Here is a picture for meat eaters who are too cowardly to kill their own food, and criticize hunters.
Now, here is a picture for decent people.
Here is a picture for meat eaters who are too cowardly to kill their own food, and criticize hunters.
Now, here is a picture for decent people.
If there are too many deer in the country then hunting them is ok. Is there a surfeit of bears? How many people eat bear? How many COULD eat bear?
Implying I’m an indecent coward is a bit much. I’m no coward. The next time a chicken demands my wallet I’m gonna beat the shit out of it.
This is an excellent site for climate stuff, but I can be rude too if you like, until you block me.
Hunting is a fundamental instinct. Like the cops who hunt down 13 year olds carrying plastic toys in California.
I agree, but there are too many people for everyone to rely on it. Come and live in Shropshire and see how long you can survive on blackbirds. Palin didn’t need to kill the bear. She just enjoys killing them. That’s different from hunting for food.
How much courage does it take to shoot something with a rifle? A real non-coward would put the gun down and fight the bear with fists – good luck with that one, Sarah.
Most cave art going back thousands of years shows people hunting animals with weapons. Only a complete moron would hunt a wild animal with their bare hands.
You are completely missing the point. People who eat industrial farmed meat are committing an offense against nature and common decency. Hunters are far more ethical.
That cave art dates from when there were about half a million people in the world.
As for me being a coward for not hunting my dinner: You consume things that you do not personally derive from the natural world. I assume your computer isn’t made of grass.
Anyone who eats industrial farmed meat has no business criticizing other people.
Farming’s unethical now, is it? Does that apply to farmed plants as well? If not, why not?
Oh dear, the REPLY button seems to have disappeared!
If you continue raising straw man arguments, you will be spammed.
What’s spamming? Is that something people do when they are losing an argument?
You are done here.
Bye Ed nice knowing ya.
A few years ago, the government studies supported removing the grizzly from the endangered list. Environmental extremists and a sympathetic judge blocked that move, in order to prevent hunting. Since then, Wyoming grizzlies have become a serious nuisance. In one year, there were so many they killed and ate the entire year’s population of newborn moose. They kill people in Yellowstone Park and in neighborhoods. They make hiking in the Tetons a risky adventure. There are other reasons for hunting in addition to food.
Because of population management, there are vastly more whitetail deer today than last century. They too are a nuisance in many suburbs. And yes, people who kill bear do eat them. Palin’s bear did not go to waste. Hunters/fishermen who want trophies and not meat give the meat to locals. Hunted animals do not go to waste.
Rick, Here is a great talk , by Greg Walcher, Former Cabinet Secretary, Colorado Department of Natural Resources & Former president, natural resources secretaries’ national organization. In this talk Greg Walcher speaks about states fighting the federal government to delist formorly endangered species. It is a great talk with humor splashed here and there.
Smoking Them Out: The Theft of the Environment and How to Take It Back
http://youtu.be/T7tvUx-ahI0?t=4m27s
Lots of typos but in my defense the crazy glue has not dried on my reading glasses yet…
We have so many bears in Colorado due to the statue passed by the voters and instigated by the radical Humane Society of the United States, that Colorado Parks and Wildlife kill more nuisance bears than are harvested by hunters. And why would anyone not eat a bear? In the fall they gorge on berries and acorns, so whats not to like.
For what it is worth, I have been a vegetarian for the last four plus decades. I also let hunters hunt on my property. Why? Because the hunters in my area hunt for food, not for fun. If I ever get to the point that I cannot survive as a vegetarian, I will eat meat — and be grateful for the animal whose life I take so that I can live. What I won’t do is support the practice of raising animals in torture chambers. Yes, they are not so sentient as humans, but their lives do count for something and they should not be raised without respect or killed without some measure of reverence.
Just my opinion…
Similar story with me. I eat very little meat myself, and when I do purchase meat it is always free range. Industrial animal farming is a massive blight on the integrity of our culture.
Being a hunter and farmer, it’s an interesting topic to me, but I’m having a hard time making out the picture. It looks like chickens in pre-slaughter cages. Where did you get the pic and what were the comments or context when it was originally taken?
I was in the business briefly. The picture is a cropped picture of a transport truck. Even “factory” chickens are not raised that densely. And chicken cages are not stacked that way one on top of another. The droppings would foul the lower cages and cause disease. Layers are usually caged to make collecting the eggs easier, but some broilers are raised without cages, but still in houses to make catching them easier. The limiting factor in density and arrangement is preventing disease, which otherwise would wipe out the tiny profit growers get on each bird. It is only a few cents.
