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Kittitas, WA, USA, North America, Terra, Sol system, Milky Way Glaxy, Known Universe
ShivanAngel wrote:Im not completely opposed to the killing of whales for meat, as long as it is done humanely...
But letting anything suffer for a few minutes while you try to kill it is just wrong.
Sentiments like this make me think I missed somewhere in the picture where all the fishermen were really mustache twirling caricatures of evil villans.
How exactly do you propose someone goes about "humanely" bleeding to death and animal that is probably in the neighborhood of 4000lb before eviscerating it and breaking it down into small enough parts to handle conveniently? Would you honestly prefer it if they had put a couple 50cal rounds through the skulls? Because that's pretty much what it would take.
Xx_ECHO_xX wrote: They are killing them for food but its the fact that they killl them in a very inhumane way i agree with the topic poste. they should not be killed
Please tell me you dont eat factory beef then. becuase the way we treat cows is bad.
I would rather have my food killed inhumanly then treated like this WHILE THEY ARE alive.
the way that they catch whales/kill wales is they shoot them with a harpoon gun with a large grenade attached to the end so when it goes deep enough into the whales it explodes, not killing the whale outright but causing it extreme pain. and im not saying that they treat them bad its the way they kill them
no, they don't that would waste meat. and a large grenade attached to anything underwater is going to turn it to jelly.
actually they do, they use explosive harpoons, and the explosive harpoon is what led to major commercialised whaling.
They throw or fire the harpoon at the whale, and the force generated by the whale moving away ignites the explosive, which makes a big hole in the side of the whale, killing it.
Also the reason that there actually WAS a news article was because the standards at that farm were below what is accepted.
The humane way in which cows are killed these days is by using, ironically for a warhammer forum, a boltgun (technically a "captive bolt pistol", which uses high air pressure to push a metal bolt through the skull of the cow, shredding the cerebellum, and meaning that, while the cow is braindead and can't feel anything, it's basic functions, such as heartbeat, continue, so that it when the major artery is cut, which it can't feel, it's blood continues to flow, and it bleeds to death.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2010/08/04 00:30:25
Kittitas, WA, USA, North America, Terra, Sol system, Milky Way Glaxy, Known Universe
Goliath wrote:just checked on Wikipedia and apparently it varies:
sometimes a 300V/2A charge is applied the back of the skull, sometimes a Boltgun is used...
both methods render the cow insensible, and unable to feel pain.
Theres more variance than that, animals slaughtered using methods that are halal or kashrut are intentionally bled to death while conscious through cutting a major artery and (ideally) the trachea. Some slaughterhouse/processing plants use flat wide tub of electrified water and a conveyor belt forces the head of the animal into the water as it goes by. Smaller animals like chickens, turkeys, and rabbits are often slaughter by simply beheading them, and most experienced fishermen cut the gills on one side of their harvest and hang it to bleed.
I found it easier to shoot a human than an animal. Now if it came down to survial then yes I would kill an animal for food. But in this day and age the slaughter of animals in such a way was uncalled for. If an animal is protected there is a reason why. Regardless of custom or culture that protection should be respected or that culture runsthe risk of losing its custom forever.
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would rather have my food killed inhumanly then treated like this WHILE THEY ARE alive.
The two aren't mutually exclusive.
Amazingly it IS possible to treat animals humanely AND slaughter them in a way that minimises stress and suffering.
Chibi has a point. You can use the whole argument of nature red in tooth and claw, but the fact is we are humans and we have a theory of mind. We understand suffering as a concept, which can be good or bad. You can recognize suffering even in an animal and want it to stop, or a human being has the capability of enjoying another beings suffering. This is nothing new. "Primitive" humans understood that the animals they used for their needs had spirits, which is essentially saying they had empathy for the animal. I'm saying all of this as someone who has hunted, killed, dressed, and eaten animals.
