Any Vegetarians/Vegans here?

[bennyboy]

I agree that animals do suffer, and there is research on it. Animal do not have the same rage of emotions that we do and they don't waste time thinking about what happened in the past and don't think about the future. They see the present. They don't feel guilt.

You can cry about every poor hurting animals all you want. You can even protest against that nature of death buy being a vegan. I don't really care.
I do care about animals, that's why I learn about them. Animals die. If you don't eat the meat someone or something else will. It is a fact of life. It is in nature for death to occur. We have been killing animals for food for billions of years. I do not approve of abusing the animal for fun(we are not cats), but I do see it as acceptable to kill an animal with the intention of eating it. It's not enjoyable, death never is, but it is acceptable as a fact of life. Everything dies.

What is the difference from killing an animal and letting that body go to waste,and animal suffering to death and the body going to waste(aside from the scavengers), or killing the animal and using it for nutrients?

The difference would be that in not having billions of livestock, those animals would never exist at all. That degree of suffering wouldn't exist at all, as it exists exclusively through our deliberate actions as a species.

Obviously, I'd prefer animals weren't eaten. However, I think the gluttony of meat-eating, especially in the US, constitutes a disrespect both to the animals and to common sense. If you're underweight and poor, and the best protein source you have access to is a yak you come across in the mountain, then fair game. But how many underweight people have you met in the US? Not too many. And yet 300 lb hippos are scarfing down Big Macs or pork cutlets 3 times a day, becoming a burden to themselves, their families, and the society that has to provide health care to them. And they expect animals to exist, suffer and die to sustain them in this life style.

People talk about how special people are, but you'd have to look hard to find a monkey that dysfunctional.

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With all that said I still firmly believe it is quite acceptable to cause some unavoidable suffering to animals in order to process them for food purposes. I have been to many food processing plants both for hogs and chickens and I see no problem with what they do to them. It is quick and efficient.

When people want something, they start defining "unavoidable" in ways that mediate the cost of fulfilling those wants. This is clearly the case, since there are millions (maybe over a billion) of perfectly healthy, functional vegetarians in the world. What you really should say is that you like meat so much that you do not WANT to avoid the suffering of the animals. You see the fulfillment of the "yummy meat" instinct as trumping the wellbeing of non-human animals; but there is no logical reason why you should do so-- it is just the desire for pleasure masquerading as logic.