"Leslie" > wrote in message
...
> Found scrawled in the outhouse on 22 Jun 2005 03:03:01 -0700,
> "Rupert"
> > wrote:
>
> <snip>
>>
>>> Vegetarian diets are quite good, and efficient, where vegans
>>> go awry is falling for all the feelgood quasi-political
>>> nonsense.
>>
>>What nonsense? Some vegans claim that following a vegan diet is
>>the
>>best way to minimize one's contribution to animal suffering. I
>>don't
>>see that you've offered me any reason to think otherwise.
>
> I believe Dutch and Rick have tried to tell you. It is
> logically and numerically
> impossible to claim that animal suffering can be minimized by
> going vegan. Let me offer a
> reasonable example:
===============
Great stuff, but let's face it, it won't mean a thing to the
braindead vegans on usenet. Their brainwashing is complete, and
they have nothing left with which to think for themselves....





> In the production of crops, even on a smaller scale than the
> corporate farms, you have
> destruction of animals beginning with the preparation of the
> ground for planting
> (discing). Every field must be worked and, other than a small
> vegetable garden in your
> backyard, it is impractical in time and manpower, to hand-work
> a 70 acre field for
> planting preparation. Ergo, machinery. Go to your nearest John
> Deere dealership and take a
> look at the size of a tractor needed for a 70 acre crop. *Just*
> the tractor; we'll get to
> the other implements later.
>
> After you have run the tractor and disc through your 70 acres
> the first time, you must do
> it a second time for 70 acres of never-tilled earth. While at
> the Deere dealership, move
> on to the implements and take a look at a 15 foot disc. They
> are equipped with big steel
> blades that bite at least 6 to 8 inches into the soil. Between
> the tractor and the disc
> you have, effectively, a giant tenderizer (tractor weight and
> wheels) that slices and
> dices after squashing.
>
> Keep in mind that there is no guarantee that the voles, mice,
> bunnies, prairie dogs,
> ground squirrels, fox, badger, and other denning/underground
> dwelling creatures have been
> actually killed by your first pass. No, you might have a couple
> of hundred assorted
> creatures mortally wounded but not *yet* dead. Yes, they will
> die, of shock.
>
> Now that your 70 acres has been plowed you must prepare the
> ground for your crop. Let's do
> soy beans because they usually show up in a vegan diet. While
> you are buying your seeds,
> you also buy your chemical herbicide and fertilizer. If you
> don't have an applicators
> license, because this stuff *is* lethal, you hire it done by
> the local co-op.
>
> First, they come out to your field with the anhydrous ammonia.
> That is your fertilizer.
> Ever smell it? It will stop your heart and suffocate you if you
> don't use a breathing
> apparatus. Now think about it being applied right on top of or
> into the animal dens
> themselves. Very nasty way to die, assuming you had survivors
> of discing. Lungs, eyes, and
> skin burning, fighting for air and unable to get any that isn't
> filled with the
> anhydrous...
>
> Okay. Now you must get ready for the seed you bought. That
> means going into the 70 acres
> for a third time with a harrow bed, to pulverize the disced up
> dirt clods into finer,
> tillable ground for planting. The co-op then goes in after
> harrowing with the herbicide
> application. It has a skull and crossbones on the label for a
> good reason. The applicator,
> if he has followed the manufacturers statistical data sheet
> (MSDS), will be in a "moon
> suit". He's covered head to toe, goggled, and wearing a gas
> mask or other device to
> breath. You use a chemical herbicide because it would take you
> a month to go in and pull
> weeds by hand, and you have to get your crop in, or go broke.
>
> You are ready to plant now. For a *fifth* time a tractor and
> implement have gone into the
> 70 acres, this time with that seed you bought and a 12 row
> planter. Look at the implement
> again. Here, this will help:
>
> http://www.deere.com/en_US/deerecom/usa_canada.html
> (click on agriculture)
>
> WOW. You just noticed at the Deere site that soy beans are
> waaaay up, so you really have
> to get going. Of course, being sort of conscientious, you have
> bought the most minimally
> inoculated but disease resistant seed possible. Yep, your seed
> has all its shots, which is
> why you don't want to handle it much without gloves. It will
> also kill any animal that
> eats it and quite a few bugs, too. "Virgin" soy seed doesn't
> exist anymore. It's all been
> manipulated.
>
> You plant, it grows. The crop is looking good. Oh NO! Those
> pesky bugs! So, it's down to
> the co-op for a pesticide to kill the bugs that have been
> identified by your local USDA
> extension office. They tell you what chemical to use. They
> spray it on and, voila! No more
> bugs...no more birds, no more mice, no more bunnies. They are
> either killed slowly by the
> poison or, if not dead, then sterilized.
>
> That's okay. Your crop is looking damned good! The market price
> is high and you might make
> some money on soybeans. Oh, crap! Weeds!! Not many but enough
> to be irritating. Well, you
> don't have a cultivator so you hire Mexican labor to go in and
> "walk" the beans. Three
> bucks an hour and all the pot they can haul away (ditch weed
> grows wild and resists
> everything). Now your 70 looks pristine, from above.
>
> Harvest time!!! You drag out the combine (see Deere implements
> again) and tractor and go
> to work. It grabs the bean plant, yanks it out, separates the
> beans from the foliage, puts
> the beans in the grain tank, grinds up the rest of the plant
> and shoots it out the back.
> The names of the parts of a combine are pretty
> self-explanatory: threshing rotor, cleaning
> fan, chaffer, sieve, etc. End of any animal who might have made
> an above ground nest for
> themselves.
>
> But you've got your $7.00 a bushel beans out for all the vegans
> who "don't want to kill
> animals for food". At that price, who is going to care if a few
> thousand birds, squirrels,
> mice, or moles (and their babies) got squished, sliced, diced,
> ground, tumbled, terrified
> by the rumble and noise, badly injured, and left to die?
>
> Now do you see why the vegan claim of less- or cruelty free is
> an empty one? If the vegans
> place a value on a single life of a single creature, then using
> soy in whatever form
> renders that value meaningless.
>
> Moreover, this kind of wholesale destruction for crop
> production is far more "inhumane"
> than the factory farming of a large hog operation. The hogs
> aren't sliced and diced,
> squished, starved, out of water, or evicted from their "nests".
> A HUMAN is there every
> single day to feed them, water them, call the vet, clean up
> after them, and even talk to
> them. Their slaughter, when it's time, is quick. Their meat is
> nutritious. Every part is
> used. Not like the waste left behind the combine, made of
> chemicalized soy.
>
> Does this answer your argument?
>
> Cheers 2 U,
>
> Leslie
> "Only two things are infinite: the universe and human
> stupidity.
> And I'm not sure about the former.".... Albert Einstein