OT: Never complain about the cost of meat

[Wade]

This nonsense always starts on forums when someone lightly mentions meat or animals as food(and other controversial subjects that can be argued over until we get bored).

I love animals. They're delicious.

I love animals in their natural habitats too.

I don't like them in small enclosures for most of their lives; aside from my aquarium where I did my best to create a natural habitat(Though I still have doubts about the practice of aquarium keeping sometimes). My cat regularly goes inside and outside; though cats are amongst the species that have been domesticated by humans over thousands of years.

Many of the pets and farm/domesticated animals and plants did not exist in their current forms until humans domesticated them and selectively breed(evolution) them over thousands of years. Many of them now would die off if left to the wild without civilization.

Plants are a life form too. I believe we should use plants and animals as food, materials, labor, and comfort as long as they're not tortured or endangered as a species.

As for chemicals, hormones, cloning, genetic alteration, etcetera; if this technology improves the quality of life for humans then use it. If this technology has irrefutable evidence harming quality of life for humans then improve it.

Quality of life is a balance between all advantages and disadvantages considered.

-Wade

[AgentZero]

Sausages are the best. But I always burn the outside before the inside is cooked.

Also, GuyofDoom, MasterChiToes and Will, consider yourselves all mightily smote.

[Will]

AgentZero said:
Also, GuyofDoom, MasterChiToes and Will, consider yourselves all mightily smote.

Well thanks, except it seems you did not really read what I posted. I'm fine with eating meat. I eat at least some daily. What I'm not fine with is the so-called "industrial farming" practices, which I believe will someday come to bite us all in the arse harder than it already has. And I do mean all, not just those of us who do eat meat... like I said, the heavy usage of antibiotics in livestock is just asking for the development of resistant strains faster than would otherwise have happened.

[GuyOfDoom]

As for sources Fyron:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q...arch&DB=pubmed

Vom Saal is one of the primary world researchers on effects of estrogenic compounds. He focuses mostly on BPA, which doesn't translate directly to beef, but is important none the less. I'll see if I can narrow down one of his papers in particular that highlights the particular trend of industrial research versus NIH funded research.

Shockingly enough industry rarely finds anything wrong with their practices. If you want a "real-life" example just look at Merck.

Industry has the luxury of being able to withhold their research findings because it comes from private funding. I'm personally of the belief that all scientific research should be public domain regardless of the source of funding.

It's clear that you share the common American mindset that "it can't hurt me" or "why should I change?" I'm not going to argue with you anymore past this post. If you'd like to continue the conversation more, I'll give you a email address or we can send messages to each other.

[aegisx]

I could sure go for a cheesesteak after all this talk.

[AgentZero]

Man, whoever came up with the melding of steak with cheese was a genius! And yet who gets the Nobel Prize? A bunch of bearded weenies who go on about things no one else understands. Where's the justice?

[Renegade 13]

Unfortunately that wouldn't help; the feedlots would then just buy cattle from the US and ship them up here to be readied for slaughter...we'd just end up with no where to sell them to.

[Renegade 13]

Indeed.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Sounds like you need a cattle ranchers' union.

[MasterChiToes]

Wade said:
As for chemicals, hormones, cloning, genetic alteration, etcetera; if this technology improves the quality of life for humans then use it. If this technology has irrefutable evidence harming quality of life for humans then improve it.

Do you live in a worker's paradise where "irrefutable evidence" is funded by mega-corporations that go out of their way to throw away easy profits?
I personally find myself living in a world where more often than not any research that might threaten profits will not only not be funded but will cost scientists their careers.

Note that recent news article about a scientist being offered a job if he guaranteed he'd come out against the existence of global warming.

Anyway, I consider myself largely indifferent to the extremes of the food debate, and don't really care about being mightily smote. But the whole call for proof thing is a tired refrain, because skepticism without a level playing field of inquiry is little different from the Inquisition dismissing Galileo. Skepticism is not blindly believing in something until someone else proves you wrong.

Eat what you want... we are all going to die anyway.