P.E.T.A. can't be all crazy right ?

[Rival Max]

Recently I've been thinking a lot of about animal rights. I donate money when I can to shelters that are helping to keep animals off the streets and feed but really is it enough. Honestly what more could you do? The biggest animal group in the country is P.E.T.A. and the group seems kind of insane. But the more I think about it the more I think that P.E.T.A. is the product of a crazy world. P.E.T.A. looks at animals like they should be looked at, as an equal to us on the planet. To some extent people would agree with that. What does that really mean though? Would you protect an animal if it was getting harmed ? If so, why that animal ? what makes it different than what you're eating? If they see animals as say people then are there actions so insane. Starting fires, blowing up labs? I mean whats the loss of one person especially if that person is the one killing and testing the animals for a living ? This whole thing falls into the gray area.

First off, im not a vegan like my roommate. I also have unfortunately watched the videos of what is done to my food and it was heartbreaking. The problem here is animals are food and that is convenience which will never change. Unless all the animals are wiped out. So how can animals truly have rights ? how can you help out in a way that makes its seem like you are doing real good?

[Tenacity]

The concept of vegetarianism and animal rights is one that has buzzed around and confused my mind for a couple of years now, and while I have been unable to come to a definitive answer about whether or not an animal's life is equal to a human's or whether or not we should eat meat, or even if it's healthy to not eat meat, I've decided that when I move out from my parent's house and have control over what food is brought into the house, I'll be eating only white meat every other day or so. By doing this I'll reduce the lives I take (until I can figure out whether lives should be taken at all) and be as healthy as I can see is possible.

It's also a fact that Vitamin B12, a very essential vitamin for humanity, is only found in animal sources and must be added artificially to other food sources if animal sources are not used. If not for these technological advances, humans would either have to eat animals or become sick. So nature clearly intended for humanity to eat animals - whether that's an appropriate argument for its morality is unclear. Were our human ancestors years before this technology immoral for eating animals? If no, why would that change in the present day? After all, life feeds on other life to work. Everything does it, it's one big cycle. When it comes to life, none are innocent for using other life in some way. Is only concious life valuable? There are just too many big questions to come to a conclusion about eating meat.

PETA's principles are not crazy. Their actions and targets, on the other hand, are questionable.

[Rival Max]

I guess my view on PETA has changed slightly because the core of what they want is equality. The problem though is that equality comes at a logical cost. People need to eat. No matter what you do, you cant just stop people from eating.

People can live without meat, with the right supplements. Its not easy to transition into that life but its possible. Its also not a life for everyone. It most ways I feel its more humane to hunt something then it is to buy pre cut meat from a store. Is the best option for us to just try to increase the quality of life for our food ? Better food more room to move around but is that enough ?

[Tenacity]

People can live without meat, with the right supplements. Its not easy to transition into that life but its possible.

That's what most vegetarians I know use an argument. It seems to be pretty infallible, too.


Better food more room to move around but is that enough?

The truth is, the meat industry (and dairy industry by extension) are not concerned with the lives of their animals, but rather the amount of $$$ they can churn out. At the end of the day, these animal's lives are still being cut short in some way, and so it'd still be deemed unethical by some. The only way I can see meat eating to be ethical if it was a) artificially produced in a laboratory or b) the animal died of natural causes, but both have problems. The former is expensive and technologically difficult, and the latter poses health risks and poorer quality meat. There may never be a clear cut answer that will satisfy everyone.

[PerseusRad]

PETA is crazy. Seriously, look at Pokemon Black and Blue.

Did you know, most of the animals PETA "rescues" are killed? They seem like they really love animals. I can see maybe putting some down if there is overcrowding, but PETA kills way more than they have to, instead of making sure they get a good home.

[Saraibre Ryu]

PETA spends more time making parodies like Black and Blue, rather than funding something like a, oh I don't know, nature preserve? Another shelter? An adoption program?

But NAAAAAAAW, that would be the intelligent thing to do.

[3m0d0ll]

The way PETA goes about enforcing it's goals is not only illegal in most cases, but unethical in it's own right. To me, it's just like the pro-life *******s who spray fake blood in people that go into abortion clinics (as if the decision wasn't hard enough on the family as it is).

In regards to eating meat in general, I have no problem with it. Some turn to vegetarianism/veganism for health reasons, and that's fine, but look in a mirror and open your mouth. We have canines for a reason; we have evolved to rip though flesh and bite through skin. To NOT eat meat is depriving your body from something it's designed to need, even if the need is just the sensation of chomping into a steak.

