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| Should I become a vegetarian? |
| Yes |
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18% |
[ 4 ] |
| Yes, and I should become a vegan too |
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13% |
[ 3 ] |
| No, but I should start consuming meat from more ethical sources |
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22% |
[ 5 ] |
| No |
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22% |
[ 5 ] |
| It really doesn't matter either way |
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22% |
[ 5 ] |
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| Total Votes : 22 |
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Wokko 
Come and take it.
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
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Flippant comedy posts aside I'm going to be a voice of dissent (how unusual). Eating red meat aids in the production of testosterone due to zinc/fat/iron content and meat contains nutrients that are hard to acquire from other sources.
Eat meat. Lift weights. Feel awesome.
If you're concerned about the ethics of your meat then maybe you could try hunting your own. I can attest to wild venison being delicious and wild deer are becoming a huge environmental problem in Victoria. How much more ethical can you get than helping the environment while only eating animals that have lived free and happy lives with no natural predators.
Duck is also very tasty and if you bagged a couple and froze them you'd have a couple of months of food that you had the pleasure of hunting yourself.
Anyone who finds hunting ethically questionable, go and spend a day inside (or nearby if you can't stomach it) your local abattoir and see how Woolworths gets that steak from the Cow to your plate, that's truly sickening. |
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think positive 
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere
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| Brenny wrote: | To be honest David, you sound like the type of guy who should go vegetarian then may end up going vegan.
I'm neither because I love meat and I wear leather and so on.
Me I'm a hypocrite, I love meat but I loathe horse racing and even dog shows because I think they are cruel to animals. I never tell anybody this. I also think sport fishing is barbaric and I'd even like to shoot people who hunt because I'd like them to experience the pain they are putting animals through.
As I said, because I am a hypocrite, I never put these views to people or tell them they are wrong or even discuss them.
From what I read above, I'd go vegetarian if I were you and then consider being vegan. If you love meat too much, like I do, then don't even consider it.
When I eat meat however, I almost cry and it hurts because I think of what that poor animal has gone through. I actually feel bad... But it tastes so good! |
Hypocrite to putting my hand up!
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You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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| Wokko wrote: | Flippant comedy posts aside I'm going to be a voice of dissent (how unusual). Eating red meat aids in the production of testosterone due to zinc/fat/iron content and meat contains nutrients that are hard to acquire from other sources.
Eat meat. Lift weights. Feel awesome.
If you're concerned about the ethics of your meat then maybe you could try hunting your own. I can attest to wild venison being delicious and wild deer are becoming a huge environmental problem in Victoria. How much more ethical can you get than helping the environment while only eating animals that have lived free and happy lives with no natural predators.
Duck is also very tasty and if you bagged a couple and froze them you'd have a couple of months of food that you had the pleasure of hunting yourself.
Anyone who finds hunting ethically questionable, go and spend a day inside (or nearby if you can't stomach it) your local abattoir and see how Woolworths gets that steak from the Cow to your plate, that's truly sickening. |
I agree with you that hunting is less cruel than abattoirs, but I guess it's all a matter of degrees. You're still talking about killing something that is conscious, has subjective experience and doesn't want to die. Clearly we wouldn't agree with that happening to people, so the question is where we draw the line. I'm aware of why the status quo is what it is, but I think I have enough sympathy for the vegetarian position to give this a go.
Anyone want to join me in my April pledge? Strength in numbers? 
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All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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Wokko
Come and take it.
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
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| David wrote: |
I agree with you that hunting is less cruel than abattoirs, but I guess it's all a matter of degrees. You're still talking about killing something that is conscious, has subjective experience and doesn't want to die. Clearly we wouldn't agree with that happening to people, so the question is where we draw the line. I'm aware of why the status quo is what it is, but I think I have enough sympathy for the vegetarian position to give this a go.
