Animal cruelty: root's of societal ignorance

In summary, the author discusses the issue of animal confinement in various ways. They suggest that there is a lack of clear definition of what constitutes "unsafe" living conditions for farm animals, and that this is a source of concern. They suggest that the issue of animal cruelty is not as prevalent today as some people may believe, and that people should learn about the issue from both sides before forming an opinion. They also mention that commercial farms must adhere to a number of regulations in order to ensure the welfare of their animals, and that any violations of these regulations must be reported.

what is your stance? (can click more than one option)


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  • #1
GCT
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Anyone here an animal right's activist (not quite sure if this is the right term, the most general term being preferred)?

-Farm animals being enclosed/penned upin unsuitable living conditions (such as those associated with the big business meat industries)

-chemical experimentation on animals, e.g. cosmetic industries

-vivisection (you don't want to know)

I'm not so much against eating meat per say, even game hunting. But I've recently been convinced that the situations emphasized above deserves much societal concern. The aspect of chemical experimentation of that relating to drug testing is somewhat of a more difficult issue to consider though.

My argument relates to the animal cruelty. How prevalent are such practices today (of those that I emphasized)? I've recently seen a "meatrix" video (although I'm not quite sure on whether they're blowing things out of proportion), I'm pretty sure that chemical experimentation still occur and are prevalent (I'm not so much against this one as long as the animals are euthanized properly), how about vivisection (this borders on complete ignorance, people who perform such acts should be punished severely).
 
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  • #2
Personally, sometimes I think all animal rights activists are like PETA - i.e. radical and blind - but I see you are not, you think well. :smile:

GCT said:
-Farm animals being enclosed/penned upin unsuitable living conditions (such as those associated with the big business meat industries)
It depends on what you call unsuitable living conditions. Those of a cow or chicken are somewhat different from that of people.

My argument relates to the animal cruelty. How prevalent are such practices today (of those that I emphasized)? I've recently seen a "meatrix" video (although I'm not quite sure on whether they're blowing things out of proportion)...
I was about to say, that the "Meatrix" video sounds like another totally-blown-out-of-proportion piece of propaganda from PETA... until I found out it was.

I suggest learning the facts from a non-biased source, as well as hearing arguments from both sides, and deciding for yourself.
 
  • #3
How about an option that's more like

I don't feel I know enough about it to make an informed decision.

Because that's where I belong...I hate the idea of animals needless suffering but I cannot say there is never a time where it could be justified. I need to know more about to really have a solid position.

Now as far as commercial farms treating animals like crap... :mad: that pisses me off to no end. What kind of heartless loathsome person would want to keep a chicken locked up in tiny cage during the chickens short forsaken life? Just plain pisses me off... :grumpy:
 
  • #4
It depends on what you call unsuitable living conditions. Those of a cow or chicken are somewhat different from that of people.

yeah, not completely confiding in the meatrix video, but referring to such situations as mentioned-extremely confined cages, "living in their own ****, slowly dying" type of situation. Although I'm not absolutely sure if even such conditions exist today, which was my initial question.

Chicken coops (somewhat spacious allowing plenty of motion), as well as relatively decent conditions do not concern me so much (doesn't have to be paradise)
 
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  • #5
Since your biggest concern seems to be animal experimentation, I will point out that it is HEAVILY regulated. In the US, all institutions that receive NIH funding have to comply with the NIH Guide for the care and use of laboratory animals. That covers the mice and rats. If you use any other mammalian species, from other rodents right on up to primates, USDA regulates use of those. Then there is an independent organization that provides accreditation to institutions, AAALAC, and inspects the use of ALL species. This last accreditation is considered the gold standard, and you are going to have trouble getting animal studies funded if you aren't at an AAALAC accredited institution. Every institution that conducts animal research is, by law, required to have an institutional animal care and use committee that is composed of scientists, a veterinarian, and an "advocate" for the animals; at least one person on the committee must be from outside the institution. This committee reviews EVERY protocol that involves animals and ensures that all the methods are appropriate and properly treat the animals, that anesthetics and analgesics are suitable, that personnel are properly supervised and trained, etc. There are regular inspections of all facilities. There are also anonymous hotline numbers posted all over the place in animal facilities for people to report violations if they see them.

