Eh?:

Ok, got it now but it would have helped if you’d got the numbers right.

I’m not sure the concept of watching football generally includes bum rushing a load of Belgians and Italians off the edge of a crumbling stadium, but have your false equivalence if you must.

Mostly vegetarian tbh, but again nice attempt at a false equivalence. Killing for food and killing to get a boner aren’t the same in my book.

Except that eating meat in Europe in 2019 is entirely about choice and pleasure, just as much as trophy hunting.

But they contain a lot of living creatures!

Tom

We’ll have to agree to disagree on this. I’m glad the only sniping you do is in a thread full of ibex, rather than a hillside of them.

That may well be true, but trying to suggest that they're somehow equivalent is js just ridiculous.

Do you actually think that Trophy hunting is acceptable?

Yes.

Tom

I think eating meat is 'morally justifiable' in principle. We are not herbivores and meat is a very rich source of man essential proteins and nutrients that is hard to replace in sufficient quantities without going to a lot of effort.

The question is how we sustainably farm and produce it going forward. Vat-grown meat may be the way to do that in order to significantly reduce the impact on the environment and stop pain and suffering to mass-farmed animals.

Culling is usually necessary for any large herbivores that live in a safe area with plentiful food sources and that don't have any predators to keep the population in check. Otherwise they just keep breeding and multiplying and form an imbalance with their local environment leading to big problems. It's a man-made problem with a man-made solution.

Introducing predators would be the only way to restore the balance and while a couple of areas in Switzerland are trying to re-introduce wolves, for many areas it's probably not so feasible.
Eating farmed meat and killing animals for trophy sport are so completely different in moral terms that to suggest otherwise implies that you will say almost anything for the sake of a good internet argument and then likely forget you said it a few months later (like the, erm, incest thing).

But for DB, this thread has nothing to do with Ibex- at all. Simples.

I know it's just a typo but suddenly very apt for the swerve of this thread.

And that isn't what DB is saying.

His homophobic "Christians" post made the point even more clearly but it appears to have been deleted. Why, I do not understand, unless some sort of personal vendetta. If someone is offended by the notion of homophobic Christians then I'd suggest they have greater issues than what is being posted on this little corner of the internets.

Erm. Ok.

Well Rufie please explain to us, as DB's personal thoughts translator, exactly what he is saying when he writes "Eating meat in Europe in the 21st century is no more morally justifiable than trophy hunting." and "But it's ok for you to find pleasure in eating the flesh of an animal somebody has killed for you?"?

There are clearly parallels being drawn but whatever is morally unjustifiable about either of them are for very different reasons. I don't eat meat for sport or for the thrill of knowing an animal has died to produce it.

Erm. Ok.

If you eat the animal, then why not?
It has had a much better life than all animals living on farms and also has a better death than any of them.

I agree with a lot of what you're saying, but I think it is one of the biggest fallacies going that if you don't eat meat it is a huge ballache to replace the "man essential proteins and nutrients" - by which I suspect you mostly mean amino acids - they are present in veg in sufficient quantities for anyone. It is actually less of a ballache, one less aisle to visit in Migros!

Veganism is a different ballgame of course, then you need to actually think about what you're buying.

Not sure you followed this thread - the animals are not eaten- the meat is too old and tough anyhow.
Lions, rhinoceros, etc- are not eaten either.

I didn't think we were well enough acquainted for pet names but sure, TinyC. Anything to help you out with the wordz, flower.

Read his post again. Look carefully at what he isn't saying as to avoid the Censor Meat eating is about choice. You don't need to eat meat to get all the nutrients you need in your diet. Trophy hunting is also about choice. I don't agree with trophy hunting, or fox hunting. But I like to eat meat. I don't agree with how animals are treated and killed for that meat, but I eat it all the same. I know there is hypocrisy there. It's mine to deal with.

Like I said, his deleted analogy made the better point, uncomfortable as it was.

Yes because Veganism does not involve the slaughter of animals compared with vegetarianism which does.

Of course it's convenient to skim over this fact.

Do you have any evidence to back that up?

I'd eat them!

Old and tough becomes wurst, or a slow-cooked stew.

Tom

Um... I was under the impression vegetarians don't do the animal eating thing. Unless milking a cow involves more blood than I realised.

It is much harder to replace meat with vegetarian equivalents, that is fact. Not impossible, but harder. You need to eat a wider variety of foods in more quantities. Meat is extremely rich in essential proteins and has some nutrients which are only found in meat in sufficient quantities like vitamin B12. There was an older study that suggested 84% of vegetarians/vegans go back to meat and while I am not sure of the accuracy of that figure I would say that it is nevertheless comparatively high for a variety of reasons.

For me there is no question that meat should continue to be eaten until an equivalent can be found, the concern I have is how we can do it responsibly and sustainably given the worlds population and that is why I generally aim to buy good quality sustainably-farmed meat.

If everyone switched from meat eating to vegetarian in a short space of time can you imagine the pressure it would place on the worlds farming production and on the specific vegetables/beans etc that provide high protein? I would be extremely surprised if we have the capacity to provide for that and it would likely mean even more deforestation as new fields are created to cope with it.

It's a crappy situation but it is my belief that the world is currently in a critical transition period that will drive a lot of new breakthroughs in mass agricultural and meat farming as the environmental impacts and problems with availability simply become unavoidable. Meat isn't going away any time soon and I think only science has the realistic answer to this problem. As soon as cultured meat or a viable substitute becomes widespread then I will be among the first to make the switch.