Anyone want to join me in my April pledge? Strength in numbers? |
I once tried the Vego thing because as an animal lover I find the philosophical gymnastics necessary to justify eating meat to be quite difficult. I ended up anaemic, despite doing my best to get other sources of iron and even tried supplementation (Men shouldn't supplement iron generally). I also found myself feeling weak, foggy brained and lethargic. Cooked up a medium-rare scotch fillet with mash, broccolli and carrots and felt a million dollars. Some of us just aren't cut out to be herbivorous. Good luck with it if you can manage though. Some of the faux meat products are pretty tasty, but soy can have negative impacts on Men.
http://www.menshealth.com/nutrition/soys-negative-effects |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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Considering the quantity of soy I already consume (I only have soy milk with my breakfast cereal nowadays—not a vegan thing, I just like the taste!—of which I typically eat copious amounts), that is kind of alarming. Though Wikipedia doesn't seem convinced:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soybean#Men
| Quote: | | Because of the phytoestrogen content, some studies have suggested that soybean ingestion may influence testosterone levels in men. However, a 2010 meta-analysis of 15 placebo controlled studies showed that neither soy foods nor isoflavone supplements alter measures of bioavailable testosterone or estrogen concentrations in men. It has been hypothesized that soy foods and enterolactone may increase the development of prostate cancer although no significant associations were observed for the soy isoflavones. Furthermore, soy consumption has been shown to have no effect on the levels and quality of sperm. A 2009 meta-analysis of the research on the association between soy consumption and prostate cancer risk in men concluded that "consumption of soy foods is associated with a reduction in prostate cancer risk in men." |
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All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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Tannin 
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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David, I don't want to get into the ethics of killing animals to eat. (Well, OK, very briefly, I find the arguments of thou-shalt-not-kill vegetarians fairly persuasive and I don't have a very good counter-argument to propose. nevertheless, I have not acted on that weak conviction and don't currently plan to.)
There are, however, very, very strong and persuasive arguments that centre on the ethics of producing meat. In summary, meat production is incredibly, horribly expensive in energy, water, soil degredation, and environmental footprint. It takes (number from memory) around 30 times more soil, water, fossil energy, and land area to produce the same food value worth of meat as it does of plants. Ethically, there is an overwhelmingly strong case to reduce or eliminate your meat consumption.
(Disclaimer: I am not a vegetarian. However, I eat a fairly small amount of meat, not just for this reason but also because a low-meat, high-vegetable diet is much better for your health. Thirdly, although I like meat and still eat it, I am particularly fond of fruit, grain, and vegetables. So I eat perhaps about a third as much meat as I imagine the average Australian does.)
PS: some meats are much less harmful than others. Kangaroos and Emus are both much, much less damaging than cattle or sheep. Both produce tasty, low-fat, high-protein meat, and we should all eat more of it instead of beef and mutton. Currently, both are hard to get and very expensive - which just goes to show how insane our food production systems still are.
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�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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Wokko
Come and take it.
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
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| Tannin wrote: |
PS: some meats are much less harmful than others. Kangaroos and Emus are both much, much less damaging than cattle or sheep. Both produce tasty, low-fat, high-protein meat, and we should all eat more of it instead of beef and mutton. Currently, both are hard to get and very expensive - which just goes to show how insane our food production systems still are. |
Is it legal to hunt Roo? A .303 round is pretty cheap  |
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1061
Joined: 06 Sep 2013
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Starting this thread in my humble opinion is a sign that David you are not committed to the vegie cause. You may do it for April, you may have a cheat every now and then but I honestly do not care.
Life is to short not to enjoy every experience available.
Good luck with it David. |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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Um, yeah, I think it's pretty obvious I'm not yet committed to the vegetarian cause. Otherwise I'd probably already be a vegetarian. 
Stuff like this (not eating meat for a month), and, for that matter, engaging in rational discussion, is how many vegetarians get started. I may succeed, I may fail, or I may succeed and realise that it's not for me. But you've gotta start somewhere.
Thanks.
