Ashamed to be human

People can and do live healthily without meat - that is a valid choice. We are designed as meat-eaters - but this does not mean that we cannot do without it with our current nutritional knowledge that can ensure a good protein intake.

I was talking about the basic design. We are not designed as herbivores only; although that does not mean we cannot choose to be so.

I am sure that you are right petallus that a trip round an abattoir would out many of us off our meat-eating; although, as I have said, I personally do very little of it.

I think that the point I am making is that we are as we are - and the nature of the world is undoubtedly about kill or be killed - papaoscar has graphically outlined what goes on in nature. If you are a pet owner, you will know that many of your loved pets are killers by instinct and design.

We cannot hide from all this. But.....I do find it distasteful when animals are killed in a ritualistic way as sacrifice. By all means let us eat animals as nature intended in order to secure our survival - but to kill them for pleasure or atonement is to my mind unacceptable.

There is a certain cultural imperialism in the reaction to the pictures of all those dead animals.

I was as shocked as anyone at the scale of the killing but it's really no different from an industrial abattoir, just that we don't see them. The idea that abattoirs in this country are 'humane' is really just a sop so that we feel better.

I wonder if any non-vegetarians who signed petitions also are disturbed about the millions of turkeys who are about to be dispatched.

At least those buffaloes seemed to have lived a 'free range' life before being killed.

At Easter most of us enjoy eating Spring lamb - a lovely cuddly woolly chap one minute and a tasty Sunday lunch the next.

And then we have the cheek to be revolted when in some parts of Asia they eat puppies!

papaoscar I understood there was a point to the slaughter. Something to do with their religion.

Indeed, there is ambivalence all round in our relationship with non-human animals.

We eat some animals and treat others as substitute humans, sharing our homes with them; we expend great effort saving one species that will then eat other species (who is to say which is the most deserving or valuable?); we are revolted by the idea of eating dog, but not by eating other animals.

None of it makes a whit of sense. I have given up trying to understand it all; I just find ritual slaughter distasteful.

Mishsp Again, you say we are "designed" to be meat eaters. There are varying opinions about this - particularly in relation to the length of the intestinal tract and the fact that several animals with ferocious looking canine teeth are herbivores.

The general consensus as far as I can see from the various papers I have looked at is that humans are basically omnivores and that archeological evidence of meat-eating by humans goes back as far as we can study.

In the modern context that does give us a choice as we now know how to ensure adequate human nutrition without meat.

How did nature intend us to eat animals, Mishap? Raw? I bet you do not do that with chicken.
Apparently Tesco is the place to buy your poultry if you want to do that as it has the lowest risk of campylobacter in its poultry.

According to Colin Spencer's research in his history of vegetarianism, he compares mankind with a seventy year old man and says that only for the last 9 days did he become a meat eater, and only for the last six days did he learn to cook meat. So nature did not intend us to eat meat any more than it intended us to fly.

In the local paper yesterday there was an article about two policemen who were sent to humanely kill a deer which had been injured by a car. They clubbed it to death.
They are being internally disciplined but not going to court as there appear to be no photos of the act!

Eloethan, there are 2.5 million people at the ritual, with 300,000 animals being killed, many of them chickens, etc. so there will not be much to store.

There are many papers indicating that we are omnivores - you take your pick I guess.

I assume that meat was eaten raw at one time - I see no reason why not. We don't do that now (except for specific meats) but there is no reason to suppose that we did not.

I imagine one of the risks of eating meat raw would be ingesting parasites.

Yes - can't imagine that it was all that good for us - but then, life is cheap in the scheme of things.

Just a couple of snippets.(1) Abattoirs usually (or should) carry out their grim business discretely and with minimum stress: its not commercial sense to do otherwise. (2) A religion that encourages cruelty and blood-lust is not worthy of the name.

Good posts mishap and papaoscar.
I did hear somebody on the radio the other day, say that the one thing we are not designed to eat is wheat and a few other grains, and that we have not adapted yet internally to digest those things. No mince pies!

Even Giant Pandas, which we think of as being solely bamboo eaters eat meat when they can get it [and need a certain amount in their diet].

Re abattoirs - we had one in the middle of the village where I used to live and I got to know some of the slaughtermen. It was explained to me that when animals were being unloaded this was done as calmly as possible. The animals (mostly pigs in this case) were kept from seeing the one in front being despatched or the carcass afterwards in order that they were as unstressed as possible. Stress causes adrenalin production which bunches up the muscles and leads to tough meat. The meat from this abattoir is sold to local butchers and I can vouch that it is very good.

Perhaps this is why Britain has a reputation abroad for good roast meat, which doesn't need fancy sauces and overnight marinades and long slow cooking?

A significant percentage of meat eaten in Britain is imported from countries who do not have stringent regulations regarding animal welfare.

We are omnivores, not carnivores. Point of fact. Just mentioning it because so few people seem to understand the difference. Omnivores eat both animal and plant material. Carnivores don't.

Some people choose to be vegetarian but our species has evolved to be omnivorous.

tegan, I've just read that bit about pandas eating meat. Really? Gosh.

Just googled and yes, you're right. Well, well! Maybe their evolutionary path hasn't been as weird (and doom-laden because so narrow) as I had previously thought. Thanks, tegan. I like learning stuff like that

The posts about abattoirs and animal welfare made me think of Temple Grandin, the American woman who has become a leading academic despite being autistic - most of you will know about her using her own experience of extreme sensitivity to noise, smells, stress etc to design abattoirs which minimise stress for the animals. She's also designed devices that make animal handling kinder and less stressful for the animals (mostly cattle I think) and also safer for the humans involved.

Every so often one of the animal welfare organisations exposes awful practices in an abattoir somewhere but I don't think this is the norm although working in such places must brutalise the workers.

If you care about animal welfare but want to eat meat then it would be better to try to buy from sources where you know the highest standards are maintained. Doesn't deal with £2 chickens though with all that is entailed in their 'production'. I became vegetarian when I decided that I couldn't personally kill an animal to eat so it seemed cowardly to buy bits of animal wrapped in plastic instead. We all make our own decisions. I wish we could educate the rest of the world to become more sensitive to species as well as our own.

It starts with children I think and immediately I think of fox hunting and 'blooding' youngsters as a ritualistic way of celebrating their first hunt (rubbing a bloodied dead fox's tail on their cheek if you didn't know). We are not exactly innocent on the cruelty front.

I thought fox hunting had been illegal in Britain for some years? Has this changed?

Hunting is illegal but the hunters don't care

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/01/27/shocking-fox-hunt-picture-modbury-harriers_n_4674276.html

Fox hunting is illegal. Hunts today follow a trail which has been laid cross country.
What interests me more on this thread are not the rights and wrongs about eating meat but the mealy mouthed unwillingness to say to another culture "This is barbaric ". I am surprised no one has mentioned FGM (or I may have missed it) or Sharia law or the bar to education of girls in some cultures. I am not saying we are always right, heaven knows we tolerate appalling cruelty and injustices but we have a duty to speak out and if a country aspires to "civilisation" whether in the form of atomic weapons or economic respectability their regard for human rights or animal rights or religious tolerance are legitimate subjects of scrutiny.

So what do you think should happen to two policemen who beat a deer to death with crowbars, Soutra? They were asked to dispatch it humanely after it had been hit by a car.

Did they have firearms?