In answer to PETA
By Chuckman
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, was one of the first groups to be considered for Chuckland.com's enemies list. This is for a reason.
PETA's core values conflict with mine on several key points. Not only that, PETA is, in fact, the front for an insidious agenda and its advocates seek to interfere with freedom.
We'll start with hunting. For obvious reasons, PETA is anti-hunting. Let's go through their reasons for that, one by one.
"It is true that quickly killing an animal in the wild is much less cruel than factory farming. However, hunting, like farming, disrupts families and causes pain, trauma, and grief to both the victims and the survivors. "
Animals don't have families. The great majority of animals don't form a pair bond with a mate, and are incapable of recognizing their own offspring (some to the extent of eating them for survival) and thus don't give a crap if their cousin is shot by a hunter. The above quoute is specious and based on an assumption which applies human feelings to creatures that do not have sentience or emotion.
"Starvation and disease are unfortunate, but they are nature's way of ensuring that the strong survive. Natural predators help keep prey species strong by killing only the sick and weak. Hunters, however, kill any animal they come across or any animal whose head they think would look good mounted above the fireplace�often the large, healthy animals needed to keep the population strong. And hunting creates the ideal conditions for overpopulation. After hunting season, the abrupt drop in population leads to less competition among survivors, resulting in a higher birth rate.
If we were really concerned about keeping animals from starving, we would not hunt but instead take steps to reduce the animals� fertility. We would also preserve wolves, mountain lions, coyotes, and other natural predators. Ironically, many deer herds and duck populations are purposely manipulated to produce more and more animals for hunters to kill."
Hunters control the population, too. You can't have a 'natural' deer herd in a populated area; the deer would be hit by cars and starve to death, as well as eating dog food and lawns, etc. With no natural fear of man, the overpopulation would be a disaster in more ways than one. Furthermore, the hunter does pick off an animal that isn't fit to survive- if it's so damn stupid it walks out into a clearing, it should be killed so the clever deer can reproduce.
"The relatively small fee each hunter pays does not cover the cost of hunting programs or game warden salaries. Hunting fees pay for hunter programs that benefit only hunters, like manipulating animal populations to increase the number of animals available to kill. The public lands that many hunters use are supported by taxpayers, and funds benefiting "nongame" species are scarce."
That is, unfortunately, utter and total nonsense. The hunting fees, which are far from small, in addition to excise taxes on guns and ammunition, cover more wildlife programs than all other sources of money combined. Period.
"Did the fact that Jeffrey Dahmer ate his victims justify his crimes? What is done with a corpse after its murder doesn�t lessen the victim�s suffering.
Furthermore, hunters are harming animals other than the ones they kill and take home. Those who don't die outright often suffer disabling injuries. Additionally, the stress that hunting inflicts on animals�the noise, the fear, and the constant chase�severely restricts their ability to eat adequately and store the fat and energy they need to survive the winter."
Hunting also disrupts migration and hibernation. For animals like wolves, who mate for life and have close-knit families, hunting can severely harm entire communities."
This assumes that hunters will abondon a wounded animal; this is incorrect as most hunters will take a follow-up shot and track their game. There is no constant chase- deer season is a couple of weeks, and men are just another predator. The comparison of hunting to Jeffrey Dahmer is specious and a cheap tactic to incite false sympathy for the animal which is NOT brutally sodomized and butchered.
"We have no quarrel with subsistence hunters and fishers who truly have no choice in order to survive. However, in this day and age, meat, fur, and leather are not a necessary part of survival for the vast majority of us.
Unfortunately, many "sport" hunters have borrowed from aboriginal tradition and manipulated it into a justification for killing animals for recreation or profit."
Hunting and killing animals is not the same thing; I don't think killing animals is fun, I think hunting is fun. There's a difference, allthough they refuse to see it. Hunting is a grand tradition passed from father to son (or from mother to daughter, even) that has been passed down from our ancient ancestors. These people will never visit the forests where these animals live, I have. They are weak and have no experience of hunting, and thus their arguments are not based in reality.
