Comments

1
Fuck PETA.
2
Beanie Weenies for everyone I say!
3
I really don't want to see that picture. Couldn't you give us a warning? I know people can be cruel.
4
PETA: still grossly counterproductive to their own causes.

And still completely ignorable, too. But if there's anything people relish as much as a vegan relishes the opportunity to feel morally superior to everybody else, it's an opportunity to feel morally superior to vegans.
5
Keep in mind that anyone commenting on this post is not a vegan, since they need to use electronics to do so, which contain animal products.
7
I don't really have a problem with the picture. Wouldn't kids raised on farms be pretty familiar with livestock carcasses?
8
Somehow, farm kids don't all grow up to be vegans. In fact, all the ones I know are avid meat eaters.

Perhaps it's primarily squeamish adults who are all "Ewwww, icky! This dead animal I'm eating may have suffered before its death!"? If you think showing someone how their food is made is a horrible ethical nightmare...why the hell are you eating factory farmed meat in the first place?
9
done in @1.
10
Five years old might be a little young for some images like this, but elementary school children should learn where most food actually comes from.
11
PETA makes me want to start eating meat again.

Delicious, delicious meat.
12
Aside from the propaganda issue, public schools are going to have very detailed contracts with their lunch providers that would likely make this impossible. Which PETA would have known if they had done about five minutes of homework.
13
I'd be okay with an organization with food-handling skills coming in to feed healthy food to my kids and their classmates. That sounds great.

PETA, you want to spread your tastes in delicious vegan food? Let's talk. You want to make my kids feel guilty about eating meat? Not cool. You want to show my kids images or tortured animals? You're sick fucks.
14
@ 12, PeTA doesn't care. They're all about shock tactics. They have all the moral standing of the anti-choice movement.
15
PETA is getting way too Westboro to be taken seriously anymore. All they seek to do these days is appeal to their fanatical base, and stay in the news.
16
It's awesome being a holier-than-thou vegan, because you can be annoying and downright stupid and you still win, because you're arguing against people who torture animals to death and eat their bodies.
17
@ 16, the animals I eat are well raised and quickly dispatched, not tortured. I'm guessing this is why you never argue with me.
18
This is PETA. It's surprising the "free educational material" didn't feature nude spokesmodels.
19
16: Are you saying if someone bolted you in the head and cut your throat until you bled to death it wouldn't count as being "tortured to death"? That doesn't seem particularly compassionate, but whatever helps you smile while you eat corpses.

Also, if you ever eat meat at restaurants or chain grocers, your animals aren't even tortured close to that nicely.
20
I meant 17. See, I'm annoying and stupid and still seem like a saint compared to you!
21
Those of us who are sane and civilized need to band together and overthrow PETA as the public face of animal welfare advocacy. They have made things immeasurably worse by turning the general public against us at every possible turn. PETA is the worst thing that has ever happened to the animal welfare cause and it pisses me off to no end to ever be associated with or perceived to be represented by them.
22
@ 19, yes. Simply killing an animal quickly is not torture. Full stop.

My meat comes from local farms that I have visited. I don't eat meat at restaurants unless I know that they're getting their meat from those same sources.

I'm not sure what you think qualifies you as a saint. While I'm taking concrete steps to better animal welfare, you're shrieking on blogs and being the typical judgmental asshole for whom anyone not in complete agreement with you is evil. Sure, veganism is one way to address the issue, but that give you no moral high ground by itself.
23
Is it propaganda if it's factual information?
24
@8 I'm wondering if there is a single vegan out there who grew up on a farm or even in the countryside. As far as I can tell they all seem to be urbanites/suburbanites whose experience with animals does not extend past their cat, the zoo and Wild Kingdom and who think cows wear overalls, walk around on their hind legs and speak English.
25
22- All of that is true. But, you still forcibly inseminate (aka rape) and then murder animals and eat their corpses. If you did that to a dog or cat or human you'd rightfully be in jail. Good work navigating those legal loopholes!

BRB, I need to go carjack some single mothers while on PCP. And I'll still win at morality!
26
@21 A NALT movement for animal welfare advocates? Not a bad idea.
27
@15: anymore? They've been using these same appalling tactics for years.

