Letters to the Editor
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damn straight!
Well, of course we're sexy! What's with this "may be" stuff?!
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Try again.
Cheap generic soft-porn attention-getter that annoys serious females and leaves the male viewers with not the slightest idea what she was even saying. Way to be taken seriously, PETA.
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She was talking?
Damn
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I'm converting
To Vagitarianism
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My body can't tolerate plant protein
Too many phytoestrogens come along with it.
I wish vegans and vegetarians success with their high plant estrogen diets. More power to them if this doesn't end up eventually doing something nasty and hormonal to their bodies.
Plant protein as it turns out does something nasty and hormonal to my body.
If they want to call me a murderer for eating meat, then I'm going to call them murderers right back because I WILL die if I eat like a vegan or a vegetarian.
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She May Have More Energy
But apparently not enough to jump-start her career.
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Lovely ad, too bad Alicia couldn't find a better organization
I agree in terms of PETA being polarizing--considering what an incredible job they've done of making anyone who cares about animals look like a misanthropic wacko, I've long suspected that they must be getting some of their funding from the beef lobby, cosmetics companies and puppy farms. As for your grass-fed beef, however: imagine what would happen if we tried to satisfy the American appetite for meat with free range farming. Where would all the "range" come from? Say bye-by to trees!
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How can I take Peta seriously
Last I looked unethical treatment of humans is still pretty high. Ask the 2 million displaced or the millions of people dealing with murdered family members in Iraq, not to mention the almost 4,000 killed Americans and 25,000 wounded and their families. Never had to suddenly take care of a parapalegic or someone with brain damage? Well lucky you. Maybe torture doesn't bother you as long as you are not the one being tortured? I could go on forever on the atrocities of human against human just in the modern age alone, never mind historically.
How can I take Peta seriously when treatment of humans is still so totally fukked.
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Great post and many thoughtful letters
captainlarab deserves three red stars. I know as a meat eater (trying to cut down)that if you're really worried about global warming vegetarianism is a very good place to start.
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Hopeless
> Lectures about veganism aren't going to register with the vast majority of meat consumers.
Boy, you got that right. And we older, tireder vegetarians (vegan when I can get it) stopped "explaining" ourselves to meat eaters a long time ago. It's one of those issues on which a vast preponderance of evidence and logic is overwhelmed by an enormous mass of cultural prejudice and inertia. Nevertheless one feels obligated in a discussion of this kind to state the basic case again. So here goes.
There are at least three solid reasons not to eat meat: (1) It is unethical because it needlessly inflicts suffering on other beings; (2) it is unethical and imprudent because it inflicts unnecessary environmental damage upon the planet, contributing to the risk of extinguishing our own and other species; and (3) it's unhealthy.
The only colorable counterarguments (in an industrial society) are esthetic and cultural, i.e., "it tastes good" and "everybody does it."
These of course aren't arguments at all, but refusals to reason. For the first of the above points, in particular, there is no counterargument, except to deny one of its two premises, i.e., (1) animals suffer when they are slaughtered (not to mention what happens to them before that), and (2) it is unethical to inflict suffering without a countervailing ethical justification.
This simple logic is an enormous elephant in the middle of our culture's living room. And it's not just dry logic, either. Our massive consumption of meat is made psychologically possible only by the comfortable distance cushioning us from a real awareness of the consequences of our conduct. If people had to slaughter their own chickens, pigs, and cows -- even fish -- the rate of consumption would plummet. Instead we are conditioned to think of a package of fryer parts as just like one of tomatoes. Anybody who's ever seen decapitated chickens running around the barnyard spraying blood in all directions, as I did in my childhood, knows better. And those barnyard chickens lived in paradise compared to the ones you're buying today in the supermarket, "free range" or not.
The tension between the undeniable wrongness of this custom and the cultural pressure to preserve it makes people uncomfortable, which in turn leads them not only to construct transparent fallacies in its defense but also to seek out excuses to sneer at those who no longer accept the consensus delusion. It's an old pattern, and one that's likely to do worse things to us and our planet than the mere slaughter of a few tens of billions of our fellow creatures.
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Grab them by the balls
and their hearts and minds will follow.
Getting a message across is not the work of just one organization. Peta is one of many organizations trying to reduce environmental damage, promote humane treatment of animals, and benefit our health. They are just one of many. They get a lot of publicity because they do act up. In a way, they clear the path for more moderate organizations. Once they have your attention, you might, indeed actually think a little about the message.
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Puppies
PETA seems to be Scientology for people who like cute puppies.
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Silverstone's side shot
I still I'll stay with beefier choices - women and my diet.
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RE: notre druide
While I generally think you make some good points, I have one big quibble:
If people had to slaughter their own chickens, pigs, and cows -- even fish -- the rate of consumption would plummet.
If this is the case, how is it that for the last 5000+ years of recorded history (and probably a lot longer than that) most of humanity has happily killed and eaten animals for sustenance? It's only in the last fifty years or so that most of the Western world has started to remove itself from the killing end of things - and even at that, there are still a number of us (myself included) who have no qualms about personally killing animals and eating them (but then, I grew up on a beef farm). I think you certainly have a point that many / most meat eaters are hypocritical (I'd say I'm not, but I don't believe we have any ethical reason not to inflict paint on animals, which isn't a position most people would take, I think...but again, I grew up on a beef farm and that does give you a different perspective). Still, I do have sympathy for your opinion - nothing annoys me more than people who can't stand to think about killing a cute little calf, but will happily chow down on veal parmesan...