Veal

[snorer]

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It's better to live a short life then to not live at all. It's better to love and lost then to not love at all. Cows would be endangered if it wasn't for human's urge to raise and eat them. They are given a chance to live that they wouldn't have had in a modern vegan society.

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Right, and slavery was good because otherwise Africans never would have experienced the fun boat ride. It's ironic you would call vegans hippies because that whole spiel up there reaks of new age bullshit. I mean, your whole premise is that life is "sacred" or that these cows are "blessed" and lucky to have been born. Like farmers are affirmative action activists handing out college educations to innercity children without the necessary means for a necessary means. Exactly why would cows be extinct, anyway?

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We are at the top of the food chain and life isn't a perfect picture.

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really, what food chain is this? I always hear people talking about this "chain" but I can't really see the links... last I checked cows and pigs weren't doing much hunting, and those that were weren't getting preyed upon by humans all too often. If we were ever part of a food chain you can be assured we're far removed from it

[theBruiser500]

"It's better to live a short life then to not live at all. It's better to love and lost then to not love at all. Cows would be endangered if it wasn't for human's urge to raise and eat them. They are given a chance to live that they wouldn't have had in a modern vegan society.

Of course that argument only holds water when talking about free range cows. The conditions chickens are raised in are pure torture."

Okay, that is reasonable. Buster as far as I can tell was talking about all animals not just free rnage ones, and I thought you were too.

[ethan]

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Think of this though, those animals would not exist if they were not for veal; It's not like they are ruining an otherwise enjoyable life for an animal.

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This is the exact argument I use to defend myself against vegans when I eat a nice juicy steak.

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are you serious about this? it seems like an incredibly vaccuous argument to me.

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Oddly enough, I agree with bruiser here. This argument really doesn't seem all that convincing. Then again, my argument for eating meat is probably something along the lines of "bummer for the cow, but I'm hungry and steak tastes good."

[BusterStacks]

Wacki, I am not sure I am willing to admit that they are in pain. If a person is in a a room that is tall enough for them to stand up fully as well as lay down, they are not in pain no matter how much it sucks. Same for animals.

[GuyOnTilt]

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Think of this though, those animals would not exist if they were not for veal; It's not like they are ruining an otherwise enjoyable life for an animal.

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This is the exact argument I use to defend myself against vegans when I eat a nice juicy steak.

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This is not a valid argument. The fact that you created something for a specific purpose does not in and of itself justify that purpose. Let's say I decided to have a child with a woman just so I could run tests on it to determine the limits of human pain. Yes, it would not exist had I not had the specific desire to torture it, but that does not necessarily justify my torturing it.

GoT

[wacki]

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This is not a valid argument. The fact that you created something for a specific purpose does not in and of itself justify that purpose. Let's say I decided to have a child with a woman just so I could run tests on it to determine the limits of human pain. Yes, it would not exist had I not had the specific desire to torture it, but that does not necessarily justify my torturing it.

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Just to make it uber clear I've never made an argument supporting torture. In fact the whole point of this thread is to ask the question "do we have the right to torture animals for narcissistic and ostentatious purposes only?"

I kind of wish I made this pole differently as I have a feeling the results may of been different.

[West]

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Wacki, I will hold off on what I would like to post simply because it's you. Think of this though, those animals would not exist if they were not for veal; It's not like they are ruining an otherwise enjoyable life for an animal. Furthermore, animals have neither reason nor self-awareness, thus we can infer that unless something is being done that is physically painful to them, this treatment is acceptable from even the most compassionate standpoints if taken at a purely scientifc level.


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I mean seriously, this has got to be one of the dumbest statements I have read in a long time. Or at least the last five minutes.

I do browse the politics forum...

[DavidC]

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Think of this though, those animals would not exist if they were not for veal;

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I haven't participated in a debate for quite some time. I'll note here that I do eat "white" veal (not sure what the difference is) and lamb almost exclusively when I'm cooking red meat.

Anyways, I don't know if I agree with your logic here. I don't think ownership of an animal allows you, morally, to torture it, and I don't believe that intentionally breeding an animal for a specific purpose makes said purpose good or bad.

Whether or not this is indeed torture, I don't know. I just don't find that statement to be a good contribution to the debate, if there is one.

[DavidC]

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Wacki, I will hold off on what I would like to post simply because it's you.

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Keep in mind that he's being very non-confrontational about this (at least in the original post).

[Blarg]

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Wacki, I will hold off on what I would like to post simply because it's you. Think of this though, those animals would not exist if they were not for veal; It's not like they are ruining an otherwise enjoyable life for an animal. Furthermore, animals have neither reason nor self-awareness, thus we can infer that unless something is being done that is physically painful to them, this treatment is acceptable from even the most compassionate standpoints if taken at a purely scientifc level.

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This has always been an assinine opinion.

I'm not saying you're an ass for having it; everyone's got flaws. But it makes zero sense, and in your case, it's not even internally consistent.

Without sense, an animal could not so much as stand up, much less react to pain. This B.F. Skinner/(Descartes? or Spinoza?) crap is pure horseshyt. But at least Descartes, if my memory isn't screwy, had internal consistency in his written ideas. He felt it was okay to dissect animals alive, without even using anesthetic, because they were mere machines and could not feel pain. Buster, you're describing them as lacking awareness yet still saying we should use whether they have pain as some sort of consideration. Forget the presumptuous silliness and inanity of declaring that they have no awareness; here your argument simply makes no internal sense in even the most obvious way.

If an alien race came to earth, they might say the same thing about us, and have just as much reason to ill treat and eat us.

Again, I think this argument is clearly assinine, but if you're smarter than the average bear, than you can understand that I don't mean that to say you're an idiot or a terrible person; just clearly dead wrong.