There are two part to this that I can see, the first is the cause of that animal's death (say, hypothetically speaking it is natural causes), which is all well and good, but I think it is just the respect for the animal. It upsets me in the same way as if I were to see a dead man in the street, and people taking his boots, jacket, wallet etc. He is dead so what does it matter? It is a respect for the life, and respect for that animal, (human or otherwise) even after its death. Do you see what I mean? That is how I feel anyway.



Thank you, that means a lot. I know what you mean about the inconsistent types, I think the term is fake-itarian. There are a lot of people who claim to be vegetarian but still eat fish, and don't understand why that makes people say that they are not vegetarian.


Sarah, I found some more info on dairy industry. You said that people you know help to make the cows live longer. How long do they live for do you know? At least it is something if they are treated better than in factory conditions.

Briefly, I am thinking of plastics and things being made from oil and all the damage oil wells and pipelines can do to the places they are located, not to mention spills from oil tankers or such like. Then the processing of materials often releases pollution, and when the end product is discarded and isn't biodegradable you have more pollution in land fills and even recycling frequently involves chemicals and energy use. Also many manufacturing processes use a lot of electricity and most of the ways of generating electricity aren't kind to the environment if you look at the whole process including building the factory.

Of course this environmental damage affects humans and both tame and wild animals. Taking the issue as a whole rather complicates matters, but I believe trying to see the whole picture is important. Personally I prefer natural materials and agree with the campaigns to keep farm animals in better conditions. My personal belief is there are too many humans on this planet by at least 10 times and that is an even harder problem to solve!

Yup, I don't think you could go around controlling the human population as you could do animals. Nobody would like that!

By natural products, I assume you mean materials. I agree the state of the environment is of a great concern, and humans are far in abundance. Intensive farming is a great contributor to poor environmental state.

Some interesting facts -

Cows release about 100 million tons of hydrocarbon annually by releasing gas, mostly by burping. They are one of the main contributors to the hole in the ozone layer. If the gas of 10 cows could be captured, it would provide heating for a small house for a year.

World meat production has quadrupled in the past 50 years and livestock now outnumber people by more than 3 to 1 due to intensive animal farming for food.
Here are some facts. (I admit they are US based, but I don't think that makes them any less relevant.)

Children dying of starvation or malnutrition per day worldwide: more than 33,000
Portion of U.S. grain crop fed to animals destined for slaughter: 70%
Pounds of corn and soy to produce one pound of pork: 7lb

!!DON'T READ THE FOLLOWING IF YOU HAVE EATEN / ARE ABOUT TO EAT!!

Approximate tons of manure from North American food animals per year - 1.5 billion.
Approximate tons of solid sewage waste from North American humans per year - 0.73 billion
Faeces and urine from livestock for each 0.3kg serving of meat: 16kg

Pretty disturbing I think.

Not everyone likes the colours, but I thought I'd mention my wife uses an incredibow and we import them from the US so I mention this as an opportunity to find out more about them if you're in the UK.

What quite interests us is that not all teachers approve of them - there's definitely a difference to the grip which takes a bit of getting used to and they're not quite the "traditional" look, even though they do quite a nice wood-finish one.

I'd never thought of the "animal rights" angle - an interesting point - and definitely I can vouch that they are totally synthetic and the bow and hair etc are guaranteed for three years.

Just a quickie, (edit: famous last words, that one...) there's so much to talk about and answer in this thread I doubt I will ever catch up... Yes, it's possible that people would keep some sheep as pets, on petting farms, or in sanctuaries... but they seriously take a heck of a lot of work - domesticated sheep really do take a heck of a lot of care and attention. A lot of this care and attention stems from years of selectrive breeding - which one could argue should not have happened, but it has, and can't be reversed. So although I can well believe that some people would take on sheep to look after, it isn't a job for the faint-hearted, and to look after them properly would definitely require the look-after-ers to have a good level of knowledge and skills, and enough spare money and time to do it. Not that it would be impossible - by any means - to have sheep cared for in this way... but there are fewer people I suspect who would have the ability and resources to look after them properly than who would be willing to.

