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I didn't see any other threads on this topic, and it's one I enjoy discussing quite a bit. blaugh

So, I have been a vegetarian for 5 years. I made the decision when I when 13, initially scared into it by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). I have since become very comfortable with my diet and enjoy vegetarianism to the fullest.

HOWEVER,
Vegetarians and vegans are attacked fairly often for what we do; both online and IRL. In high school, kids would try to gross me out by showing me meat or talking about it. It didn't work. rolleyes Some people seem to think that vegetarians/vegans are crazy PETA-enthused pamphlet wavers who want nothing more than to make the entire world stop eating animals.

I believe that animals, regardless of whether or not I choose to eat them, are food. Animals eat other animals all the time; humans were not meant to be vegetarians. I have never blindly suggested that anyone become a vegetarian. If someone asks me for information (which they frequently do, IRL), I gladly oblige but I leave my thoughts or impressions out of it.

And I hate to say it, but many people who avoid animal products attribute to this bad rep. A few days ago in a thread I was called "lazy" and a "slacker" because I was vegetarian and not vegan. I like milk and cheese (though I usually use organics when I can afford them!) and although I'd love to try veganism, I don't buy my own groceries and I don't want to inflate my cost of living any further. The vegetarian diet, while only slightly effecting the cost of my food, has put enough of a strain on my meat-eating parents.

I don't think meat-eaters love animals any less than I do. I just happen not to like them as food. I think most of us can agree that outright animal abuse is terrible and wrong, whether cats and dogs or cows and pigs. Although factory farms can be unhappy places, there is very little that can stop the consumer's need for meats. Animals really do need to be breeded and "harvested", and nothing about that is wrong to me. Of course there are some disturbing videos of abuse going on in said farms, but it's not the farms themselves that are kicking or hurting the animals; it's the workers who most likely have some form of mental illness. However, conditions are undesirable in these farms, as most of them appear to be dirty. But that's a matter of perspective.

So yes, please do share opinions.

I tried to be a vegetarian, but that didn't go to well with my love of BBQ blaugh . I too try to eat organic food, and I/family have are own farm so most of the food I eat I raised. It's sorta weird to eat a cow that I saw born. The trick is to not name the ones your going to eat.

I don't eat anything with a face. XD Therefore meat is a no no for me.

I do consume dairy products though. No animals were harmed/killed then.

One "anarchist" I know said that he hasn't been sick since he became a vegan!

I'm vegan and I just keep my mouth shut so people don't have an excuse to bag on vegans and vegetarians. Honestly, I think it's pretty messed up when people know where their food comes from and they don't change simply because it tastes good. I had to give up some of my favorite foods and it really sucked for the first few weeks, but I adjusted.
I just feel that there's no sense in so many living, conscious creatures to go through so much suffering so I can have food that "tastes good". It's really mostly because you're used to it. I really don't feel any sense of judgment to most people who eat meat and animal products since I avoided being vegan for so long my self. I don't think I know a single vegan or vegetarian now that I think about it. The transition is the only difficult part; living vegan is really easy and it seems to give me more energy among other health benefits.

The dairy industrie really isn't as bad as most people seem to think. Yes, cows are artificially inseminated, but this is because it is acctually safer for the cow and the humans handeling the cow. Bulls are dangerous, take it from some one who used to manage them. A full grow Holstein bull weighs over a ton. That can be very hard for the cow to hold up especially a heffer, has yet to calve or has only calved once, and it can also be hard on older cows who are starting to get a little stiff in the joints. Bulls are also unpredictable in their behavior. You really never know what is going to set them off.

You need to have babies to produce milk true, but most people don't realize that the cow is not bred again immediatly after calving. She is usually put back with the rest of the cows and milked through the parlor with the rest for about six months after freshing, calving, and then dried off, stop being milked, about six months later when the developing calf needs most of her energy. She is then turned out to pasture for the next three months. After calving the cycle starts again. Thats why dairy farmers need so many cattle, if they are going to be able to take care of their families and their cattle they need to be able to have cows freshinging every few days to keep a consistant amount of milk going out.

The reason that todays dairy cattle produce so much more milk then the average beef cow, came from same root people, is because for centuries high producing cows have been bred to bulls of high producing mothers. same reason beef cattle are so heavily muscled.

Calves are removed from their mothers because it's safer for them. Cows are random eliminators, they don't care where they poo or wee. It isn't healthy for the baby to be getting poo'd on or wee'd on, also I have had to remove several babies cause their moms laid down on them. With dairy cattle it is much safer and healtheir for the calf to be removed. They are usualy fed a quality powdered milk replacer. They are housed individually so that any health concerns can be spotted early and treated. Again yes some are used for veal but some also end up on your dinner table and at McDonalds as hamburg. These animals have to go somewhere.

People also need to realize that most of the big milk companies milk comes from family farms who sell their milk to the big companies. The people who produce the milk are usually very concerned for the welfare of their cattle because with out them they have nothing.

My family has always raised it's own meat, but we also sold alot of our excess calves at auction or raised them and sold them "off the hook". We also produced all of our own milk from dairy goats, domesticated long before the cow and bred to produce milk longer.

Ha ha ha ha, I have to say, I find this thread rather fun. Not eat anything with a face? Not consume conscious beings? Did you know that for every step you take, you crush more than two hundred tiny creatures? That an average person will swallow hundreds of insects during his/her lifetime, without even being aware of it? Humans are ANIMALS, animals with a sense of abstracts. Animals kills each other for food, and they always have, and they alway will. Sympathy doesn't make the food chain go around - animals eating each other makes the world go round. Plants, you say? Plants are living beings, just like animals. They don't have a consicousness, but they pulsate with life, they grow, they spread, they die, they get eaten, they eat. Or if the 'consciousness' part is so imprtant, what about eating braindead animals? Is it okay to kill a vegetable patient in a hospital, because he's braindead and not sentinent like us? What about eggs, then? They're not even pollinated and has no living creature growing inside them. Animal cruelty is wrong, and the way some farms treats their animals is abominable, but then, why not buy ecological meat? Or let's look at it from another direction. If everyone stopped eating meat... What about the cows the pigs, the hens? They would die out completely, because they aren't fit to live in the wild, and if nobody can profit from raising them, then why should anyone bother?

Instead, why not cherish this beautiful circle of life? In the wild, it's "Eat or be eaten". Ohh, cats, they're cute, aren't they? There are hundreds of thousands of cats in America, and they kill millions of birds, rats, insects and other smaller creatures every year. So it's okay to breed cats that slaughters animals for fun, but not okay to raise animals for food?

Edit --> I laughed at the beginning not to insult anyone, but because I felt there were some truly younthful naive posts. Nothing wrong that that, of course, it just felt refreshing, since I'm used to hanging with more, eh, disillusioned and unethical crowds. And many of you make good points, of course. I apologize in advance if I insulted anyone.

Cats kill even if they get three meals a day from their owners. Why? Because they are predators. We can play at being 'above' and 'evolved' all we want, in the end, we are predators. Or rather, we are omnivores, or whatever it's called, meaning we're built to eat both plant and meat. But we are still predators. And like I said, animal ABUSE is wrong, I agree. But simply killing animals for food is natural. And besides, the cosmetic industry and the fur industry are the real bad guys here. Compared to those, the meat industry is like an animal spa, with asian maids and hot springs. So keep on buying ecologic meat, and focus your efforts on those industries instead.