'd rather buy your food for four hours' wages in work than grow it for two hours' work. Good for you.

That's why I said, a person who can and doesn't produce their own food is no better or worse than one who can and doesn't earn their own money. If you allow that one is okay to do, you must allow the other; if you condemn one, you must condemn the other. I say that both are okay to do, but they're not okay for me.

I have nothing to add to this discussion except a reminiscence about my college days and the food intake of my roommate and myself.  Those with weak constitutions may wish to leave the thread now.

(Note: this was our second year in the dorms, so our self-abuse was aided by the stupidly overpriced cafeteria.)

Breakfast was eggs, half a dozen or more, backed up with half a pound of bacon plus whatever sausage seemed to call to you.  Biscuits went next, piled in a cereal bowl and doused in gravy.  Donuts (no more than two, that would be gluttony) filled out the tray and it was on to the drink station for two glasses of skim milk.  Cereal optional.

Lunch varied.  One of my favorites was three Burger King double cheeseburgers, a quart of skim milk and a king-size peanut butter Twix.

Dinner was where true eating happened.  We had a system based on the flow of the cafeteria crowds:

   Upon entry, we sized up the night's menu for high-demand items.  (Things like chicken-fried steak and pork chops often caused a run on the entree line, and forced us to change our priorities around.)  Then it was time to make a beeline for the barbecue line, where you might score TWO chicken quarters if you flirted with the girl serving them up.  The Chicken Plate, as it was known, was rounded out with green beans and mashed potatoes.  A short, brisk walk would slide you into the pasta line for a plate of spaghetti and meatballs.  Seats were picked out and the trays laid down.

Now for main dishes!  Main dish lines were handled with a sort of faceless efficiency; you took what you could get.  The secret was to turn down offers of side dishes, leaving space open for the next leg of your trip: the vegetarian line.  The vegetarian line always always always had the best side dishes (lentils and casseroles and greens and sweet potatoes...), with which you would load down your tray.

Laden with a main dish plate and a side dish plate, it was time to return to your seats.  After snagging two glasses of skim, you were ready to eat.

Once your plates were empty and piled on your tray, it was time for a stop at the cereal station for a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.  Then you could waddle home with pride.

On weekend nights, flush with cash, it might be a pizza night. One large with pepperoni apiece, a loaf of cheese bread and a box of wings between us.


We were doing weight training in the gym, impromptu workouts with sandbags and dumbbells in the dorm room, hiding large rocks around campus for use as testing stones...  The good life.  (Yes, we still got fat as all hell. ;))

Nowadays my old roomie's a sprinter with single digit bodyfat.  I'm a grotesquely obese boxer.  At least I have a sense of humor about it. :D

If I ate like that even one day a week nowadays I think I'd vaporize on the spot.  It's good we're not 19 forever or we'd die of burnout at 30.

Side note: I told my mother about how we were eating at the time, and she threw up in her mouth.

Quote from: JimBobOzYou're assuming that I think people who could work, but don't, are lazy SOBs who should in some way be punished.I don't.

Fair enough, JimBob.  I'd like to point out that I'm fairly comfortable in saying that is not a majority opinion - particularly in a board with so many Americans on it.  I know your feeling on Americans, so I'm not saying it's a good or bad thing, but we here in the states tend to think that way.  I only bring it up because you seem to attempt to be clear in your writing - part of which is understanding your audience, yeah?  And so it might be good to be more clear in this regard.  I understand you used the term "no better or worse than" which would be, in kindness, daming with feint praise (at best).

Quote from: JimBobOzThat's why I said, a person who can and doesn't produce their own food is no better or worse than one who can and doesn't earn their own money. If you allow that one is okay to do, you must allow the other; if you condemn one, you must condemn the other. I say that both are okay to do, but they're not okay for me.

This is not the same as me working and earning money to buy food - you know, the modern trading system that replaced barter lo these many years ago. The equivalent of your able-bodied-but-unwilling-to-work individual would be someone who did not work to produce their own food and expected to be fed by others without exchanging something of value.

Just so we can be clear.  You're not talking about charity for those who can't do for themselves. You're saying it's OK to be able to do something but not, and comparing that with someone pays someone else to do something for them - exchanging something of value in return for the work done. Is that a fair summary of what you've written?

Quote from: JimBobOzHell, the CEO of Tabcorp (gambling corporation) was sacked because of the (relatively) poor stock performance of the company - and when sacked, got a "performance bonus" of A$3.3 million. He was sacked because of poor performance, but got a performance bonus.