The problem with the Westboro comparison is that pretty much everyone knows that Westboro are hateful fringe lunatics who do not speak for mainstream religious folks. It's the exact opposite with PETA and animal welfare. People consistently link the two because of the way PETA has so shamelessly hijacked the cause.
28
@ 25, only if it's wrong to kill animals for food. Which it is not.

Anyway, thanks for that weird "rape" comment. I knew you were pretty wacky anyway, but it helps when you show everyone that you are.
29
Yes, Hernandez! Exactly :)
30
24- I know two vegans who grew up on farms in Central Washington. I grew up with chickens although it wasn't a true farm. There are plenty of vegan farmers - ask around at vegetable stands at your farmers market. Most eat meat just like society in general, but many don't.

Lots of people in the countryside are vegan. Say, like these people.

http://www.pigspeace.org
31
28- I know!!! I'm crazy and I just belittled rape (even though every single farmed animal is a product of rape by a human with a device - google "rape racks").

But, you murder animals, chop them up, and eat their muscle tissue as if it were food!! How sick is that! I win!!
32
@24: Sounds like you don't know many vegans.
33
@24 haven't you ever heard of howard lyman?
34
@33 Nope. I guess that makes one.
35
@21 ftw. I want to end cruelty to animals as much as anyone but no one wants to end up sounding like raku. What an astounding cockbag. PETA has hurt this cause way more than anyone has ever helped it.
36
@24 There are, as evidenced by this thread. My point is that seeing animal carcasses doesn't automatically turn a child into a vegan. Whether someone decides to be vegan or a meat eater, it seems sensible to me for them to understand where their food came from.

People should fully grasp and face where their food comes from and then make their choice with all of the information at hand. Yes, PETA is obnoxious as hell and relies on shock tactics, but where is the harm in letting children know where their food comes from and at what cost? How is ignorance of this basic fact of their daily lives beneficial? If the reality of meat is so horrific that it would give children nightmares, then...why feed them meat?
37
@36: Footage of open-heart surgery would probably also give kids nightmares. Should we abolish it?
38
@ 31, yes you did, schmoogums. U won! We're so proud of you!!! *pats head condescendingly*
39
@36 Yeah I agree. Actually I think it is a bit weird that people are horrified about seeing, or having their kids see animal carcasses. Most kids who grow up in the sticks see that from a very young age and if any of them grow up to be vegan I'm pretty certain the percentage is vanishingly small compared to vegans of suburban/urban origin who seem to get their ideas of what animals are like from Disney films or Mother Goose.
40
thanks, @35, but i'd argue that raku is pretty happy to be sounding like raku. and god knows there's more where s/he came from.
41
@ 36, the problem is that this was never intended to be a serious attempt to teach children about the cruelties of factory farming. As @ 12 points out, PeTA's offer was almost certainly not permissible under the contracts that they've signed. In addition, I wonder whether PeTA was up and up on their health department certification to serve food in this manner.
42
Matt from Denver FTW.

Next topic: would it be ethical to eat Raku?
43
* rolls eyes *

As always, PETA is their own worst enemy. Making vegans look like lunatics.

I fully support the notion of reducing animal cruelty and reducing the overconsumption of meat, but PETA does far more harm than good with their ridiculous tactics. Does anybody (besides raku) take them seriously?
44
PETA is awesome. I fully support educating children about the ethics of food.

if you find the images disturbing, you should. Murdering other sentient beings just so you can have a hot dog ought to disturb you.
45
@23: Yes. Propaganda just means "that which is propagated". The only key quality of propaganda is that somebody is trying to spread the news about it, with the implication that they are trying to convince people of something. When President Obama's staff put out statements to the effect that Obamacare will save the government money, that's truthful propaganda.
46
@ 44, it's called the food web. Anthropomorphizing it isn't sensible.

The image shown here is disturbing because it depicts abuse. Slaughter images (when done in a clean abattoir by non-psychopathic workers) aren't disturbing, except to those conditioned to find it that way.
47
@19 I do smile when I eat corpses. Because corpses taste so good. Like a chicken corpse in shish taouk, mmmmmmh! :-9
48
@13 The sicks fucks are the ones who are torturing the animals, not the ones who are showing pictures of it.

