Quote:
Originally Posted by Duggeh /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Rubbish. It's about self satisfaction at kidding yourself into believing that you're somehow morally superior to the disgusting bastards who condone or ignore the manner in which something like fois gras is made.
|
How arrogant, indeed, ignorant, that you could presume to tell people what it is they are feeling and the basis for those thoughts and feelings.
It is about supporting responsibility in food production, or not supporting those products which are derived as a result of methods which are not in agreement with one's own morality. Plain and simple. To suggest otherwise, to suggest what you did, highlights your argument is empty and devoid of any real merit whatsoever.
Quote:
| Again, rubbish. These are animals, those who make fois gras follow the laws requisate for its production. Same as pig farms follow the rules for the maximum number of pigs allowed to be pushed into a 10x10m concrete compartment. |
Ahhhh so they are just animals therefore we can treat them how we like? Perhaps it is not about my alleged feelings of moral superiority, but your own feelings of moral inferiority that has been piqued here?
Furthermore, the law is hardly the moral compass it could be. Sodomy used to illegal between consenting adults, rape within marriage never used to be a crime, a woman never had property rights until relatively recently within our society. Please don't trot out the tired old lazy argument that if it is legal, it is right and proper. The law has been playing catch up on animal welfare issues, so at which stage was the law right? if the most recent stage then presumably the law was wrong previously and as such contradicts your argument that everything legal is good and proper, if the law was right at an earlier stage of the animal welfare fight, then why would the law require further changes since then, further eroding your argument that what is law is immovable as it is already properly legislated for.
Quote:
| I won't disagree with this. However I vehemantly disagree with the seperation of the fois gras example from eating any other mass produced animal product, or indeed, with eating animal products at all. |
You can disagree, vehemently or otherwise, but you will always be wrong. Fois grais is just one product which people should boycott as a result of the inhumane method of production. The thing our meat and animal products should be, is natural, it is better for us and it is better for the animals concerned. To force feed an animal until it suffers serious health repercussions and impacts upon the quality of its life in such a way that it carries out its life in a painful and obstructed manner is totally barbaric, and as such deserves no support from those of us who are perhaps more enlightened in the way we view the animal kingdom and indeed the human race.
If we are to rear and slaughter animals as we do to harvest their meat and other things which we then consume in whatever way, we have a moral duty to ensure that their life and their end has met with as little pain as possible while adhering to a wholly natural (for that animal) a life as possible. If that means refusing to force feed animals to the point they can no longer stand under their own body weight, then that is a price I am more than willing to pay, and frankly, am quite saddened, although perhaps unsurprised, that others do not share the same opinion with regards animal suffering and cruelty.
Quote:
| You either address the entire issue or you don't. You do not cherry pick some spike on the animal welfare desk which happens to have slightly fattier stains on the paper. Either man up and develop some real principles or lump it up and admit that you've just picked one particular aspect in order to make yourself feel like you're better than other people who eat just as much meat from mass farmed sources as you, but also eat this delicious french meaty paste. |
What the hell are you waffling incoherently about now?
The particular issue was fois grais, I expanded it to other areas of meat and meat product production which also needs addressing. I did not, and will not cherry pick anything. Just re-read the post if you need to see where I brought in a wider context to the debate.
Quote:
| Yes. They're animals. They don't have human rights, they have animal rights, such as they are, and hen farms must comply with the laws relevent to the industry relating to density and numeracy. Ventilation and feeding. Etc, Etc. |
Human rights?
Who mentioned human rights for animals? Talk about the lack of any substance to an argument to the extent that you erect a straw man so you can then pull it down.
The law has been covered in my earlier paragraph if you care to re-read. As for rights, I think it is entirely right and proper that living feeling sentient beings are afforded a life free from unnecessary suffering and pain.
I guess that's where we are divided.
Quote:
| Yes. They're animals. They don't have human rights... see above. |
Who mentioned human rights, I would like them to have their right as a sentient being to live their life in a natural way free from forced, cramped and painful circumstances.
Furthermore, the meat and meat products produced in such an ethical way taste better too.
