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Is it natural to kill animals for food?

Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
It is interesting that Gordon Ramsay, who despises vegetarians refused to shoot a deer when he was given the opportunity. And it raises a question: if even he cannot bring himself to do that, then is it natural to kill animals for food? Could you bring yourself to do something like that? And if not, do you still think it's ok to eat meat?
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Comments

  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Yes it's natural.

    I've killed a lot of fish in my life and at very young age as well. I don't feel bad about it. I however prefer that other people kill animals for me. :p

    Like most things, the ability to kill an animal is about training yourself, phsyically and mentally. If we were closer to nature and had to depend on hunting, it'd just be one of those things we did. Hunger is also a huge driving force for every living animal.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    It is natural. I wouldn't do it personally because I hate the sight of blood, but that doesn't mean that if it came down to it and I was starving and I HAD to kill something to eat that I wouldn't do it. Although I'm intrigued as to why he didn't since he does raise and kill his own sheep/pigs on his TV show.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Lihualee wrote: »
    I'm going to bump the tread up.

    after 3 minutes? :confused:

    But I don't think it's unnatural, its part of our culture and way of life. Whether it's natural in terms of our biology I think we evolved to forage and hunt so in that sense again it's pretty natural. I think our culture is changing slowly though so it might be unnatural for people because of the way they are brought up and what they believe now.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I would expect that from Gordon Ramsay; for a man who despises the idea of the 'celebrity chef' he's one of the biggest ones out there.

    I agree with Jaloux's comment that it's something you have to prepare for if you haven't been raised in that environment.
  • SkiveSkive Posts: 15,282 Skive's The Limit
    Of course it's natural. We've been doing throughout human history.

    A lot of veggies say that we've evolved to a point where we don't have to eat meat, which is blatently false. It's only in recent times that we've had the technology to be able to stick healthily to a veggie diet. Most people in the world still can't rely on just veg. It's not evolution is just that some are lucky enough to be able to choose.

    I used to go shotting every weekend as a kid and teenager. Still fish a fair bit, have shot and killed rabbit, dear, fox, squirrels and rats for either food or pest control and enjoyed it almost everytime. No qualms here.
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  • SkiveSkive Posts: 15,282 Skive's The Limit
    ShyBoy wrote: »
    I think our culture is changing slowly though so it might be unnatural for people because of the way they are brought up and what they believe now.

    Culture and nature are different things though.
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  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Skive wrote: »
    A lot of veggies say that we've evolved to a point where we don't have to eat meat, which is blatently false. It's only in recent times that we've had the technology to be able to stick healthily to a veggie diet. Most people in the world still can't rely on just veg. It's not evolution is just that some are lucky enough to be able to choose.

    We haven't evolved to the point that we don't need meat, but we've developed the technology to a degree that we don't really need meat. But we've used that technology to make more meat instead.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    It's completely natural to kill animals and eat meat. We're just brought up in a society that hides the whole meat trade away and teaches us to love animals, which is why people are sensitive about seeing them being killed. I don't see any problem with eating meat.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I don't know why Ramsey refused to kill that deer but he's well known for killing his own food. He even makes his young children kill them, or at least witness the killing of the animals. In that respect he's, ironically, in agreement with vegetarians and vegans: namely that if people are unable to kill the animals they eat animals because it feels wrong to them or they feel sorry for the animal, they shouldn't be eating meat in the first place.

    As for the argument at hand, no I don't think it is wrong or immoral. We are an animal species just like any other. There is a very good argument for ensuring the animals we farm and eat are treated throughout their lives in a humane way and kept in the best condition and environment possible.

    Oh, and those who kill animals simply for fun are cunts. IMVHO of course.
  • SkiveSkive Posts: 15,282 Skive's The Limit
    Aladdin wrote: »
    Oh, and those who kill animals simply for fun are cunts. IMVHO of course.

    There a very simple difference from takng pleasure in hunting and taking pleasure in causes suffering for the sake of it.

