Your torment is delicious.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Sat Nov 21, 2009 2:19 am

Crissa wrote:If you buy from heartless dicks, you are a heartless dick.

You are what you eat, not who you buy from. Although based on that some of us might still be excardiated penises.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sat Nov 21, 2009 11:09 am

Fuck you, Crissa. I enjoy home-cooked burgers (I do not enjoy beef-flavoured plastic known as McDonalds), and while I don't actually give a shit where it comes from, as long as the answer is "ground up cow organs"*, if there happens to be (unnecessary) animal cruelty involved on their end, that's their business. Convenience is convenient, and I am not going to pay more (hint: I am unable to do so if I want the luxury of eating every day) or go raise and slaughter my own animals just to make you happy about some animal that I only see being grilled, fried or barbecued.

I'd prefer that the animals led happy lives dancing about in fields, but I'm not going to lose sleep over the fact that I get to eat these things at affordable prices as a result of the suffering of a creature I'll never meet.

Though you're the rich bitch here, so feel free to buy my food for me if it chokes you that badly.

*Though I'm a much bigger fan of eating the native wildlife of Australia. YOU JUST WAIT, PLATYPUS. YOUR TIME WILL COME.

erik · Post by **erik** » Sat Nov 21, 2009 11:45 am

Platypaddies. Yum.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_do_you_cook_platypus

(boooooo)

For the record, I am in the crowd that does not feel the necessity to be humane to my food. It is a luxury to be able to do so, and luxuries are optional. It is never pretty when a predator eats another creature and such is life. If we didn't stuff creatures to get more food out of them, then I imagine we would just have to raise and kill that many more, and that would raise more human health issues with crowding of food creatures.

Be efficient, be healthy for people, and feed people. That is all that I ask of my food. Be delicious would be 4th on the list, but I usually just eat to satisfy hunger, not to enjoy the fare.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Sat Nov 21, 2009 3:25 pm

Crissa wrote:Just like they sue Oprah for saying she doesn't eat hamburgers.

Crissa, the people involved in writing that article are abysmally unintelligent and incredibly biased. Why would you bother linking that?

Anyway, I'm still not seeing how the American meat industry requires "torture." I have no desire for cows to be tortured. I do, however, enjoy hamburgers and steak. I see no reason why animals that are killed for food need to be "tortured" prior to execution.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sat Nov 21, 2009 3:56 pm

In favour of the people who give half a flying toss about animals that aren't pets:

Tormented animals tend to not have delicious tender meat. Animals that are more or less content have far better meat (though this is also a case of younger == better, so we should just be slaughtering the children or something).

Caedrus · Post by **Caedrus** » Sat Nov 21, 2009 4:51 pm

So... you can be sued for saying you don't like hamburgers on TV?

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Sat Nov 21, 2009 7:44 pm

As if Oprah has a food she doesn't like.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Sun Nov 22, 2009 7:32 am

So the needless human and animal suffering is perfectly okay with you.

I get that.

You can have your poisoned meat, washed in ammonia, carrying an unnecessary load of anti-biotic resistant bacteria. Which wouldn't even exist, if you thought humane treatment was important in your food supply.

I guess none of you have read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.

-Crissa

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sun Nov 22, 2009 7:52 am

It is okay with me if it means the difference between eating properly every day and not doing so, and if the humans/animals involved aren't ones I'd ever meet. Yes.

But as I said, you can buy my groceries for me if it would make you feel better.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Sun Nov 22, 2009 9:30 am

Crissa wrote:So the needless human and animal suffering is perfectly okay with you.

That's...that's not what I said at all.

You can have your poisoned meat, washed in ammonia, carrying an unnecessary load of anti-biotic resistant bacteria. Which wouldn't even exist, if you thought humane treatment was important in your food supply.

I think that humane treatment is important. However, I can't afford to buy meat that costs twice as much as the stuff at the store. It also doesn't matter if I buy "humane" meat; the rest of the world is happy to buy "inhumane" meat.

I guess none of you have read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.

-Crissa

I'm pretty sure the standards have improved since the early 1900s.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sun Nov 22, 2009 12:04 pm

Isn't the jungle one of those dystopian setting books that has "homeless sausage" or something?

Personally I find that an elegant, if possibly risky, solution to the homeless problem.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sun Nov 22, 2009 12:13 pm

Prak_Anima wrote: Personally I find that an elegant, if possibly risky, solution to the homeless problem.

I'm pretty sure eating human flesh can make you very ill. Indeed, mentally ill.

And I have a better solution, if it turns out I'm mistaken: it's called upperclass sausage. Basically it mixes the Red Revolution with Hannibal Lecter. Everybody wins.

But see back to point 1. Always consult with your doctor before eating your fellow man.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sun Nov 22, 2009 12:15 pm

well at least the upper class tend to only have mental diseases if I understand correctly. I like it.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Sun Nov 22, 2009 12:23 pm

The Jungle is about Lithuanian immigrants who work in a meat-packing plant. It was basically an attempt by Upton Sinclair to motivate Americans to support social programs to help the needy, promote worker's rights, stop the exploitation of the working class, beat up the corrupt officials, and, as he put it, "[w]rite the Uncle Tom's Cabin of the Labor Movement."

He did such an excellent job of detailing the deplorable conditions of the meat packing industry that people forgot all about the plight of the immigrants, the criticisms of laissez-faire capitalism, and the socialist propaganda. Instead, they focused on the meat being gross.

Whoops.

