This is an issue I think about quite a lot. I have a great deal of love and respect for animals. I don't even want to kill spiders. We relocate them if we have to. I respect every animal's right to live.

But I do eat meat.

Do you consider being vegetarian? Do you respect the animal but understand it has to die to feed you? Do you seek out "human" food sources vs "painful to the animal" food sources?

I would just bet you meant "humain" food sources. I am pretty sure we have laws about "human" food sources.

Right, BLR, I think we only eat people in emergency survival situations.

even then you pretty much get into trouble. Better to starve.

LOLOL ok you guys got me really laughing out loud!

HUMANE food sources!!

Not soylent green

Soylent Green....is made out of tofu!!!!!

no soylent green is made out of humans

I have always struggled with eating meat. When I was a very young child I always disliked the smell, look, thought, taste (of most). I have always loved animals and could never understand why we ate them - just struck me as truly disgusting. I remember my mother cooking chicken and seeing the blood, fat, muscles, skin - yuck!
As I got older and lived on my own I stopped buying & cooking meat, only ate it out once in awhile at restaurants, mostly chicken or hamburgers. After more time & thought I stopped eating it altogether. There really is no need to eat it. There are other sources of food & protein available. Every food contains some amount of protein, except a few fruits & alcohol.
Now I struggle with going completely Vegan.
Just my opinion, but I don't believe there is a truly humane meat option. You still have to raise the animal for food, take it from it's family, then kill it to consume it.
If you are on the fence, I highly recommend watching Meet Your Meat.

i agree with all, but i beleive that we can eat meat or not!

i have nothing wrong with a vegitarian but i personaly will not
i love animals actully i want to become a zoooligist, i like them that much!!

but we were put in charge since the beggining of earth to have dominion over the animals GOD made animals for company and food
i agree we have to watch what we eat but frankly i don't beleive chickens/pigs/cows are becoming extinct.... ans remember we aren't throwing away perfectly good bones 150-100 years ago indians would use every part of the body to make stuff

i believe it's not bad but when we are killing vidle animals
it's hard to explane and i think someone will agree with me on that if anybody has i ideas that i can't explain

please speak

and i like i said people are killing to much of one animal but look chickens have 5 eggs a week!!!

but people go over board killing nonstop tiger/whales and just for us we can eat them but we go over board more for there stuff not there meat!!!

not good!

JMD it sounds like you are saying that it is ok to raise animals to be used for food, but we should not hunt animals just to be killing them.

yah pretty much that kind of!!!
not sure i can't explain my mind so hope you understand!

but 70% is true mostly!

Love My Budgies has a great point. Many people who eat meat do not know fully everything involved in the process. I definitely believe that a person who eats meat should be fully aware of what goes on. If they then want to still choose to eat meat, it is an informed choice. I think people should act on informed choices as much as they can, that is a responsibility they have as adults (or as proto-adults as the case may be).

There are many great videos and movies out there that talk about how certain animals are raised and treated. So there is no shortage of options to gain that knowledge. NetFlix must stock a few of them, I'm sure.

I think the issue of Animals and treatment in the Bible is a very important one, but that needs to be a separate thread. So please discuss that here -

http://www.wineintro.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/394360

Let's keep this thread about how we personally feel about eating meat.

I think we can all agree with the starting assumption that we shouldn't be eating anything on the verge of extinction, that to kill off forever something just to eat it would be sad.

In cleaning out my pile of New Yorkers I came across a great article on "should you eat meat". It says Americans spend $40 billion a year on pet animals - and the number rises even in recessions. People would rather feed their pet well even if they live on mac & cheese. 46 million families have dogs, 38 million have cats.

At the same time, we eat 35 million cows, and 9 billion birds a year. The vast majority raised in "barbaric" (her words) conditions. She goes into some of the details. She then wonders why we slave over pets with avian manicures, but at the same time allow the food-animals we ingest to be tortured.

She's not saying necessarily that we should stop eating meat. She's just saying, if we care for animals so much, we should care for all of them that are part of our lives (including the ones we eat) and ensure all of them are treated well.

An interesting point she brings up is with milk. Many vegetarians drink milk. But the process to make cows continually churn out milk, and to then milk them 3 times a day by machine, can be really nasty to a cow. How about eggs? The chickens are kept in tiny rooms and their beaks cut so they don't peck each other in frustration.

