Do you care how the animals you eat are treated?

Most peoples knowledge of meat extends to a plastic package they get in the refrigerated aisle in tesco.

Opinions might be different if they went to the farm or actually killed an animal themselves I'd imagine.

Not really. I hope they don't get treated badly but if they do then that's out of my control. I don't look at the breast of chicken i'm about to scoff down me worrying about how it lived its final days.

JupiterKid wrote: »

Happier animals IMO makes for tastier meat.

Yep. A happy cow is a tasty cow.

If abbatoirs had glass walls some of the attitudes here might change slightly.

I went to one in Cahir, Co Tipp, back when I was about 12 or so, my friends dad was a farmer and was taking a cow there that he'd sold.

Even now, 15 years on, I still vividly remember the sounds, the horrific smell, the conveyor belts loaded with organs and the gutters channeling sh1t and stomach contents away to who-knows-where, and the noises of all those cows that were well aware of their fate.

All that aside, has anyone considered how impractical and wasteful the process of meat farming is? We grow food, to feed to the animals that we eventually eat ourselves. In Ireland it's pasture, green grass or whatever(consider that Ireland was roughly 90% forest 'back in the day', and what is it now?)....but in other countries like the USA, hundreds of thousands of acres of the earth have been deforested or otherwise cleared to allow millions/billions of animals to graze. This in turn leads to desertification. Desertification is a phenomenon caused by overgrazing, and can/does lead to changes in climatic conditions.

I still eat meat, and that's no surprise. After all, monkey see, monkey do. But in the last few years I've done some serious thinking about the knock on effects of mass animal farming, and nowadays I can easily go several days without having any meat in my diet. Probably because I can actually be bothered to make an effort and think of perfectly tasty and nutritious meals that don't revolve around dead animal. I eat much, much less meat than I did a year ago, and i'm working towards quitting it altogether. It's hard, being a broke student living in a box in the city, to eat healthily and ethically. It's incredibly hard to go against the grain, especially so with the meat-eating issue.

A lot of the comments here are flippant, and that's not a surprise either, given the 'out of sight, out of mind' attitude that is sadly so rife among the population. We're disconnected, and de-sensitized, and I think that the 'anti-hippy, green loony' attitude is just a little bit narrow minded.

We need to consider the bigger picture.

I cannot bring myself to watch the video clip.....I think it would probably encourage me to go vegetarian...I can't understand cruelty to animals! I eat meat and it would make be sick to know if an animal was mistreated before their impeding death!!

coin wrote: »

Most peoples knowledge of meat extends to a plastic package they get in the refrigerated aisle in tesco.

Opinions might be different if they went to the farm or actually killed an animal themselves I'd imagine.

Farmers and meat processing factory workers see it everyday and somehow they don't go vegetarian.

It really is terrible the way animals are treated in mass farming.Yes,animals are a food source and are naturally intended to be.But mass confinement and forced artificial feeding methods are,or should be,seen as barbaric and made illegal.I eat meat (a lot) but i would prefer serious changes in how it gets to my plate.

Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't the majority of animals here free range? My uncles don't feed their cows and sheep anything other than grass or that fermented stuff with a top up of feed. Ireland has pretty much all year round green pastures. They send their animals off into the fields all day and bring them back into their heated shed at night...... What's wrong with that? Seems like a happy life for an animal to me.

I don't know anything about abattoirs except what was on that TV show and I saw nothing awful about that. Looked humane to me. So, I'm happy enough with that. My uncles see it up close most weeks and see nothing awful about it.

I'm happy to keep eating meat.

A lot of assumptions regarding treatment of animals before slaughter here. I worked for over 20 years in various beef and lamb plants all over leinster and while it wasn't pleasant a lot of emphasis was put on treatment of cattle before they are shot. If the animal is stressed just before its shot the meat darkens and is less valuable to sell. Its in the company's best interests to look after them after then.

I haven't watched the video as im on phone but once its shot then its dead 99.99% of the time and all your seeing is the butchering process of a dead animal. The other 0.01% can be dangerous when the animal jumps up. Seen plenty of that over the years too.

SamAK wrote: »

If abbatoirs had glass walls some of the attitudes here might change slightly.

I went to one in Cahir, Co Tipp, back when I was about 12 or so, my friends dad was a farmer and was taking a cow there that he'd sold.

Even now, 15 years on, I still vividly remember the sounds, the horrific smell, the conveyor belts loaded with organs and the gutters channeling sh1t and stomach contents away to who-knows-where, and the noises of all those cows that were well aware of their fate.

All that aside, has anyone considered how impractical and wasteful the process of meat farming is? We grow food, to feed to the animals that we eventually eat ourselves. In Ireland it's pasture, green grass or whatever(consider that Ireland was roughly 90% forest 'back in the day', and what is it now?)....but in other countries like the USA, hundreds of thousands of acres of the earth have been deforested or otherwise cleared to allow millions/billions of animals to graze. This in turn leads to desertification. Desertification is a phenomenon caused by overgrazing, and can/does lead to changes in climatic conditions.

I still eat meat, and that's no surprise. After all, monkey see, monkey do. But in the last few years I've done some serious thinking about the knock on effects of mass animal farming, and nowadays I can easily go several days without having any meat in my diet. Probably because I can actually be bothered to make an effort and think of perfectly tasty and nutritious meals that don't revolve around dead animal. I eat much, much less meat than I did a year ago, and i'm working towards quitting it altogether. It's hard, being a broke student living in a box in the city, to eat healthily and ethically. It's incredibly hard to go against the grain, especially so with the meat-eating issue.

A lot of the comments here are flippant, and that's not a surprise either, given the 'out of sight, out of mind' attitude that is sadly so rife among the population. We're disconnected, and de-sensitized, and I think that the 'anti-hippy, green loony' attitude is just a little bit narrow minded.

We need to consider the bigger picture.

Is that you Paul :rolleyes:

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

I know people who are staunch vegetarians, quoting examples like this thread for the reasoning, yet are indifferent, uncaring, ignorant, whichever of those adjectives, towards actual human beings and their predicaments around the globe. It's a mad world really, when the welfare of animals often takes immediate priority over the human beings unfortunate enough to be born outside of the luxury of the first world.

I think this is where the distinction between animal welfare and animal rights arises. The way I see it, if an animal (mammal anyway) is free to search for food and sex and follow its instincts then it's doing fine. Its basic rights have been attended to. I believe that people who back animal rights have a very keenly developed sense of justice for our own species.

On the other hand, animal welfare is directed at specific species, ones that are cute, interesting or rare and are definitely not going to be food for humans. They could campaign against declawing pet cats yet ignore the vast horrors happening to chicken's claws in battery farms.

There's no logic behind their position so I'm not surprised when one dead pony is bigger news to them than 100 dead in Syria.

I find it's always the vegetarians who love puppies, are squeamish about blood and hope to lose a few kilos that turn out to eat fish or only steer clear of red meat. They're screwing up the definition of vegetarian for the rest of us.