What Made you Smile/What Ticked you off Today?

[cookie monster]

Spending the weekend painting and staining our new bedroom and then i can finish the move by the end of next week. It is gonna bea busy week finishing painting ,packing, cleaning the apt and foxhounds mom's place for turkey day and making desserts and prepping and praying my sore throat doesn't turn into something worse.

[Luke]

Smile: The surprise party was great. Family came and went, then some friends came and went, and then another group of friends came and went. 3pm-1am.

Frown: My brother in law was so loud he almost gave me a headache. You would have thought the party was for him. I also told them the party was between 3-5pm, but they arrived late and left closer to 6pm. Not a big deal, but still annoying.

Mega Frown: I spent over $60 on heavy hors dourves and all I got was one cracker with brie, smoked salmon, and fresh dill. I made a bunch of fancy hors dourves but all I really wanted were a few cocktail wieners but those were gobbled up in minutes.

[MrPopo]

Yeah, if you don't eat meat at all then obviously you're not going to like it. But I'm not discussing the morality of eating meat. If we start from "meat is ok", then I don't see how foie gras is somehow evil.

Ever heard of hunting? And there's also free range animal farms. Before you say it: I'm sure many people use the latter a way to gain more profits, while blatantly lying to consumers and still treating animals in a bad manner.

I'll give you hunting, as in that case animals have a chance. But free range farming is in the same ethical category as all other farming, just different conditions. You're still causing animals to be born solely for the purpose of being slaughtered for our dinner tables.

[Forlorn Drifter]

Smile: Everybody on here is arguing over the ethics of eating meat, while I'm chowing down on a veal sandwich...

[Menegrothx]

But free range farming is in the same ethical category as all other farming, just different conditions. You're still causing animals to be born solely for the purpose of being slaughtered for our dinner tables.

So if the end result is the same, there's no difference what so ever what you do to the animals between the time perioid of their birth and death? Whether you let the animals live in relative peace in some what "humane" conditions or whether you force them to live in horrible conditions and treat them like dirt, it's just as unethical and bad?

So by same logic, shouldn't it also be irrelevant how we decide to treat our house pets like cats and dogs, since they'll live in captitivity anyways? Since common pet animals are only bred so they would bring joy to their owners, isn't it irrelevant whether you buy a cute puppy so you can take good care of it or if you just want to torture it in different ways? After all some individuals find pleasure in torturing animals, so that should be a valid reason for purchasing a cat or a dog.

Smile: Everybody on here is arguing over the ethics of eating meat, while I'm chowing down on a veal sandwich...

Ethics of eating meat and how we treat farm animals aren't the same thing. There's nothing unnatural or unethical about eating meat per se.

[Luke]

There are too many jumps to generalizations about this entire meatscussion. Popo is obviously not for cruelty to animals, simply stating that animals bred for slaughter will be slaughtered and treated as such. That's how it is.

I don't buy into any of that corporate "we treat our animals better" bullshit. If it is a mass market producer, they're going to pinch every penny possible.

Can I taste the difference from a Tyson free range and a Tyson cage free chicken? Nope.

Can I taste the difference between a Tyson chicken and an actual farm raised chicken? By leaps and bounds. It's marketing, nothing else.

[Menegrothx]

I didn't mean to imply he's advocating cruelty for the sake of cruelty, but logic dictates that if he has a clinical and pragmatic view on the issue, then same rules should also apply for regular pets. If we are to believe what Ayn Rand writes (not a particularly respected philosopher amongst academic circles, but we can argue about the merits of her philosophy some other time) then true altruism does not exist, and thus our reasons for owning pets are as selfish as our reasons for raising cattle.

[dsheinem]

if this piece of bread stays down it will be the first thing to do so in a day and a half...

[elmagicochrisg]

There are too many jumps to generalizations about this entire meatscussion. Popo is obviously not for cruelty to animals, simply stating that animals bred for slaughter will be slaughtered and treated as such. That's how it is.

There's breeding an animal to eat it, and there's torturing an animal to eat it.

Feeding an animal until it vomits and until its liver is so big it can hardly breathe because there's no more room for its lungs is torture. If you condone that just for the sake of being able to eat some 'fancy' foie gras, then yes, you are for cruelty to animals.

I didn't mean to imply he's advocating cruelty for the sake of cruelty.

Nope, not for the sake of cruelty. Just because it fits him.

Is there any difference really?...

I don't buy into any of that corporate "we treat our animals better" bullshit. If it is a mass market producer, they're going to pinch every penny possible.

Can I taste the difference from a Tyson free range and a Tyson cage free chicken? Nope.

Can I taste the difference between a Tyson chicken and an actual farm raised chicken? By leaps and bounds. It's marketing, nothing else.

Free range and cage free still sound a whole lot better than caged.

Not saying that those animals live like kings mind you.

But it's the first step in making our food live a more decent life before it ends up on our plate.

[Menegrothx]

I didn't mean to imply he's advocating cruelty for the sake of cruelty.

Nope, not for the sake of cruelty. Just because it fits him.

Is there any difference really?...

Well cruelty for sake of cruelty would be something like kicking little children or animals "for fun" (serves no further puporse than getting "joy" out of the act of cruelty and sense of having power over some one weaker than you), while atleast in theory something like Ying Yang fish (fish that's deep fried alive) or force feeding cattle serves the purporse of the product having better taste (which will be killed so it could be consumed in any case). Either way, that's justifying unnecessary cruelty.