Poor Veggies. :(

[Brucelles]

I dont class hunting as wrong, i njoy shooting for sport, obviously we`re not talking big game here. But its all opinion.

I used to be a regular hunter of beer cans. I bought a Chinese copy of a Russian hunting rifle in Abu Dhabi (for peanuts) and decided to go hunting. The thing is that the only things to hunt in Abu Dhabi are camels and goats (if you exclude people) so I ended up using it for fun only. I once went on a barbecue with my colleagues and my boss took his golf stuff along, to practice. I and my buddy Al decided to piss him off and with my first shot I blew one of my bosses balls apart.

Only a golf ball, but I think the message was received.

[arbitor]

Well round here theres many vermin,bird, whatever to headshot

[Brucelles]

Yeah. I wish I had my gun. We have ravens here the size of single-seat helicopters and they attack the cats and can drag a garbage sack all over the street in a few minutes.

[Splash]

My wife was a vegetarian on the grounds that she doesn't want animals bred in ****ty, cruel farms so that she can eat them. She figured that fish get born free, and leap and splash and have baby fish and then get caught and filletted and they basically have happy lives. So it was OK to eat them.

That's cool (personal choice again) but she's not a vegetarian.

[kalniel]

By the British Vegetarian Society definition you mean?

[Splash]

Well, by definition of Wikipedia, Google or as you suggest the Vegetarian Society

[kalniel]

Wikipedia I would never trust as a source of definition

Google seems to only present things from an English speaking world view-point.

The point is made in the Veg Soc one:

We define a vegetarian as someone...

(bolding my own) - they do not claim a universal definition and simply explain their own.

Just as there is no universal reasoning behind the decision there is no universal definition of Vegetarianism either - it is, as you say, personal choice. It would be wrong, possibly ignorant, to say to someone you aren't vegetarian simply because your idea of the term doesn't match theirs

[Splash]

I see. In that case I am a robot.

The IVU (International Vegetarian Union) defines a vegetarian as follows.

"Vegetarian: For the purpose of membership of IVU, vegetarianism includes veganism and is defined as the practice of not eating meat, poultry or fish or their by-products, with or without the use of dairy products or eggs.

Often broken down further into OVO-LACTO, and LACTO. Vegetarians may or may not try and minimize their non food use of animals like vegans. "

Again their definition, but all these definitions (International, so allowing for non-English speaking areas of the world) seem to have a common ground in that someone who eats fish isn't a vegetarian. They may claim themselves as any of the following (from IVU)

Semi-Vegetarian: Eats less meat than average person. See also PSEUDO-VEGETARIAN.

Pseudo-Vegetarian: Claims to be vegetarian, but isn't. Often used by VEGETARIANS to describe SEMI-VEGETARIANs, and PESCETARIANs.

Pescetarian: Similar to VEGETARIAN, but also consumes fish. (often is a person avoiding factory-farming techniques...) See also PSEUDO-VEGETARIAN.

I put it to you the jury that these people would be better defined as above than as vegetarian.



Also I've yet to see an official or widely accepted definition of a vegetarian as someone who eats fish, chicken, kebabs, bacon etc etc etc

[Crazy Cricket]

If some of what has been said in this thread is true then you REALLY need to sort your life out and stop worrying about something, which in the grand scheme of things is quite minor...

So let me get this straight, by holding a point of principle a person needs to sort their whole life out ?

How very odd.

[SiM]

Another issue is pretty much ignored by all you meat folk. Justify these:

http://www.viva.org.uk/guides/feedtheworld2.htm

Human starvation will worsen whilst animals will continue to be fed so that rich people can continue to eat meat.

Intensively farmed meat is billed as being a cheap source of protein whilst the global picture - the “grain drain” created by increased meat consumption - is ignored. Demand for cereals to feed to farmed animals is predicted to double in developing countries over the next generation (5). Demand for maize (corn) will increase the most, growing by 2.35 per cent over the next 20 years. Nearly two thirds will go towards feeding animals.

http://www.viva.org.uk/books/goingveggie/ch09.html

Animals in the USA alone eat enough wheat and soya beans to feed 1900 million people – about one-third of all the people in the world, or the whole population of India and China put together. But there are so many cows that even that’s not enough and to keep these non-stop munching machines going, yet more cattle food is imported from abroad. The USA even buys beef from the poor countries of Central and South America, and all these cattle have to be fed in a similar way.

‘ My son persuaded myself and my wife, Caroline, to become vegetarians by pointing out that if the world ate the grain instead of feeding it to farm animals, no one would starve.’
Tony Benn, MP

https://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/...ng/rosenbe.htm

or:
google.com for 100000000s of more

(some of these might be a bit date but they are all written by people who have done their research - they know a lot more about the topic than you or me)

[kalniel]

Well again the IVU are clear to point out that it's their own definition.

I could throw up the term pesco-vegetarian - a branch of vegetarianism as legitimate as lacto-ovo and lacto vegetarian. They are all forms of vegetarianism with differences in the details.

I agree with you however that I've need seen any definitions that includes chicken, kababs and bacon.

[arbitor]

So let me get this straight, by holding a point of principle a person needs to sort their whole life out ?

How very odd.

by saying an animals life is more important than a humans you should really wonder what your doing on this earth

[SiM]

by saying an animals life is more important than a humans you should really wonder what your doing on this earth

Maybe not worth more to your human life for you but what is happening is affecting a lot of humans too (and will affect more in the future)... Read my post above^

A small lifestyle change for many people can solve the world's starvation problem... I'm not saying everyone should be veggies, but the average american eats over 100kg of meat a year, to produce that meat, 200-400kg of veggie food is fed to the animals - you do the math.

[directhex]

i'm not going to pretend for a second that eating meat is ethical

i'm not going to pretend that i'm under some kind of duty to do it because i have canines

but i'm going to go out on a limb and say that, to me, a human's life is worth more than an animal's. i don't think animals bred explicitly to be killed and eaten are the same as people. i don't think animals that are bred to be used to help discover life-saving treatments die in vain. those animals would not exist unless they were bred for a purpose. and whilst i feel that wild animals should be sustained and certainly unmolested wherever possible, i don't feel any guilt when i tuck into a tasty meaty morsel, or when friends inject themselves with originally-developed-thanks-to-experiments-on-pigs insulin

meat tastes good. i'll continue to eat meat as long as it continues to taste good.

[arbitor]

i see your point, but i dont see animals as anything important really, obviously they are good for food, and some are good for pets, some are good for a pellet to the face.

In short i think that cruilty is wrong, but at the end of the day. We are the hunter on this earth.

Im not being very deep about this as im at work.

[pollaxe]

I think the world's starvation problems are far more complex than the examples being cited and are more rooted in political and social problems.. I'm not saying meat eating doesn't impact on this kind of thing (my vegan friends are always telling me about the damage done due to the water used in farming on a world scale for example) but I suggest that at best it's a factor rather than being the sole lynch pin of the situation.......