I've watched so many videos of slaughter houses and animals being killed in the meat industry and it truly is disgusting. If I could have my way, I'd want animals to eat their natural diet at a natural pace and grow to a natural size. If that means that chicken becomes smaller and beef becomes more expensive, then so be it. We should definitely treat the animals better because that's the most humane way to go about killing them and it will affect our health accordingly. We are truly what we eat.

About animals testing and what not, I feel the same way. The animal should be treated with as much common decency as possible, but if a handful of lab mice have to go blind because the new shampoo is faulty and their loss prevents me from loosing my eye-sight then that's just the way it goes. Animals simply aren't equal to humans, no matter how you look at it. The most important thing to humans is human life, that's just the way it goes. We've pushed animals to extinction for their horns and furs. It's a sad fact of life that we have to live with, but there isn't a way around it. :/

[VeloJello]

I actually read PETA's Wikipedia page for fun the other day - because I know they're attention-hounds and my cynical side finds their moronic stunts amusing. While I'm sure most of us know about Black and Blue, did you know that they've made jabs at Cooking Mama, too? It's not because Cooking Mama has anything that resembles content that would be bad for kids - it's because it includes recepies that use meat. This, coupled with their endeavor to rename fish "sea kittens" and the fact that their president/whatever discourages the use of guide animals pretty much cemented my view of them as misguided at best and cruel at worst. I believe that a lot of people who support PETA have good ideals at heart, but I don't think that their aims are reasonable and I think that a lot of the people who run it are just looking for attention.

Like I said, I do like their sentiments - animals are certainly poorly treated by some people, but at the same time I value the needs of humans far above the needs of animals. For a lot of people, vegetarianism/veganism is simply unsustainable for cost or health reasons. People can live without meat, sure, but not without a ridiculous amount of cost/hassle. Meat is a vital food source for a lot of people; removing it could be devastating, especially to those with health issues like anemia.

(also, Jenn, the generalization about pro-life people reads as just a tad insensitive)

[Rival Max]

Maybe my questions should have been are the extreme acts of animals rights groups wrong and what is an animal life actually worth.

Peta can be a little crazy but not all of there actions are insane. Unfortunately PerseusRad comment was correct. They put down a good number of animals themselves. Domesticated animals like our cats and dogs are really just pets. The minute they try to go wild sadly the are put down. The crap thing about the situation is that a good deal of those cats and dogs in shelters are because people just got ride of them..

Also being a vegan is not as ridiculous as you think...you could grow some of your own food cutting back on the costs. Other things like salads could be made at a very low cost. However without the knowledge and time to do the growing, fast food or cheaps soups are much easier and more convenient.

[Death's Spook]

Um. Yeah. I didn't have much of an opinion before, but when I saw this and then looked at the PETA website, I was…concerned.

From what I've seen of their website, PETA uses a high amount of emotional appeals. This in and of itself is not very worrisome: after all, this is what many moral arguments do. However, for an argument to be substantial, there needs to be logic behind it.

I don't see much in the way of logic with PETA's appeals.

For one, the scant number of statistics PETA uses are not substantiated. They at no point seem to cite any credible source for their facts. In addition, PETA uses very strong diction, talking about how fur is "ripped from rabbits' skin" and how pillows are "products of misery." This strong diction appears to be designed to invoke emotional appeals so that people are off balance and forget to be skeptical of the information they are processing until they can verify.

But most worrisome about PETA?

PETA clearly crosses the line between emotional appeal and outright scare tactics. In their recent article "Give Turkeys a Reason to say Thanks," PETA published a video involving putting a boy through a simplified version of what turkeys go through before being slaughtered. The imagery in the video is not supported through any factual evidence, and the use of a child to demonstrate their point appears to be designed to invoke a sense of terror, which discourages logical thinking. The piece after the video confirms this by pointing out that "it's hard to watch this video without thinking, 'What if someone did this to me?'" This question exposes the fact that PETA is deliberately trying to manipulate the issues by framing it as an issue of a child or the viewer being the target of this treatment, instead of focusing on the animals. Most worrisome is that the end of the video has a turkey cutting down a support beam in the factory and causing destruction, making it seem that PETA advocates the use of violence in the name of their cause. This is especially disturbing in light of rumors of their links to domestic terrorist groups and the fact that the FBI has files documenting various threats they've made. (http://vault.fbi.gov/People%20for%20the%20Ethical%20Treatment%20of%20An imals%20%28PETA%29/People%20for%20the%20Ethical%20Treatment%20of%20An imals%20%28PETA%29%20Part%201%20of%201/view)

