@Atman, I didn’t have enough words to response to your final point which was:

‘This is an activist/moral crusade born from the false belief that one is living a superior life to others.’

I don’t see why wanting to change things is a bad thing or a “crusade” – I’m sure you are happy for many changes that we’ve had over the past few hundred years, which have been achieved through activism, people raising moral/ethical issues etc. This issue is not about superiority, it is about trying to stand up for/question people’s attitudes and actions towards an oppressed group in our society.

@Yabby:

Okay, whether or not chimpanzees eat other animals unnecessarily doesn’t really have much to do with what we should be doing. We are talking about what humans should be doing, rather than drawing on other animals to excuse our actions. Other animals do all kinds of things, this does not mean that we should be doing the same.

‘Fact is that if people turned vegan, a whole lot of herbivores would die a miserable death from overpopulation and starvation.’

Why is this? I don’t think so. See my comment above.

‘If animals are farmed humanely and naturally, its a win-win situation…’

This is easy for those who are in the power end of the relationship to say – those who are profiting from this relationship. But just because it is a win-win for you, doesn’t mean that it is a win for the victim facing the violence and enduring suffering and death, despite the “humane” label on their carcass/secretions: http://www.humanemyth.org/

*There is nothing “natural” about confining animals for our use*

Interesting that you think that, Nick. Now in the third world,
villages have chickens, goats, cattle, pigs, not a fence in sight
anywhere. They are hardly confined. Anyone of them could run for
its life, they don't. In our world we need fences, for we invented
cars and without fences, driving would be rather tricky for you,
if you ever went to the country.

*The sheep you have shouldn’t be any different to me,*

In nature
every creature needs to make a living somehow, Nick. If sheep and
cattle were not farmed, those species would hardly exist. So they
would never have a life at all. As it happens, alot of my old girls
live to be a ripe old age, but when their teeth start to go, so do
they. Dying slowly is hardly a pleasant experience. In fact sheep
get it far better than you ever will. They will stick you in an old
peoples home and wait and watch until you gasp your last breathe.
Hardly pleasant. Sheep, luckily for them, avoid all that.

*There would not be overcrowding, because, as you point out, we wouldn’t be breeding these animals to use and kill for animal products.*

Hang on, we don't breed them, they do it all by themselves. Now you
want to deny them their natural urge to have sex and have babies.
My ewes love fussing over their young. Its only when they get older
and become troublesome "teenagers", tht mommy loses interest.

You keep ignoring nature, Nick

http://www.jayhanson.us/page80.htm

Nick, this is what happened, when they released 29 deer on St
Matthew Island and left them to their own devices, with no
interference from man.

The net result, mass starvation and suffering. Never ignore the
law of unintended consequences, or it might bite you in the arse.

Nick Pendergrast.

Enjoyment is NOT a trivial reason to do things in life. Enjoyment in life is NECESSARY for mood stability. The 'wrongness' of enjoying eating meat is merely a value judgement based on a sense of having superior ideas to others.

You said "I don’t see why wanting to change things is a bad thing or a “crusade” "

I didn't say changing things is bad or a crusade. I said what you are doing is a crusade. 'Wanting to change things' is what Nelson Mandela and Adolf Hitler both aimed for. 'Change' therefore has no inherent value in itself. In your case its a euphemism for forcing people to do what you want them to do even against their will because you believe your way is morally superior. Its a form of misguided moral elitism.

Veganism increases the risk of developmental problems in children. Risking childrens' health because of a parental obsession is simply abhorrent and criminal.

You called animals 'oppressed group in our society'. Really that's sounding quite strange now. They are not humans. Anthropomorphism, yet again. Now you're stealing language intended to describe a human condition for animals. Its like describing a group of your friends as a herd. Just plain wrong.

Your logic would say ants are oppressed too. We kill them wantonly every day while walking. Your logic eventually leads to absurdity.

Technically, by your logic, lions don't need to kill to survive either because their nutrition can be replaced. They do so by choice. They like eating meat. Their protein can be just as easily replaced by a vegetarian diet as human meat protein.

You and other activists are trying to write the term Anthropomorphism out of the books because you have no argument against it. You're pretending its used for the sake of oppression and suppression of an argument. But that is merely a defensive measure to preserve the consistency of your ideas. The suppression you feel is the mental impasse resulting from a lack of answers you have to the concept.

Let people decide for themselves what they want to eat.

If I can take your silence as agreement, Mr Pendergrast, we are at least able to move on from the sillier parts of your article.

Firstly, you now accept that a "chronic solvent sniffer living in a humpy" cutting the throat of a puppy "in front of horrified onlookers, including a five-year-old child" is cruelty of a different order of magnitude than that which occurs in our abattoirs.

Next, you appear content to accept that humans are not natural herbivores, and the need for vegans to consume dietary supplements of various kinds merely underlines this simple fact.

I have no quarrel with vegetarians. Most of those I know avoid meat for their own reasons, that range from "I can't stand the taste of meat" to "I can't abide the thought of killing animals for food". Few of these happy people make it their business to lecture others about their choice, I'm glad to say. Perhaps with the honourable exception of my partner, for whom regular exhortations to eschew "eating dead animals" has become a hobby, rather than a bone of contention.

>>...but most people choose to eat animal products for trivial reasons such as enjoyment, convenience, habit etc.<<

I suspect that most people do not consider enjoyment, convenience or even habit to be particularly trivial. While "enjoyment" is thoroughly personal - I dislike rhubarb and tripe with equal vehemence, for example - I would be as miserable as sin if asked to survive on only one or the other. Or both, come to that.

Convenience and habit are the two pillars that are based upon our omnivorous nature. Entire industries have been built on the fact that we eat both meat and veg., and as such, we rely upon the convenience created by our major retailers to indulge our habit of shopping at Coles every week.

Enjoy your vegetarianism. But please, don't expect us to buy into the proposition that the image of a hobo torturing a puppy is emblematic of our communal cruelty.

>>B12 is available in vegan supplements and fortified foods. I get mine mainly from (fortified) soy milk. It is also present in some savoury yeast flakes, mock meats etc. Once again, if people are not getting enough from what they eat and drink, there are vegan B12 supplements.<<

But it isn't naturally present in any vegan food. And I think there's a strong case for getting your nutrition naturally and not from artificially fortified foods or supplements: it tastes a lot better. There is absolutely no comparison between mock meat and a nicely poached egg: the former makes my skin crawl and the latter is sex on toast.

It doesn't have to involve any cruelty: my neighbor keeps chooks and I often receive surplus eggs if they've been laying well. They look like pretty happy chooks to me - insofar as a chicken can be said to look happy - and I know they're not being treated cruelly. A few laying chooks would go a long way to meeting a person's B12 requirements without having to resort to supplements. Not everyone can keep chooks and I still buy eggs. I always buy the RSPCA approved ones. I figure if anybody knows if a chicken is being mistreated it's the RSPCA.

On a related note: Nick did you happen to catch news of this sickening case of animal abuse?

http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/latest/14802640/hundreds-of-roosters-to-be-put-down-after-cockfighting-bust/

Maybe you could write an article about the horrors of underground cockfighting rings. That seems like a far worse example of animal cruelty than eating the occasional egg.

Cheers,

Tony