I don't necessarily like PETA, but, I'm sorry. Spreading awareness of animal cruelty should be non-controversial, not something that makes meat-eaters with a guilty conscience want to kill the messenger. Sure, they could go about broaching the subject with children more delicately, but the nasty backlash is misplaced.
49
@46 And images of slaughter in a clean abattoir aren't disturbing to those conditioned NOT to see them disturbing. You can't say the way I'm conditioned is "unnatural" but the way you're conditioned is "natural" without being unfair. It isn't cruel to shoot a baby in the face either--it would die instantly. But I'm still killing it.

And please, don't lump cattle, horses, and chickens in with amoebas and other micro-organisms.
50
@ 49, you really ought to re-read your post. It's precisely what's wrong with militant veganism, and a big part of why animal welfare isn't improving anymore.
52
#51: We're very similar, except the Westboro Baptist Church is obviously wrong, and vegan activists are obviously right.

PS Here are some Germans using "ethical slaughter practices". http://youtu.be/fYHc3A7VF0g

PPS Here is a video of where the German Sausage you buy at a store/restaurant comes from. http://video.humanesociety.org/press/vid…
53
I have always thought you should not eat meat unless you are willing to kill the animal yourself.

Otherwise, you are just forcing another to take on that moral responsibility while you yourself reap the rewards without the introspection of taking another life, even if it is just a creature's.

Ah, this is bringing me back to my younger days, helping my grandfather hunt deer and slaughter hogs.

I do love how #49 reveals the true hypocrisy of militant animal's rights folks: they draw an imaginary and arbitrary moral line between beings who are acceptable to kill, and those who are not. Isn't it so surprising how the beings it is ok to kill are not cute or similar physically to humans? Not recognizing the clear difference between humans and animals is just the icing on the nut cake.
55
Vegans wanting to introduce people to their lifestyle by offering free food? Fine.

Kid-friendly is a picture of a chicken covered in blood?

Cartoon Network has a rule of thumb that nothing they show before 11 p.m. should give an American six-year-old nightmares. They gutted all the blood effects and a good many of the plot elements from Ruroni Kenshin and only showed Inuyasha on Adult Swim because they couldn't figure out how to work around the arrow through his chest.

This would not be shown on Cartoon Network before 11 p.m.

There are legit animal rights groups out there, but PETA is a bunch of nuts. Aside from the lies that they tell about scientists, they even think that it's cruel to keep dogs and cats as pets! LOOK UP WHAT A DOMESTICATED ANIMAL IS, YOU GUYS.
56
@45 "Propaganda" does not just mean "that which is propagated." That is its root, not its meaning. "Propaganda," in modern English, refers to information, ideas or rumors that are spread for the purpose of helping or harming a group or cause. These PETA materials do not contain ordinary or average images of pigs and chickens being slaughtered. They contain the most brutal and evocative images that they could find. And yes, something can be propaganda even if it's true.

Here's a good example: The lesson is the stages of fetal growth and development over time. Imagine that class taught 1. by a science teacher as part of the human reproduction section of a high school biology class. 2. by any anti-abortion organization. They will be different! Similarly, children should be taught where their food comes from, but this should be done in an apolitical, dispassionate way; don't try to brainwash them.

If it wasn't okay for meat and dairy organizations to provide actually-kid-friendly "four food groups" materials that gave undue weight to their products, then it is wrong for PETA to try to manipulate children into making nutritional choices out of fear.
57
There's plenty of evidence that meatless eating doesn't equal "healthy eating" as PETA's press release states. It would be nice for them if health lined up with their moral concerns, but that's not how things always work. And yet so many folks on the vegan/vegetarian side behave as if that just HAS to be true...uncritically reading T. Colin Campbell, repeating talking points they read online on every blog they can find, etc. Can't one just CHOOSE to not participate in carnivorism without having to create a reason outside animal welfare? Really just don't get it.
58
@ 57, animal welfare alone isn't a reason for becoming an herbivore. As I've addressed above, livestock can be very humanely raised, and can be killed as humanely as possible too.

The ONLY real reason to adopt a completely meat and dairy free lifestyle is believing that it's wrong to kill animals for food. That's it. That's all. Every single other argument out there can be addressed in other ways. Health? Just eat less meat. You don't need it every day, never mind at every meal. Environment? First, get meat only from old fashioned farms, so as not to support the massive feedlots that are so polluting. Second, eat less meat. Animal welfare? See environment, but also visit the farms where your meat comes from. The ethical rancher wants you to see how well the animals live.