If someone who is vegetarian complains about hunting, I really can't have an answer for them, other than that I'm sorry, but my lifestyle might offend you, but it is my lifestyle. I have a real problem with someone who talks about how barbaric killing an animal is while they eat their 1/4 pound hamburger. These people will usually follow with some kind of statement about "rednecks" and other disparaging things about the supposed socioeconomic status of those doing the hunting. The fact is, for most people, the store bought meat is not a question of being humane but of isolating the consumer from the reality of meat. Meat is not in any way clean or neat, though it could be argued it could be made humane. Meat is bloody. Meat is killing, because there is no way around that fact. Meat is tearing the flesh from a living creature. To be honest, I think gathering meat should emotionally effect the gatherer on some level, because of the human capacity for empathy.
I think that saying killing one animal for meat is the same as killing any other animal doesn't make any sense, because by their very nature organisms are not alike. The problem is that opinions on what is a prey animal and what is an animal not to kill is highly individual. For instance, I see deer as a prey animal that I can hunt for food and trophy. I know people who hunt bear, and at one time I wanted to. However, after studying bears and talking with other hunters and scientists, I've decided that I have no desire to kill a bear. I've decided that that particular animal is far too human like in mind and behavior for me to justify killing except in dire need. The point is, this is a personal decision based on my observation. I don't criticize others who choose to hunt bears. These are highly individual decisions.
On one particular conversation I had on a hunting trip is enlightening. I had made the argument, that I now consider ignorant, that there wasn't a moral issue because the animals did not have the same capacity of mind that a human being does. My father's friend's response ( an individual who has killed several human beings in his lifetime in Vietnam) was, " I bet they like breathing". For me that pretty much ended it right there, as it is hard to argue with that one.
To me it is a very emotionally significant experience to hunt an animal, one that I try to hide from my hunting partners, because our modern society is just not big on emotion. The first deer I took I almost didn't take. I realized that all I had to do was take the shot, but I realized that I was about to make a living, breathing creature, without a care in the world that morning, die. More to the point, I had a hard time accepting the reality of it, and that this couldn't actually happen, and that meat came in 1 pound packages wrapped in plastic at the store. I must have looked at that deer through the scope for 10 seconds, although it felt like 10 minutes. I was told that often they'll take off running and you have to track them ( they do), but that time it dropped and didn't move.
Its messy. The fact of meat means you have to reach in and take what is inside the animal out. It happens quite easily actually, as once you detach the gut from both ends everything can sort of fall out, and you just have to cut connective tissue. I really do think everyone who eats meat should hunt or visit a slaughterhouse. Its gross, there is no way around it.
I don't think slaughterhouses are always humane at all. The number one priority has to be moving the meat quickly, so to maximize profit and minimize loss. Animals are taken apart in an industrial process. Also, our over-consumption of meat creates an enormous amount of slaughterhouse waste. People think pollution comes from factories and such, but probably the biggest threat to water quality for most of the U.S. is agricultural pollution of some sort. The worst sample for oxygen depletion testing I've ever encountered wasn't sewage but was from a river contaminated with an overflow from a collection pond at a slaughterhouse. The river was completely trashed, the samples were red brown and had maggots in them, and completely devoid of oxygen.
I haven't seen the whale video yet because I'm at work, but I can almost see the anti-whaling point of view. I know personally I would not kill a cetacean under any but the most dire of circumstances. I definitely don't think it is something modern society should engage in with an industrial level of production, regardless of how plentiful the particular whale is. The problem is defining that absolute condition of what is wrong and right in regards to prey. Many human cultures were absolutely dependent on products from whales in pre-industrial times. Even during industrialization, whale products were necessary, and that need coupled with industrialization almost destroyed them.
Its a morally sticky issue I'm not prepared to judge someone on.
Ahtman wrote:Perhaps in the interest of truthiness we should change the title to "Brutal slaughter of delicious whales".
It's reported in the sun. This could actually be a gang of rape-whales killed by plucky locals blocking their blow-holes with bacon. Delicious slaughter of brutal whales.
The trouble with whales, delicious or otherwise, is that they are very big and live in water. If they were small you could easily gas them in these numbers. Completely painless. Severing the spine is crude but effective. Also, I doubt these will have been harpooned- Rather corralled into the shallows and pulled out with hooks like large fish (tuna etc).
I don't particularly approve, but I don't object unless it is without reason.