So the main thrust of the article was - whether you choose to eat meat, or eggs, or milk, or anything - that you should be very aware of the path the animal takes to get to you and ensure you are supporting a humane, healthy animal life.

I agree that in this day and age no matter what your decision to eat, one should know what they are eating, how it got on their plate, and what it costs the planet.
Some main stream movies available that can enlighten are Food, Inc., King Corn, Fast Food Nation, Supersize Me, Death on a Factory Farm, Earthlings, Meet Your Meat.
Michael Pollan has a few good books out about food. But my favorite book on the subject is The Perfectly Contented Meat-Eater's Guide to Vegetarianism by Mark Warren Reinhardt.

"...only eat people in emergency survival situations..." That's funny! I like meat with every meal, probably because I was raised with that kind of diet. I don't like the way meat production has changed through the years. I visited slaughter houses before and it was horrible. Most of my meat comes from my sisters farm. When animals die from natural causes, my sisters family can't eat the whole animal so she ships the meat to family members. It helps me to know that all animals have not been brutally slaughtered. When I lived in the mountains I did what the American Indians did, I only killed for survival and used every bit of the creature. With prices and economy as they are my biggest concern is being able to afford food.

And the cost of hunting now far exceeds the average cost of a grocery trip to the market..the money for it goes into the study and preservation of wildlife also...whereas the cost of a trip to the grocery store doesnt.

I'm a vegetarian actually - hence the name - and I just wanted to share my opinion on the matter. A) You cannot argue to eat meat because there's "so many animals." That's because people purposely raise those animals for slaughter. B) An arbitrary peice of info, but the USA has the highest allowance of cow puss in milk - somewhere under 10% - in the world (where it's regulated, anyway). C) I would eat meat if I knew where it came from, that it hadn't been tortured, dissected alive, etc. But I don't, and I respect them too much to endorse that kind of thing. D) TEMPLE GRANDIN - my hero, and an excellent movie. She designed a humane slaughter process, despite being autistic, and says that we have the obligation to take care of them. Even if they end up meat, they are an individual until death, and deserve our respect.

I get sad when I look at my kitties and think that in some places, they eat cat.

But I can't go vegetarian. As I said in a much earlier topic, I can't rationalize vegetables not feeling anything enough to feel that superior to everyone else because I only eat them. Philosophically, for all I know, they could feel pain, I just can't detect it.

So I'm at peace with knowing that no mater what, if I want to live, something must die to feed me.

Good point. I've wondered if veggies feel pain too, only then people look at me funny, so I shut up and settle for not eating what I know has felt pain.

it is interesting too that of the vegies we eat, we eat mostly the embro of those vegies

I once spent time in the Rocky Mountains. Didn't plan it very well. Ran out of food and supplies quickly. Nothing but ice and snow. Felt sorry for the critters. Got real hungry. I ate anything that ran slower than me. Felt sorry for the critters, but I had to eat. Went hunting with my dad and my uncle. Had plenty of food. Shot things for fun and didn't even eat it. I hated myself and my relatives for it. Food is relative. Food sources are relative. If you can control your resources, you can live with it. If you can't control it, you eat it. Simple.

I personally think that animals are treated very poorly, but I'm not going to sacrifice my health to boycott meat, especially since meat will still be sold whether I eat it or not. A lot of vegetarians end up like frail twigs, and I'm already underweight. I need red meat to keep me from getting more-so.

I know it's possible to be healthy on a vegetarian or vegan diet, but it's not easy, and I just don't like vegetables all that much. Also, dairy cows are treated much more kindly than beef cows, so I understand being vegan even less than being vegetarian.

I would like to get to the point where i only eat meat that has been treated humanely, hopefully organically and free range, as much as possible. it is a goal of mine, but one i realize will be hard to live up to.

As I get more settled in my life, I hope to work towards this more and more.

Jilly, I'm with you 100% right now. Which is ironic. I tended to fight pretty adamantly against vegetarianism before. Hehe.

But all it took for me was watching Supersize Me, and seeing the interview with the dude who wrote Fast Food Nation (I have the book, gonna read it).

It's just hard. I don't make the money to buy all organic, and we don't have the supply in upstate NY as we did in the city! I buy a lot from the restaurant I work at though, we are very picky as a corporation on where we buy our seafood. I highly respect that.

