Quote:
Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel
what ?? no more bacon for you ????
i'm a vegetarian, have been my whole life. i don't eat "anything with a face" as a friend once put it. i do eat eggs and dairy products ("i like cheese."  ).
i have three reasons for this choice which probably are equally weighted : - habit. it's how i've always eaten so it's quite natural for me, i don't have to think too hard about it.
- ethics. i am very uncomfortable with the human-centric point of view of many people and i consider that animals deserve respect and good treatment just as much as humans do. and most particularly i find factory farming practices to be barbaric and i refuse to support them. i buy only organic eggs from chickens who are living outside, and try to buy "small producer" milk and cheese products from local family farms. they are a bit more expensive, but i think it's worth it.
- taste. as a vegetarian, you get a lot of meat-eaters telling you "you don't know what you're missing !" or "how can you give up such delicious food !" so to shut them up at various times i've tasted some kinds of meat, and i can therefore confirm that i don't like it. i've never tasted fish or any kind of crustacean, because the smell and sight of it alone are enough to turn my stomach. even if i weren't a vegetarian, i wouldn't eat fish.
i don't proselytize and i get very annoyed by people who try to convert me, particularly with such spurious arguments as "but they're just animals / fish / birds, they're MADE to be eaten !" |
I'm entirely on your side, and I can quite easily follow point 1 and 2.
However regarding to taste. It's quite rare that we humans like something (that is not sugary) on the first go. Normally "experts" talk about how small children needs to taste something up to ten times before they get used to it. And it should be even worse for adults. So when you don't like meat, it's probably mostly because you're not used to the taste.
I have the same problem about dioxins and the likes as you have. As I don't eat a lot of meat, I would like to only eat meat from ecological (organic (crappy word since all meat is organic)) farming. But it's not easy: The supermarkets may have 15 different types of chicken, but you have to be lucky if just one of them is "organic". The diversity is just more of the same it seems.
Needless to say there are moral questions, along with the personal health concerns, involved buying a 2£ chicken which has had a life span of 40 days opposed to the typical 90 days life span of an organic chicken. In Denmark, where I am from, a farmer was given about 23 pence for a chicken in 1950. Today they are given about 20 pence. No wonder we eat crap. And there are only two to blame: 1) Us, the consumers, who really don't care, as long as it is cheap, and 2) the government who should have regulated the food industry much more to protect animals as well as the consumers (because the food industry has a lack of transparency, it's difficult for the end consumer to make qualified choices).
Even if you only buy food labeled "organic", you cannot be sure that you are getting a reasonable product, since there are different rules for the use of such a label in different countries.
Phew /rant off.
