Let me cite some facts then to help back up Padraig’s rudeness.

Here is an excellent article from the BBC that sums up the main points.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/food_matters/meatethics.shtml

Here is a quick highlight:
“It takes up to10kg of cattle feed to produce just one kilogram of beef, 4-5kg of grain to produce a kilogram of pork and 2-3kg of grain for one kilogram of chicken.”

Translated from the metric that is
up to 10 pounds of grain for 1 pound of beef
4-5 pounds of grain for 1 pound of pork
2-3 pounds of grain for 1 pound of chicken

For every 16 once rib eye consumed, there could be 10 pounds of grain used to feed the hungry. Plant production is way, way more efficient.

If you care about climate change at all, then, you should eat less meat.

Per the United Nations: “The UNFAO estimates that meat production accounts for nearly a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. That’s more than all of the world’s air and road transport combined.”

Every one eating less or no meat could have a bigger effect on climate change then every one buying a Prius.

This doesn’t get into the other environmental impacts of factory farming meat. Imagine dealing with all the shit from all the Pigs and Cows that are raised in factory farms. Well, I could try to sum it up, but really, the Article Boss Hog in Rolling Stone does it better justice then I ever could.

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/21727641/boss_hog/

The story wasn’t rendering for me for some reason. If it wasn’t for you, here is the google cache of the first page. It’ll give you the jist.

http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:gg4TAD8xyVYJ:www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/12840743/porks_dirty_secret_the_nations_top_hog_producer_is_also_one_of_americas_worst_polluters+rolling+stone+boss+hog&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a

The bottom line is that meat is very inefficient, terrible for the environment, and very tasty. I still eat it, but much less then I used to. I used to jokingly call myself a “meatatarian.” After seeing the impact that meat has on the environment, I went from eating meat at every meal to about three times a week now. Some times, I’ll go vegetarian for about a month.

I’ve found people are a lot more open to change if you explain that meat is hard on the environment and that eating less meat can help. If you ask some one to give up meat cold turkey, they will usually blow you off.

Ahh hah ha ha. Are they?
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“Currently, American cattle feed may legally include any of the following risky materials:xxii

• Plate Waste. This includes restaurant scraps and leftovers that may contain beef products. (cooking infected meat does not destroy the disease)

• Poultry Litter. This is the waste swept up from the floors of chicken houses. The litter usually includes spilled chicken feed, which may contain cow parts, and chicken feces, which may contain BSE prions since they do not break down in the digestive tract.

• Cow and Pig Blood. Plasma (the liquid part of blood) from cows and pigs is often used as a protein supplement in milk replacer for young calves.”

http://www.sustainabletable.org/issues/madcow/
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“But critics have long worried about some big loopholes: Cows were allowed to eat the blood from slaughtered cattle, usually as a milk replacement for calves. That exemption was allowed even though people thought to have been exposed to mad cow-tainted beef in other countries weren’t allowed to donate blood, for fear the disease could spread through blood.”

“Also, cow parts are allowed in pig and poultry feed – and until now, chicken waste could be swept up and added to cattle feed, meaning cows could indirectly be exposed.”

http://www.redorbit.com/news/general/40186/government_bans_cattle_blood_in_feed/
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“Effective April 23, 2009, the FDA has banned a series of cattle products from all animal feed and pet food in attempt to prevent the spread of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), also known as mad cow disease.”

http://www.all-creatures.org/health/cowbrains.html

I want to make that clear, because that’s where “happy chickens” that lay “happy eggs” come from. How many hens does Mark have? An approximately equal number of male chicks died at the hatchery where Mark bought his hens. I can guarantee it.

I have my own backyard hens so that I can have “happy eggs” too. I’m under no illusion about what happened to the roosters. You shouldn’t labor under that illusion, either.

Youve got a point. But I dont think their using the meat so still wrong =[

–oh shit!

Is this where feminism sees humanity in 100 years? I say we outlaw IVF and artificial insemination procedures. If we don’t we’re nearly certain to run into this problem with humans eventually. Female babies live and prosper, male babies turned into Soylent Green.

Feeding animals to animals is how prions got from sheep brains into cow brains into human brains (BSE).

Full disclosure: I don’t eat land critters. The day they pulled down the butcher chart in 7th grade biology class was the last day I ate such things. No politics involved. None. Period. That was 25 years ago. I won’t suggest anyone else quit eating critter. That’s your choice, your body. However, I can ask that we all try to get a bit more informed about where our food comes from and how it gets from the barn or field to our tables.

