Some Observations...(all are welcomed)

[rdouglass]

It's kinda' funny that something from the Bible might be surprisingly relevant:

Romans 14:2-3 tells us, "One man's faith allows him to eat everything, but another man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him."

[narf poit chez BOOM]

PvK said:

Narf, what are you referring to? The low end was 40 or 48 inches square per chicken, not per eight chickens. 48 would be about 7 x 7 per chicken (if it were square, vertical unspecified), and the wonderful concession is a gradual increase to 72 which is more like 8 x 9 inches (flappin' 4 joy (tm)). There are generally several chickens per cage though, so an 8-chicken cage would be 8 times as big, with 8 chickens. There are pictures on the net of course if still curious. Just do a Google image search for: chicken "battery cage" ... or not.

Ah, thanks. I misread.

That does look rather cruel. I don't actually know if that's prevalent, but it's definitly cruel.

[Kamog]

Soon we won't have to kill animals to produce meat. According to this article, scientists are using stem cells to grow meat in a test tube!

[Randallw]

yeah I think about that sort of stuff from time to time. I personally wouldn't have a problem with it as long as it tasted like proper meat. But on the other hand I wouldn't eat it for the sake of it if it was more expensive then normal meat. Come the day it is the same or cheaper I would make the change.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Renegade 13 said:
.....I guess a vegetarian's choice to not eat meat is their choice to make (and their loss in my opinion ).....

Well, that "loss" is entirely your opinion. Whenever my family and I go to a party where we are the only vegetarians, and the host(ess) has prepared a "normal" and a vegetarian version of the same dish (for example pasta salad, lasagna, etc.), it's always the vegetarian version that's eaten first. Trust me.

[Renegade 13]

Strategia_In_Ultima said:
Well, that "loss" is entirely your opinion. Whenever my family and I go to a party where we are the only vegetarians, and the host(ess) has prepared a "normal" and a vegetarian version of the same dish (for example pasta salad, lasagna, etc.), it's always the vegetarian version that's eaten first. Trust me.

While I have no doubt that that is true, it definitely wouldn't be the same in my (or my family's) case We're all closer to carnivores than omnivores it seems

Kamog said:
Soon we won't have to kill animals to produce meat. According to this article, scientists are using stem cells to grow meat in a test tube!

Though I don't doubt that day is coming, I highly doubt it would actually taste like meat does today. If such a reality does come about, I bet "real" meat would be worth a premium compared to the "fake" meat.


"In the wild savannah of the Serengetti, the cheetah's having just killed their dinner, they soon discover to their horror that they just hunted and killed one of the Serengetti's stranger creatures, the Tofudabeest."

[Fyron]

Strategia_In_Ultima said:
...it's always the vegetarian version that's eaten first. Trust me.

If they were actually made the same, but the normal one included the meat, there would be no reason for this... Most of the time, people put extra vegetables into the "vegetarian" version, which naturally could make it taste better overall (not better than if it had the meat too, just compared to the more bland version). I've never seen a legitimate version of this, where the "normal" dish was the same as the vegetarian one plus meat...

[capnq]

Renegade 13 said:
Vegetarians would not stand a chance at survival if they were deprived of their "civilized" comforts.

Neither would, at a guess, about 5/6 of humanity.

I think a pretty good measure of how "advanced" a civilization is, is the percentage of the population that would not survive its collapse.

[Renegade 13]

Good point. I think I'd estimate the number closer to 90% wouldn't survive, but that's just me.

I for one wouldn't have lived past 17 if deprived of "civilization". Appendicitis would have killed me. One of my three sisters would have died at about 12 from whooping cough.

That's just medical reasons why people don't die today, I hate to think about how many would die simply from malnutrition, not knowing how to survive, etc. if our civilization fell.

[Kamog]

Hmm, I wouldn't survive without civilization either. I'm nearsighted, and without glasses or contact lenses, I won't be able to find food or see predators coming. Then again, without computers, TV, books etc I'd probably have better eyesight.