What's the difference between hunting and buying meat?

when there is already an overabundance of food and resources that can substitute the need to do so.

Only because there are those who are willing to do what you are not...However, eating meat, or vegetable, you are part of the chain that leads up to the killing.

Remember that next time you eat a hamburger. It didnt start out that way. Your attempt to remove yourself from it by degrees for a sense of contentment is appalling to me.

Be careful with doing things because it is not 'ethical or characteristic of a [insert]'. You run the risk of trying to conform to a stereotype. Become who you desire to be, but do it because it feels right rather than to fill some obligation.

There are lots of ethical or moral reasons behind eating meat or being vegetarian etc, but perhaps my primary - but not only - concern would be suffering. Eating free range chicken is, in my mind, more ethical than eating battery farmed chicken as an example.

Khaos wrote:

when there is already an overabundance of food and resources that can substitute the need to do so.

Only because there are those who are willing to do what you are not...However, eating meat, or vegetable, you are part of the chain that leads up to the killing.

Remember that next time you eat a hamburger. It didnt start out that way. Your attempt to remove yourself from it by degrees for a sense of contentment is appalling to me.

You misunderstand

90 billion pounds of food is thrown away in the United States each year. A good amount of that is meat product, although I was unable to find information on the exact percentage of what food thrown away is meat.

If it were NECESSARY to kill an animal in order to eat, I would do so without hesitation or issue. The problem I take, is that someone else has already butchered an animal with the intent of selling it for consumption. By purchasing that product, the animal which is already dead, I am supporting the killing of that animal for my consumption.

I do not see the need to take more life, when there has already been an excess of life taken for my potential use and consumption.

Hopefully that clarifies my view somewhat more for you Khaos.

Kohadra wrote: someone else has already butchered an animal with the intent of selling it for consumption.

If you don't buy it, someone else will. If people stop buying enough of it, the price will go down. When the price is no longer profitable, no more meat will be produced. You might be surprised how inexpensive it is to raise cattle free-range, without hormones, without antibiotics, without feed-lots, etc. The price really goes down if you don't have to run a factory for packaging, pay for plastic and styrofoam packaging, inject it with MSG(oh sorry "natural flavor") and salt water to add weight and flavor, pay for shipping, etc.

I raise cows for our own meat consumption. It costs almost nothing. If I were to butcher them myself it would be almost free. I may switch to goats for that reason. Anyway, the meat we get from our cows is nothing like the meat you buy in stores. We do our own eggs too and they're great(and almost free too).

So the point is this: don't buy meat from confined-animal-farming-operations. Know your meat provider. There are plenty of mom and pop cattle ranchers who will gladly sell you a side of beef for half the price of walmart meat while guaranteeing no hormones, antibiotics, cruelty, etc.

Species lived and died out because of other species all over the planet since living creatures ever existed. We, a speck in the history of the planet, are not monsters. We were produced by this planet doing what comes naturally to us. We as a specie may not make it and other specie may die out because of us, but the planet and life will go on, growing and creating more species to replace the lost ones as it goes.

Clarification: If we are going to concern ourselves with these things, it should be from a perspective that involves both our own AND the world around us, not just one of the two.

rugadd wrote: creating more species to replace the lost ones as it goes.

round-up resistant weeds
BT resistant corn worms
GMO corn and soy
Pesticide resistant pests

I deal with these on a daily basis because my neighbouring corporate farm has been dumping pesticides all over their property for the past 20 years.

ren wrote:

So efficient in fact, that most of it rots before it gets distributed.

nonsense. besides, what about all the wild animals that die a natural death? Do they count as waste too? When a supermarket fails to sell a rotting tomato, it's waste, what about all the wild fruits that have the same fate? Do they count as waste too?

tzb wrote:
animals that die a natural death are eaten by vultures, scavengers, and insects so they aren't wasted. wild fruits are either eaten by insects or turn into compost and nutrients for plant life.

"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.

Or am I off-target trying to resurrect this over-half-a-year-old thread? Lol...