PeTA and radical vegans bring up all this other stuff to bolster their case. They appeal to other concerns that might get someone to consider the change in lifestyle, because it's hard to get people who have no problem with the concept of animals=food to consider that that's wrong in and of itself. Which is no wonder, because everything about how the food web works tells us otherwise.

Anyway, don't look for an admission that meatless ≠ healthy anytime soon, or even an acknowledgement that some people must eat meat to be healthy, due to medical conditions and under a doctor's orders. They're hardliners.
59
I meant "not killing animals" as part of "animal welfare." You know, the loose definition where if I care about your welfare, I don't raise you in a nice field but still kill you and stuff.

I would agree with all that, except that "eat less meat" doesn't equal "healthy" either, at least according to a lot of recent research. People think that "meat is bad for you" is some proven fact, but it's just not.
60
@ 59, I'm mostly speaking to the fact that, on average, Americans do eat too much meat, and that overconsumption is unhealthy. Cutting back (or cutting out) isn't going to make one perfectly healthy, but it will improve things.

Anyway, remember that if an animal isn't being raised by a rancher who provides food, water, shelter, and protection from other predators, it's out on its own in nature, which can be much worse for its welfare. Well cared-for livestock enjoy the greatest welfare possible on this earth.
61
@60 -- I think it's a bit redundant to say you're patting someone's head condescendingly. We can understand your tone without use of that adverb.
62
Those who are meat eaters and vigorously commenting here, what is your motivation? What do you care? Could it be that on some level, you understand that eating meat is wrong?
I like to go by evidence and facts, not bullshit. # 5 Theodore Gorath: I can find no evidence that "electronics" always or even sometimes contain animal products, but so what if they do? If nobody ate meat they would make them out of something else.
Bethany Jean Clement: How do you know that image was going to be given to school children? Couldn't the district have asked for disturbing images to be omitted? Why wouldn't it be possible for the school lunch staff to safely prepare the food in compliance with all regulations and safe practices?
Also I grew up surrounded by farms and farmers, and my father's brother and father had working farms and raised and produced meat which we ate. When I became an adult I started thinking for my self and haven't eaten meat at all since the '70s.
63
@62, where are the "facts" you say you value? I didn't see any in your post, just a bunch of accusations and suppositions, along with implications that people who have different opinions from you are wrong.
64
@62: Why do you want to let this specific organization into school cafeterias? How about an all-meat day sponsored by local small farms? And, help me, I forget which logical fallacy you're going for with the thing about how now you're thinking for yourself so you don't eat meat, even though you have this meat-intensive background. Appeal to Authority? (Meat-eating authority?) Or whatever fits "If you think for yourself you'll think like me"? Sorry, it's early for me...or not enough Healthy Whole Grains in my diet, perhaps...
65
I was vegetarian, then vegan, for over 6 years. I was as a late teen/early 20s a RARA (radical animal rights activist). Eventually I grew up, developed a deeper understanding of the interconnectedness of life, and now I live on a farm where we process our roosters every spring or as we need them. We have a few we'll be dispatching soon in fact. They roam our property freely, have a lovely bunch of hens while they're here, and all the food/bugs/veggies they can eat. When we processed our first rooster I wondered if I would feel sad/upset/grossed out/etc... I was a tiny surprised that I did not. His life was pleasant and his death was extremely quick. There was really nothing to feel bad about. Frankly I think we should all be so lucky as to go with as little suffering as he did. He made a delicious roast chicken (he was a year old and had the most amazingly flavorful, maroon colored dark meat you have ever seen) and several gallons of chicken soup. After that first rooster I have no qualms about what we do. We give them a good life, a good death, and nothing goes to waste.

I don't really know what my point is... Rabid vegans can't be reasoned with - I should know, I once was one... I guess I've just seen what death is and it blew a shit ton of holes in the RARA arguments we always here. It's not horrific. It just is. It's a part of the circle of life as it has been for eons. We're a part of that circle and there's nothing wrong with that. The only obligation I feel to the animals I eat is respect what they are giving me and to do my part to make their deaths as quick and painless as possible.
66
People Eating Tasty Animals: Unethical psychopaths for animals since 1980

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