Comments on: A better way to die?

By: Pat Duffy

Pat Duffy — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 16:13:49 +0000

So many things in this post, where to start? Sorry my comments are so long.
Background, I teach Ecology and Comparative Anatomy and Physiology to Wildlife Management students.
1. Many animals have huge mortality rates while young – look at how many babies are produced, given that only 2 and a bit need to grow up to replace their parents in the population. That is 2 over the life of the parents, not 2 each breeding season. I watch ducks and geese here – by fall most have only 1-3 babies surviving, the rest have gone to snapping turtles, pike, raccoons, etc. Migrating birds have heavy migratory mortality, but its still better than staying here for the winter – again they need to have enough babies to offset this loss. Fish lay dozens to millions of eggs – what happens to them? If this interests posters, then read any College/University level Ecology textbook’s sections on population ecology.
2. Happy life in the wild? – apart from being eaten by predators, animals get all sorts of parasites – endoparasites like tapeworms, hookworms, liver and lung flukes, ectoparasites like fleas, lice and ticks. I saw a photo of a fawn once (at an Entomological conference) whose head was totally covered with ticks – it was dying from blood loss. Not to mention diseases. Predator/prey studies show that for larger carnivores most prey are dangerous, they can hurt and kill the predator. Most wolves have internal injuries, a healthy moose kick can break wolf ribs easily. So most successful hunts take the young, the old, the stupid and the sick. Read David L. Mech’s work on wolves for an example. We put a lot of effort into keeping our domestic animals healthy. And health inspectors are supposed to pull out any diseased carcasses that do make it to the slaughterhouse.
Plus, if herbivores have no predators they will eat all the vegetation and end up starving in huge numbers while the plants recover – well documented in moose (Isle Royale) and snowshoe hares and lemmings – its easier to see in harsher environments.
3. We are not carnivores, we are omnivores. If you look at dentition our teeth look like a raccoon’s. We, like raccoons, are really good at eating a huge variety of food. And eating whatever is available. Our teeth do not look like a cat’s (a true carnivore) or a cow’s (even cows get some meat, any insect on their grass gets eaten and digested). We do resemble canids and wolves, but they will also eat plant material. Our teeth are also similar to pig’s, who will also eat meat when available. Our teeth do not look like grinding teeth that can cope with hard plant material like grains. Our intestines are longer than true carnivore intestines, but a lot shorter than herbivore intestines, they look like those of animals who eat a lot of meat and some plant material. And no place to digest cellulose (no rumen or caecum). This is typical of most primates, not all, but those that eat a lot of plant material have guts that do not look like ours either. So the typical low-carb diet fits our digestive systems nicely.
4. For my home province, 6% of Quebec (Canada) is arable land, 94% is not. Of that 6%, 3% can be farmed in terms of plowing, the other 3% has soil that is too shallow or rocky – good for pasture and hay. From this we have developed a large dairy industry, good use of poor land. Our topsoil went south during the last ice age.
5. Most of my students are also into the alternate PETA – that is the People for the Eating of Tasty Animals.

I’m on board with everything you write except for #3. But I’m going to address my views on that subject in a long post myself instead of in the comments section.

By: Elenor

Elenor — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 05:12:29 +0000

I always shock the globa warmi… er.. the “climate change” folks who wail about polar bears going hungry. I love polar bears too, but when I suggest flying up sheep and dropping them off for the bears … somehow, the climate change people always get really offended and seem to think that it’s a bad idea.

I also feed the mourning doves outside the window specifically to feed the hawks — and have actually had the pleasure of seeing our local redtail catch one for lunch once.

Sadly, so many people are so completely removed from Nature, they have no idea about reality. It IS red in tooth and claw — and we are a superior species in trying to ease the deaths of the animals in our care.

By: Jennifer

Jennifer — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 03:50:32 +0000

If you think humans have evolved into a species that should be primarily vegetarian, check your teeth. If you still have canines and molars set up for tearing and chewing meat, your body is still omnivorous and set up for meat eating. If, however, you have developed large flat teeth like a horse, congratulations, you have evolved into a vegetarian.
Dr. Mike-I love your blog. I am a scientist and have recently gone low carb, mostly because all the science I have seen presented makes so much sense that I just couldn’t ignore it any longer. I work in the animal health industry, which makes my moral and ethical dilemmas about animal rights more immediate, and I live in the Midwest (cattle country) where animal rights activists do NOT thrive. There are no easy answers, but I agree that I would prefer the stun gun to the lion!! In terms of how dissociated we as a society are from our food, I was reading a low carb recipe that called for a few Tablespoons of orange juice, and thought “but what would I do with the rest of the carton?” It took a few minutes for it to hit me that orange juice comes from oranges, not just from cartons at the grocery store. And I like to think that Midwesterners are MORE cognizant of where their food comes from. My only excuse is that, as a Midwesterner, we don’t see much in the way of citrus trees around here

Don’t worry. I may have had the same first thought, and I have an orange tree in my backyard.

