Originally posted by flexmorei think you will find that the motivation for both crimes comes from the same source as do many of these things (see judy small's The Futures Exchange below - you've perhaps heard some of her poignant works).
This is still continueing today.
This massive murder of Australias native inhabitants is the BIG crime.
This torture of our imported sheep is a lesser crime.
elimination of what you say is the 'lesser' crime may go a long way to stopping of what you say is the greater crime.
in friendship,
prad
The Futures Exchange
For the silver that the men have paid
Who think they own the land
It is the silver of Iscariot
The silver of the damned
It is part of the accounting
In which we all must pay
Trading in our children's futures
For false promises today
It rises in the sunlight, silver dome upon the sand
Encircled by the wire like a blight upon the land
And the people of the dreaming whose sacred land it is
Wonder who this Uncle Sam can be to think it could be his
For the land belongs to dreaming and the people are its own
Who have lived there fifty thousand years, the desert is their home
And the women go a-weeping and a-wailing for its loss
And we join them in their grieving and the counting of the cost
And the mine from which the poison comes sits cold beneath the stars
The landscape it has ravaged will forever bear the scars
Roxby, Ranger, Jabiluka will be words to conjure shame
For the spark they help to kindle will ignite the devil's flame
Judy Small
Originally posted by pradtfPrad, I would like to ask you a few veggie question if you don't mind.
i think you will find that the motivation for both crimes comes from the same source (see judy small's The Futures Exchange below - you've perhaps heard some of her poignant works).
elimination of what you say is the 'lesser' crime may go a long way to stopping whay you say is the greater crime.
in friendship,
prad
The Futures Exchange
For ...[text shortened]... to conjure shame
For the spark they help to kindle will ignite the devil's flame
Judy Small
Do you wear any products made from animals?
Do you try to avoid buying product which contains animal by-product?
If so, how do you make sure that you are buying a completely animal free product?
How long have you been a veggie?
I ask because I am curious about becomming a veggie.
I don't eat red meat anymore, and I only eat a little fish and chicken.
Originally posted by elvendreamgirl
Prad, I would like to ask you a few veggie question if you don't mind.
Do you wear any products made from animals?
Do you try to avoid buying product which contains animal by-product?
If so, how do you make sure that you are buying a completely animal free product?
How long have you been a veggie?
I ask because I am curious about becomming a veggie.
I don't eat red meat anymore, and I only eat a little fish and chicken.
I absolutely eat no beef products whatsoever, and no meat that anyone else has ground up -- like sausage or ground chicken or anything like that. I eat meat much less these days, and when I do it is whole cuts of organic free-ranged chicken or salmon mostly. I do not drink cow's milk (it was made for baby cows!, complete with cow growth hormones), and use Silk instead (which I actually prefer).
-f
good point flex. for a minute there i thought your were referring to the native human inhabitants of australia, but on further reading i see your concerns were for the native wild-life.
there are just a couple of points that have been running in this thread that i'd thought need clarification.
firstly, docking of lambs is the status quo in Australia and New Zealand. This is quite a humaine practice.
secondly, if muesling was outlawed world-wide tomorrow the chances of enforcing the legislation would be around 99% certain of failure, people can pontificate on the subject all they wish, but in the end this will be up to joe blow sheep farmer, whom (in my opinion) has no intention of implementing the changes.
thirdly, and finally (do i hear collective sighs of releaf here 🙂 ) let's try to stop the export of live sheep world-wide, this truely is a barbaric practice. there are readly avaliable alternatives. If the Arab markets insist on sheep being killed in a specific way, so as not to offend allah, this could be acheived quite easily and cost effectively, in country of origin under their scrutiny. cheer's and take it easy one and all
Originally posted by easybeatWhy don't the middle eastern countries grow their own sheep?
good point flex. for a minute there i thought your were referring to the native human inhabitants of australia, but on further reading i see your concerns were for the native wild-life.
there are just a couple of points that have been running in this thread that i'd thought need clarification.
firstly, docking of lambs is the status quo in Australia ...[text shortened]... st effectively, in country of origin under their scrutiny. cheer's and take it easy one and all
I do nknow that they prize the sheep's tail. I believ it is a meal only for men, and the tail of the male sheep is supposed to have some sort of manly hormones .
Originally posted by pradtfOk prad. What I was trying to ask in a kind of oblique way is where do you draw the line?
Originally posted by gumbie
[b]But sheep are really dumb.
This is an interesting argument for various reasons and so it deserves to be answered in some detail.
First, dumbness is a rather subjective concept and depends largely on the measuring stick being used. For instance, many of the students in the vocational school where I used to teach ...[text shortened]... ched into our souls' - and through them we achieve "our finest hour".
In friendship,
prad[/b]
Some animal right's activists seem to draw a line between animals and fish or between mammals and other animals but I am interested to know on what they base this decision.