Violations that involve endangerment or mistreatment of animals are all required, by law, to be reported by the institution, and action must be taken to remediate the problem, be it by revoking an investigator's protocol and not permitting them to order animals to revoking their funding, and if an institution were to have repeated violations by multiple investigators, suggesting an institution-wide problem, funding agencies have the right to revoke ALL funding to ALL investigators at the institution (they actually can do that with a single violation if they wanted to, but usually the more practical solution is to just shut down the lab of the investigator who committed the violation).

Our animals have better housing conditions than our students do.
 
  • #6
that's nice to know, thanks for the info
 
  • #7
GCT said:
the "meatrix condition" should be legally banned

That's not really an 'option' outside of some place like, say, Iran. Do you mean something like, 'is * an inaccurate propaganda film'?
 
  • #8
I guess people will all ways eat meat, unless there is a world wide bse outbreak
and chicken flu at the same time.
there is no reason to be cruel to animals, if we eat meat the animal it came
from should have a natural as possible life.
 
  • #9
wolram said:
if we eat meat the animal it came
from should have a natural as possible life.

I totally agree...that is why I supplement my diet with fish and other various game I have taken from the field. I have a lot of respect animals and I try for as quick and clean a kill as possible.

When you buy meat from the store, you have no control over how the animal was treated or killed.
 
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  • #10
Do you mean something like, 'is * an inaccurate propaganda film'?
yeah that was one of my questions, I was actually shown the video during a human geography elective course that I took during my undergraduate years...was wondering how prevalent are such practices
 
  • #11
Townsend said:
I totally agree...that is why I supplement my diet with fish and other various game I have taken from the field. I have a lot of respect animals and I try for as quick and clean a kill as possible.

When you buy meat from the store, you have no control over how the animal was treated or killed.
So you think a humane hunter-gatherer society would be best?
 
  • #12
Mk said:
So you think a humane hunter-gatherer society would be best?

As far as being the easiest on nature, yes...

The American Indians lived in perfect harmony with nature. They used every part of the animal and wasted as little as possible. I am not saying I would prefer that society return to caveman days but at the very least supplementing your diet with food you have personally taken from the field is much better for you and for the environment.

Regards
 
  • #13
wolram said:
there is no reason to be cruel to animals, if we eat meat the animal it came from should have a natural as possible life.
You know how they neuter male piglets? They showed it on television once on a entertainment show to raise awareness, I had to change channels, the pigs don't get analstetics because that would cost the farmer too much (time/money). You could just leave their jewels on, but that makes the pigs aggressive and more difficult to handle, it also makes the meat more tough so they take them off.
 
  • #14
Townsend said:
As far as being the easiest on nature, yes...

The American Indians lived in perfect harmony with nature. They used every part of the animal and wasted as little as possible. I am not saying I would prefer that society return to caveman days but at the very least supplementing your diet with food you have personally taken from the field is much better for you and for the environment.

Tell me again why we should be hunting for our own food instead of buying is better for the environment.

Townsend, the Native Americans were expert observers of the natural world, and didn't like the "old-growth" forest in and around where Yellowstone National Park is today. The forests may look astonishing and impressive, but they're dead landscapes for game. They set fires, making sure the forests burned down periodically. They made sure there were only islands of old-growth forest in the midst of plains and meadows. The forests that the first Europeans saw were hardly "primeval." They were cultivated. The Native Americans changed them to their liking. Its not surprising there is more old-growth forest today then there was one hundred and fifty years ago. Today its all romantic mythology.

Early Native Americans hunted mammoth and other large animals to extinction, they burned forests and changed the environment to suit their purposes.
 
  • #15
Mk said:
They set fires, making sure the forests burned down periodically.
Early Native Americans hunted mammoth and other large animals to extinction...
This is the first I've heard of this. I would like to know more about it. Could you point me to a reference?
 