    Hunting is fun, it can be useful (for food or pest reasons) and hunted animals generally have a far better quality of life than the average slab of meat on your supermarket shelf.
    Most of the people I know serious about hunting are very serious enviromentalists and care very much and about the animals they're hunting and understand them too.
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  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    There's nothing unnatural about meat itself - although, there is nothing natural about the obscene quantity of meat consumed by many people in rich countries. If meat reverted to being a luxury instead of a staple people would be far healthier. There is also a very strong environmental case for reducing meat consumption. From an ethical perspective I think it would also be preferable if meat was an occasional luxury; that being the case it would be easier to mandate that all meat comes from sources where animal welfare is taken seriously.

    Animal cruelty, in the form of battery farmed chickens and the other appalling conditions that livestock is kept in, is frequently justified on the basis that people can't afford better quality meat. That doesn't wash. The proportion of our income spent on food is at an all time low. It comes down to the fact that most Brits are basically cheapskates who don't value food and only care about price - hence the supermarket wars being fought on where is 'cheapest'. And Brits wonder why their European neighbours who spend a higher proportion of their income on food have better food and live longer... :rolleyes:
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    It's easy to put it like that dis but most people who buy cheaper food do it because they can't afford the more expensive stuff. I don't know a lot of people who have a lot of money left over at the end of the month when all the rent and bills are paid for to splash out with expensive food.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    ShyBoy wrote: »
    It's easy to put it like that dis but most people who buy cheaper food do it because they can't afford the more expensive stuff.

    Bollocks. Both me and my boyfriend are on quite a low income (I was bringing in about £8k a year last year) and I don't feel that I can justify animal suffering just so I can eat better. I regard eggs as a luxury because I only buy free range. I don't buy them often and when I do I use them sparingly because they're expensive. I don't eat meat (for many reasons, not because I think it's wrong to) but I do eat fish. Similarly I regard buying fresh fish as a luxury and often make the decision to buy something else cheaper and go without. People who turn a blind eye to animal suffering so they can buy more food for themselves, unless they are literally on the breadline, are just plain greedy. It's only been the past 20 years that eating meat whenever you like has been regarded as a right rather than a luxury, which I think is appalling.

    In regards to people who can't afford food - me and my boyfriend have a food budget of £30 a week for both of us including packed lunches 5 days a week. Last month we were under budget and spent an average of £27 a week. We have a healthy balanced diet, with the odd treat and everything we eat is nice (no gruel or anything lol). Yes we see things on the shelf that we'd like to buy but have to say no, omg we have some self control. I'm sick of hearing fucking excuses for animal cruelty. There is no excuse, only greed and gluttony.

    I don't have a problem with killing and eating animals for food, I have a problem with the appalling practices that go on so that people can stuff their faces with tesco value chicken whenever they like, at the cost of an animal's suffering. Its disgusting
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Isn't anything humans do natural simply by the virtue that we're part of nature and do it?
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Agree. Nature produced humans so anything they do is natural.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Kangoo so you believe for those on a low income (and if you are both earning £8k isn't bad just for you, I know families that live off that together) that there are only two absolutes - either you save the money to have fresh fish or whatever or you go without? It is not an excuse, it is the reality that people buy what they can afford. MSE is even giving out advice now to families and such to downgrade their shopping so instead of buying from M&S buy from Aldi.

    I don't need to excuse my behaviour because I can barely afford the cheap meat most of the time.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    minimi38 wrote: »
    Agree. Nature produced humans so anything they do is natural.
    So chopping people into pieces, shagging the corpse of your dead mother or keeping your daughter as a sex slave in a basement for 19 years are natural things?
    :eek2:
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Aladdin wrote: »
    So chopping people into pieces, shagging the corpse of your dead mother or keeping your daughter as a sex slave in a basement for 19 years are natural things?
    :eek2:

    It is in Austria :D
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    kangoo wrote: »
    Bollocks. Both me and my boyfriend are on quite a low income (I was bringing in about £8k a year last year) and I don't feel that I can justify animal suffering just so I can eat better. I regard eggs as a luxury because I only buy free range. I don't buy them often and when I do I use them sparingly because they're expensive. I don't eat meat (for many reasons, not because I think it's wrong to) but I do eat fish. Similarly I regard buying fresh fish as a luxury and often make the decision to buy something else cheaper and go without. People who turn a blind eye to animal suffering so they can buy more food for themselves, unless they are literally on the breadline, are just plain greedy. It's only been the past 20 years that eating meat whenever you like has been regarded as a right rather than a luxury, which I think is appalling.