Where do you draw the line yourself?
Originally posted by easybeatYou pose an interesting arguement.
this is all very peachy, but personally I prefer to wear wollen garments. Which whether you like it or not are definitely a 'renewable reasource' unlike many made made synthetic fibres. Cheer's chubby-chap
Though on first thought wool may seem like a renewable resource, however, in order to get wool, the cost to the environment is great. I did some research about this, and here is what I found…
Climate Change
Manure generated from livestock has significantly contributed to the increase in atmospheric "greenhouse" gasses over the last 250 years. In that time, the concentration of methane has increased by more than 130 percent in the United States. "Enteric fermentation," or livestock belching and passing gas, accounts for roughly one-quarter of annual agricultural methane emissions. In New Zealand, methane emissions from enteric fermentation, coming mostly from sheep, constitute more than 90 percent of the nation's greenhouse gas emissions. In the summer of 2003, New Zealand's agriculture minister, Jim Sutton, Convenor of the Ministerial Group on Climate Change Pete Hodgson, and other members of the government proposed taxing sheep farmers to pay for emissions research, but the plan was recently abandoned.
Land Damage
Oxford researchers studying land degradation in Karoo, South Africa, have noted, "There is some evidence in the Karoo as a whole … that very high stock numbers (sheep largely) are the cause of vegetation change and soil erosion leading to the formation of badlands [heavily eroded areas]."
Water Pollution
In the first half of the 20th century, Patagonia, Argentina, was second to Australia in wool production. But when local sheep farmers got too greedy, the scale of their operations outgrew the ability of the land to sustain them. Soil erosion in the region has triggered a desertification process that officials estimate threatens as much as 93 percent of the land. Argentina is no longer a major wool producer.
Fecal matter contaminates waterways in areas where sheep are farmed. A case study conducted by the New Zealand government on two medium-sized farms found fecal contamination in the water that "… exceeded levels suitable for drinking and safe recreational use in virtually every reading since 1994, and in recent times ... has well exceeded safe livestock drinking levels ..."
Sheep "dip," which is a toxic chemical used to rid sheep of parasites, presents disposal problems and can harm the environment. A Scottish study of 795 sheep-dip facilities found that 40 percent presented a pollution risk. The study found evidence of a 1995 incident in which a cupful of spent dip, full of a highly toxic synthetic called pyrethroid cypermethrin, killed 1,200 fish downstream of where it was dumped into a river.
Wildlife “Scapegoats”
The wool industry also inflicts "collateral damage" on wildlife they consider to be "pests." Many landowners consider kangaroos to be such "pests," and though there are some laws governing the killing of kangaroos, on their own property, landowners can do whatever they want to these animals without fear of repercussions. The preferred method of killing joeys whose mothers have been slaughtered is, according to government code, decapitation or a "blow to destroy the brain."
In the U.S., coyotes are vilified for eating sheep and other livestock, and as a result, millions are slaughtered every year by ranchers and the federal government.
(from http://www.savethesheep.com/environment.asp)
So you see, when wool is produced on a massive scale, there is significant damage to the eco-system. Now some of the alternatives to wool I’ve recently read about are quite interesting. Tencel is a breathable, durable, and biodegradable. It is one of the newest cruelty-free wool substitutes around. Also, Polartec Wind Pro-made primarily from recycled plastic soda bottles-is a high-density fleece with four times the wind resistance of wool that also wicks away moisture…so the alternatives are out there, it’s just a matter of consumers demanding that their clothes be made humanely and more and more alternatives will come out. When I heard of the cruel practices in the wool industry, I stopped wearing wool…that was about 12 years ago and I haven’t ever found a problem with getting alternatives to wool.
Sincerely,
Sangeeta
Originally posted by kirksey957Hi Kirksey!
I have noticed in this country (US) that the raising of Alpaca has become a growing business and hobby for many people. I gather that this is on a much smaller scale than the shep industry. What are your thoughts on this, Sangeeta?
Honestly, this is the first that I have heard of Alpaca...I just looked them up online to get an idea of what they are.
From what little I know, here is my humble opinion....whenever we use animals and their products as a marketable commodity, there will be some suffering involved due to the exploitation. The Alpaca market seems to be small (but I doubt it is free of suffering), but I fear the worst as it starts to grow.
Sincerely,
Sangeeta
Originally posted by SangeetaI went to an Alpaca show and was impressed that the owners/breeders related to these animals somewhat like I would a dog in terms of it being a personal relationship. They are somewhat expensive so there is an effort to recoup the investment. As their hair ( I guess that's what you call it) is more expensive I don't see it becoming like the wool industry.
Hi Kirksey!
Honestly, this is the first that I have heard of Alpaca...I just looked them up online to get an idea of what they are.