Now, I do not believe that animals should be cruelly treated. However, I am a logical person at heart. I believe that we should be humane to animals, but that doesn't mean completely cutting them out of my diet. I eat meat. I enjoy meat. Meat is easily the best source of complete protein; although plants have some protein, one has to be extremely careful when using plants to supply proteins, as they do not contain every essential amino acid and not getting necessary amino acids can cause developmental and growth issues in children, along with the breaking down of muscle tissue in adults. Although some may argue that it's worth it to balance these plant sources carefully to avoid eating meat, the fact of the matter is, there is a very large amount of food deserts in America alone, as shown by this map:

http://grist.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/food-deserts1.jpg?w=470&h=254

(The green marks food deserts)

This marks the areas in the /US/, a relatively wealthy country, where it is difficult to find food. When one considers the difficulty of attaining food already in addition to the hardships involving making sure that one consumes the proteins their body needs, becoming vegan becomes clearly impractical. Therefore, I would instead suggest supporting the causes of people such as Dr. Temple Grandin, who has tirelessly campaigned to ensure that animals are treated humanely when they're going to the slaughter. Instead of cutting meat out of our diets and advocating the use of terrorism in the name of animal rights, taking a less extreme view point than PETA seems to be far more practical.

Sources:

http://vault.fbi.gov/People%20for%20the%20Ethical%20Treatment%20of%20An imals%20%28PETA%29/People%20for%20the%20Ethical%20Treatment%20of%20An imals%20%28PETA%29%20Part%201%20of%201/view

http://vegetarian.lovetoknow.com/Protein_Deficiency_Symptoms

http://grist.org/list/this-sobering-map-shows-you-all-of-americas-food-deserts/

[FedoraChar]

I have several opinions on this. Some coming from my years as a biology student. Some from personal religious beliefs (yeah, I brought up the "r" word, but that's not the point of this thread so I'm not arguing it or anything, just telling you where my perspective comes from).

1.) As one of my biology professors always says, we have to be careful not to put human-emotions on inhuman things. Although some people would like to think otherwise, animals do not think and feel like we do. That is not to say that we shouldn't feel guilty about abusing animals. I believe that as humans we have a stewardship over the earth, and so we are responsible for taking care of it and respecting the life found in it. At the same time I do not support the extreme measures that some people take to accomplish that. There's nothing wrong with using the resources of this planet. They are there for us to use. We just need to be wise about using it.

2.) Farm animals. They seriously have it made. You can go on and on about how unfair it is to raise them up for butcher, keeping them crammed in cages, but nature would treat them much worse. On a farm, they don't have to worry about finding food/water or avoiding predators. They don't even have to worry about disease--the people who raise them are very cautious with sanitation and vaccination, seeing how they'll be food eventually. And in some farms, they don't have to worry about getting too cold or hot. Reproduction is a concern for many wild animals, but we handle all of the genetics with that. The best genes are always being passed on, and new generations are always growing up.


So do I feel bad about eating chicken? Nope. That bird had a darn good life.

So PETA? They're right only in that we need to respect life. The rest is all craziness

[Homura]

We have to understand PETA's position in this sense as well. While I don't condone the use of their tactics, much of it stems from them needing to use such tactics to get public attention in the first place. If you aren't being a domestic terrorist of sorts, trap beautiful women in cages to make statements, etc. Then you aren't being outlandish enough to even get a mention on the news. They essentially need to become the lady gaga of organizations to stay in the spotlight. There's a method to their madness, and unfortunately it's come to a method like this.

The method of appealing to emotion is just propaganda/marketing tactics. Nothing more. It's one of the most commonly used tactics in existence because it is effective and doesn't require logic, not that logic can be used to convince the large majority of the population anyway. Look at it this way, this is used by almost every charity organization on the planet to convince people to donate to their cause. For example, unicef always has short clips of poor kids in Africa frowning and/or diseased, and then usually followed by similar kids smiling and "happy" with the mention of donation. Why? Because it's effective. It's carefully sculpted to do so.