Colossal Donkey wrote:Nature can't keep up with demand. Why should an animal be forced into extinction because the evolutionary goal posts have been moved.
Because that's the way it works? 99+% of the species that have ever lived on this planet are extinct now precisely because the evolutionary goal posts got moved on them.
Lets be realistic about this. 236ish whales killed in one year. Populations of 1,000,000 and 200,000. I'm not seeing how these people are driving these creatures to extinction. At this rate, assuming no whale ever died of natural causes or gave birth the people of the Faroe islands could drive them to extinction sometime around the year 7,036. So... not seeing the problem.
Does anyone else chuckle at the phrase, "killed humanely,"? I mean honestly, can you get more inhumane than killing someone? To me "humane killing," is right up there with, "tender rape," and "gentle decapitation," for ridiculous oxymorons.
Pipboy101 wrote:I found it easier to shoot a human than an animal.
...does anyone else find that sentiment particularly frightening?
mattyrm wrote: I will bro fist a toilet cleaner.
I will chainfist a pretentious English literature student who wears a beret.
Colossal Donkey wrote:Nature can't keep up with demand. Why should an animal be forced into extinction because the evolutionary goal posts have been moved.
Because that's the way it works? 99+% of the species that have ever lived on this planet are extinct now precisely because the evolutionary goal posts got moved on them.
Lets be realistic about this. 236ish whales killed in one year. Populations of 1,000,000 and 200,000. I'm not seeing how these people are driving these creatures to extinction. At this rate, assuming no whale ever died of natural causes or gave birth the people of the Faroe islands could drive them to extinction sometime around the year 7,036. So... not seeing the problem.
Does anyone else chuckle at the phrase, "killed humanely,"? I mean honestly, can you get more inhumane than killing someone? To me "humane killing," is right up there with, "tender rape," and "gentle decapitation," for ridiculous oxymorons.
Pipboy101 wrote:I found it easier to shoot a human than an animal.
...does anyone else find that sentiment particularly frightening?
Well, there's the school of thought that says whatever we do we are acting out as nature/God/our alien creators... intended we do, that we are not to concern ourselves with concepts of extinction and morality over it, we are another animal that should consume and devour and expand our population as we can.
There's also the argument that nature/God/our alien creators gifted us with the ability to rationalise and equate and empathise and predict. It's about whether or not you believe you are on this earth to do just as you please or whether you have a responsibility, personally I always, regardless of evolution, divine creation or alien construction, believed humans are the custodians of our earth, our capacity to alter environments and manipulate tools could be used to create amazing things, not squeeze the rest of life off the rock we all share.
We are forcing certain species to the brink of extinction, we have already destroyed others. We have the capacity to slow and stop our hunting of wild populations of many animals in many instances and do not for reasons of 'tradition' or 'because we like the taste' etc.
We have the ability to harvest animals sustainably.
We have the comprehension and scientific capacity to understand certain animals aren't so short of our own intellect and emotional capacity, according to our morality, that should lead us to question continuing to hunt them and whether or not something may have more or less right to life according to it's higher reasoning.
Tyyr, your mathematical reasoning is flawed, the whale is not becoming extinct due to the hunting, it's due to the hunting and the death and infertility by pollution, inadvertent net trapping death, massive reduction in prey fish species due to human consumption and any other number of human influences.
We also now know that most whale and dolphin species are building up dangerous levels of heavy metals in their bodies due to pollution, people eating them will cause serious damage to their own bodies.
As David Attenborough said, it's actually fairly difficult to wipe out all life on earth, but wipe ourselves out? Very, very easy.
With regards your comment on humane killing, I've hunted and fished since I was a small child, I came to understand very quickly the need to dispatch something as quickly and painlessly as possible, not only for the animal's last few moments but for my own sense of empathy and loathing of suffering. In taking life, I gained a very strong sense of it's value and assume others in this thread belittling that either have not done so themselves or are emotionally and intellectually underdeveloped.
MeanGreenStompa wrote:Well, there's the school of thought that says whatever we do we are acting out as nature/God/our alien creators... intended we do, that we are not to concern ourselves with concepts of extinction and morality over it, we are another animal that should consume and devour and expand our population as we can.