Actually, according to the Sydney Morning Herald (http://www.smh.com.au/news/business/tabcorp-sacks-ceo-matthew-slatter/2007/03/14/1173722511374.html) it wasn't a performance bonus, but rather a payout amounting to a year's salary in lieu of notice.  

QuoteThat's why I said, a person who can and doesn't produce their own food is no better or worse than one who can and doesn't earn their own money.

Huh??  Sitting on your bum all day watching TV and expecting to be funded by other taxpayers is no better or worse than someone who busts their arse working a 50 hour week earning money and then buys their food rather than producing it themself?

I must be missing your meaning, because that is seriously fucked up.

Quote from: James J SkachFair enough, JimBob.  I'd like to point out that I'm fairly comfortable in saying that is not a majority opinion - particularly in a board with so many Americans on it.  I know your feeling on Americans, so I'm not saying it's a good or bad thing, but we here in the states tend to think that way.  

  If I remember correctly , JimBobOz lived in America for several years in the past  and either has relatives over here or good friends that still live in the states.
 I've never noticed him having any unusual bias about America one way or the other.

- E.W.C.

Quote from: Tyberious FunkActually, according to the Sydney Morning Herald (http://www.smh.com.au/news/business/tabcorp-sacks-ceo-matthew-slatter/2007/03/14/1173722511374.html) it wasn't a performance bonus, but rather a payout amounting to a year's salary in lieu of notice.  

Same shit, different shovel. It's still three million bucks. Quite a fucking lot for someone who's supposedly being sacked for fucking up.

Quote from: Tyberious FunkHuh??  Sitting on your bum all day watching TV and expecting to be funded by other taxpayers is no better or worse than someone who busts their arse working a 50 hour week earning money and then buys their food rather than producing it themself?

It's rare that the dole bludger is a lifelong one. Typically, whatever they're drawing in dole they already more than paid out in taxes, and/or will in future. It more than comes out even; if it didn't, we'd have a federal deficit, not a surplus.

When so much public money is going to rich idle people, I simply can't get upset about the far smaller sums going to poor idle people. The issue, from my point of view, is the morality or immorality of being idle and relying on others for what you need or want in your life.

It's nowhere written that a person has to "bust their arse working a 50 hour week." That's a choice. If you want to complain about having to fund (by way of your taxes) someone else's personal choice to be poor and idle on the dole, then you can't really expect sympathy for your personal choice to bust your bum working a 50 hour week. Either we're supposed to indulge by money and time and sympathy others' personal choices, or we're not.

Commonly, working for cash while complaining frequently about the long hours you do is considered more noble than working on unpaid tasks - like growing your own food, or looking after your kids. Being rich and idle and being sustained by public funds is considered more noble than being poor and idle and sustained by public funds. I think those assessments are wrong.

Paying up for lazy fuckers - whether it's some drongo on the dole in Broadmeadows, or some confused CEO - is just part of the friction of the machinery of society. I can't get too excited about it, really. It's like Adam Smith said, whatever you do, a good part of the country's wealth is going to go to supporting the idle. Shit happens.

Thing is, not too many years from now everyone's going to have to be growing at least some of their food, we won't be able to afford to transport it from miles away.

Self-reliance is a good thing - in cash, in food, water, whatever you can manage. 'Course, you have to make compromises with the other people in your life.

Quote from: JimBobOzSame shit, different shovel. It's still three million bucks. Quite a fucking lot for someone who's supposedly being sacked for fucking up.

Being the CEO of a major corporatation is one of the more brutal jobs going around.  High stress, long hours and typically a non-supportive board.  In my experience, no company will execute major strategy without approval from board members.  And yet, when things go badly, the CEO is usually the one with his head on the chopping block.  Plus, you can expect every single one of your fuck-ups to be widely publicised.  

Is it worth millions of dollars?

Well, it must.  Companies wouldn't pay CEOs multi-million dollar salaries if they didn't have to.  Afterall, Tabcorp pay their CEO $3M+ and they still couldn't get a decent one.  Similarly, I always find it funny when people bitch about how much politicians earn.  Imagine the caliber of political candidates you'd get if you paid them even less.

QuoteWhen so much public money is going to rich idle people, I simply can't get upset about the far smaller sums going to poor idle people. The issue, from my point of view, is the morality or immorality of being idle and relying on others for what you need or want in your life.