Many photos decrying bird houses use transport pictures to exaggerate the problem, the same way anti-coal people use winter pictures of smokestacks spewing steam to exaggerate the problem of pollution. They are deliberately misleading but with a grain of truth.
I live in the area where industrial animal farming was invented, and it is an abomination reminiscent of Nazi concentration camps.
Free range venison. Yum.
I used to spend deer season with several guys from American Sportsman. Bow hunters. This requires much more skill than rifle hunting. Good times.
I was a meatcutter then, and we would close shop at night and cut deer. We had to sterilize everything after. Everyone will think I’m crazy, but the average fully dressed and aged white tail (No head, skin, no legs below the shanks) doesn’t amount to much. Roughly 50-55 lbs. After carrying beef around every day, you can carry an aged deer carcass in one hand, and lift it over your head by the skirt with one hand. Hunters wouldn’t believe it because a field dressed carcass that is still full of water and has the hocks and head weighs a lot more.
Not much to them. Tasty tho.
Industrial SCALE farming is not the same as Inhumane farming. Which was the reason I asked about the chicken cage picture. As Rick mentioned above, they are pre slaughter cages on a truck. But they look like ones used many years ago, or are used today in the third world. Most of the type sold today in the U.S. are plastic. I know because I own many of them, and use them to bring chickens to the local processer when we desire to raise a batch of broilers for personal/family eating. Which is about twice a year.
And regarding cattle feed lots-most people (left of center) don’t realize that’s not the way the cattle have spent their existence. Most all are raised on pasture then spend only the last 9-12 weeks on feed(various mixes) to fatten them up.
And the conditions for the feed lots have changed since the Upton Sinclair days. Running feedlots in filthy conditions with unhealthy cattle isn’t profitable.
I live right in the middle of this crap and see it every week. It is the equivalent of Nazi concentration camps.
I am in the large scale grain and animal farming business. I live on a farm. To anthropomorphize animals raised for human consumption and relate that reality to nazi concentration camps goes beyond even the PETA cult followers, and is simply silly.
As I’d mentioned, Industrial SCALE animal farming does not have to equate to inhumane farming. It doesn’t mean there hasn’t been or aren’t bad actors. There are in every field of human endeavor, which is of course why your blog exists, to expose those actors in the sciences especially.
Without large scale farming of all types, you would not have been able to feed the Western world in sufficient quantities to allow for the growth that’s occurred over the last 100 years, nor of course would the second and third world been able to take advantage of our surplus.
It should and can be done humanely and responsibly, and in the first world these days it mostly is.
I see it every week. It is beyond filthy and disgusting. Perhaps not as bad where you are. And yes, it is very similar to Nazi concentration camps.
People would be healthier eating 1/4th as much meat as they do, and all of it free range – the way God intended animals to live.
This is the last post I’ll make on this topic, as I know there are many topics above this now.
Steve, I know where you live, I’ve been to feed lots and farms in your area. I have friends that live in your area. Many people have such a misunderstanding of large scale animal farming because of a few bad actors in the past, but also (much more so imo) because of the aesthetics, or visuals of large scale animal farming, which they associate with BAD THINGS, bc of Peta type activists and zealots misrepresenting reality. They have no clue how the entire process works, nor the whys and hows of it, or the technology or science involved. Or the humane concepts of animal husbandry. I like nothing more that to shoot an elk, quail, goose or other game animal, clean it, cook and enjoy it with family and friends. Same concept with fish. But that has nothing to do with this.
Without large scale farming, as its existed to date, you would not have the economic and technological growth (ag tech included) that has allowed the western world to be where it is today. To deny that is to deny reality and history. James Hansen, Bill Mckibben, all the other idiots, etc., look at the human race as a cancer on the earth. That the earth and animals are pristine; we are not. Comes from the Club of Rome, Paul Ehrlich types, personal failings of humans (like Obama with no father), take your pick. But large scale animal farming has provided the world with economic sources of protein and nourishment, where none others existed.
To equate meat raising and eating with nazi concentration camps is so outlandish, but is also grossly hypocritical considering you mention God in the same message. To equate animal raising and consumption with human slaughter means you are coming from a different human foundation/worldview/point of view.
And like Hansen, Mckibben, etc., if you see a boogieman around every corner and believe there’s a monster under every bed you sleep in, there is simply no reasoning with that person, until they change the underlying foundation of how they see the world, and humans existence within it.
Raising animals for human consumption is not akin to nazi concentration camps, and to assert such is simply beyond the pail and shows a foundational misinterpretation of the world we live in, in my opinion.
Otherwise, fantastic blog, and I look forward to reading more of your posts.
John