  • #16
Mk said:
Early Native Americans hunted mammoth and other large animals to extinction,
Please don't present your opinion as fact. There are many theories on the subject.
 
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  • #17
Echo 6 Sierra said:
This is the first I've heard of this. I would like to know more about it. Could you point me to a reference?
http://www.climateark.org/articles/2001/4th/maexmyst.htm
 
  • #18
Mk said:
Tell me again why we should be hunting for our own food instead of buying is better for the environment.

How much methane gas is put into the air by commercial farms? Who really controls the living conditions that animals have on farms? Sure there are regulations for some animals but nobody even seems to care about poultry and yet it is a staple of the American diet. How much habitat is used for growing crops that could be used support wildlife?

On the flip side, tell me what negative impact is there on the environment from hunters and fisherman who actually care about wildlife and the environment? Seeing as everyone I know that hunts and fishes takes great care to obey laws and buys expensive licenses that are used to maintain wildlife habitat it would seem to me that at least the law abiding hunters only do good for nature and wildlife.
 
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  • #19
Not to mentioning the processing and packaging of mass produced food is usually composed entirely of non degradable substances.
 
  • #20
This may be a long post.

Smurf said:
Please don't present your opinion as fact. There are many theories on the subject.
You got me there, yes it has not been proven, it is only one of the three major theories. Like Global Warming.

Townsend said:
How much methane gas is put into the air by commercial farms?
Decomposition of organic wastes from natural sources, mostly marshes adds up to 23%.

From mineral fuel extraction: 20%
From digestion by animals: 17%
From bacteria on rice fields: 12%

During the past 200 years, the concentration of this gas in the atmosphere doubled, passing from 0.8 to 1.7 ppm.

[PLAIN]http://www.niwa.cri.nz/pubs/wa/09-1/ice-graph.jpg [Broken]
At exhibit one, I show a rather interesting graph, taken from the New Zealand's National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research, showing the strong correlation between CO2 and CH4 atmospheric concentrations, and solar insolation, over the last 400,000 years derived from Antarctic ice cores from Lake Vostok. "The parallel changes in CO2 and CH4 are believed to have caused about half the amplitude of the temperature changes, with the other half probably due to changes in solar insolation."

Echo 6 Sierra said:
This is the first I've heard of this. I would like to know more about it. Could you point me to a reference?

Gladly. I didn't either, and found it rather interesting.
From: The Smithsonian Institution's National Zoological Park website (http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Publications/ZooGoer/2002/6/firetime.cfm [Broken])
The control of fire, anthropologists surmise, likely hastened human evolution and dispersal. In North America, indigenous tribes revered this life-force as “our Grandfather Fire.” Native Americans ignited flames to flush bears from dens; to thin out forests in order to better spot deer; to drive away mosquitoes and bees; to stimulate grassland growth; to communicate with friends; to encircle enemies. So crucial was fire that the Narragansett Indians assumed the English had come to America in search of firewood.

Thanks in part to Native Americans using fire to turn forests into grassland, bison were able to expand their range as far east as Massachusetts by the 17th century. Following the forced removal of Native Americans from much of the continent by European colonists and, later, by the U.S. government, prairie gave way again to pine forests in the South, to pinyon and juniper forests in the Southwest, and to sagebrush in the Great Basin. “The transformation of grasslands, prairies, and savannahs to forests is one of the most fundamental and widespread outcomes of European colonization,” writes Stephen Pyne in Fire in America.

Native Americans passed on many of their forest-burning techniques to white farmers.

From Science magazine (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/287/5453/573?rbfvrToken=d966391bdd955642f5e79addb1fa062d1fa34276):
As scores of projects to save North American forests get under way, new data on how those forests looked centuries ago are fueling a debate on what ecologists should aim for when restoring ailing ecosystems. In trying to reconstruct how ecosystems looked centuries ago, researchers hope to offer a handle on how much change is natural and how much is caused by human activity. Further dogging the debate is the issue of whether restoring a forest to its pre-European settlement state is even a legitimate goal, considering that Native Americans were shaping the land long before European settlers arrived.