Kobajagrande · Post by **Kobajagrande** » Sun Nov 22, 2009 7:00 pm

No one died from the meat just because it came out of a meat industry facility.

However, a lot of people died because of hunger.

Thread end.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sun Nov 22, 2009 7:07 pm

You'd think so, except I'd be willing to bet money (except I don't have any money) that Crissa would be okay with people starving to death instead of hurting those poor cows, or is fine with cannibalism, or feels we should just figure out how to survive on plastic instead.

Kobajagrande · Post by **Kobajagrande** » Sun Nov 22, 2009 7:45 pm

The way I see it is:

"A person disconnected from the reality of the world around him applying fake morality to a random thing for the shake of feeling better about himself? Oh, surprise."

erik · Post by **erik** » Sun Nov 22, 2009 7:51 pm

Kobajagrande wrote:No one died from the meat just because it came out of a meat industry facility.

People do die from tainted meat.

I could find lots of links to reports of people dying from tainted meat, but it'd be easier to simply accept that it does happen, and that yes, we can do better for human health and safety by improving our methods of meat production.

I'm not as concerned about humane treatment of food-critters as I am for healthy treatment of food-animals (especially such that they don't become bio-weapons directed at humanity).

We need to get on making insects into mass-produced foodstuffs for our 'meats'. Nobody gives 2 shits about their treatment, they don't mind being packed into efficient spaces, they are >10 times more efficient to grow per meatiness than livestock, and it seems unlikely that they will be petri dishes for mutated viruses that can infect humans, as chickens and pigs have proven to be. Not much risk of mad cow disease from grasshoppers either, I imagine.

Either that or just grow meat creatures.

Kobajagrande · Post by **Kobajagrande** » Sun Nov 22, 2009 7:56 pm

clikml wrote:People do die from tainted meat.

You will notice I said "just because it came out of a meat industry facility", meaning that the people died solely because of the reason the meat came out of the meat industry, and not because of some other factor like bacteria infection/bad storage/mad cow disease.

Its not like those things are exclusive to meat industry anyway.

erik · Post by **erik** » Sun Nov 22, 2009 8:04 pm

Huh?

The meat was tainted at a meat processing facility. What is there to argue? That stuff should be caught before people get dead by it, if not outright prevented. I shouldn't be dying because I ate a flippin burger dammit. At least, not immediately.

Cielingcat · Post by **Cielingcat** » Sun Nov 22, 2009 8:10 pm

That argument is like "no one ever died from a gun, only from bullets," or some other retarded bullshit. It is retarded, bullshit, and you are stupid for saying it.

Kobajagrande · Post by **Kobajagrande** » Sun Nov 22, 2009 8:10 pm

clikml wrote:Huh?

The meat was tainted at a meat processing facility. What is there to argue? That stuff should be caught before people get dead by it, if not outright prevented. I shouldn't be dying because I ate a flippin burger dammit. At least, not immediately.

god damn.

It was a fucking bacteria infection. it happens everywhere. It happens with a farmer who kills one, happy little cow if he doesn't watch for his slaughter facilities.

That's why you have all those health inspections who's job it is for this thing not to happen.

That shitty canned meat did come out of a meat processing, but it was not infected because it came out of a meat processing facility. It got infected because of something that happened at the meat processing facility, but not SOLELY because it came out of a meat processing facility.

Do you understand?

erik · Post by **erik** » Sun Nov 22, 2009 9:06 pm

*blinks*

I guess I do not understand the relevance of your distinction.

The processing facility was culpable in the spreading of deadly bacteria. If not for their facility's involvement in the processing of meat, some people would not have died. It seems the perfect rejoinder to your claim that nobody dies because the meat came from a particular place. This was just one example I chose at random from the many returns I got from google.

There were things they could do to improve their safety, as evidenced by that they did things to improve their safety after that incident. Their safety measures are pretty darned good now, and probably much better than U.S. standards.

This says nothing about treating food critters humanely or not while they are still living which I believe was the topic at hand. It was an aside to rebut your weird less-than-factually-based comment about nobody dying due to meat processing places, which was at beast a corollary to the topic at hand to begin with.

Kobajagrande · Post by **Kobajagrande** » Sun Nov 22, 2009 9:22 pm

clikml wrote:
I guess I do not understand the relevance of your distinction.

Well, duh.

Look, things are simple: the bacterial infection was not inherent to the meat production process. This shit happened because something (actually, a lot of things) failed and allowed the meat to get infected and reach the market, but not because of the process itself.

Such cases show that food control is serious business, not that we have to abolish meat processing facilities.

erik · Post by **erik** » Sun Nov 22, 2009 10:00 pm

I think we are in at least partial agreement, certainly on your last statement: "Such cases show that food control is serious business, not that we have to abolish meat processing facilities."

However, while it wasn't inherent but it was amplified at least in part due to a failure in the process. At least one piece of tainted meat was enabled to taint many more pieces of meat during processing. Inherently clean meat was made unclean. My beef is that this effectively puts the at least some portion of the blame for some of those deaths in the hands of the meat processing plant.

If that isn't grounds to say that some people died due to meat being from a certain meat processing plant, then it is equally disingenuous to place blame on the farmer's practices (since they would not be any more of an inherent cause either).

In fact, it is impossible to assign blame pretty much anywhere since you can keep simply tracking back the genesis and evolution of the bacteria until, well, the big bang if you are looking for a truly inherent cause. I cannot find that methodology terribly practical.