"From a moral standpoint, actions that harm others are not matters of personal choice. Murder, child abuse, and cruelty to animals are all immoral. Our society now encourages meat-eating and the cruelties of factory farming, but history teaches that society also once encouraged slavery, child labor, and many other practices now universally recognized as wrong."
This is a matter of personal choice. Under no law are animals defined as people, or at least they shouldn't be- animals are not people. It's not so much the food part- it's that you force your beliefs on me. Vegitarianism is a religion in all but name; I don't agree with your beliefs and I choose not to follow them. I honestly don't give a damn if the animal suffers before I eat it; it exists for the express purpose of providing me with food.
"Most of the animals who kill for food could not survive if they didn�t. That is not the case for us. We are better off not eating meat. Many other animals are vegetarians, including some of our closest primate relatives. Why don�t we look to them as our example instead of to carnivores?"
This is also specious reasoning. We are NOT better off not eating meat, studies have proven this. Some people such as myself have practically forsaken vegetables and are all the happier for it. We are OMNIVOROUS animals meaning that we eat both meats and plant matter. So there.
"Humans do, too, but that doesn�t give you the right to kill them or to cause them a lifetime of suffering."
Animals aren't humans. Stupid.
"Animals on factory farms do not gain weight, lay eggs, and produce milk because they are comfortable, content, or well cared for, but rather, because they have been manipulated specifically to do these things through genetics, medications, hormones, and management techniques. In addition, animals raised for food today are slaughtered at extremely young ages, usually before disease and misery have decimated them.
Such huge numbers of animals are raised for food that it is less expensive for farmers to absorb some losses than it is to provide humane conditions."
Your point being...
"It�s unrealistic to expect that everyone will stop eating animals overnight. As the demand for meat decreases, the number of animals bred will decrease. Farmers will stop breeding so many animals and will turn to other types of agriculture. When there are fewer of these animals, they will be able to live more natural lives."
I will NEVER stop eating animals, even if I have to grow them myself. I am incapable of eating most vegitables due to a strong gag reaction when I attempt to imbibe them. What about me?
"Life on factory farms is so miserable that it is hard to see how we are doing animals a favor by bringing them into that type of existence, confining them, tormenting them, and then slaughtering them."
I don't care about doing them a favor. I just want to eat them. I wouldn't care if they were grown in tanks with no heads so long as they tasted good.
"Yes. We feed so much grain to animals in order to fatten them up for consumption that if we all became vegetarians, we could produce enough food to feed the entire world. In the U.S., animals are fed more than 80 percent of the corn we grow and more than 95 percent of the oats. The world's cattle alone consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people�more than the entire human population on Earth."
I don't want grain, you silly sod, I want a steak.
"In the West, our problem is that we get too much protein, not too little. Most Americans get about seven times as much protein as they need. You can get enough protein from whole wheat bread, oatmeal, beans, corn, peas, mushrooms, or broccoli�almost every food contains protein. Unless you eat a great deal of junk food, it's almost impossible to eat as many calories as we need for good health without getting enough protein.
By contrast, too much protein is the major cause of osteoporosis and contributes to kidney failure and other diseases of affluence."
Not... enough... protein. Hmm. Could you please tell the judges your name, and what planet you come from?
"Actually, human bodies are better suited for a vegetarian diet. Carnivorous animals have long, curved fangs, claws, and a short digestive tract. Humans have flat, flexible nails and our so-called "canine" teeth are minuscule compared to those of carnivores, and even compared to vegetarian primates like gorillas and oranguatans. Our tiny canine teeth are better suited to biting into fruits than tearing through tough hides. We have flat molars and a long digestive tract suited to a diet of vegetables, fruits, and grains. Eating meat is hazardous to our health; it contributes to heart disease, cancer, and many other health problems."
Poppycock. Human teeth are closer in "design" to rodents, which are omnivores- just like we are. Our traits are also precipitated from our toolmaking nature, which makes claws and sharp teeth moot. The plain fact is that if we aren't supposed to eat something, it doesn't taste good.
"
There are healthy and unhealthy vegetarians. But doctors agree that vegetarians who eat a varied, low-fat diet stand a much better chance of living longer, healthier lives than their meat-eating counterparts. "
What doctors? Can you give me one of their names so I can send them an email, letter, or call their office? Where did you obtain this information? Name a study. Let's hear some actual proof, eh?