If you really want I shall repost the hugely (and overly) long post I just wrote about the care of sheep... I decided it was just crazily long and no one could possibly be that interested in sheep care! (this post is long enough already...) I will summarise and say: skilled jobs for a would-be sheep-carer: birthing sheep, caring for orphaned sheep, docking lambs tails or shearing your sheep's rears regularly to help prevent fly strike (which is very very nasty! - can cause miscarriage, can be fatal) or finding some other way of avoiding it, sheering your sheep (highly skillful job, especially to do it well and not distress your animals or nick their skin) each year assuming they are those that have been bred to produce too much wool over the years (probable) and could therefore suffer from heatstroke if not sheared before summer heats up, and noticing and treating (or having treated) the numerable nasty diseases sheep are prone to.

Certainly, most sheep, cows, and other farm animals could in general be treated a lot better, though I'm glad to say none of the farmers I know use intensive or cruel techniques and care greatly for their animals.

I do believe that, although I do actually think we are as humans an omnivorous animal* , we do in general eat way too much meat, far more than we need and more even than could possible be good for us. I do actually believe from what I have read, from my own experience with anaemia, and from our physiology, that we either were designed or evolved to eat an omnivorous diet, but I doubt that we need to eat it even every day, let alone 3 times a day as some people do. If people ate an amount of meat that was actually healthy rather than eating as much as most people do, then not only would we frankly be healthier, but we would require fewer animals for food, and those animals which were raised for food could be raised in a way which put welfare rather than profits first - and indeed would be, because if one only ate meat a few times a week, the cheap cost of farmed meat would not be nearly as attractive as eating meat which tasted better, which was free range, and which had been killed in the most humane way possible. I rather suspect that the amount of meat we eat (along with the fat it naturaly comes laden with, which we need - but in moderation) has a lot to do with the growing number of people with heart problems and obesity.


* just to explain why, in case you are wondering;
- I find it hard to believe that our canines and insisors developed for eating vegetables - I use my incisors for eating apples and... um... meat... most vegetables are macerated in between my molars, well when *I* eat anyhow... I have thought about this, believe me, but I'm struggling to come up with many non- meat foods that use the incisors, and none that need canines. The only reason I don't chomp and apple between my teeth as I might a raw carrot is because it's the wrong shape to eat that way;
- chimps, who share more than 98% of DNA with us, do actually kill and eat meat - according to Jane Goodall's research, insects, birds, and bigger animals such as baby baboons, monkeys, or small antelope;
- we can and do eat raw meat - steak tartare and sushi come to mind, and meat that is cooked rare... the Eskimos ate raw meat, with no problems - apparently the major problem nowadays would be more to do with it not being fresh enough (bacteria, causing illness) and/or chemical treatment... we cook meat to get rid of the nasties in it;
- we actually have problems digesting plant matter because of the cell walls... the fact that we can't digest it gives us the fibre in food. Most of the time when we eat vegetables, we digest them better if they are cooked;
- there are certain amino acids that our bodies don't produce (gorillas, who are largely vegetarian, although they get some protein from insects and larvae ingested with the fruit etc they eat (same applies for other "vegetarian" species of primate), apparently do) that are most easily available to us in meat, and peasant groups where meat is rarely or never available show stunted growth and development. Some claim that we can get these from certain combinations of foods, and of course their are supplements, but I find it hard to believe that our distant ancestors were into food combining or food supplements - the logical conclusion would be, our bodies don't have the ability to manufacture those amino acids because we got them from meat.

I can't, again, claim to be an expert here, but if our nearest "relatives" eat meat, we have the teeth for eating meat, and our growth is stunted if we don't get certain substances that are most easily available from meat, then it seems reasonable to assume that, like other omnivorous animals, meat is something are bodies are designed to eat.

I may have to think again about which violin and bow to buy, and see if I can get a good synthetic one. (is there such a thing?)

