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Survival of the fittest, blue.

Then why didn't Hitler have the right to experiment on the mentally retarded? I see no difference really.

Survival of the fittest, blue. If we as humans didn't have laws condemning the murder of other humans, you can bet we'd be killing each other off just as other animals do.

Oh wait. It's called war.

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The exact same right that they have to kill and eat us.

Animals do not have the reasoning ability of humans. They do not have a sense of what is right or wrong. Don't we often kill animals when they attack/kill humans? To me, that's like executing an insane person.

And I don't want to start an arguement at all. I was just thinking about this one day. And I don't think that meat-eaters are evil either (like certain vegetarians).

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Slew can you EVER make a post without posting a bunch of links?

Excuse me for being helpful

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How about you actually attack the philosophical question about why it is or is not just to eat meat? Not your own skittishness about eating animals you find cute.

Now, now, blue said she didn't want an argument to start over this, remember? I was just simply adding a different point of view.
And this isn't about finding certain animals cute either, otherwise I'd be eating turkeys and ugly fish

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Slewin, its cool you don't eat meat, just don't say I shouldn't because of your own decision.

I'm not forcing anyone to do anything. I'm just putting the facts out there so you all can make up your own minds about it. Is that so wrong?

What gives us as humans the right to kill animals for food? The right to survival. If you condemn humans for killing animals, you had better start condemning wolves, grizzly bears, and carnivorous plants as well.

Humans are superior creatures, both in adaptability and brain capacity. We are more sophisticated than most, if not all, other animals. That alone should give us the right to do what we wish with other species. If humans were less able to survive than, say, sea lions, the sea lions would exercise their superiority to the fullest extent, just as we do now.

That's how I justify my meat. It's essentially what DrS said, but without as many large words.

Well said, strange, as usual.

Slewin, its cool you don't eat meat, just don't say I shouldn't because of your own decision.

Slew can you EVER make a post without posting a bunch of links?

How about you actually attack the philosophical question about why it is or is not just to eat meat? Not your own skittishness about eating animals you find cute.

Give these facts some consideration, blue:

Chickens (and other poultry) are not covered by the Humane Slaughter Act or the Animal Welfare Act. This means that chickens have no federal protection from cruel treatment or inhumane slaughter.

If someone kept dogs and cats in condictions similar to the way most chickens are kept, the people involved would be charged with animal cruelty and could get fined, jailed and may even possibly get psychological counsiling. (since that would be considered hoarding)

If you wouldn't eat your cat/dog/etc. (I don't know if you have any animals), then why eat an animal who is just as able to feel pain and suffer as a dog or cat?

Eating chickens requires more animal deaths than eating beef, simply because chickens are small and cattle are big (you can't eat a cow in one sitting, but you can with a chicken). Almost 9 billion of the 10 billion land animals killed every year for food are poultry. And since chickens are not covered by any federal anti-cruelty law (while cattle are covered under the Humane Slaughter Act), more cruelty is involved too.

If you have the time, please see these websites for much more information:
http://www.chickenindustry.com/
http://www.poultry.org/
http://www.factoryfarming.com/poultry.htm
http://www.goveg.com/factoryFarming_chickens.asp
http://www.goveg.com/f-hiddenliveschickens.asp
http://www.veganoutreach.org/whyvegan/index.html
http://www.upc-online.org/
http://www.fosterfacts.net/

I am a vegetarian myself, but I was like you just over a year ago. One day I was looking at the chicks in our yard, (I knew about the cruelty involved in the production of chicken, but I had lacked the motivation to go veg) and I realized that if I wouldn't eat those chicks, then why am I eating other chicks? I made the desision to stop eating chicken then and there. It wasn't easy (mostly because of family dispute), but I think it was worth it. (I got my family eating healthier too!)

If you need any help/advice, let me know. I'm on your friends list on MySpace, so you can contact me through there.

If people didn't eat cows we wouldn't raise them. I know it seems barbaric to kill them after raising them but very few animals live to be of an old age in the wild anyway. The way humans kill animals is much more painless and quicker than how predators kill prey. So, they either die in the wild to vicious predators or to humans who cared for them and treated them well while they wre alive.

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I'm just curious but what exactly gives humans the right to kill and eat animals?

The exact same right that they have to kill and eat us. In the natural world there is no right to life. That is some legal definition that we have made because humans, with our superior sentient mind, can actually conceptualize laws and moral philosophy. Animals cannot communicate with us on a higher level, and vis versa.

The minute a species forms a group and writes me a letter about how ticked off ticked off they are that I eat them, then I might consider not eating meat.

Untill then, killing and death are a perfectly natural thing. There is nothing bad or evil about killing something to eat it. We don't prosecute a mountain lion for eating a hiker. We kill it because it is a threat to us. Basic, natural, logical. Get my reasoning? Human's don't have some divine dominion over anuimals. We're just really good at what we do.

We're just superior creatures. Sure, we're flawed, sometimes evil and manipulative, but we're just higher up on the evolution scale. The next time a chicken creates something that dramatically changes chickens' lives forever, I'll rethink my Chicken Sandwich at Wendy's.

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become like cows in India and wander in places they shouldnt be in.

Dude. Cows are sacred there. Just like monkeys in some other places. They are a nuisance, but they unlike us, can adapt.

I'm really getting annoyed with this human dominion over animals crap. Ticks, mosquitos, sharks, anacondas, tigers, lions, bears, locusts, spiders, etc. We have zero authority over them and they know that. Besides, I'm the one cleaning out my cats' litterbox, and using my money to feed them, and they don't do a damn thing for me.

To me, a life's a life, and seeing images of beheaded chickens in my head isn't quite worth eating meat to me. Anyway, I don't justify it. I'm not one to fight for animal rights, but I have a rather overactive conscience. "It's the circle of life/It rules us all" yada, yada, yada. . . So yes, this post was rather contridicting my own decision.

Well, I've never really given it much thought (my whole family hunts so to me it's just normal) but I guess I would have to say that we have the right simply because we can. I mean, no one questions a lions' right to kill for food and humans are just basically animals so... that's the way the world works. I do totally hate cruelty towards animals though; kills should be quick and as painless as possible.

Bush, animals would NOT overrun the world. Nature takes care of that, they managed just fine before humans came along and they manage just fine in remote places where there are no to few humans.

(this might sound either short or ignorant)

this is just my opinion, but I think that killing animals for food purposes is alright for humans to do because the Lord gave us dominion over animals. Cows would be running the show if otherwise. Killing animals, again, for food purposes only (I think it is wrong just to go on a killing spree just for the heck of it) also keeps the animal population down. If we never killed another animal, there would be no way of controlling the population and animals would become like cows in India and wander in places they shouldnt be in.