From what little I know, here is my humble opinion....whenever we use animals and their products as a marketable commodity, there will be some suffering involved due to the exploitation. The Alpaca market seems to be small, but I fear the worst as it starts to grow.
Sincerely,
Sangeeta
Originally posted by elvendreamgirl
Prad, I would like to ask you a few veggie question if you don't mind.
I'm happy to answer your questions. It's nice to be asked since I have so few people who talk to me anymore after that black spiritual and harmonica tragedy 🙁
Several of the questions you ask are not so much vegetarian (diet related: no meat, fish, eggs, dairy, honey etc), but vegan (lifestyle related: vegetarian with no silk, leather, fur, wool etc).
Do you wear any products made from animals?
no. We get practically all our stuff at the Salvation Army (we like recycling) and there is plenty of pure cotton stuff there. A few of our things do have some polyester in them. There are plenty of stores that carry a large variety of no animal product items and certain stores that specialize in it (eg www.mooshoes.com which sells vegan shoes or www.veganstore.com which sell a variety of things).
Do you try to avoid buying product which contains animal by-product?
If so, how do you make sure that you are buying a completely animal free product?
yes we avoid buying things with animal by-products. It is difficult to be 100% vegan because of the way some things are made, but we're pretty close. We have no animal stuff in our food or clothing, our shoes are canvas or synthetic, we avoid print photography (gelatin in the emulsion - though we will use up the film and paper we've accummulated one of these days). We haven't been able to get around the driving problem yet (tires have animal slaughterhouse products), but we buy used tires anyway and there isn't too much more one can do about it if one owns a car.
You can make sure you are getting animal-free stuff by
1) shopping at places who make a point of supplying these things
2) asking the store owners or salesperson carefully
3) contacting the manufactures directly
Sometimes people think they know, but they don't. For example, as you probably know milk isn't the only thing that goes into cheese which is made with rennet (i didn't want to whine in your "I love cheese" party 😀 ):
The active ingredient of rennet is the enzyme, chymosin (also known as rennin). The usual source of rennet is the stomach of slaughtered newly-born calves.
http://www.vegsoc.org/info/cheese.html
So in comes what some call "vegetarian" cheese which uses rennet from fungal sources.
However, one step more and you get soya cheeses or garbanzo cheeses which some people like to consider to be vegan cheese. However, some of these clearly state on the label that they have casein in them which of course is an animal protein - weird, right? However, there are plenty of vegan cheeses that do not have casein in them and are actually vegan, so one just needs to read the labels (they won't taste like the cheeses most people know - though some of them come fairly close, some of them taste horrible, but i don't like cheese anyway so i don't have to worry about it).
Restaurants are another matter. If you explain your vegan requirements, most places will be very happy to prepare something for you without the animal offerings - but you usually have to say a bit more than I'm vegetarian. Some people think not eating red meat alone makes them vegetarian. We had just such a salesperson come to our door many years ago selling steak and seafood. When we told her we were vegetarian and hence would not buy her product, she said with considerable enthusiasm, "Neat! I'm vegetarian too. I just gave up eating beef after hearing about all the health problems. These days I just eat chicken and fish." Of course, she meant well and was making a transition along the usual route, but she had been misinformed about vegetarianism.
How long have you been a veggie?
I became lacto-ovo vegetarian in 1972 for purely nutritional reasons. When our son was born, we looked further into it and went strict vegetarian in 1990 and then adopted a vegan lifestyle a couple of years later. My wife took a little longer because she wouldn't give up cheese for a year or so partly due to its somewhat addictive properties. You can read about some of it (including the effect on her arthritis) here (3rd post from the bottom):
http://www.redhotpawn.com/board/showthread.php?threadid=11794&page=4
I ask because I am curious about becomming a veggie.
the biggest step I found in going veg was dealing with parents who thought I had gone mad. Well they are veg now too 😀
It is much easier to go veg these days than it was 30 years ago. The process is really a lot simpler than what some people want you to believe - you just don't eat and use certain things. It's not too hard in Canada and US, and probably not in Britain, which is pretty advanced as far as vegan attitudes go. There are increasing numbers of vegans and as a result, the product base keeps growing.
If there isn't a veg substitute available at the time, then you can do the following:
1) don't buy the product
2) buy the product but ask the store owner to find an alternative
3) keep looking for alternatives yourself
It's a bit like in chess - you make the best move you can, with what you've got, at the moment. If you can't do something, no need to feel bad - be glad of what you have accomplished, and keep trying. Even we vegans bicker a bit between ourselves sometimes as to who is holier than thou, but that way we learn from each other and find solutions.
After all, it is the journey that is important since there may never be a destination.
In friendship,
prad
Originally posted by SangeetaSangeeta,
You pose an interesting arguement.
Though on first thought wool may seem like a renewable resource, however, in order to get wool, the cost to the environment is great. I did some research about this, and here is what I found…
Climate Change
Manure generated from livestock has significantly contributed to the increase in atmospheric "greenhouse" g ...[text shortened]... o and I haven’t ever found a problem with getting alternatives to wool.