    In regards to people who can't afford food - me and my boyfriend have a food budget of £30 a week for both of us including packed lunches 5 days a week. Last month we were under budget and spent an average of £27 a week. We have a healthy balanced diet, with the odd treat and everything we eat is nice (no gruel or anything lol). Yes we see things on the shelf that we'd like to buy but have to say no, omg we have some self control. I'm sick of hearing fucking excuses for animal cruelty. There is no excuse, only greed and gluttony.

    I don't have a problem with killing and eating animals for food, I have a problem with the appalling practices that go on so that people can stuff their faces with tesco value chicken whenever they like, at the cost of an animal's suffering. Its disgusting

    *applauds*
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    minimi38 wrote: »
    Agree. Nature produced humans so anything they do is natural.

    But that doesn't make it right!
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    ShyBoy wrote: »
    It is not an excuse, it is the reality that people buy what they can afford.

    Exactly. You buy what you can afford. Only 40 or 50 years ago you'd buy a chicken for Sunday dinner, eat the leftovers for the next 4 days including the offal that people now turn their nose up at, and make it last. People were much poorer then but they made do. Now we want more than we can afford - that's the problem. We live a culture where its seen as awful if we can't afford what we want when we want. And that comes at a price of animal cruelty and suffering. We have more than we've ever had before, even with the sudden increases in food, yet we still want more, we still want it cheaper.

    People have a terrible attitude to meat, they feel it's their right to buy meat as cheap as possible regardless of the cost. There's no respect for the animal's life and there seriously should be.

    All I can say to the people who buy value meat and eggs knowing full well what the animal has been through, you should be disgusted with yourself. You're either in serious denial about the horror of what happens to the animal before it reaches your plate, or you can't possibly have a heart. It's one of the two.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    cheap meat isnt automatically cruel. the problem really only lies with eggs and chickens. a lot of meat is cheap as its an undesirable cut or there is a large quanitity of it, e.g. pork mince, chuck steak etc.
    kangoo wrote: »
    Exactly. You buy what you can afford. Only 40 or 50 years ago you'd buy a chicken for Sunday dinner, eat the leftovers for the next 4 days including the offal that people now turn their nose up at, and make it last. People were much poorer then but they made do. Now we want more than we can afford - that's the problem. We live a culture where its seen as awful if we can't afford what we want when we want.


    Yeah its nice to live in a modern society isnt it?
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Pigs are just as badly treated as chickens remember.

    Kangoo, two brilliant posts there.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Aladdin wrote: »
    So chopping people into pieces, shagging the corpse of your dead mother or keeping your daughter as a sex slave in a basement for 19 years are natural things?
    :eek2:

    That the word "natural" is misused and is infact entirely useless for distinguishing between something that has occurred with or without human intervention doesnt make that statement false.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Aladdin wrote: »
    So chopping people into pieces, shagging the corpse of your dead mother or keeping your daughter as a sex slave in a basement for 19 years are natural things?
    :eek2:

    Unfortunately, yes.

    Mental illness is a natural thing.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Pigs are just as badly treated as chickens remember.

    The legal welfare standards of pigs are quite adequate. They are food not pets.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I don't mean that they are pets. Pigs are treated just as terribly as poultry are in the food industry. Just because something will eventually be eaten is no reason to treat it badly. Also, and I'm sure quite a few people will agree, that legal requirements could certainly be much better.
  • SkiveSkive Posts: 15,282 Skive's The Limit
    I thought the question was is it natural to kill animals for food? Some people have narrowed the discussion to dodgy farming practices though. I don't see this as an argument to abstain from meat completely, just an argument for being a responsible consumer.

    Simply eating meat isn't wrong, but we should almost certainly eat less and take an intrest in where our meat is coming from - I don't like the way most meat eaters are so well removed from what goes into the product they're buying. It's because of that these dodgy farming practice go on.
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  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Sorry for the tangent, I was just responding to minimi's ill informed comments.
    I agree with what you say though, it's not wrong to eat meat but it shouldn't be considered the way it is today.
  • SkiveSkive Posts: 15,282 Skive's The Limit
    Unfortunately, yes.

    :yes:
    Natural is life and death and everything inbetween.


    Still, I think your being a little pedantic - you know that 'natural' here is being used to determine what is or isn't ordinary human behaviour.
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