"I don�t know. Humans will go to extremes to save their own lives, even if it means hurting someone innocent. (People have even killed and eaten other people in such situations.) This example, however, isn't relevant to our daily choices. For most of us, there is no emergency and no excuse to kill animals for food."
Yes there is- they taste good, stupid.
"This is true, but the real cruelty of egg production lies in the treatment of the "laying hens" themselves, who are perhaps the most abused of all factory-farmed animals. Each egg from today�s factory farms represents 22 hours of misery for a hen packed in a cage the size of a filing cabinet drawer with up to five other chickens. Cages are stacked many tiers high, and feces from cages above fall onto the chickens below. Hens become lame and develop osteoporosis from forced immobility and calcium lost to produce egg shells. Some birds� feet grow around the wire cage floors; they starve to death because they are unable to reach the food trough. At just two years old, most hens are "spent" and they are sent to the slaughterhouse. Egg-laying hatcheries don�t have any use for male chicks; they are killed by suffocation, decapitation, crushing, or are ground up alive"
So what? They're chickens. They have brains the size of a pea. Who cares?
"Besides the moral issues involved, clinical and epidemiological studies of humans offer a far more accurate picture without hurting anyone. Observing interactions in animals is no guarantee that the information can be extrapolated to humans. Different species of animals vary enormously in their reactions to toxins and diseases and in their metabolism of drugs. For example, a dose of aspirin that is therapeutic in humans is poisonous to cats and has no effect on fever in horses; benzene causes leukemia in humans but not in mice; insulin produces birth defects in animals but not in humans, and so on. Animal experiments cannot replace careful clinical observation of human beings."
Yes, so what? You would put humans in danger to preserve a mouse? You're proposing murder there, buddy boy.
"Medical historians have shown that improved nutrition, sanitation, and other behavioral and environmental factors�not anything learned from animal experiments�are responsible for the decline in deaths since 1900 from the most common infectious diseases and that medicine has had little to do with increased life expectancy. Many of the most important advances in health are attributable to human studies, among them anesthesia; bacteriology; germ theory; the stethoscope; morphine; radium; penicillin; artificial respiration; antiseptics; the CAT, MRI, and PET scans; the discovery of the relationships between cholesterol and heart disease and between smoking and cancer; the development of x-rays; and the isolation of the virus that causes AIDS. Animal testing played no role in these and many other developments."
Okay, I see. Lots of people did things at night, so we should blow up the sun.
"In fact, two separate bodies of work were done on polio�the in vitro work, which was awarded the Nobel Prize and which did not involve animals, and the subsequent animal tests, in which close to 1 million animals were killed and which the Nobel committee refused to recognize as anything more than wasteful. Also, polio died out just as quickly in areas of the world that did not use the vaccine as in the United States.
However, certainly, some medical developments were discovered through cruel animal tests. But just because animals were used doesn't mean they had to be used or that primitive techniques that were used in the 1800s are valid today. It's impossible to say where we would be if we had declined to experiment on animals, because throughout medical history, very few resources have been devoted to non-animal research methods. In fact, because animal experiments frequently give misleading results with regard to human health, we'd probably be better off if we hadn't relied on them."
Tell that to the people who would be dead right now if there were no polio vaccine, and see what they think.
"More human lives could be saved and more suffering spared by educating people on the importance of avoiding fat and cholesterol, quitting smoking, reducing alcohol and other drug consumption, exercising regularly, and cleaning up the environment than by all the animal tests in the world. Animal tests are primitive, and besides, we have modern technology and human clinical tests.
Even if it could be proved that we have no alternative to using animals�which it can�t�as George Bernard Shaw once said, "You do not settle whether an experiment is justified or not by merely showing that it is of some use. The distinction is not between useful and useless experiments, but between barbarous and civilized behavior." After all, there are some medical problems that can probably only be cured by testing on unwilling people, but we don�t do it, because we recognize that it would be wrong."
