Jamie

Brilliantly said...


Much Peace and Happiness

There are many regions with extremely short growing seasons, high winds, shallow topsoil, etc that make GRASS the ideal crop. We certainly can't eat grass, but do have the ability to form relationships with other animals that can.

I do agree that there are many options for supporting biodiversity. Permaculture is great resource, but grass fed livestock is sometimes more efficient.

That's just my opinion based on my own experience with farming. I could think of a lot of ways biodiversity and the environment could be help much more than someone choosing to buy grass fed beef. However I was trying to think of something people could do that let them continue to live their lives in cities nearly completely cut off from the reality of their food supply. In my opinion eating chicken is less intensive than beef as long as the chickens are spread out really thin and free to forage on their own, but that doesn't fit the way we've set up our cities. Having remained an agrarian society is what I think would have been best for the environment, but I've given up trying to talk people into that.

Cattle, and goats and sheep, are able to live off of fodder that grows on land too steep or arid to properly grow food crops. They don't need to eat grain. In the US they are fattened on grain because that's how we like them to taste. That's why I specified grass fed. The beef I ate all last year ate almost no grain. He ate grass that grew around a creek whose ground would wash away if it were farmed.



Most beef is fattened on other farm crops. That is, the animal is taken from 700 or 800 lbs to about 1,200 lbs. That affects the amount and flavor of the fat and the speed of growth. That is a result of the consumers taste that creates a demand for grain fed beef. Demand something else and that's what you'll get.

All land is not equal. If someone raises a goat on sagebrush and eats it, it doesn't mean that same land could have been used to grow vegetables without depleting the aquifers. Even where the climate allows unaided growth of fruit and vegetables, the land is sometimes too steep or stoney to be used as such.

The land is pushed to its limit and poisoned, in my opinion, due to a lack of people. Even the smallest farmers are required to care for 10 times the land they used to. This requires larger machines and increased spray. There's no way a single family can weed 800 acres by hand they way they used to weed 80. Grass fed beef isn't an ideal solution. I didn't mean to portray it as such. The real answer I think is for each of us to find a small piece of earth and care for it properly and raise our food off of it ourselves. If that can't happen then I would expect the land, as it gets put into fewer and fewer hands, to be cared for less and less regardless of if it's being used to raise animals or vegetables.

2,000 Year Old Food Forest in Morocco


Much Peace and Understanding

Interesting points. You have giving me food for thought...no pun intended.

Thank you

If that would be true, on what ground would you protest if i´d decide to cut of one of your arms?

It ís as clear cut. It´s simple: you just have to seriously try and not look away from answers that you´re uncomfortable with. The best method to find the highest moral decission is not to judge instantly, to stall your moral judgements as long as possible, and to keep asking questions until you cannot go any further. Than you´ll have a number of facts that will eventually accumulate into a moral verdict.

The only fact that realy matters is ofcourse that animals are capable of suffering, like humans. Especially the brains of high-evolved mammals differ in no way from ours. The only difference from our brain is that our neo-cortex is relatively larger...the difference is only relative. Their neo-cortex functions just the way ours does. There is nothing unique about the human brain.

So if you take these facts seriously, you´ll see that whatever decission YOU will make in relation to how you´ll treat animals, will have an impäct on the suffering of beings with a counsciousnes.

You cannot simply walk-away from these choices or go for the answers you´re comfortable with if you want to take life seriously.

You're absolutely right about that. All food animals I have known have had their own personality. They all think and feel and have emotions pretty much on par with humans. Each species has a different culture, for the lack of a better word, that to a large degree drives how they think and feel and react to different situations. I think all of these animals have a soul just like I think humans do. I have felt it leave them when they have died, both when I have killed them and when I was fighting to save them. At their deaths I would say the most common feeling they had was fear, no matter what the cause of their death, natural or by my hand. I hate death. I can completely understand why so many people want to have no part of it and choose to be vegetarians. I don't choose to be a vegetarian. I can see how you would see that as being less moral. I can only try to help you understand my reasoning. I'm not trying to convert you to it.

I hate death. If I could I would choose to have the animals under my care live young and happy lives forever, but where life comes it has to come with an equal measure of death. I don't get a choice about that. So I can choose to eliminate death by eliminating life, or I can choose to make life as good as I'm able and the death transition as easy as possible. As a human I have the power to control and conform the environment. I can choose to not use those powers and let nature balance life and death through struggle, predation, disease and starvation, but like you said I cannot simply walk-away from my choices if I want to take life seriously.

What I have setup here is a little bit of a Logans Run type of dystopia. Everyone is well fed, well cared for, the animals are young and vibrant. Every natural urge of the animals is allowed to succeed. The bulls don't need to struggle and die to gain a harem. The pastures don't run short. No one starves. The young are not torn apart in front of their mothers by predators. If there is trouble during a birth mother and calf don't slowly die, they are rescued. Their desires are fulfilled and they are genuinely happy. I can detect no desire in them to trade their managed abundance for starvation in freedom. I believe that desire is unique to humans.

But the gift of abundance results in them reproducing way beyond the lands ability to support them. If death would not intervene by my hand it would come the next year in the form of starvation. Even if I had not added to the problem by providing them with such a sheltered life they would reproduce themselves to the point of starvation soon enough on their own. It's just their way. It's the way of all of us.

So I cull them so that their numbers don't go beyond what the land can support. This results in no more death than would have come naturally, because nature doesn't allow an animal to reproduce beyond what the land can support either. The only difference is with me the death comes quickly and with a full stomach and their death supports the lives of humans and their pets rather than the lives of vultures and of flies.

