I do not understand why people are willing to kill animals for food when healthy vegetarian alternatives exist. Animals want to live as much as people do, and to take their lives when it is not necessary strikes me as cruel.

The meat industry is a contributor to global warming. It depletes our water resources, especially out West. Cattle ranchers shoot and poison prairie dogs, coyotes, and any other animal which they feel interferes with their operations. On top of all of that, you have intelligent and sensitive animals like cattle and pigs and goats and chickens enduring terrible living conditions, or in the rare case, adequate living conditions, and then being forced onto trucks and train cars and having their throats slit in slaughterhouses while their fellow "livestock" look on in fear.

All of this pain and suffering could be eliminated if people would only go vegetarian.

For those who argue that animals kill and eat animals, since when have people patterned their behavior on the law of the jungle? We're supposed to be capable of better things, like compassion.

If you're that uninformed about politics, you have no business casting a vote.

The ignoramuses will respond to the most effective campaign commercials and cast their votes accordingly. That's how we ended up with W.

You obviously have no spine whatsoever. Don't let your children grow up with your disability.

When I was a vegetarian, and not a vegan, I ate eggs, and I compared a factory farmed egg to an egg made by humanely raised hens. I cracked both eggs open and poured them into separate bowls. The factory farmed egg was watery, with a pale, sickly-looking yolk. The humanely raised egg was firmer, with a deep yellow and solid looking yolk. There is no comparison between the two.

Anyway, factory farmed hens are the worst abused animals in the world. They suffer from birth until death, and that alone is a reason to stop buying eggs made from such a system.

With one caveat: I can't see factory farmed eggs ever being organic, given the filthy conditions of those places and the great use of hormones and antibiotics.

You think that the fact that some factories let their birds actually flap their wings at some point during their entirely indoor lives somehow mitigates the cruelty of factory farming?

Who exactly do you work for?

http://factoryfarming.com/

Moreover, whether an animal is raised in a filthy factory farm, or is raised in a natural setting, the end result is the same: a slit throat, a life taken, and all for the sake of someone's taste buds.

I can't think of anyone else who could come up with such a slimy accusation as yours.

See you in the funny pages, shill.

Your ideas are wonderful, Ms. Waters, but aside from buying humanely raised eggs, which ought to be the legal standard everywhere, your advocacy of cooking from scratch is simply incompatible with the experience of most working people.

I cook for my wife 4-5 times a week, and I do it from scratch to the extent possible; however, we rely on bagged salads. We rely on bottled sauces. We rely on dried, pre-packaged spices. Even without having children, and even with these conveniences, we normally do not sit down to dinner before 8 pm.

How do you expect working families, especially with children, to adhere to your suggestions? It simply is not possible in this ridiculously flawed society we live in. That is the privlege of the wealthy or retired, or the dwindling one worker, one stay-at-home spouse family.

Dream on, Ms. Waters. One day the world will catch up to you. Until then, we will live in the 40/50/60 hour workweek, two weeks vacation, both partners working, stupendously inhumane American lifestyle (except for our wealthy rulers, who benefit from our misery).

The prospect of having this no-neck fascist goon running what's left of our country for another 4 years is too upsetting to long contemplate.

I agree with you Joe: let Guiliani agree to be waterboarded in the same manner as our detainees in Gitmo. Let's put in on YouTube. In fact, let's have a bet: if he doesn't blubber and scream for mercy, we let him be President. I have zero doubt that he will not pass this test. After all, it is torture.

You are the most gloriously insane letter writer in Salon. Don't ever stop.

Maybe we'll unknowingly see each other at Nora's. If so, I hope I order whatever it is you're drinking.

First comes the ticking time bomb excuse to justify the torture of foreign "terrorists." After that, it is used on American citizens who are considered "terrorists." Now the door is wide open.

Then comes the missing child excuse, followed by the heinous crime excuse, the stolen loot excuse, and the broken window excuse.

Eventually, torture is seen as an acceptable way to get confessions under any circumstance.

Those of you who seek to justify the use of torture against those evil Al Queda terrorists need to realize that when torture becomes acceptable, its use becomes widespread, and that you yourself could end up on the torturer's rack.