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Rupert
 
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Leslie wrote:
> 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:
>
> 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?


No. Additional plant production is required for animal food production.
I don't see that you've argued against the claim that veganism
minimizes your contribution to animal suffering. Do you believe you
have plausible figures for the death toll required for a vegan diet and
for a meat-based diet? Why don't you give them?

> 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".


They are kept in small crates too narrow from them to turn around. They
are deprived of straw and other sources of amusement. They suffer
greatly from boredom. Their tails are docked without anaesthetic. They
stand on either wire mesh, slatted floors or concrete floors, which are
unnatural footings. They suffer from poor air quality due to poor
ventilation and accumulating waste products. They are often abused at
the loading and unloading stages of transport. Furthermore it takes
eight pounds of protein in hog feed to generate a pound of pork.

> 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?
>


No.

> Cheers 2 U,
>
> Leslie
> "Only two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity.
> And I'm not sure about the former.".... Albert Einstein