The only other choice we have is to eliminate their lives completely. Don't allow them to live so that they can never die. But I think we'd both agree these animals have a desire to live. They are sentient and they love and cling to life. Never giving them a chance at life just so that we can shut our eyes to the reality of our world is also not a moral choice in my eyes. The best I think we can do is to make life as vibrant and as good as possible for all creatures and to channel their inevitable deaths into further life.

I actually don't eat vegetables (unless they're starchy).

Majority of them trigger my gag reflex and make me puke.

Make's consuming mushrooms incredibly difficult, so I have to grind them into a powder.

Diet consists of Beef, Chicken, Turkey, Apples, Grapes, Banananas, Nuts, Breads (of any kind), Dairy (of most kinds), Potatos, Corn, Beans, Rice, and -some- Seafood.

Anything stringy, plant-like cripsy, gooey or with that weird bitter plant taste, will seriously make me heave until it's completely swallowed or spit out (and spitting out usually is quicker/less painful).

Sucks I suppose.

I admire this. I sincerely wish this was the attitude adopted by all those involved in the killing of meat, from those that raise them, to those kill them, and those that purchase and consume them. You obviously understand both compassion and empathy for your animals and you don't just idly take their life. You've developed a symbiotic relationship with your animals where you take care of their needs and in return they make the ultimate sacrifice to take care of you and your family.

Because I have already made the switch and I'm not in a position to do what you have done I continue to feel as though it's best for me to stick to my curent path, but I sincerely admire your willingness to go out of your way to provide for both your animals and your family.

Peace

I'm definitely an omnivore that likes his meat, especially bacon... I definitely have some reservations about eating meat knowing that the animal that it came from most likely lived a horrible life but then again I also have reservations about spending money knowing that every time I do I am in some way funding and perpetuating war, famine, poverty, etc, so it bothers me less from a cynical standpoint i suppose. I mainly replied to this thread because I have a question for all the hardcore vegans out there. WHY NO HONEY? I understand the concept of not eating anything that comes from an animal the idea being that milking animals and whatnot hurts them and i understand that but this still doesn't make sense to me in regards to eating honey. Many vegans have told me that using smoke to calm the bees as beekeepers have done for thousands of years hurts the bees but this is complete and utter bs, because the smoke just sedates the bees and no harm is done, which I'm pretty sure is the point since you need healthy bees to make honey. Does anyone have a good explanation for not eating honey other than the ones that I've mentioned. I don't have a problem with this aspect of veganism or veganism at all but not eating honey has always confused me. I mean it used to be part of a plant didn't it? bees just made it more refined in to some nice goopy sugar. Idk, maybe I'm a honey evangelist and I don't know it yet... I mean its the only food on the planet that never goes bad!!! People have heated up honey from sarcophagus' and it still good to eat. How badass is that? I want to eat 3000 year old honey.. Anyway I digress

The smoke doesn't actually sedate the bees, it simply masks the spread of alarm pheromones in the hive. Beekeeping is another example of very beneficial symbiosis: supporting bees in new habitats and in turn pollinating both cultivated crops and wild plant life, overall benefiting the surrounding ecosystem. + Honey

Applebaum, thank you for outlining your views and practices. It is inspiring to see consciousness evolving in any and all aspects of society.

Grass fed beef < corn fed beef < permaculture

No matter what eating plants is more efficient that growing plants to feed to animals to eat them. Granted, I would enjoy grass-fed cattle over any one plant or any cut of corn-fed cattle.

^ that quote is not something that I said.

Today's - bizarre to me - "artificial meat" thread got me thinking about this....

Used to be vegetarian, for 5 years. Decided it was impractical for my lifestyle at the time, so slowly switched back to ... chicken ... fish...then the whole ball of wax. My wife and I talk about this alot ... but can't seem to take the plunge back to no-meat diet. But I'd like to. Maybe one step at a time....

Recently learned about "Ransoming the lives of animals"... that is, ransoming from consumption, the slaughterhouse, what have you. What a beautiful idea, I find.

Here is one such proponent:

vegie for 7 months now. it was mainly a moral choice. but has benefited my diet aswell. no meat = no fast food

Vegie for 7 years. Meat eater for 9. Now back to vegie with seafood added.
Meat would sit in my gut for months as I stacked more and more.
Teeth are for veggie not meat.
We are the only animal that has to cook meat to eat.
Takes animals 3 hours to digest meat, takes humans 3days.
Meat if consumed within the 3 days (for me 3-4 times a day) it wont have time to digest and stack up and rot.

I lost 9 pounds in a few days after going back to veggie diet.
But can still enjoy lobster and king crab!
It is for my health and maybe some day it will be for the animal's too.

Since I first started commenting on this thread a few things have changed. I am now eating meat maybe 2-3x a week MAX instead of once a day, sometimes more (much more ), I have gone for about 2 weeks with no meat at all at the start of this 'experiment' as well, which is quite something for some one who loves their meat.

The reason I have been doing this is because I have had certain reservations about the meat industry for a while, and had it all brought home by that blasted documentary 'Earthlings'. I have wanted to look into it for a while, but that was the shove that was needed. My body and mind feel great at the moment, and I think meat will be an occassional treat, which means I can buy ethically reared, top quality produce when I do decide a bit of flesh is in order.

Thank you Nexus for yet again for being so inspirational and instigating moar positive changes!

I've been getting much deeper into my spiritual path, and was presented with the idea that I can't eat any meat, any more...I tried after the message, and I get violently ill every single time now...like, posioned kind of sick...It feels so good to know that if I follow the right practices, I can be God! I am so fucking happy, you guys...life is opening up into something we could have only imagined before! We are a Family.

Sorry, usually I'm not this over-stimulated, its just that excitation is a feeling I've been missing for a while...it's finally coming back!