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Bushies: We "Will Fight to Keep Meatpackers from Testing for Mad Cow Disease"
The argument for free market economics—though we here at Mother Jones may have, on occasion, doubted its virtuosity—goes like this: Competition encourages innovation, and customers decide which innovations are worth keeping and get what they want in the process. Here's a case in point: A small business called Creekstone Farms Premium Beef proposed testing all of its cows for mad cow disease. Customers have long been skittish about mad cow disease, and testing would likely cause Creekstone's business to spike.
Innovation? Check. Benefit to consumers? Check. Fostering small businesses? Check. But the USDA has intervened to block Creekstone from conducting the tests. The rationale? It's not fair to agribusinesses, which buy, sell, and butcher so many cows that they couldn't possibly conduct the expensive test on all of them. The USDA also alleged that "widespread testing could lead to a false positive that would harm the meat industry."
Protecting the strong from the weak and putting dollars above lives are standard practice at the USDA, which is pretty much a trade group for agribusiness. Mother Jones has highlighted other examples of the same mentality: Read about the USDA's watering down of organic standards here, and its past moves to block safety innovations here.
Now, for another reason to become a vegetarian. PETA has petitioned Congress to create a tax break for non-meat eaters. After all, the animal rights group argues, buying a hybrid vehicle entitles you to a tax break, although it reduces carbon emissions by only two-thirds as much per year as forgoing meat. It seems like a pretty righteous idea to me (full disclosure: I'm a long-time vegetarian, though I might have had a tiny taste of prosciutto last night)—the only problem is, how could the government determine who does and does not eat meat? Testing our poop is obviously out of the question: See above.
No comment.my god
PETA is right. Vegetarians are better people than meat eating cannibals. They also live longer and their poo and sweat doesn't smell like the potted meat eaters.
Case in point: how can true vegetarians get the discount--and get it they should--when self-proclaimed "long-time vegetarians" actually eat meat?
You'll probably say something diminutive about quantity and frequency of meat consumption, but the point is that too many people call themselves vegetarians when they patently are not.
Do you eat meat? Ever? If you the answer is yes, you're not a vegetarian.
Wrap your head around what it really means to be a vegetarian: if you're not now, you never were.
The morality of vegetarians: they kill living things and then eat them, sometimes raw.
GetReal, Who are you to judge who is a vegetarian or a Christian, or a Jew ...etc.? A Jew will sometimes have a little bacon or ham, that does not mean he is not a Jew because he breaks the Kosher law every now and then. A vegetarian is one who usually does not eat meat everyday like the average American. Nobody is perfect, only degrees of perfection.
Even if one were to declaim who is, or is not, a Martian/vegan/sea cumcumber the writer surely misses the point. If you are a vegetarian/Martian etc it is presumably for reasons that seem adequate to you; to then abjure or ignore those reasons indicates more about your reasoning(sic!)process than sniping from the peanut (or rumpsteak) gallery.
So, if you are a rational adult (a) say what you believe (b) do what you say and failing (a) or (b) stop blathering.
I am a vegetarian. Except for fish... and the occational chicken or steak. And I really love bacon and eat it a couple of times a week. But other than that, I think I deserve a tax break because I really really want one.
I'm a vegetarian. I eat meat six out of seven days.
I'm also a married catholic, but I sleep with other people all the time behind my wife's back (her name's Suzy Sunshine, I'm Bryan Sunshine...), use contraception and have gay friends who are also catholic.
I'm vegi-curious. I haven't eaten red-meat for 3 years, but I eat chicken about once a week.
I guess I'm not strict enough for a vegetarian tax-break, but something I am strict about is cutting out all High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS). If you think your family members think you're weird when you order vegetarian meals at restaurants, try telling them you don't eat bread, use any condiments, or dressing at restaurants anymore... because those have HFCS in them. Actually it's almost unavoidable at restaurants because you don't know what sauce they cook with. I guess plain noodles or salads with steamed vegetables is all that's safe for me at restaurants.
"I'm a long-time vegetarian, though I might have had a tiny taste of prosciutto last night"
Then you might not be a vegetarian.
This isn't rocket science. Vegetarian, n., a person who does not eat meat.
I'd register as a vege if it meant I get a tax break (haha, proove I'm not, suckers), but it is a well known fact that food that has had direct sunshine on it tastes better. It tastes even better when the organism has enjoyed the feeling of sunshine on it's body.
