"Rupert" > wrote in message
oups.com...
>
>
> 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.
=======================
No, fool, it is not required. There is NO requirment to feed
crops to cattle for beef.


> 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?
=================
Hey wait a minute, YOU claimed to have done all the research and
made this determination! Where's your numbers? Oh, right, you
lied. You have nothing.


>
>> 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.
================
Brainwashing too tight, eh killer?


See, I told you Leslie....


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