Slaughtering and eating cats (NSFW?)

[HomerJay]

And what the hell are you on about, FBM? The Agricultural Revolution involved the domestication and selective breeding of animals, FOR MEAT. As hunter-gatherers, you only get meat if you catch and kill it in the wild. As a farmer, you go to your barn, and strategically pick animals to kill/breed from, and you can breed animals to be tamer, and produce more meat - as we, er, DID, and do, to grotesque proportions in some cases…

If nutrition declined at the onset of agriculture, I'm more willing to put it down to an increase in the homogeneity of the diet in general (grain and other food staples are never good to rely almost solely on) rather than a decrease in meat consumption. And ultimately, a vegetarian (even vegan) diet can be perfectly nutritionally complete.

I couldn't be bothered to read the very long c+v stuff from FBM but I thought the current view about the onset of agriculture was that it occured out of necessity. So there already wasn't enough food to go round and people were also not very good at growing it, so health was declining before agriculuture and the decline continued until they learnt how to do it better.

[Bella Fortuna]

Cunning plan of ducks trying not to get eaten.

[Hermit]

Cunning plan of ducks trying not to get eaten.

Famous last words: "I have a cunning plan." In China, and many other countries they slaughter and eat both. Often they severely beat dogs before killing them, because a dog that dies in pain supposedly tastes better.

[Ironclad]

It's just food. Isn't it? I'd rather not eat a kittun but we're used to having the things as companions, whereas the Chinese are unhuman monsters who will consume anything, especially Mr Fluffy.
Monsters!!

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Okay, do we draw the line at cannabilism, because I'd rather skin out one of my neighbors than any cat in the Tri-State area.

[FBM]

Famous last words: "I have a cunning plan." In China, and many other countries they slaughter and eat both. Often they severely beat dogs before killing them, because a dog that dies in pain supposedly tastes better.

Beating, strangling, electrocution for allegedly better-tasting meat that enhances male "stamina"...Korea adopted all that woo from China. I wish I could get my hands on the heartless fuckers who do that and give them a taste of what they dish out...

But, the inconvenient truth is, what happens in the "wild" where we come from? Lions eating the hindquarters while the wildebeast is still struggling, killing and eating the offspring of the previous alpha male, our cute lolcats toying with mortally wounded mice, birds, etc etc. There's the reality that is, and there's the moralities that we try to impose on the world. I hate to see unnecessary suffering, but I humbly acknowledge that the way of nature isn't going to change simply to accomodate my sensibilities. To expect that would be the height of arrogance. Humans are animals, no matter how correctly sip our wine and how many electronic gadgets we can devise.

[charlou]

Yep, we can hardly expect all the world's carnivores to live on rice and alfalfa.

[lordpasternack]

What I'm on about is in the link I already posted. As in most debates, we are choosing the sources and information that best support our subjective preferences. I don't have any agenda to impose my preferences on you. Can you say the same? I hope so.

Could you say the same if you came upon a culture with a cannibalistic tradition? Could many readers say the same when watching cats and dogs be kept in captivity and slaughtered for food? Would many readers even abide by watching a dog be sold at auction, unfeelingly herded into a truck for the abbatoir, then stunned and slaughtered 'humanely'? Because I find it hard to bear, and I've finally decided to stop being a hypocrite, and to stop feeling that ignorance is bliss when it comes to how the animal on my plate spent its life, and how it died.

I know that many mammals in particular - cows, sheep, deer, horses, etc - are just as sentient, as emotional, as affectionate, as capable of physical and psychologocal suffering as the cats I so fuss over - and as deserving of a decent and relatively free life. I wouldn't see a cat or dog branded with a hot iron, castrated without anaesthetic, have its teeth pulled out with pliers without anaesthetic (or at all, actually), or tail docked without anaesthetic (and mercifully, all tail-docking is illegal or greatly restricted in the UK), or kept in enclosures for most or all of the day where they can't even comfortably turn around, or move between lying down and standing up.

And it doesn't matter how many times you want to bleat about how things happen or happen on the farms that you know of - these things happen and are happening, and factory farming in particular is happening and will continue to happen at an increasing rate, as human populations and demand for meat and coldly efficient livestock farming grows, and as long as it continues to remain so blissfully out of sight and out of mind from the happily munching end consumer - or as long as we happily munching end consumers continue to rationalise to ourselves that it doesn't matter, and it really isn't equivalent to that happening to our dear pets' species, or our pets themselves.

And of course, in the UK and throughout Europe, due to the high demand, many slaughterhouses have turned their entire production to halal slaughter - and many supermarkets are now selling meat that has been slaughtered thus, without labelling it as halal, since, in the words of Pat Condell (a vegan, for the record), if you knew what you were buying, you wouldn't be buying it... Some people are quite happy to stomach it. I'm not. I am happy to go with the hypothesis that when a large fellow mammal is hoisted upside down by its legs and has its throat slit while conscious, and dies relatively slowly and painfully, writhing and choking on its own blood - it suffers similarly to a dog, cat, or human would if you tried the same with them. And I'm not quick to assure myself that it didn't happen to the animal on my plate.