From the Forestry Research Community in Corvallis (http://www.fsl.orst.edu/coops/ama/ncama/guidch2.htm)
How much did Native American burning contribute to past wildfires? Sauter and Johnson (1974) noted that large areas of brush and small trees were burned away each year by local tribes to clear the land for easier hunting and travel. This cleared land also provided new browse each spring to attract deer and elk.

Townsend said:
How much habitat is used for growing crops that could be used support
wildlife?

On the flip side, as you say, tell me how much habitat for wildlife is NOT used for crops?

The CIA puts it at about 99% actually. (http://cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/xx.html)
arable land: 10.73%
permanent crops: 1%
other: 88.27% (2001)

That's quite a bit, I don't think animals need much more. And that's just land, Earth's seven oceans are much more highly populated than the land is, and you can't grow crops over the oceans very well can you?

On the flip side, tell me what negative impact is there on the environment from hunters and fisherman who actually care about wildlife
and the environment?
I think everyone cares about the environment, simply because we live in it. Some people care for it on a higher level. The environment is the complex of physical, chemical, and biotic factors that act upon an organism and all organisms, and ultimately determines its form and survival. We owe our lives to the environment, we came from it, and will recede into it.

On the flip side, tell me what negative impact is there on the environment from hunters and fisherman who actually care about wildlife
and the environment?
To look at it a different way, the hunters and fisherman happen to change the environment, which is apparently "bad," at least by your standards. They kill things, they reap, and I guess humankind can never live successfully if they still live to reap...

I know that hunts and fishes takes great care to obey laws
Sorry to ruin your fantasy world, but here in Guam, and many many other places worldwide, some participate in various illegal fishing techniques. The first one that comes to mind is one that was featured in the popular movie Crocodile Dundee II, where the protagonist starts off the movie by throwing a stick of dynamite into the water, and a load of fish falls into his boat (if my memory isn't failing me).

Actually it is a very effective way of fishing, but it is outlawed pretty much everywhere in Western civilization for obvious reasons.

Another illegal fishing practice that is more common, is to add a cyanide solution into the sea-water, and scoop up the deceased, floating fish.

and buys expensive licenses that are used to maintain wildlife habitat it would seem to me that at least the law abiding hunters only do good for nature and wildlife.

Yellowstone Park, the first wilderness to be set aside as a natural preserve anywhere in the world, was called a National Park in 1872, by Ulysses Grant. No one had ever tried to preserve wilderness before, they assumed it would be much easier than it proved to be.

When Theodore Roosevelt visited the park in 1903, he saw a landscape teeming with game. There were thousands of elk, buffalo, black bear, deer, mountain lions, grizzlies, coyotes, wolves, and bighorn sheep. By that time there were rules in place to keep things the way they were. The Park Service was formed, a new bureaucracy whose sole purpose was the maintain the park in its original condition.

Within 10 years, the teeming landscape that Roosevelt saw was gone forever. The reason for this was because of the Park rangers, they were supposed to be keeping the park in pristine condition, and had taken a series of steps that they thought were in the best interest of preserving the park.

The Park Service mistankenly believed that elk were becoming extinct, they tried to increase the elk herds within the park by eliminating predators. To that end, they shot and poisoned all the wolves in the park, of course not intending to kill all of them. They also prohibited local Native Americans from hunting there, even though Yellowstone was a traditional hunting ground.

Totally protected now, the elk herd population exploded and they ate so much of certain trees and grasses, that the ecology of the park began to change. The elk ate defoliated trees that the beavers used to make dams, so the beavers vanished. That was when manages found out that beavers were vital to the overall management of the region. When the beavers vanished, meadows dried up, trout and otter populations receded, soil erosion increased, park ecology changed even further.

By the 1920s, it was clear there were way too many elk, os the rangers shot them by the thousands. The change in plant ecology seemed permanent; the old mix of trees and grasses did not return.

It also became clear that Native American hunters had exerted a valueable ecological influence on the park lands by keeping down the numbers of elk, moose, and bison. This recognition came as a part of a general understanding that the Native Americans strongly shaped the untouched wilderness white men thought they saw.

