Korean Job Discussion Forums

[billybrobby]

http://www.meat.org/

try to watch this without squirming or turning away.

yeesh.

[Satori]

I like eating meat, and will continue to do so. It`s very healthy, and to cover your full nutrition requirements with a vegetarian diet requires some deep research and a lot of active effort and inconvenience which is ongoing. Your choices at restaraunts will be severly limited.

OK, they are just MY reasons, not an argument in defence per se. But people have been eating animal flesh sinse the beginning. There has never been a problem with it till recently. Im against the poor treatment of animals that are to be eaten. But I see this as a problem of capitalism and industry, rather than a problem simply of being meat eaters. We eat too much meat, and we try to squeeze too much meat out of too little space. THIS is the problem.

There is nothing wrong with eating meat, but we need to get our consumption levels and production means back in harmony with the land and the animal population. It could be organised so much better, but as usual, greed take the forefront yet again.

[periwinkle]

Couldn't watch it all. Is that Alec Baldwin narrating? I grew up in dairy country (Wisconsin), and I've never seen cows treated as such. Used to work in a farm store, and plenty of farmers (and Amish and Menonite farmers, as well) bought medicine for their animals (wouldn't let them walk around "oozing pus" and whatnot). I have a feeling private farms treat their animals a lot better than the corporate farms. There was a corporate mink farm that I knew of that was notorious for its treatment of the minks.

[Hater Depot]

Small family farms treat their animals infinitely better than the factory farms that developed last century.

As a vegan of six years though I can tell you that it does not take any special planning to eat healthily. That's one of those things that people assume is true but isn't.

[fiveeagles]

That is one of the worse things I have ever seen in my life.

What about free range animals? Is this America or all over the world? I have heard Canada is very strict with their animals.

That's one of the best cases for going vegetarian that I have ever seen.

[Hater Depot]

Free range can mean a lot of thing, as in the USA at least there are no national regulations about what can be called free range and what can't. It could mean free-roaming chickens who don't live in a cage or it could mean pretty much exactly that.

Probably no nation treats its animals raised for food as badly as the US does, though a lot of European countries come close and I would imagine so do others with advanced economies.

Animals feel pain just as much as we do.. anyone who buys meat from these types of systems (that is to say, every westerner who eats meat) should watch these videos. And if you decide that you are ok with giving your money to a system that does this to tens of billions of animals a year then I guess nothing will change your mind.

[keithinkorea]

Animals treated in this manner produce very low quality food.

The big problems are the corporate nature of some of these agricultural businesses. I know a few farmers who care a lot about the animals that they produce, not all animals are treated in this sickening manner and vegetarians can screw up the environment too by eating GM food.

I don't think if it's really a very respresentative video of all meat producers. People who do behave in this manner towards animals should be imprisoned. All live exports should also be banned unless striclty regulated and only for breeding stock and never for slaughter.

Many small individual farmers produce great produce and have high standards of animal husbandry.

[laogaiguk]

[Rteacher]

Everyone implicated in these kinds of barbaric practices will suffer in this life and will be on the receiving end next life - to experience first-hand the ghastly hell we've created on earth for so many millions of poor animals...

The filthy politics of the meat industry has been known for a long time. Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (1906) was an early expose that led to some government regulations, but big slaughterhouse business and its powerful lobbyists (and allies in the White House) have thwarted major reforms and have largely shielded their dark secrets...

The only hope I see on the horizon in the U.S. (short of a massive Hare Krishna revival...) would be grass-roots support - and major funding - for another presidential campaign by (vegan) Dennis Kucinich...

[mole]

That was an eye-opener.
My bacon double-cheeseburger will never look so delicious again.

[kermo]

[Butterfly]

[Demophobe]

[billybrobby]

So what's the solution to this problem?

A few things to think about (maybe true, maybe not):

1. People are gonna want to eat meat and the majority of americans are not gonna be vegetarians anytime soon.

2. This kind of cruelty is directly associated with big agribusiness and perhaps small farmers would be more humane(?)

3. Isn't all farming supported heavily by government subsidies? If we took away all farming subsidies, what would happen?

4. If meat prices went up to a point where low-income families couldn't afford it, that would be a bad thing.

[manlyboy]

Yes, it made me squirm. Give me a petition; I'll sign. Organise a protest; I'll march. Put it to the vote; I'll vote for it.

But you know what really makes me squirm? It makes me squirm that some affluent Westerners devote more time, money and effort to preventing cruelty to animals than to preventing the poverty, famine and disease happening to their fellow humans, and fighting the dictatorships which allow it to happen.
It makes me squirm that in 50 years, there will be so few affluent, white liberals left on the planet (a simple matter of statistical fact; it's the red states which are fueling America's slight population growth; and all other Western nations are in population decline) there will be no Alec Baldwins left to fight this kind of cruelty.