Quote:
| Wrong again. I find nothing wrong with eating fois gras, pate, veal, or sausages or mayonnaise or whatever. You're making the universal idle-liberalist mistake of assuming that because you want to be nicer to animals that your view is somehow morally superior. |
Er, theres that straw man again. No I am not. I am using the premise that animals feel pain and suffering to inform my decision to support farming that follows my ideas and ideals regarding animal welfare, and suggesting that lending support to those sections of the farming industry that disregard animal welfare issues should be boycotted by withdrawing our financial support as consumers.
Quote:
| Guess again. They're animals. They don't have moral rights and they don't understand morality. They're food or pets or sport, not dear aunt Mavis. |
It may come as big surprise to you, but we are animals too, fully included within the animal kingdom, not separate, distinct or apart regardless of how much you loath animals.
Quote:
Do you ask the supermarket girl where the cuts of beef came from? Do you enquire as to how the pigs that went into your sausage were reared? Do you demand paperwork showing that a frozen beefburger came from a happy cow?
I doubt it. |
You make a plethora of assumptions, none of which are based on any evidence or fact. You just spout it out there shotgun fashion hoping that something, somewhere will hit the mark.
I do not eat processed meat products period. I do not eat beef, I eat chicken, turkey, fish, egg whites, vegetables, salads and fruit. I control as much as I can do that enters my food chain and none of it is intensively reared using practices that I don't agree with.
I do not expect other people to be as quite as restrictive in their diet. I do however, expect other people to actually give a **** about what they put into their bodies and to give a **** about the lives lived of those animals they consume. It makes for tastier meat and happier animals.
Of course, financial imperatives loom large for lots of people, but when you have a generation who thinks frozen pizza and frozen chips is cheaper than fruit and veg then it is more about education, than actual financial restrictions and sacrifices.
Quote:
| I have no time for anybody who refuses a small slice of animal food products based on some double layered mess of sniffy moral platitudes. |
I have no time for anyone who hates animals as much as you do based on the assumption that we are somehow more significant or better or more worthwhile, superior somehow, who because we are in a position to abuse animals, we should do.
Quote:
Animals are much much more than food. I guess that kind of sums up beautifully you're attitude.
Quote:
| 99.9% of them are mass bred, mass fed, mass slaughtered caged, penned or compressed habitat dwellers from the day they're born till the day they die. Same for dairy cows, or battery chickens that lay eggs. |
I am unsure of the figures, but that is largely irrelevant, the fact of the matter is, that they should be afforded a live free from pain and suffering which follows what would be their natural life and lifestyle as closely as possible within the remit of food production and livestock rearing.
Quote:
| You might always buy a box of free range eggs at the supermarket but see that jar of mayonnaise? See that cake? That premade quiche? They all used those very eggs you make yourself feel better about by not buying. |
I do not consume processed foods.
Quote:
| As for vegetarians, a vegetarian diet results in the death of more animals, numerically, than a omniverous diet with beef or venison or lamb/mutton or pork as the primary meat componants does. Thats a fact established by repeated scientific study. |
Like I have been illustrating all along, you have quite simply missed the point.
It is not about animals dying, or the number of them dying, it is about the manner of their death and the manner in which they live. It is about animals living and the quality of that life and the responsibility we have as a race, as producers, as consumers towards those animals, not only because knowing that they are sentient feeling beings we should want to reduce pain and suffering, but also, ultimately, because it produces a better product.
Of course, I wouldn't expect someone on a rant as blindly as you to stop for a second and understand that notion.
Quote:
Ergo if your precious absolutist holier-than-thou morality scales out from beyond your neat cosseted little feelgood worldview you'd see that the principle of least harm dictates we should be eating more beef and everyone knows that the best way to serve beef is wrapped up in filo pastry and pine nuts with a good layer of fois gras in there too.
I cannot abide the kind of hollow, smug, santimonious ******** "morality" or "philosophy" that gets pushed the way you're pushing your point here. It's so unconscionably phoney. |
Duggeh, seriously, you need to look in the mirror, the only one coming across as sanctimonious and holier than though is you mate.... and it happens in a lot of your posts too.
The only other people I have ever come across who seems to display such disregard and outright hatred for animals are religious people, are you religious in any way?
If you could produce the same meat and meat products while ensuring it was produced following a duty of care and responsibility towards that animal, (Because they can, and they do) then why would you not?