North American humans had exerted a huge influencee on the environment for thousands of years, by burning palins grasses, modifying forests, thinning out specific animal populations, and hunting others to extinction - capitulation to a superior species.

The rule forbidding Native Americans from hunting was seen as a mistake, but it was just one of many that continued to be made by the Park Service. Grizzlies were protected, then killed off, Wolves were killed off, then brought back. Radio collars research was halted, then resumed. Fire prevention policies were instituted, with no understanding of the regenerative effects of fire. When the policy was reversed, thousands of acres were burned so hotly to the ground that it was sterilized, and forests did not grow back without reseeding. Rainbow trout were introduced in the 70s, that species killed off the native cutthroat species. And on and on and on and on.

It is a history of ignorant, incompetent, intrusive interveintion, followed by disastrous attempts to repair, followed by attempts to repair damage caused by repairs. Just as dramatic as any oil spill or toxic waste dump, but in these ones there are no evil awful big corporations, or fossil fuel economy to blame. These are disasters caused by environmentalists, the very people who wanted to protect the environement, who made one mistake after another.

Passive protection, leaving things alone, doesn't preserve the status quo within a wilderness any more than it does in your backyard. The world is alive, things are constantly in flux. Species are winning, losing, rising, falling, exploding, bottlenecking, taking over, being pushed back. Merely leaving it alone doesn't put it in a state of supsended animation. Its like locking your son or daughter in their bedroom and expecting them not to grow up.

Humans do care what happens to the environment in the future, and try hard. Humans just don't know what they are doing. And it keeps happening, banning DDT, Solar panels, abolishing CFCs.

Why are we interferring with the course of nature? Why do some try to keep it the way it is? Why do some blame humans for changing it? It will change for better or for worse, if we are here are not here. If humans were in this state of development before the last ice age, we would blame each other for causing it.
 
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  • #21
Mk said:
This may be a long post.

Yes but it was a very good post...

You make a lot of good points but I still think hunting and fishing do less harm to the environment than commercial farms do.

The important thing to consider is not how much land is open for wildlife but how much land is open for wildlife that is habitable...farms take a large amount of the habitable land and towns and cities take a lot too. I don't think deer like deserts as much as grassy plains you know.
:smile:
 
  • #22
Echo 6 Sierra said:
This is the first I've heard of this. I would like to know more about it. Could you point me to a reference?


Mk meant Buffalo of course. That is also another popular legend about Indians hunting them to the extinction.
 
  • #23
stoned said:
Mk meant Buffalo of course. That is also another popular legend about Indians hunting them to the extinction.

There is no such legend :rolleyes:
 
  • #24
stoned said:
Mk meant Buffalo of course. That is also another popular legend about Indians hunting them to the extinction.
I wasn't talking about Buffalo, and that pointed comment was unnecessary.

Actually when the white men came with rifles and a vengeance, in addition to the Native American hunting, the American Bison were driven to near extinction.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f8/Bison_skull_pile%2C_ca1870.png [Broken]
A pile of bison skulls, to be ground up for fertilizer.

But I did just learn Mr. Smurf was right as well, that there is a substantiated theory that the Long Horned Bison may have gone extinct due to hunting pressure from recent human immigrants into North America.

The Long Horned Bison and the other Megafauna vanished, to be replaced to some degree by immigrant Eurasian animals that were better adapted to predators, and even the best - humans. The American Bison, technically a dwarf form, was one of these animals.

At over 1.5 meters tall, short-faced bear became extinct some 12,000 years ago, perhaps partly because some of its large prey died out earlier, and partly because of competition with the smaller, more herbivorous brown bears that entered North America from Eurasia. It just couldn't compete.

At any rate, after much less competition, the newly introduced American Bison built up enormous populations in a few centuries.

Bison were central to the lifestyle of Native Americans of the Great Plains. Before the introduction of horses, bison were herded into large chutes made of rocks and willow branches and then stampeded over cliffs. These bison jumps are found in several places in the US and Canada.