You know what? My personal habits are none of your business, buddy boy, and I'm not going to do something you like, just so I can save some pathetic little white mouse. I had an albino rat for a freaking pet, and I still don't boohoo over rats dying.
"The choice isn�t between animals and people. There�s no guarantee that drugs are safe just because they�ve been tested on animals. Because of the physiological differences between humans and other animals, results from animal tests cannot be accurately extrapolated to humans, leaving us vulnerable to exposure to drugs that can cause serious side effects.
Ironically, unfavorable animal test results do not prevent a drug from being marketed for human use. So much evidence has accumulated about differences in the effects that chemicals have on animals and humans that government officials often do not act on findings from animal studies. In the last two decades, many drugs, including phenacitin, Eferol, Oraflex, Suprol, and Selacryn, were taken off the market after causing hundreds of deaths and/or injuries. In fact, more than half the drugs the Food and Drug Administration approved between 1976 and 1985 were either removed from the market or relabeled because of serious side effects. If the pharmaceutical industry switched from animal experiments to quantum pharmacology and in vitro tests, we would have greater protection, not less."
Do you want to pay for that? Oh, wait, you're a communist, so I guess you don't care about money.
"This is like saying it�s acceptable to experiment on poor children to benefit rich ones. The point is not whether animal experimentation can be useful to animals or humans; the point is that we do not have the moral right to inflict unnecessary suffering on those who are at our mercy."
If you're going to make an omelette...
"No, they don�t. In fact, more and more medical students are becoming conscientious objectors, and many students now graduate without having used animals; instead they learn by assisting experienced surgeons. In Great Britain, it is against the law for medical students to practice surgery on animals, and British physicians are as competent as those educated elsewhere. Many of the leading U.S. medical schools, including Harvard, Yale, and Stanford, now use innovative, clinical teaching methods instead of old-fashioned animal laboratories. Harvard, for instance, offers a Cardiac Anesthesia Practicum, where students observe human heart bypass operations, instead of dog labs; the Harvard staff who developed it have recommended that it be implemented elsewhere"
Is the Harvard staff going to pay for it? Sorry, rich man's son, but not everybody has access to the resources that you do, and I'd like a doctor that knows what the hell he's doing, thank you very much.
"Unfortunately, a number of things in our society came about through others� exploitation. For instance, many of the roads we drive on were built by slaves. We can't change the past; those who have already suffered and died are lost. But what we can do is change the future by using non-animal research methods from now on."
Oh... I see. You'll talk the talk, but when it comes time to walk the walk... Oh, and I didn't know we had any 146 year old roads that were built before asphalt was invented.
"There is no law in this country that prohibits any experiment, no matter how frivolous or painful. The Animal Welfare Act is very weak and poorly enforced. The Act does not include rats and mice, even though they are the most commonly used animals. Also, the law does not include cold-blooded animals, birds, or animals traditionally used for food. It is basically a housekeeping act; it doesn�t prohibit any type of experiment on animals in laboratories�they can be starved, electrically shocked, driven insane, or burned with a blowtorch�as long as it's done in a clean laboratory"
So?
"A painless death at an animal shelter is a far cry from a life of severe pain and deprivation in a laboratory before being killed by experimenters. "
Animals at shelters die of asphyxiation. Slowly.
"Suppose the only way to save those 10,000 people was to experiment on one mentally-challenged orphan. If saving people is the goal, wouldn't that be worth it? Most people will agree that it is wrong to sacrifice one human for the "greater good" of others because it would violate that individual�s rights. But when it comes to sacrificing animals, the assumption is that human beings have rights while animals do not. Yet there is no logical reason to deny animals the same rights that protect individual humans from being sacrificed for the common good."
There is a perfectly logical reason- ANIMALS AREN'T HUMAN YOU THUNDERING MORON!
"I would save my child, but that�s just instinct. A dog would save her pup. Regardless of whom I save, however, my choice proves nothing about the moral legitimacy of experimenting on animals. I might save my own child instead of my neighbor�s, but that hardly proves that experimentation on my neighbor�s child is acceptable. "
It does, however, prove that you have the sick, twisted idea stuck in your head that animals feel the same way you do.
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