You're either shifting your stance or not making yourself clear.  You were basically comparing someone who can work, but chooses not to (idle) with someone who works for a living (not idle) and then uses money to buy food rather than grow it themselves.  

The fact that working a 50 hour week is a choice is irrelevant to the discussion.  I choose to work a desk job because that's the most productive use of my skills.  My knowledge and experience with farming is absolutely nill.  I'm pretty sure I could pick up the basics, but it would take a lot of time and practice.  Far better for me to pay a skilled farmer to do it for me.  Division of labour and all the jazz...

Apparently, though, because I choose not to grow my own food, my contribution to society is no better or worse than someone on the dole who chooses not to work at all.

Quote from: Tyberious FunkBeing the CEO of a major corporatation is one of the more brutal jobs going around.  High stress, long hours and typically a non-supportive board.  

Yeah, must be real hard stuff. That must be why we hear all these stories of people turning down the chance to do it. A bit like the people who tell us how it's harder to be wealthy than be poor... yet strangely they don't give away all their wealth and then become poor. Funny, that.

Quote from: Tyberious Funk[...] when things go badly, the CEO is usually the one with his head on the chopping block.  Plus, you can expect every single one of your fuck-ups to be widely publicised.  

Is it worth millions of dollars?

I dunno. I figure, people cop the blame for failures not their fault, lose their job and get a bad rep and find it hard to get the next job without getting millions of bucks, so...

Quote from: Tyberious FunkWell, it must.  Companies wouldn't pay CEOs multi-million dollar salaries if they didn't have to.

Wouldn't they? Australian CEOs are among the highest-paid in the world. Japanese, German, Scandanavian CEOs manage to struggle by on mere hundreds of thousands of bucks. Are their economices in the poo compared to ours? Well, no. Could it be... someone made a choice, a chose to pay them heaps? Could it be that they'd like to set a precedent, just in case they're in that position some day? Or perhaps the board members would like a nice raise, too - and figure, "Well, if the CEO is getting $5 million, then we can justify $1 million each, a bit harder if he's only getting $250,000."

Quote from: Tyberious FunkSimilarly, I always find it funny when people bitch about how much politicians earn.  Imagine the caliber of political candidates you'd get if you paid them even less.

We've got a high calibre type now? What's the money got to do with it? By this reasoning, all nannies must be better parents than natural mothers, because natural mothers are paid nothing. Could it be that money's not everything?

The Aussie Army's been raising pay steadily for years, yet still can't get enough recruits. Could it be that money's not everything?

Quote from: Tyberious FunkApparently, though, because I choose not to grow my own food, my contribution to society is no better or worse than someone on the dole who chooses not to work at all.

Who said anything about contributions to society? I'm talking about a different thing - the virture of self-reliance. Let's face it, the work that most of us does contributes nothing to society. One guy works in an office making web pages prettier, another makes some nice meals, another spends 18 months making software for a gambling company which they decide won't be profitable enough and ditch. How have we improved people's lives?

The people really contributing things to society are people like parents, people inventing and promoting things like solar ovens, so that some refugee woman doesn't have to spend half her food ration buying firewood to cook the other half, people giving jobs to someone who's been unemployed for ten years, people making great music or organising festivals or community work, that sort of thing. Those are people who improve other people's quality of life and happiness. That's a contribution to society, not crap like most of us do.

Most of us neither contribute nor remove anything from society. We're net zeroes.

And just paying taxes isn't, usually, that big a deal as a contribution. For all we complain, we get a lot of services for that money. We might quibble about this or that bit of spending, but on the whole we have roads, primary and tertiary education, healthcare, free advice on everything from nutrition to agriculture, utilities, subsidies to companies which then employ us so that we've a wage to pay taxes from, etc.

Most of us neither contribute nor subtract anything from society, overall, whether it's 50 hours a week sweating in the kitchen or 30 hours a week slumped around watching telly. We do what's good for ourselves.

I'm hearing a lot of the "protestant work ethic" here. I'm more of a, "I don't bother anyone else, so I hope they won't bother me," sort of guy. If that takes a few thousand of my taxes each year, well then so be it. That doesn't change what I think is good for a person as an individual - which is, self-reliance in cash, food, utilities, etc. We do what's good for ourselves - and I think it's good for ourselves to be self-reliant.

You don't have to be some kind of expert to grow some of your own food. It requires even less brains than being a chef, and that, I can tell you, requires no fucking brains at all :D