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LaTigresse -> RE: Before you grill it, ya gotta kill it (9/2/2012 11:03:37 AM)
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I've seen an awful lot of these sorts of threads over my years here. I am sure some of the same pro veg, anti animal farming/killing/etc will pop up with the same tired vegetarian PETA type propaganda.
I've grown up in farm country, spent most of my 50 years around it. Some of it is less than impressive. Most of it, not nearly as horrible as PETA would like to lead you to believe. I hate PETA. They lie, they twist things, they use photos and video that are not even taken in the US to stir people here up. Misleading bullshit. Not unlike the anti-abortion nuts that protest with the gory photo covered signs outside and around the Planned Parenthood facility in Iowa City.
The core of the arguments against some animal farming practices I support. The way organizations like PETA blow things up, twist them, etc......sickens me as much as the animal abuses that do happen.
I am a meat eater and will likely always be. I have three dogs that eat a lot of meat as well. That being said, we humans tend to eat a lot more meat that we should or need to. I've cut way back as I know, I need very little. Still, I do believe animal protein is an important part of a health diet. Regardless of whatever argument vegans come up with to the contrary. Especially during brain development years.
As long as human beings eat meat there will be a need for farmers to raise it the most efficient and cost effective ways possible. WE.......with our numbers, in a myriad of ways, suburban spread, the price of land, the price of fuel, the price of grain....have created the need for cost effective factory farming of animal protein.
PETA would be better served to try and deal with the bigger picture. Encourage people to reclaim their cities for living spaces rather than search out the dream of the new home in a burb......that should be a farm instead. Encourage their local governments to bann the ability of land to be sold for urban sprawl that raises farm land prices. Encourage government to fund programmes that lead to educating people on nutrition that requires less cheap meat. Encourage government funding towards research of alternate farming. Lessening the need of farmers to farm as 'cheaply' as possible.......aka factory farming. And on and on........but no, it's not as exciting as snapping photos of horrible farm practices somewhere in rural Romania, and passing them off in a video or brochure as yet another horrible grain belt factory farm.
Most of the animal rights extremists have never even BEEN on one of our farms. They have no idea what it's really like. It's far easier to sit in their urban environments and create judgement based upon bad propaganda that's been built up and twisted into something that barely even resembles reality.
I am not saying that everything the farmers around here do is correct, right, or moral. I've certainly had my fair share of heated 'discussions' with a few.
I would love to guarantee that every bite of bacon or hamburger was raised in a manner that parallels my morals of how a living feeling being should be treated. Unfortunately I simply cannot afford to. My finances are stretched to the max as it is. Not unlike many of the family farmers I know.
It's easy to sit on a moral pedestal and preach. Trust me, if I wasn't born, raised, and still living here........I'd be one. But I AM too close to it. It is more personal. I know these farmers. They are not the evil spawn of satan. They are working class people trying to raise their kids, pay their bills, caring for the land they love in the best way they know how. They know that some of the things they have to do are repulsive to many. Nearly every one of those things has a common sense reason. These farmers are not crazy sick, mentally ill whackos, cackling gleefully while sadistically torturing innocent animals. They are trying to make a living from feeding a ridiculously growing population of disconnected gluttons growing ever more obese off the fruits of their toil.
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