[/quote]

I don't thnk there is such a thing as good synthetic horsehair for a violin bow but if you are worried about cruelty, then, perhaps you have to buy a Chinese bow since removing hair from a live horse is not likely to cause pain or injury, not unlike sheep-shearing. My daughter used to think sheep-shearing was cruel and painful till I liken it to a haircut!

She couldn't figure out how "dead" hair/fur can be "dead" (as in no pain or feeling when cut) when they can yet "grow" again.

Hi Sarah, I take your point on this matter. You obviously know a lot more about sheep care than I do, and I understand care of any animal requires much knowledge, time and money, but I don't see this as a valid reason not to try and help them, or change things.



That is good to know, but unfortunately the slaughter process is the same for all animals, however well they were treated in life. They still get to see exactly what happens to the other sheep before them, and are in great distress before they die.


Research shows that humans are omnivorous, and were scavengers originally. They developed tools to hunt and kill animals for food.



I found this little bit of information




Regarding your comment about amino acid


I found this -



Meat is not the only place to get these acids. As for the stunted growth in poor areas, I read a study, (possibly the same one you refer to), and this study was funded by the meat industry. There are many conflicting studies about nutrition, and the information you get will depend on who was providing the funds for the study, and who it would benefit. There was a recent BBC article on this. I will try and find it.

I will check in more detail later to see if I have missed anything, but for now I have to go and recover from this ridiculously long post.

Kelly

It seems a good idea to remove the hair from the horse first or bowing could get cumbersome!

But what's the percentage ratio, or how larger portion of beans (and what type?) would you need to eat to obtain the equivalent lysine intake you would get from one egg.

Found this little snippet.

I haven't had the time (or brainpower, more pertinently!) to look at all these answers properly, but... a LOT of people have allergies/intolerance to soy and soy products.

True. Not an issue though, for vegans looking for correct nutrients.

It would be, believe me, if said vegan had a serious intolerance. Ditto yeast.
Any coeliacs also could have a problem getting enough protein from the grains. That gluten intolerance actually causes serious damage to the gut.

Like I've said before, I think we eat waaaaaaaaay too much meat.

I'd be interested to know how our teeth compare to those of a chimp, who are 98% the same as us as DNA goes and definitely kill and eat other animals.

I don't suggest that we shouldn't take care of sheep, for example in the case they they were not farmed for food any more - but it would be a big responsibility to look after a whole herd, not a spare time job.



http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&lr=&o...fine:OMNIVOROUS

"an animal which eats a mixed diet of meat and plants, for example, humans. Omnivores have a dentition adapted for their diet with a combination of grinding and tearing teeth."

If we are omnivorous, whether our meat eating initially developed from scavenging or not, we are likely to have evolved or been designed (depending on your POV) to eat meat. And if we are only animals, eating what we have evolved to eat...


If we developed as scavengers then tool users, they never needed to. Shearing through muscles and tendons is exactly what we DO do with our teeth when we eat meat...


The article I read was actually by and anthropologist, and was more concerned with the eating habits of our nearest primate relatives (who are mostly omnivorous either intentionally or by eating insects in the fruit they eat) than particularly in amino acids. I'm afraid I have equal doubt in the ability of either the meat industry or the vegetarian lobby to be completely unbiased in their studies.

I believe, and will probably continue to, that improving the lives AND the deaths of farmed animals is the best solution - though I don't expect you to subscribe to that view! When we can learn to treat our fellow human beings with respect, then we might be able to make a start on treating animals with respect too. Sadly even the former seems unlikely.

I know, that's why I posted that last bit of information. Even if someone had a serious intolerance to soy, it doesn't mean they can't be vegan, there are other things you can get the necessary ingredients from.


Also, there are many vegan coeliacs, and they get their nutrients just fine. (Although they would most likely have trouble if they wanted to eat out anywhere)


Have to go now, but just got this link.
http://www.vivausa.org/guides/healthiestdietofall1.htm#b12