Just adding to last time...

This has just always been an argument that has bugged me. Going along with my last blog, I also saw something about this on dA today and just seeing multiple relating items has got me thinking again.

Vegetarians. I don't mind them as long as they don't mind me. I have family that is vegetarian, and they're fine. I have friends that are, and it's fine. It's all well and good until they start telling me that I can't eat meat, or getting after me for eating meat and telling me I'm some cruel person because I eat meat.

Let's get this straight. I'm me, and am in control of my diet. I am not doing it to be cruel to animals. As I eat a steak, I do not think to myself, "Oh, it's so great that this cow had to go to the slaughterhouse and be bloodily slaughtered. I'm sure it was in a lot of pain and I'm going to take joy in that idea." No. No one does that. If they do enjoy the idea of animals in pain, they're going to go do it themselves, not eat a steak and think about it.

Here's a stupid argument I hear a lot: "Animals kill their prey quickly and humanely. Humans do not."

I never realized that pulling the guts out of a deer while it is still alive was humane. I did not know that giving a mouse a slow-working poison that dissolves it from the inside out was humane. The idea of laying an egg inside a beetle so that the emerging grub eats it until the beetle is just an empty shell and dies does not strike me as humane.

I'm quite sure, however, that quickly chopping off a chicken's head so that all that remains are a few nerve impulses is. Shooting a deer through the brain so that it's functions stop and it drops dead as quickly as is naturally possible is perfectly humane. Sending a cow to the slaughterhouse, where it is quickly killed and every part of it is used (some parts go to science, some go to dogs, but yes, every part is used), is perfectly humane.

Do not tell me that humans are not humane and animals are. There's a reason that "humane" is derived from "human" and that the word is not "animalane". Animals do not care.

"Oh, but people are so cruel to animals. They raise them just to eat them, and they don't even raise them nicely!"

Riiight. A wild guinea hen, like a domestic chicken, is born with eating in mind. It is also born with tons of animals having eating it on their minds. A wild guinea hen must survive on its own, digging up grubs and picking off seeds while struggling to avoid predators and trying to find a mate. Eventually, it will be killed, most likely cruelly. It will most likely feel body parts being ripped off while it is still living. It will likely gasp, immobile, through a broken neck and watch as a carnivore rips its unfeeling legs off.

A chicken, even a chicken that spends its entire life in a wire box, never has to worry. It has plenty of food and water, a clean nest of straw. All it has to do is lay an egg a day and life is good. When it starts to get old and stops laying, they humanely kill it and someone eats it. The chicken never has to suffer through old age. It never has to worry, except that split second when it sees a knife coming for its neck.

"But... veal!"

Those calves live in a small enclosure, but they get the very best food, company (albeit often human), and daily massages. If I were an animal being raised for food, I'd want to be a calf being raised for veal. They live the good life, and then are killed before they experience even the slightest hardship.

"They never get to live the life of a wild animal! Animals should be able to run free and wild!"

And what? Worry constantly about predators? Have to walk miles for a bite of food or a sip of water? Have to spend their winters standing in blizzards and their summers either caught in blistering heat or stuck in bug-swarmed shade?

The wild is not a wonderful place. It is not a land of freedom and joy. It's a land of constant danger, where even beetles and ants fight over food.

Know what you're talking about. There is a difference between raising animals and animal cruelty, a huge difference. Kicking a cat because it walked past you is cruel. Killing a cow so that you can eat its meat, when that is what the animal is designed for (seriously, what else? If it grows old and dies, you've got a fifteen hundred pounds of rotting meat that you are refusing to eat in your pasture and it's going to give you some damage), is perfectly normal.

Being a vegetarian is fine, but so is being omnivorous. Don't get after me for following what is also a very natural diet.