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All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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luvdids 
Joined: 22 Mar 2008
Location: work
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Post a pic come the end of April of you looking pale & gaunt  |
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HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
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| What do you really want to ask me? |
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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| luvdids wrote: | | Post a pic come the end of April of you looking pale & gaunt |
Too late!
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�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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stui magpie 
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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| Wokko wrote: | | Tannin wrote: |
PS: some meats are much less harmful than others. Kangaroos and Emus are both much, much less damaging than cattle or sheep. Both produce tasty, low-fat, high-protein meat, and we should all eat more of it instead of beef and mutton. Currently, both are hard to get and very expensive - which just goes to show how insane our food production systems still are. |
Is it legal to hunt Roo? A .303 round is pretty cheap |
Pretty sure it is on private property. I used to shoot roos on private farmland back in the 80's, don't know if laws have changed since then.
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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| Wokko wrote: | | Is it legal to hunt Roo? A .303 round is pretty cheap |
In general, you need a permit. In Victoria, the carcass must then be destroyed (buried, normally). Permits in Victoria are, in theory, only issued when the local kangaroo population is considered to be too high. Sometimes (far too seldom!) it's done for environmental management reasons, more often but still infrequently for economic reasons (to protect crops or more typically to reduce competition with livestock for fodder). The Victorian state government is now planning to trial a system where the carcasses are allowed to be used for the pet food industry, but still not for human consumption.
The strange bury-the-carcass rule in Victoria presumably exists with twin aims: (1) to pacify the ignorant bleeding heart city types who believe that there is something uniquely disgusting and immoral about killing kangaroos and (2) to make certain that culling for genuine environmental or economic reasons does not become the thin edge of a wedge leading to massive and harmful commercial exploitation and, eventually, local extinction. In other contexts, similar rules have been vital to the preservation of nature.
The obvious example is the rule that environmental thinning to help forests and especially woodlands recover from clearfelling must not be done for commercial gain. It's a necessary rule - we would have lost vast amounts of important habitat without it - but also quite harmful in that thinning of regrowth is very seldom carried out at all.
In some other states, especially NSW and Queensland, permits are routinely issued to allow commercial shooting and processing of a large quota of kangaroos every year. The carcasses are processed for both human and pet food (also some byproducts), and most of the meat is exported. This is one reason why kangaroo meat is so expensive: Europeans and Asians pay top dollar for it. In those states (but to a much lesser extent in Victoria), there are enormous numbers of kangaroos and the harvesting has no long-term effect on population levels.
There are only three species of kangaroo, and all three species are present in vast numbers on the NSW and Queensland plains. It varies from year to year, but on average there are around 20 million head of Eastern Grey Kangaroo, the same of Western Greys, and the same again of the Red Kangaroo. They breed rapidly and, if not taken by predators, soon outgrow the capacity of the land to support them, at which point they die in vast numbers, slowly and painfully. In the meantime, they do great damage to the countryside. (But nevertheless much less damage than even a smaller number of cattle, horses, sheep or goats.)
Until humans arrived here 50,000 years ago, native marsupial carnivores kept them in check. All of those several natural predator species were wiped out by humans early on except the Thylacine, which held on in Tasmania until the 1930s. Humans themselves hunted kangaroos after that, assisted from around 5000 years ago by the Dingo. But with the death of 90% of Aboriginal Australians after white settlement and the modern move of the survivors into townships, human subsistence hunting no longer applies. Further, our mindless and idotic suppression of the only remaining top level predator (the Dingo) has led to the current situation, where kangaroos need to be killed in very large numbers simply to keep the population stable.
Note that no kangaroo species is remotely endangered. Note also that grazing pressure from too many kangaroos (and also wallabies, which are not hunted commercially) does great harm in some places.
Note also that many of the several-dozen other macropod species are endangered, some of them critically endangered. The biggest single threat to them is the Red Fox - a terribly destructive animal which is suppressed by Dingoes where they are still present.
_________________
�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives!
Last edited by Tannin on Wed Mar 26, 2014 11:25 am; edited 1 time in total |
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HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
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