Bison were hunted almost to extinction in the 19th century; estimates go down to 750 bison for 1890. The Bronx Zoo maintained a remnant herd, some of which was transported in the early 20th century to Yellowstone National Park to bolster its faltering indigenous herd (which poaching had reduced to a few dozen animals), joining with transplants from other wildlife preserves. Some of these came from Charles Goodnight's ranch in the Texas Panhandle. A variety of privately-owned herds have also been established, starting from this population. The current American Bison population has been growing rapidly and is estimated at 350,000, but this is compared to an estimated 60–100 million during the end of the pre-Columbian era.

Hunters killed the Bison for several reasons:

Proposals to protect the Bison were discouraged, as it was recognized that the Plains Indians, often at war with the United States, depended on Bison for their way of life.

Herds of these large animals on the tracks damaged rather expensive locomotives when the trains failed to stop in time. Trains were like airplanes back then, what would Continental or Northwest do if thousands of three-thousand pound animals were smashing into planes? And how would you feel? You wouldn't want to take a plane flight as much as you did before.

Herds often took shelter in the artificial cuts formed by the grade of the track winding though hills and mountains in harsh winter conditions. This could hold up a train for days.

Besides this, Bison skins were valuable for industry, clothing such as robes, and rugs. Old West Bison hunting was very often a big commercial enterprise, involving organized teams of one or two professional hunters, skinners, professional reloaders, cooks, wranglers, blacksmiths, security guards, teamsters and large numbers of horses and wagons. Some of these professional hunters such as "Buffalo Bill" Cody killed over a hundred animals at a single stand and many thousands in their career. A good hide could bring $3.00 in Dodge City, and a very good one $50.00 in an era when a laborer would be lucky to make a dollar a day. He was pimpin.
 
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  • #25
Townsend said:
Yes but it was a very good post...
Well thank you very much for that! :!)
 
  • #26
Good information MK, most of this I have seen before.

However you mis-represented the CIA statistics, so I took the liberty of posting the explanation of the numbers.

MK said:
On the flip side, as you say, tell me how much habitat for wildlife is NOT used for crops?

The CIA puts it at about 99% actually. (http://cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/xx.html)
arable land: 10.73%
permanent crops: 1%
other: 88.27% (2001)
This entry contains the percentage shares of total land area for three different types of land use: arable land - land cultivated for crops like wheat, maize, and rice that are replanted after each harvest; permanent crops - land cultivated for crops like citrus, coffee, and rubber that are not replanted after each harvest; includes land under flowering shrubs, fruit trees, nut trees, and vines, but excludes land under trees grown for wood or timber; other - any land not arable or under permanent crops; includes permanent meadows and pastures, forests and woodlands, built-on areas, roads, barren land, etc.
As you can see the number is much higher than 1%, 12% for just growing crops. When take into account that pasture is not included as land used by agriculture and the continued destruction of habitat, the impact is much greater.

From the same CIA World Factbook;

the rapid depletion of nonrenewable mineral resources, the depletion of forest areas and wetlands, the extinction of animal and plant species, and the deterioration in air and water quality (especially in Eastern Europe, the former USSR, and China) pose serious long-term problems that governments and peoples are only beginning to address
 
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  • #27
I voted to ban vivisection, (cutting up live animals) however I would also vote to ban the meatrix condition.

Edit: If I would just read the directions before jumping in I could have voted to ban both. :blushing: (What a dolt) :biggrin:

I watched a video from an egg farm that showed live male chicks on a conveyor belt. They were being scooped live into a grinder. It was my understanding that after being ground up they were then mixed into the chicken feed and fed to their mothers.

Edit: Which is the reason I no longer eat eggs. :yuck:
 
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  • #28
Skyhunter said:
Good information MK, most of this I have seen before.
MK said:
On the flip side, as you say, tell me how much habitat for wildlife is NOT used for crops?

The CIA puts it at about 99% actually. (http://cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/xx.html)
arable land: 10.73%
permanent crops: 1%
other: 88.27% (2001)
However you mis-represented the CIA statistics, so I took the liberty of posting the explanation of the numbers.

