RE: Childhood indoctrination
June 3, 2013 at 2:45 am
(This post was last modified: June 3, 2013 at 2:56 am by Forbinator.)
(June 3, 2013 at 2:05 am)Aractus Wrote:I know about flystrike and agree that it is a worse fate than mulesing. This only strengthens the position that sheep farming is inhumane, particularly in a climate to which they are not adapted, where they have no natural resistance to parasitic infections. Farmers can never cure their herds of infections, only "manage" it, and when they are intensively farmed at high stocking densities, they are subjected to very high worm burdens.(June 2, 2013 at 9:54 am)Forbinator Wrote: Cotton isn't a synthetic fibre, and I think there are other vegan non-synthetics if you must have them. Wool is also very bad for the environment, and a horribly inefficient use of land, as well as being bad for the animals, who have to endure painful procedures without anaesthetic (castration, ear-tagging, tail-docking, mulesing and pizzle-dropping depending on flystrike prevention methods).And yet you live in Australia? I'll grant you that mulesing is a painful procedure, but it's far more attractive than the pain that the animal goes through if it endures flystrike. You know what happens to sheep that get flystrike because they were too young to go through mulesing? They either get put down - or they endure months of agony as they're slowly nursed back to health (if they're lucky).
Superfine Merino wool is viewed as a "luxury" item and has a certain economic status associated with it, and it is perhaps this issue that is the greatest barrier to abolishing the trade.
Quote:Because you say so? Merino wool with a fibre diameter of <22 microns is considered desirable, and will fetch the highest price in the market. Feeding trials have been done that show a positive correlation between feed intake and fibre diameter. We have terrible droughts here in Australia which inhibit grass growth; do you really think a farmer will care if the sheep go hungry for a few days, as long as they're still standing and producing wool? Our sheep herds are very large (in the thousands), shearing cuts are real and cause a disease called caseous lymphadenitis. If shearers process thousands of sheep in a day, it is not feasible to manage individual wounds effectively.Quote:To produce the desired fine wool, it is often desirable to underfeed the sheep. Since meat is not the main product, farmers don't care if their animals starve, unless it causes them to die, as they have been genetically selected to put their energy primarily into wool growth. Shearing invariably causes painful cuts that can become infected, as shearing is usually rushed because herds contain sheep in their thousands, whose individual needs are not met.Yep, you're loony.
(June 3, 2013 at 2:13 am)KichigaiNeko Wrote: So we are not talking about vegetarianism/ veganism but about the qualitative line that humans have drawn between themselves and every other animal?I would have thought the issues were inextricably linked.
It should be pointed out that basically all of us (meat-eaters and vegans) are against senseless animal cruelty, so actually all of us believe it is necessary to apply morality from our civilisation towards animals. We have more in common than you realise. The difference is whether you only believe it when it's convenient.
We would all agree that if I walk onto a cow paddock, and start beating a cow with a poly-pipe for fun, that would be cruelty and I should be punished, but if you consume animal products this means you're willing to accept this level of cruelty if, for example, it is necessary to beat a cow to get her to walk into the slaughterhouse where she is "supposed" to go. I would agree that the reason behind committing an act should contribute to its relative ethical merit, but from the perspective of the cow, both acts of cruelty are exactly equivalent.
Why accept any level of unnecessary cruelty?