You don’t need to fuck with people working shitty jobs to make a point. People who do this lose me instantly. They barely get paid enough to do their actual jobs without you tacking on extra little challenges. I’m sure they had a great little laugh after the fact, but everyone who has ever worked a job like this has had someone pull them aside and gotten that sinking feeling right before thinking, “Oh. Heeeeere we gooo…”
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That’s basically what humans were until the advent of grocery stores.
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This is so under appreciated.
The vast majority of our forbears worked really hard not to go hungry. That’s why we can/do eat just about anything as a species.
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I was going to ask this anyway, so I might as well ask you, in all honesty: do you have any insight on why PETA persists in behaving like a false-flag front for the meat industry trying to increase meat consumption through reverse psychology?
It’s a basic bug in human nature that we seem to think it’s possible to change a stranger’s mind by yelling at them and calling them assholes, but PETA takes it to further extremes than most, and I say that as someone who is quite sympathetic to their basic mission. Are they delusional? Do they just care more about appearing ostentatiously righteous to their fellows than they do about actually achieving their goals?
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If you ever figure out an answer to that question, please clue the rest of us in too!
The one thing I can say – even though you didn’t ask me! – and I referenced this in another thread today as well, was that some people (usually young) use veg*nism as an excuse in the attempt to control some aspect of their life. It seems that PETA fanatics have a desperate need for attention on top of that.
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To your point about feeding omnivores a mostly vegetarian diet, I think it’s more or less true, but for economic factors.
It’s far cheaper to farm a pound of grain than it is to raise a pound of pork (mainly because that pound of pork costs you many pounds of grain). There are some instances in corporate farming of grinding up the offal and leftovers of animals, treating it, and mixing it in with grain feed, but I don’t know how widespread a practice that is.
With regards to the majority of meat being farmed instead of hunted, of course that is true. The FDA mandates it–if you want to eat wild game, you pretty much have to kill it yourself. Private parties can gift meat to each other, but any private or public sale of wild meat is very, very illegal*. I know; I have been trying to put my hands on a regular supply of venison. My one supplier imports farm raised from New Zealand despite my state actually having a deer population problem. Since I don’t know any local hunters** my only option is to pay something like $30/lb.
*Except for commercial fisheries.
EDIT: **Local hunters who can hit the broad side of a barn.
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I would be shocked if PETA was actually increasing meat consumption, whatever you think of their tactics (I’m often cringingly understanding of them, but would definitely understand why they wouldn’t work on someone who’s not interested in changing, as they turned me off before I turned vegetarian). When tactics are outrageous but facts aren’t necessarily wrong, which I don’t think they usually are (but I’m sure someone will tell me how much of a fuckwit I am for saying such a thing), then the people who immediately dismiss it out of hand or are turned off by it and aren’t willing to look critically at what they’re saying, well, they weren’t going to change anyways. And some of them will lash out in equal measure to how they feel their lifestyle is being attacked. So it becomes two vocal minorities yelling at each other, while the rest of us just make up our minds in silence.
It also helps that we love to see people fail. People love to point out when a veg* fucks up, and uses animal byproducts without realizing. It’s one of those things where, if you feel like you’re trying to make the world better, you better be infallible in every aspect of your life, because people who aren’t doing what you’re doing and you doing it is making them uncomfortable with their decisions are going to come at you for every little thing.
Case in point, I posted an article today on Facebook about the UN’s recommendation that people eat less meat and dairy, and immediately had a comment about my VW TDI polluting (like I knew…), and how we should also kill dogs because they create CO2 (I have a dog).
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If by ‘opportunistic’ you mean we created our own opportunities by hunting things.
Prehistoric colonization by humans usually is followed by extinction of large game animals for a reason.
This is a good descriptor of the partisan culture wars, not just vegans, vegetarians, etc.
So fun fact about the VW thing; the unfiltered pollutants are NOx, particulates and not CO2, which means that although VW is on the hook for a lot of pollution, it’s more smog and lung cancer than global warming. Strangely, NOx emissions actually produce Ozone, which despite the news not reporting on it, ozone depletion is still an issue.
Have you checked your local CL during hunting season? Legal or not, I know of folks who get their hunts processed and then offload some of it that way.
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Horror face
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Our stupid wolf monsters earn their keep. We much prefer them on the paw to on the table.
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I hear the most studly breeders go for hundreds of thousands a shot. 
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Flipping it over, folks who condemn eating cats or dogs or horses, but who will eat cattle, may actually be (almost) as dumb as this protester. While traveling, I’ve eaten critters from the same species as I’ve kept pets. Maybe that’s why our dog is so well behaved 
I’ve often thought public flatulence should be a capital crime if anything should (hint, I don’t actually think anything should). But seriously people, squeeze those butt cheeks…builds gluts and social acceptance!
The trouble is that Ozone is only desirable in the high atmosphere. It’s a pollutant at ground level, where it’s getting created.
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I don’t think you get “shit like this” posted regularly in response to an article about vegetarians/vegans riding mopeds, or vegetarians/vegans watching a lunar eclipse, or vegetarians/vegans playing pinochle, or vegetarians/vegans washing their underwear.
An article about vegetarians/vegans being obnoxious, intrusive dickwads? Yeah, that’ll pretty much do it every time.
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I don’t think people do this as much as you think they do. The only thing I ever tend to point out is when a veg* complains about the the morality of eating animals (not even bringing into it the cruelty involved in factory farming), while happily wearing leather products, or hell, even clothing produced by sweatshop labour or posting on Facebook using their cell phone made in China under horrific working conditions. If I ever heard of a vegetarian accidentally using animal byproducts without realizing (for example, buying something that they thought was faux-fur, that turned out to be real fur), I’d feel bad for them. But if it was simply a case of “I didn’t know leather came from a cow!” or “I didn’t know Uggs were made from sheep skin!” - I would have very little sympathy.
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Dairy cow … Born, milked, (typically under lousy conditions), slaughtered when no longer profitably milkable, carcass used for who knows what.
Beef cow … Born, fed for bulk (typically under lousy conditions), slaughtered when it’s time, carcass used to feed people.
The vegetarian doing it for animal rights reasons has taken a step in the right direction (myself included) but really shouldn’t stop there.
Other things to consider. Males born to egg layers are of no use … Not tasty etc… They literally are grinded up. I imagine males born to dairy cows don’t live long either.
These articles aren’t written because they’re not news, so thanks for the non-comment.
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I have also eaten that New Zealand venison, and it is frakking amazing!
@lamaranagram - this is where we get capons and veal from no?
