You are going to quickly arguing yourself into hopeless contradiction if you think this framing of intrinsic deserving as a variable feature and moralistic bullshit like that. Killing something yourself doesn't make it better or worse, this argument just appeals to you because you know many people wouldn't be able to. Wanting to make fewer people eat meat is cool and good, but vapid sophistry is not how you get there.
I've done some hunting and skinned a deer in my time. It's not as stomach churning as you may think.
However what is stomach churning is what happens in factory farms. I'm not nearly as concerned with the slaughter as I am with the conditions the animals are kept in up until the slaughter
The real problem with people who eat meat is that they haven't completely inured themselves to the screams of the dying.
More Americans should do the FFA thing, where you raise a baby piglet to slaughter weight and then personally tear the adorable creature's heart out with a knife. That's definitely going to produce a bunch of vegetarians and not a generation of hollow-eyed psychopaths. Can't wait till we have more guys like Ron DeSantis, staring blankly into empty space for hours on end, then giggling softly any time they hear the sounds of pain.
I went to school to be a butcher, originally. I actually know how to break down a whole beef into primals, then, i can passingly get primals broken down into finish cuts. Ive done that in the past several times. Chickens too, from live to its final nugget form.
I agree fully, if youre going to eat it, you should be able to stomach the task.
Im also a vegetarian, so make of that what you will.
I used to live on a homestead where we'd occasionally kill and butcher chickens after giving them a long happy life of running free on a large property - basically the "happy farm" every carnist likes to pretend they buy their meat from.
It was still wrong and I think back on that time really negatively - the killing at least. I loved taking care of those little dinosaurs and watching them run around while I smoked on the front porch. They should have just been pets.
I don't really hunt or farm(don't live where that's an option) but I have butchered and ate a grouse that flew into my window and died one time. Free food is free food.
If you can't butcher your own meat, you're using the disconnect of letting someone else handle that trauma for you to allow yourself to be complicit in the murder of a being.
Kill it and cut it yourself, or don't fucking eat it.
I've butchered birds before and I've butchered deer before.
I'd butcher them live in my house if it was cheaper to buy them live. All my poultry is bought as the whole dead bird and cut on my countertop to save money.
Yeah I actually practiced that for a long time. Was vegetarian with the exception of fish that I caught or meat from family / friends who hunted deer. Any time this would come up in conversation it was treated like the most mind melting piece of information. Like so many people just wouldn't believe me lol
I don't have much of a problem with killing animals, i just get worried I'll do it wrong and prolong their suffering, which I think is reasonable. give me the right tool setup I would go much faster. I've only had to do mercy killings of injured birds and mice, and it hasn't been that pleasant when all I have is a hammer.
Harvesting and foraging for fruits, veggies, greens, and mushrooms is such a nice experience.
Then there's butchering, hunting, and fishing. I haven't done any except fishing though I've been a witness to all. All horrifying and scarring experiences.
Apparently people do feel the same sense of achievement in these as foraging. Idk man, to me it's like the difference between finding a coin on the ground vs mugging someone
I grew up helping my family 'process' cow and deer (and occasionally other game animals). It doesn't especially gross me out, and I'd do it again if my choice was to butcher animal corpses or have me and my family die.
Luckily, I developed a functioning moral and ethical framework, and don't need to eat animals or animal byproducts to live... so I don't. I think its wrong, even if it doesn't literally turn my stomach to think about doing.
And, I'm not the furthest off from being forced to eat animal products or die; I have a lot of food allergies, and my body seems like it likes getting more over time. Biggest struggle for me is being deathly allergic to all nuts and several seeds, but I'm okay with beans and wheat. Hope my body doesn't take me 🫘 from me.
i agree with this. i'm content with spending out the ass on the rare occasion when i do eat meat. though i'm also pretty firmly in the re-wilding camp (large wild herds of animals that we share with other meat eating animals). which goes beyond the abolition of factory farming, but i'd be happy if we manage that bit as well. i don't think you should keep animals in open air prisons even if you "treat them well". if you want to hang out with them, that's a different relationship.
I kind of agree. I leave people alone about their dietary choices, but I do respect meat-eaters more if they have 'hands-on' experience with the process of turning an animal into food. I was raised farming and hunting, and I've been vegan for almost 25 years now. My wife eats meat and it doesn't bother me, but she also grew up on a farm and knows where food comes from.