Case in point: Spring lamb versus fish eggs. Any plant from the land versus underwater shit. Bacon versus something with a shell from the beach.
And Suzy, meat eaters don't smell, it's the vegans that do: Because of their aversion to some natural materials, invariably they have to wear plastic clothing rather than leather, wool etc.. Just think how bad your feet would smell if you wore wellies all the time..... (or may be you don't need to).
um, am i the only libertarian vegetarian (well, not totally, i am okay with taxes and i eat fish) here who cares less about who is or is not a "meat eating cannibal" than about the yet-again pro-big-business, anti-free-market move by the government?
Suzy Sunshine wrote:
"Vegetarians are better people than meat eating cannibals."
Suzy Sunshine wrote:
"GetReal, Who are you to judge who is a vegetarian or a Christian, or a Jew ...etc.?"
Ummm..., Suzy..., does this mean that we are to leave all the judging of other people to you?
Suzy Sunshine is a troll.
(n.) (1) One who deliberately posts derogatory or inflammatory comments to a community forum, chat room, newsgroup and/or a blog in order to bait other users into responding.
Suzy Sunshine wrote:
"GetReal, Who are you to judge who is a vegetarian or a Christian, or a Jew ...etc.?"
The flaw in your argument is that a Christian or a Jew doesn't define themselves by what they eat. By definition if you declare yourself a vegetarian then you are defining yourself by the fact that you do not eat meat, fish etc. If you then willingly meat, fish, etc you are, by definition, not a vegetarian.
No one is asking you to be perfect, I would, however, ask you to consider your argument a little more before you tell people to "GetReal".
So what is so moral about a vegetarian diet anyway? Just because a plant doesn't have a central nervous system, you think that gives you the right to uproot it from the ground, boil it in water (or steam it to death or cook it in hot vegetable oil)? How medieval! What about the "slaughter houses" that are our kitchens and restaurants, where these living organisms are hacked to bits with knives, food processors and countless other manner of terrifying implements of dismemberment? And is it right to domesticate plant matter and force it to grow in the manner we see fit, say on a farm or held captive in a tiny flower pot which robs it of its freedom? Do we have the right to impose that on living organisms, simply because we humans, in our blindness and arrogant conceit, consider ourselves superior to plant life and therefore feel entitled to exploit it in any manner that is pleasing to us?
MRW: You've put your finger on it there.
The only moral choice is starvation.
MRW is right, if you don't apply a hierachal division--which everyone does, it's just some pretend not to--you are forced into his conclusion. It might seem like sophistry but it is the end result of the exact same line of thinking. To quote Mr. Northhead, "Life is robbery." That doesn't mean that we can't reduce the amount we rob from from other organisms and minerals, but we do need something more refined than most of the arguments bandied about.
That aside, should everyone split hairs over who is and is not a vegetarian to see who can earn some Crap-and-Trade Carbon Credits (which since everyone here's hero, Al Gore, supports, I imagine those of you who aren't outright communists do as well) for this, or does anyone care that this latest regulatory action is bullshit?
Forget those Vegetarians who have a false sense of moral superiority because they do not eat "flesh". I think that the point is that the methane given off by animal production contributes to green house gases as much as the internal combustion engine. Red meat, beef, is the biggest contributor. The other meats are more efficient from a green house gas prospective, so people can consider reducing beef consumption and increasing their consumption of the other meats. Also, forget the carbon credits and tax incentives. Like everything else in life, just do the right thing.
George, when this issue comes up, I'm always left wondering if modern beef production really results in more methane than the days when bison herds on what would come to be the American plains took days and days to move past a given spot.
When the wild herds in Africa were equally enormous. When wild horse herds still roamed Europe and Asia unmolested, and when the human population was one-third-or-less of what it is now, so the pressure on these herds and their grazing ranges was negligable?
There was never 100 million head of Bison in America. There is on our feedlots. They are not fed grass, but gas producing corn. There is no comparison to how nature was and our factory farming today. You do bring up a good point about the human population and their production of methane, but for obvious reasons, I am not going down that path now.
So how do we know how many head of Bison there were in North America in, say..., 1066?
How many wildebeests in Africa in that year? How many zebra? Waterbuffalo in Asia? And how do you Know how many there Never Were?
As to methane production from grass eaters; as a country boy and owner of a few horses, I can tell you from first hand experience, grass (hay) produces far more than you can imagine.