Meat

[mikewl]

So I was browsing imdb and saw an ad about meat, here's the link warning, this video is quite shocking.

I don't know after watching the video what to think, I mean really it shows how little I know about it all, are these the same practises used in the UK, for supermarkets and takeouts or do we have different standards, what I have taken from this video is a desire to know more about where the meat I buy is coming from.

It does make you think if this is what we are having to resort to for food production then things are only going to become worse as the population rises and demand grows.

There is also a film due to run at selected cinemas called Food Inc, which should prove to be interesting and educating, if anyone see's it could you post your thoughts on it.

What do you think after seeing the video, its a bit of an eye opener in my opinion.

[Spatial]

Only saw the first 30 seconds (haven't got time to watch it all this morning) with the cows head hanging off and blood splashing up the wall and I can confirm that's what happens here too.

They've usually been shot through the head with a captive bolt first though so it's brain dead and can't feel a thing. So they say - personally I've seen slaughtermen get it wrong and still carry on. I'd question if that blinking pig with it's head hanging off had been stunned properly but it's impossible to tell from a small segment of video).

Once it's been stunned it's all just reflexes and spasms after that, but that is how they bleed them out before doing anything else.

[prinnysquad]

I really don't want to click on that link, but I reckon curiosity will get the better of me sooner or later. I eat meat yet am very unsettled by where it comes from/how it is processed. What a ****.

[endo]

At a mate's wedding in Brazil 18 months ago, we ate a cow at the reception. The previous day, my mate picked out the cow personally (his wife's dad is a breeder) and then we all- well not quite all- watched the cow get shot in the brain and butchered right there and then. Gruesome but fascinating it was. It didn't stop moving and twitching completely for about 20 mins. And that's after a bullet in the brain and having had it's throat cut. So it was pretty dead, like.

Anyway, it was a slightly strange experience, and even a little bit sad, but I thought I should see if I could stomach what was involved seeing as I was going to eat it.

edit- watched that video above too. Paul McCartney can go and eff off. Makes me want to eat burgers seeing that twat.

[Gruce]

I really don't want to click on that link, but I reckon curiosity will get the better of me sooner or later. I eat meat yet am very unsettled by where it comes from/how it is processed. What a ****.

Save me typing my feelings I'll just quote you, ignorance is bliss as far as I'm concerned.

[QualityChimp]

[abigsmurf]

Saw 'Peta presents' and immediately went into the video sceptical. Animals Twitching after being killed is incredibly misleading (boltguns to the brain are among the most effective ways of quickly killing animals). Yes there are staff who mistreat animals but that doesn't mean it's widespread and not clamped down on.

There are people who horribly abuse their pets. Should we ban the domestication of animals because of this?

My view of slaughter houses is to compare them to how they'd die in the wild. If an animal is lucky they may get a painful death that lasts 30 seconds (preceded by a terrifying chase). If they're not lucky they'll die a slow painful drawn out death from injury, starvation or diseases (or a combination of these)

[Dirty Sanchez]

Qualitychimp has it right there.

If others want to be veggie, great, crack on.

In honour of this video I'm going to have double helping of some fluffy animal for the next 30 days.

Twats.

[spagmasterswift]

Does Paul McCartney really need to introduce himself?

[mikewl]

For me the video didn't shock me so much with how the animals are killed etc, but the fact that they basically are given no life whatsoever at all, its basically from the moment of being born they are suffering all the way upto when they are killed.

[Prophet Hero]

I didn't watch the video, but I did eat chicken for dinner. I'm not sure if that makes me a good or a bad person.

[Morph]

I think a lot of these issues are mostly down to the problem of high demand we should all eat less meat but there are many who have some sort of meat in every meal, this culture needs to change.

Especially given the fact that meat production has been long identified as the biggest contributor to global warming.


http://www.enveg.org/resources/7-clear-cut-reasons-why-meat-is-bad-for-the-environment

[mikewl]

I think a lot of these issues are mostly down to the problem of high demand we should all eat less meat but there are many who have some sort of meat in every meal, this culture needs to change.

Especially given the fact that meat production has been long identified as the biggest contributor to global warming.


http://www.enveg.org/resources/7-clear-cut-reasons-why-meat-is-bad-for-the-environment

I think thats a key point, demand became so high that to keep up they looked to find ways of making each animal produce more, using unnatural ingredients in the animals food, hormone growth etc as well as methods that force cows to produce 10 times as much milk as they would have naturally, its also partly why mad cow disease and sars came about, if we'd as a culture been forced to acknowledge the true situation we would have likely started cutting down on meat consumption and animals would at least have some form of life before they die, however there was more money to be made by pushing each animal to the limit in unnatural ways, its all about the $.

I watched a documentary the other night about the human population and the planets resources and it does show that we are living in a time of limbo, if we continue to reproduce as fast as we have the earth will no longer be able to sustain us, in a way what is being done in the meat industry are the early signs of this.

[JP]

I don't really have any problems with people eating other animals as I think it's a part of what the human animal is.

I've always really struggled with the methods of farming though. I could well be wrong in what I feel but I have absolutely no issues with the idea of hunting to eat, you kill what you need and you don't waste anything that you've killed.

That seems ideal to me but I may well change my mind the first time I had a living animal in my hands and had to cut it's throat as it struggled. I have no doubt that genuine hunger would very quickly remove any learnt inhibitions that I had concerning killing wild animals though.

I did watch the video even though I knew I'd find it distressing or maybe because I knew I'd find it distressing and I'd rather not avoid seeing it. I also know that the images shown were going to of course be carefully selected to tell one version of a story that wouldn't be universally true.

The people in the video who seemed to be purposefully cruel to some animals for the sake of it really do make me angry though. I'd imagine and hope that they are a very small minority of the people who work in places like that and much like any other occupation people are doing a job whether it's pleasant or not.

I don't like cruelty in any way and yet I find myself funding it in some way with that bacon butty I had for dinner!

Does Paul McCartney really need to introduce himself?

There was such an abundance of wrinkly turkey necks in the video I think that something at the beginning to differentiate him from the others was definitely needed.

[davesol]

It was certainly a shocking video and I wouldn't condone the behaviour of the people shown who were being deliberately cruel or making a real pigs ear (geddit?) of the killing, but it did seem that often extremes were being presented as the norm. Personally my beef (geddit?) is more with the lives the animals have rather than the way they are killed, there was no mention in the video of organic meat being a viable alternative and one where the animal does get a far higher quality of life.