When my wife and I went to Iceland a year ago, my wife was worried about being able to find halal food, in particular lamb. So before we left she asked me if I would be comfortable with being the one who had to do the slaughtering, because she doubted that the small coastal town we would be staying in had a halal butcher/super market, given that we would probably be doubling the towns muslim population upon arrival. "luckily" i didn't end up having to do the slaughtering, but it did make me question if our family should go vegetarian for a while.
According to researchers at the Institute for Applied Physics at the University of Bonn in Germany, plants release gases that are the equivalent of crying out in pain. Using a laser-powered microphone, researchers have picked up sound waves produced by plants releasing gases when cut or injured.
Although not audible to the human ear, the secret voices of plants have revealed that cucumbers scream when they are sick, and flowers whine when their leaves are cut [source: Deutsche Welle]. And it's not just cucumbers that are making their voices heard.
Chewing Sounds Put Plants on High Alert
In a macabre turn of events, there's also evidence that plants can hear themselves being eaten. Researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia found that plants understand and respond to chewing sounds made by caterpillars munching on them. As soon as the plants hear the noises, they respond with several defense mechanisms [source: Feinberg].
Plant Consciousness May Be a Real Thing
Research has revealed surprising insights into plant behavior, challenging assumptions about their capabilities. Plants, like the Mimosa pudica, can be anesthetized with substances like ether or lidocaine, causing them to stop responding to stimuli and suppressing their electrical activity.
This has sparked questions about whether this "sleep" state implies awareness or consciousness in plants. A small group of researchers, including Paco Calvo at the University of Murcia, are taking this idea seriously.
Can't eat meat without feels bad. Can't eat plants without feels bad.
Hunted a lot and butchered everything we killed for quite a few years. At one point i just decided I didn't want to eat meat anymore and haven't since. I definitely think it played a major role in me going plant based.
I did some minor home butchering of like big cuts into small cuts, parting up mostly whole poultry, and the like. The turning point for me was a whole (as whole as the FDA will let be sold) duck.
CW butchering
Cutting off the feet and head, sawing through the spinal cord, having a face looking at me all the while
was what really put it together for me. I wholeheartedly agree that people who eat meat should butcher it themselves and think about the anatomical similarities to their own body.
Jesus fuck, the way a chicken twitches after it's been killed will haunt me forever.
When I was a little one, my dad decided to raise a bunch of broiler chickens to fatten up for Christmas. IDK if others have experienced this, but there's a nauseating smell about a dying animal that seems to linger even when the blood's been washed away.
"If you can not stomach to let your cow painfully die from your refusal to milk her and turn your Sheeps blind and helpless by refusing the shearing , you shouldnt become Vegan !"
"I need my Ideology to be exklusivly founded in questions of Individual Morality"
fuck you either own the Contradictions or change your Diet !
processing a thanksgiving turkey was all it took for me to stop eating meat. just the smell makes me want to wretch now. I have no clue how anyone butchers an animal and then eats it. it's clearly a carcass, not food.
I'll go out of my way to protect a spider, but I guess I don't mind eating a bit of fish or even chicken. Then again, I hope to go something of a soft pescatarian someday and have a stomach and knowledge of food that goes beyond that.
Yeah. Meat is a pink rectangle I get from the grocery store. If I got TVP instead of animal square I probably wouldn't know the difference. Most people I think could not say the same if they got an animal part instead of a pink square.
Also slaughtering animals is fun. I remember i used to pop the head off chickens (used the two block method) and it was a really nice bonding experience with my dad when i was a little boy.
It was probably the most proud ive ever been when i first ate a chicken that i named, raised, killed, gutted and defeathered.
It gave me a very deep understanding of how flesh works. I really love that i am also made of organs. My organs are intact and inside which i am grateful for every day. Sometimes i look at my belly and imagine pulling out my guts, and there is something wierdly satisfying about it.
Agriculture is a very wholesome thing and i woukd recomend slaughtering an animal to anyone.
Also - cutting down a tree can be humbling, and is surprisingly easy. Id put it in the same category as slaughtering an animal. A lot of your stuff is made of wood, and theres no reason you cant learn the process.
If you want to slaughter an animal, then there are lots of farmers willing to pay you! Id recomend not working at some industrial slaughter house, although it does seem metal as fuck.