I think the problem is most Americans eat way too much meat. In many cultures the amount of meat is quite small and/or quite infrequently. You can get your supply of protein much cheaper and using less resources from plant based proteins - see Frances Moore Lappee's (not sure of the spelling) Diet for a Small Planet which was a revolutionary book when it first appeared. Until recently animals were not raised in these factory situations where the treatment is inhumane; families raised a few animals for slaughter and people hunted. Here in MI I know a lot of folks wo still get their deer or two during season and that is their meat for the year. Yes organic, free range is expensive but if it becomes and occasional thing it is affordable.

Niki, I did read Diet for a New America when i was in college, and I was horrified at our treatment of meat animals. I realize much of this is still going on - they just hide it better from the media.

Talking about this is certainly a reminder for me to make a better attempt to eat humanely raised food. I would love to raise my own meat - chickens are very affordable, for example. But I am squeamish about killing and dressing. I realize this all makes me a hypocrite - I am not walking the talk.

Cetan, i agree that in the US we eat meat in large slabs, which is not how most of the world handles their protein intake. It's also eating very high on the food chain, unnecessarily.

I do agree that we can probably all do better in eating in both a more socially responsible way as well as a more healthy way. We get trained by our culture to eat a certain way and it becomes "normal". It is challenging to think outside of those boundaries and change what you eat. Especially when society makes that change a financial hardship.

In our society, fast food french fries are cheap. Healthy vegetables are expensive. That is a shame.

Still, we can make it a goal to improve, and work diligently towards that goal.

It's interesting - in looking at the goals and priorities I developed for myself for 2011, none of them have to do with eating. Eve though one of my life priorities is to "be healthy". I included my yoga practice in my goals - but not my eating habits. I think this is a great discussion that will have me look into adding a goal involving the specific foods I eat.

Thank you all so much.

I am still not making an effort to eat free range meat. I honestly keep forgetting. It's hard enough for me to eat healthy in the first place since I am so lazy about food (i am happy to just eat tortillas with butter).

I wonder how long it will take me to actually transition to purely organic food. It might be a while. I want to be there, though.

in reality ...there is ***nothing truly organic...and we were made to be meat eaters also...anything with eyes front is a meat eater and needs that...eyes on the side ..are meant to be eaten...a very controversial subject becuz meat eaters are passionate about meat and the opposite side of that coin are equally as passionate.

very true. I would like to eat food that was compassionately raised though, and is free of hormones and toxins, though.

No one who believes their own reasons/excuses for eating meat will stop eating meat. Begin to question your beliefs and your own willingness to believe them.

Biblically (which so many base their "right" to kill and eat animals) humans and animals were amply provided with food that grew from the soil and told by God that this is what was to be eaten. Questioning God (i.e. eating of the fruit of the tree of good and evil) resulted in catastrophic changes to our well being and that of all living creatures, culminating in a great flood in which only a handful of humans survived but a great number of animals did, at God's request.

After the flood God put fear into the animals of the ark to protect them as far as possible while new lands began the slow initiation into vegetation and crops.

To continue to eat animals after the land became arable and rich was man's choice, not God's. And it still is, to this day.

It's an interesting question. If we are going to go based on the Bible, I have to imagine that somewhere in the Bible after the flood there are instructions about how to eat meat. You would think those wouldn't be in there if the intention was for humans not to eat meat, from a Biblical point of view ...?

Guidelines as to what animals are clean and unclean to eat are provided in the Torah (first five books of the Old Testament) for followers of Judaism. There is no mention of "instructions" in the Christian-based New Testament. Jesus ate fish. If He was a member of a Jewish sect, such as the Essenes, that group is vegetarian.

Literally billions of healthy people on the planet eat a plant-based diet. The western world's obsession with meat as a healthy choice is misguided.

Worldwide, there are estimated to be 375 million people subsisting on a vegetarian diet. That is not billions.

Not all of those people are healthy. Many have severe protein deficiencies.

It's fine if you have the money to purchase a menu which provides all your types of proteins and nutrients from fresh vegetables and other sources. Many people in inner cities do not have that luxury - they are barely scraping by to pay the rent.

None of this has anything to do on whether the Bible states that meat should not be eaten. Numerous examples seem to indicate that, after the flood, there are still instructions on when and when not to eat animal flesh. Including fish.