By: Sean

Sean — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 20:03:59 +0000

I am a life long meat eater & have had the self doubt if it is the right thing to do. My wife & I started buying grain fed meat from the local butchers a number of years ago & I have recently been studying wildlife conservation, of which hunting is a large part.
Unless the older animals are periodically weeded out they will use up more of the resources, thus causing the younger animals numbers to decline. Survival of the fittest…
When the fall comes I will go out & harvest animals of my own, with respect for what they give to me & in turn I will give something back to the species
S.

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 15:10:42 +0000

@John:

Morals are human choices, made from the comfort of warm living rooms near well-stocked refrigerators. The value of “morally-correct” choices is created in the mind of the person making the choice. If you are getting an emotional payoff from being a vegan and sparing lives of cows and chickens, more power to you. You will find, however, that most of the readers of this and similar blogs are concerned with more object value creation when making their decisions, e.g. how does what I know about human metabolism translate into choices about food which maximize my health?

If you feel that the news is a good source of relevant information, perhaps you should read Dr. Eades’ recent post on (the lack of) critical thinking and functional literacy in Western society.

By: Arlo

Arlo — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 05:30:29 +0000

I’m not going to address the ethics issue here because it’s much to large a topic, I’ll just simply respond to #1 and #4 which are basically related.

1. & 4. You obviously aren’t an avid reader of this blog if you think that eating meat causes cancer and heart disease. In fact, showing the opposite is the whole POINT of this blog. Watching mass media is probably the worst way to get information about a healthy diet.

By: Carol

Carol — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 18:45:59 +0000

Do ‘free range’ cattle get sent to these same slaughterhouses? Is there less stress in a free range cow than there would be in one raised in a stall (or however the big generic cattle farmers raise their cattle)?

Thanks,
Carol

Most people who go to the trouble to raise free-range or grass-fed cattle take a little more care with them. I would assume most go to local, smaller slaughterhouses.

By: JOhn

JOhn — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 16:16:00 +0000

1.We do not need to kill animals to survive.or be healthy
2.The stun gun does not always work..
3.There are no lions in New Brunswick..I’m pretty sure..so the cows will most likely not die from a bite to the neck
4. Eating meat causes cancer and heart disease..any body watch the news..?
5. Vegans are not all “Gaunt”..the ones that are eat chips and potatoes..
6. Animals kill animals out of necessity..they can’t grow their own food..

A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.

Leo Tolstoy

“One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken.”

Leo Tolstoy

By: Dana

Dana — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 08:57:27 +0000

Someone asked about dairy way back up there. There’s a real simple way to get around the lactose problem: try fermented milk. The Weston A. Price Foundation folks claim that that’s how most, if not all, traditional dairy-consuming groups take their milk, and I find it very easy to believe, seeing as how refrigerators are a recent invention.

I acquired some kefir grains locally and want to try piima at some point. And there’s always the time-honored yogurt. I really don’t buy the idea that plain yogurt has a lot of sugar in it, considering that the lactobacteria would have eaten up most, if not all, of the lactose and converted it to lactic acid. If you make it at home and let it ferment long enough there’s virtually none, at least according to the Specific Carbohydrate folks. (Also low-carb, with a focus on healing GI ills.)

I also see dairy as a way to make up for the loss of fat intake accompanying the extinction of most of the large food animals we as a species used to hunt. Properly grass-fed ruminant animals are not very fatty, at least until they get a good bit older.

As for the post itself, yep. You know what, though? I wouldn’t call the killing that goes on in nature, “cruel.” Cruelty, to me, is an act that goes beyond the pale of what is normally expected in any given situation. Wild herd animals expect to be hunted.

There are bad things going on in slaughterhouses now, but I blame industrial animal husbandry, not meat-eating. Not only cattle but also human beings are being unnecessarily hurt. Mother Jones magazine ran an interesting article about the latter.

And vegetarian chickens? Lord. Where do they come up with this stuff? Did everybody miss the Foghorn Leghorn cartoon where he’s trying to eat the caterpillar?

By: Mary Turzillo

Mary Turzillo — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 00:07:02 +0000

Thanks for an excellent discussion. A side issue of this whole PETA/veganism issue is this:

I listened to a speaker at our Mensa group some years ago who opposed not just using animals for food or clothing, but also for medical research. I asked her if she were to be diagnosed with type one diabetes, would she use insulin, which was developed through animal experiments and which at the time was produced from animal sources only. She said no. I asked if she were prepared to die as a result of that decision, because of course that is what would happen to her. She said she was prepared to die.

What bothers me most is that this woman, and people like her, are prepared not just to sacrifice their own lives, but the life of many others, including my young son, who at the time was eight years old and had been a type one diabetic for three years.

This isn’t a moral choice. It’s an immoral choice.

I wouldn’t be so sure the women you wrote of would have been so willing do die had the situation actually been staring her in the face instead of being hypothetical. I’ve seen many people do about faces when the Grim Reaper was tapping them on the shoulder. I doubt she would have been so willing to sacrifice her life had it really been on the line.