Sincerely,
Sangeeta
I think part of the problem is also the overpopulation of the world by humanity. There are too many people, and most people aren't interested in saving the earth.
I understand the reasoning behind this. People are just trying to get by: trying to survive from one day to the next. So, many of them just use up whatever id there, rather than taking the time and energy to plan ahead.
The over population of the earth is eating up all of our natural resources. People need to carefully comsider each life they bring into the world, both human and animal. I worry about the future of the planet.
Originally posted by gumbiewell I hope the answer I gave you earlier wasn't oblique at all.
Ok prad. What I was trying to ask in a kind of oblique way is where do you draw the line?
Some animal right's activists seem to draw a line between animals and fish or between mammals and other animals but I am interested to know on what ...[text shortened]... they base this decision.
Where do you draw the line yourself?
"drawing the line" is another very interesting question you ask! I'll answer it briefly here.
Many AR activists use the criteria of sentience as the line. The idea behind it is that if the creature can't have some awareness of itself then how can it be aware of what is happening to it. It is an interesting and certainly pragmatic argument. Sentience of course is an ever changing idea and the line keeps moving depending on how clever the measurer is. Here is an interesting site on animal sentience:
http://www.animalsentience.com/
Some activists use Jeremy Bentham's criteria "The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but Can they suffer?" This is considerably more clear, though not as convenient for some, because it is much harder to deny the suffering of an animal that is visibly writhing in pain. It is fascinating the extent to which people will deny that an animal is actually in pain - even though they see it before their own eyes. For instance, take a look at the mulesing video.
For myself (since you ask), we don't see the point of drawing a line unless it is really necessary. That means we don't swat flys, step on ants, squish mosquitoes and will pull worms out of puddles so they don't drown. My son makes homes for damaged insects and has helped dragonflies, spiders, moths several times. He has also rehabilitated several snakes. We don't kill the slugs that eat in our garden, but carry them beyond our property line in the hopes they will respect the boundary 😀
There are rats living in our attic - about 70 of them for the last 5 years and they eat in our compost. We have wasps who make their nests on the side of our house and occasionally get quite friendly especially when my son feeds them - we don't like them to come into our house mind you, and generally they are quite cooperative. We all seem to live without conflict.
Actually, about the wasps I was very surprised in that they seemed to know who had the food. My son and I would both go out side and stand about 10 ft from each other and the wasps kept going to him!
So I have not found a line to draw so far. I hope that answers your specific question about myself. If not, ask again and I'll try to do better.
In friendship,
prad
Originally posted by kirksey957It is very like the emu/ostrich industry in the USA. A few years ago , they were introduced as a meat product, and you know how silly we Americans are with our fads and all.
I went to an Alpaca show and was impressed that the owners/breeders related to these animals somewhat like I would a dog in terms of it being a personal relationship. They are somewhat expensive so there is an effort to recoup the investment. As their hair ( I guess that's what you call it) is more expensive I don't see it becoming like the wool industry.
So everywhjere in Texas, people were raising emus. Then the market was glutted, and the farmers weren't making any money. So they just set the emus free. They were all over the place. As they well know in Oz, introducing species into a habitat changes the natural balance of that habitat. Unfortunately, that is one things we humans do enjoy doing, and it has brought about the extinction of many species.
Americans also love exotic pets, and again there is the introduction of non-indigenous species. I feel so sorry for the chinchillas, chameleons, hedgehogs, snakes, lizards, and all manner of animals that have been brought here and sold to naive people who know nothiong about the care and feeding of the animals. It doesn't take long for the animals to die, or the people lose interest and release it into the wild.
Originally posted by kirksey957It is very like the emu/ostrich industry in the USA. A few years ago , they were introduced as a meat product, and you know how silly we Americans are with our fads and all.
I went to an Alpaca show and was impressed that the owners/breeders related to these animals somewhat like I would a dog in terms of it being a personal relationship. They are somewhat expensive so there is an effort to recoup the investment. As their hair ( I guess that's what you call it) is more expensive I don't see it becoming like the wool industry.
So everywhjere in Texas, people were raising emus. Then the market was glutted, and the farmers weren't making any money. So they just set the emus free. They were all over the place. As they well know in Oz, introducing species into a habitat changes the natural balance of that habitat. Unfortunately, that is one things we humans do enjoy doing, and it has brought about the extinction of many species.
Americans also love exotic pets, and again there is the introduction of non-indigenous species. I feel so sorry for the chinchillas, chameleons, hedgehogs, snakes, lizards, and all manner of animals that have been brought here and sold to naive people who know nothiong about the care and feeding of the animals. It doesn't take long for the animals to die, or the people lose interest and release it into the wild.