Mica wrote: "What's the difference between hunting and buying meat?"
My answer: it's the difference between choosing to take part in the predator/prey relationship (usually with a significant advantage, such as being able to kill your prey remotely with a projectile, using a scope to ensure as much accuracy as possible) and choosing to take part in the producer/consumer relationship (usually with some sense, however far in the back of your mind, that the meat you are consuming was grown in the bodies of animals who were put through a great deal of unnecessary suffering).
I would advocate vegetarianism or, better yet, veganism (the dairy and egg industries have their fair share of moral downfalls as well), but it would be hypocritical, since I too choose to buy and consume meat. I usually favor the meat of invertebrates, like shellfish and other spineless sea creatures, as well as insects, because I believe (biologically) that they do not suffer as much as organisms with more highly developed central nervous systems... but I'm not an expert, and even people who are experts in that field could be wrong! There hasn't been an agreement as to whether invertebrates associate emotionally with physical pain, like we do.
Most of my friends are strictly against genetically modified organisms and any kind of "Franken-food" (as they call it) in general, and I personally don't agree with modifying plants to contain pesticides, or resistances to herbicides. I think Monsanto and other BioTech companies are very rash in doing so, and that European countries are right to ban such technology from their agribusiness. However, one innovation that I agree with is the emergence of in-vitro meat production.
I'm curious, what do others in this thread think about meat that is produced in a lab from stem cells, without harming actual animals? The technology isn't practical yet, but in a decade or two it may be. If it appeared on shelves, would you choose it over CAFO-(confined animal feeding operation)-produced meat?
Also, I should add that there is a significant reason why most people in the world seem to prefer meat protein over plant protein, and that's that animal protein is much more efficiently processed by the body for it's own uses, as the animal proteins are already in a very similar form. My source on that is my mother, who is a vegan dietician.
I add this because when I bring up the topic of in-vitro meat, I usually get the response, "Isn't the easier and thus better solution to simply go vegan?" And I respond with this, and point out that most people in the world, today, probably wouldn't go vegan if they had the choice. Of course, there are a lot of remarkably convincing, delicious meat-mimicking food products out there these days, and they seem to be catching on.
people like meat because of the smell of cooked meat. i almost posted an article on it the other day on this forum. mushrooms have a meaty texture and are absolutely delicious. different mushrooms even have different textures as do different meats.
honestly, i'm not sure what to think of franken meat grown in a lab. i heard how KFC changed from Kentucky Fried Chicken for that reason. Chicken isn't grown in a lab.
if it weren't for jaguars and wolves i may be a vegetarian or vegan even. turtles eat vegetables. how many snakes and dragons eat strawberries and asparagus?