The fact is that these abhorrent practices are necessitated by our ever-escalating appetite for resources, including meat and eggs. This cruelty is what powers our civilization. We are oblivious to it, because we’ve been able to confine it into neat hatcheries and slaughterhouses, we’ve made it invisible. But it’s here and we cannot exist without it. So how to get out of this predicament?

I see two possible solutions. Unfortunately, one of them is very bad for us, and the other is science fiction that’s unlikely to ever come true during our lifetimes.

Solution number one is a drastic reduction in human population. Simple – fewer hungry mouths consume fewer resources.

Solution number two is SCIENCE!!!. Perhaps stem cell research and related fields could one day make possible the cultivation of animal muscle tissue without having to raise and harvest the complete animals. Then this business in its current form would be over, and instead we’d just grow large tracks of pure meat in giant vats of agar or something.

But until one or the other happens, there’s no hope for the chicks and other animals. :(

And as for those talking about the “food chain” and stuff like that: I hope they get mauled to death by a hippo or a cheetah, that might teach them a thing or two about the “food chain”. They probably don’t even work in a slaughterhouse, so quit acting so cool.

I am offended by the self-righteous wealthy elite liberals who, if they had their way, would have me starve so they could puff themselves up. The consequence of putting into practice the policies that liberal elites favor, all organic farming, all vegan diet etc. is that I and many millions more, would starve.

I don’t have a choice between free range chicken or grass fed beef and conventional meat. I have the choice between getting whatever the food self gives me, or is on sale, or nothing at all.

Romantic consumerism can go one step higher than the Kantian aesthetic purposelessness of window-shopping, when it decides to refrain from consumerism as such. This is the attitude of the boycotter, who emerges as a type in the proto-feminism of the Bluestocking circle in the 1780s and 1790s, and which Percy and Mary Shelley, and many others, continued. The specific product boycotted was sugar, which was sentimentally described as the crystallized blood of slaves. By describing it thus, the boycotter turned the object of pleasure into an object of disgust. In order to have good taste you have to know how to feel appropriate disgust, how to turn your nose up at something. So the zero degree performance of taste would be spitting something disgusting out, or vomiting. So the height of good taste performativity is abstaining from sugar, and spice if you are one of the Shelleys, who held correctly that spice was a product of colonialism. (Their vegetarianism was thus not only anti-cruelty, but also anti-flavor.)

The attitude of the boycotter is that she or he has exited consumerism, but one could just as easily claim that this attitude is itself a form of consumerism, as I’ve just argued. It’s a performance of a certain style of aesthetic judgment. So thinking that you’ve exited consumerism might be the most quintessentially consumerist attitude of all. In large part this is because you see that the world of consumerism is an evil world. You, having exited this world, are good. Over there is the evil object, which you shun or seek to eliminate. Over here is the good subject, who feels good precisely insofar as she or he has separated from the evil world.

Beautiful Soul Syndrome

Turning vegan solves nothing, it just turns you into a modern preening dandy.

“Nature” is a dynamic equilibrium of many species co-evolving with and within their local ecosystems. Disruption of the dynamic equilibrium to achieve harmony with philosophical dogmas that ignore natural states seems horrifyingly immoral to many people. Factory farms, whether of plants and animals, can be seen as atrocities committed against the global ecosystem we all are part of.

Thus, to eat “naturally” is to respect the other species we share the universe with, and for humans that means lots of fish, no processed sugars, no milled grains, lots of raw or stewed fruits and vegetables, and some meat. The typical vegan diet is “unnatural” in this light.

I’m explaining the logic because you asked. I’m not interested in attempting to convert you or persuading you to have any particular worldview.

If we’re concerned about cruelty, the point isn’t that animals have to die to be our food, or even that the worthless male chicks have to be culled. Those chicks could easily be killed humanely and cheaply by CO2 chambers, or by designing a machine similar to the debeaker that kills them with a metal pin to the hindbrain, or even an automated guillotine. But any practice that adds a step between sorting and grinding will slow down the processing line and result in higher costs for the company.

The same goes for debeaking; that machine was designed and built because it’s cheaper to mass-debeak the birds than to actually give them enough cage space that they don’t go bonkers and attack their neighbors. With debeaking, they still go bonkers, but can’t inflict damage. Money saved.

The cruelty here isn’t an inherent part of either farming or meat-eating. It has everything to do with profit.

We’re probably safe until they come up with another way to kill spiders.

I grew up in rural areas and having our own chooks, and the fact is you can be rough to some extent with chicks because they are tough little sods. In fact when they do something stupid and jump out of your hand they literally bounce.

The fact that people that didn’t grow up with “real” farm animals can’t take a little real life is their problem, life ain’t a petting zoo kiddies.