CIA Fact Book said:
This entry contains the percentage shares of total land area for three different types of land use: arable land - land cultivated for crops like wheat, maize, and rice that are replanted after each harvest; permanent crops - land cultivated for crops like citrus, coffee, and rubber that are not replanted after each harvest; includes land under flowering shrubs, fruit trees, nut trees, and vines, but excludes land under trees grown for wood or timber; other - any land not arable or under permanent crops; includes permanent meadows and pastures, forests and woodlands, built-on areas, roads, barren land, etc.

As you can see the number is much higher than 1%, 12% for just growing crops. When take into account that pasture is not included as land used by agriculture and the continued destruction of habitat, the impact is much greater.

From the same CIA World Factbook;

CIA Fact Book said:
the rapid depletion of nonrenewable mineral resources, the depletion of forest areas and wetlands, the extinction of animal and plant species, and the deterioration in air and water quality (especially in Eastern Europe, the former USSR, and China) pose serious long-term problems that governments and peoples are only beginning to address

Just to update the land use figures since last year

CIA World Fact Book said:
arable land: 13.31%
permanent crops: 4.71%
other: 81.98% (2005)
From 12% to 18% WOW that is a significant jump in 4 short years.
 
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  • #29
Townsend said:
How about an option that's more like

I don't feel I know enough about it to make an informed decision.

Because that's where I belong...I hate the idea of animals needless suffering but I cannot say there is never a time where it could be justified. I need to know more about to really have a solid position.

Now as far as commercial farms treating animals like crap... :mad: that pisses me off to no end. What kind of heartless loathsome person would want to keep a chicken locked up in tiny cage during the chickens short forsaken life? Just plain pisses me off... :grumpy:
IF WE AS THE HUMANS BEING ON THE TOP OF THE SO CALLED FOOD CHAIN ,WERE SAY DOWN THE LADDER A FEW ,UNDER THE TOP SPEICES THEN ONLY THEN WOULD ALL THE HUMANS KNOW THAT ANIMALS DESERVE A PAIN FREE LIFE AS DO WE THE HUMANS. ALL THE PROBLEMS STEM FROM IS HOW WE JUSTERFY THE RELATIONSHIP OF NOT THE CRULTY BUT THE WAY IN WHICH WE HAVE BEEN PROGRAMED TO DEAL WITH IT THE ATIVISTS HAVE LEARNED TO RECOGNISE THE PROBLEM AND THE WHO DONT CARES FOR RESERCH PEOPLE HAVE BEEN PROGRAMED TO CENSOR SUCH ACTS FOR THE BENEFIT OF HUMANS ONLY FOR WE ARE AT THE TOP OF THR FOOD CHIAN?
 
  • #30
GCT said:
My argument relates to the animal cruelty.

My answer would be, it isn't about the roots of societal ignorance, but, as you can see from some of the answers in your thread, about human insensitivity to other living beings. Once one feels other's suffering, even for bugs, it is hard to allow them to suffer. Lacking feeling? No problem letting others suffer for your pleasures! Just so you don't think I am a bleeding heart vegetarian, if we could attenuate the suffering of the critters we eat, I'd have no problem with people who want to eat dead rotting flesh.:biggrin:
 
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  • #31
ynotbro said:
IALL THE HUMANS KNOW THAT ANIMALS DESERVE A PAIN FREE LIFE AS DO WE THE HUMANS
Really? You have a completely pain-free life? How boring.
 
  • #32
Moonbear said:
Really? You have a completely pain-free life? How boring.

That's a good point, and I don't buy idealism/sentimentality about animal suffering. In past threads we've discussed that in the wild, many if not most animals would suffer a lot more painful death than the instant kill we provide for them. I grew up with former farmers :tongue2: and visited relatives (in rural Kentucky) who still lived on what they grew and canned and slaughtered and milked daily. Those animals had a great existence until their death, which was always mercifully quick.

But that is far from industrial meat production practices. Very, very sad indeed to see poor critters raised from birth in severly restricted spaces awaiting our tables. :frown:
 
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