Many people chant the line "meat is murder". There is some merit to that sentiment (well, many adults of other species are as sentient as human toddlers, and some are far, far more sentient than human newborns), but it focusses too much on the death of the animal, and our own irrational taboos about death (reflected also in the idea that abortion and euthanasia are 'murder'), and misses the point that for some livestock, the final loss of consciousness is a welcome reprieve from a relatively empty and stressful life, or from the grotesque suffering they're experiencing in the process of dying. It misses the point that meat is sometimes more than just 'murder' - it's being raised in one of those dank orphanages in Eastern Europe, or run by the Missionaries of Charity - it's being convoyed in similar conditions, and held with similar callous disregard that human slaves used to be, and perhaps gratuitously abused on top of that. It's a lot more than unnecessary killing.

There are contexts in which walking up to a cow in a field and blasting a shotgun through its skull would be more 'humane' than grabbing the nice non-threatening lump of processed and packaged dead cow sitting on the supermarket shelf. And no, I won't be doing that any time soon to cats or dogs, unless I absolutely have to - and no, I won't be going cow-tipping, and no, my lust for hamburgers isn't so great that I'm happy to tell myself that it really doesn't matter, and no, and don't need to eat that. I really don't.

Humans, for all our kindness and altruism, are masters of compartmentalisation, rationalisation, fondness of the status quo and blithely ignoring and blocking out suffering and wrongdoing when it suits us - as any cross-section of human history will tell you. We can be made to ignore the screams of kids as we cut bits off their genitals, and hold nice parties to mark the event; we can be made to find the idea of slavery tolerable - of slaves and women as second-rate citizens a tolerable concept; we can watch people die slowly and painfully in labour camps and have the gall to claim we were "only doing our jobs"; we can enjoy a good lynch-mobbing or stoning; we can know that our goods are made by child labour in some horrible sweatshop so many thousand miles away; some of us can be very British and ignore the fact that someone on the street is battering their wife and/or kids, and we can just shut it out... And if we can do this with fellow humans...

Whatever way you cut it, I don't need to eat sentient animals. I don't, I don't, I don't. I'm still technically omnivorous, too - it's just that I'll take a bag of mussels or a maggot stir-fry over a steak. We're all vegetarian with respect to some species. Some just extend our compassion and respect a few species further - and stop being wanton hypocrites in the process.

[charlou]

Souls are more nutritious than any physical food stuffs

[Hermit]

I think Lorpasternack was attempting to focus our attention on the hypocrisy of mollycoddling our cute pets on the one hand and eating the meat of animals we know to be most likely raised and slaughtered in cruel fashion on the other. She need not have made it in the lolcat thread, though. It's a bit like hectoring a meeting of the Great Barrier Reef Appreciation Society about the evils of human pollution. Newsflash: We fucking know all about it. Even those of us who turned up to the meeting by car.

[lordpasternack]

I hate to see unnecessary suffering, but I humbly acknowledge that the way of nature isn't going to change simply to accomodate my sensibilities. To expect that would be the height of arrogance. Humans are animals, no matter how correctly sip our wine and how many electronic gadgets we can devise.

So you view the human torturing the dog the same way you do the lion hunting a wildebeast?

I've been dwelling on this a lot recently actually - well, I dwelled on it as a kid, too - there's a lot of suffering out there both 'in the wild', and human caused. People and other animals are being sexually abused, beaten, tortured, neglected, violently killed - and cosmically speaking, it doesn't 'matter'. If an orphan is set on fire in the woods and no-one sees it...

I suppose it depends how nihilistic or utilitarian you want to be.

[lordpasternack]

I think Lorpasternack was attempting to focus our attention on the hypocrisy of mollycoddling our cute pets on the one hand and eating the meat of animals we know to be most likely raised and slaughtered in cruel fashion on the other. She need not have made it in the lolcat thread, though. It's a bit like hectoring a meeting of the Great Barrier Reef Appreciation Society about the evils of human pollution. Newsflash: We fucking know all about it. Even those of us who turned up to the meeting by car.

Well it was in response to these posts - where that point is so piquantly obvious:

Lyle should kick some human butt. He's a carnivore, you can't talk him out of it. And humans are omnivores.

[FBM]

I hate to see unnecessary suffering, but I humbly acknowledge that the way of nature isn't going to change simply to accomodate my sensibilities. To expect that would be the height of arrogance. Humans are animals, no matter how correctly sip our wine and how many electronic gadgets we can devise.

So you view the human torturing the dog the same way you do the lion hunting a wildebeast?

Have humans ceased being animals?

I've been dwelling on this a lot recently actually - well, I dwelled on it as a kid, too - there's a lot of suffering out there both 'in the wild', and human caused. People and other animals are being sexually abused, beaten, tortured, neglected, violently killed - and cosmically speaking, it doesn't 'matter'. If an orphan is set on fire in the woods and no-one sees it...

I suppose it depends how nihilistic or utilitarian you want to be.

Or realistic?

[Robert_S]

Now you've got me re-evaluating my policy of being a vegetarian at home (with some fish or wild game here and there) and an omnivore when I'm out traveling.

I think FBM was talking about not letting the cruelty of the world overload the emotions and crash the empathy systems.

[lordpasternack]

I hate to see unnecessary suffering, but I humbly acknowledge that the way of nature isn't going to change simply to accomodate my sensibilities. To expect that would be the height of arrogance. Humans are animals, no matter how correctly sip our wine and how many electronic gadgets we can devise.

So you view the human torturing the dog the same way you do the lion hunting a wildebeast?

Have humans ceased being animals?

Ah well, then, I suppose we won't bother dealing with neglected kids, and rape, and violent crime and all that shit... it's all part of nature, and the way of the world...