I'm not arguing the morality of driving another animal to extinction just because we like the taste of it over another one. Believe me I'm not. I was pointing out his concept of why animals go extinct is rather naieve. Conditions change and what was once perfectly suited for the enviornment no longer is. If the species can't adapt they go extinct.
We are forcing certain species to the brink of extinction, we have already destroyed others. We have the capacity to slow and stop our hunting of wild populations of many animals in many instances and do not for reasons of 'tradition' or 'because we like the taste' etc.
We have the ability to harvest animals sustainably.
Tyyr, your mathematical reasoning is flawed, the whale is not becoming extinct due to the hunting, it's due to the hunting and the death and infertility by pollution, inadvertent net trapping death, massive reduction in prey fish species due to human consumption and any other number of human influences.
My mathematical reasoning is quite sound actually. I wasn't suggesting that there might not be other factors effecting these animals I was pointing out that the predation on them by the people of the Faraoes is insignificant in the grand scheme of things. This whale hunt is not going to have any real effect on the species one way or another. If the other issues exist they will be the ones to drive the whales to extinction not the inconsequential hunting of a few whales by these people.
With regards your comment on humane killing, I've hunted and fished since I was a small child, I came to understand very quickly the need to dispatch something as quickly and painlessly as possible, not only for the animal's last few moments but for my own sense of empathy and loathing of suffering. In taking life, I gained a very strong sense of it's value and assume others in this thread belittling that either have not done so themselves or are emotionally and intellectually underdeveloped.
Your righteous indignation is noted and wasted. You managed to completely miss the point, not that I have any issue with minimizing suffering but that I consider the term to be ridiculous. I'm glad you've hunted and fished, so do I. I'm glad you try to minimize the animal's suffering, so do I. It does nothing to change the fact that I find the term ridiculous.
mattyrm wrote: I will bro fist a toilet cleaner.
I will chainfist a pretentious English literature student who wears a beret.
Does anyone else chuckle at the phrase, "killed humanely,"? I mean honestly, can you get more inhumane than killing someone? To me "humane killing," is right up there with, "tender rape," and "gentle decapitation," for ridiculous oxymorons.
I really can't see how this doesn't make sense. The most humane thing would be not to kill it but we do need to eat and so killing animals for food is necessary, putting an animal through unnecessary pain isn't. Nature is often brutal but with the ability to think as we can we should try and make it as painless as possible for the animals.
Humane (old english humain) means kindly and compassionately. You can't kill kindly; hence the oxymoron 'killed humanely' is a PC feel better phrase. To kill with compassion sounds Kevorkian. These are healthy animals and we're killing them. You can make the deaths quick to lessen the suffering but the act isn't humane. Even PETA kills untold numbers every year because they can't afford to keep the animals alive. They even buy huge freezers to keep the bodies until they can be disposed of en mass.
My Sisters of Battle Thread
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/783053.page
Pipboy101 wrote:I found it easier to shoot a human than an animal.
...does anyone else find that sentiment particularly frightening?
Not really mate, think on it for a moment and its an easy conclusion to come to.
Two of my friends got killed when i was out on patrol, we went back out two days later. I had a big ball of hate gnawing at my guts and i wanted to extract vengence on the people responsible. Maybe i wont get the exact guys, but its a small cell of Taliban in my AO, its good odds ill get em.
And then think about an animals habits.. like a dog or a cat or even a rat or something smaller.
There is no malice in them. No hatred, just good old indifferent nature. It isnt cruel or malicious, its just the way of things.
Hatred, spite, needless cruelty and vengeance are very human emotions and actions. Parasites and such in the natural world do what they do to survive, even a tapeworm isnt doing what it does out of hate or spite, its just driven.
I concur with him entirely, i would hate to shoot a dog, and if i had to kill one, say it had rabies or something.. then i would do so but with regret that i had to put a poor dumb animal down.
Humans? Humans that i have decided in my own head deserve it?
Happy with that. Maybe im wrong, but in my own head im happy with it. And the very first time i ever fired my weapon in anger at somebody i slept like a baby that night.
We are arming Syrian rebels who support ISIS, who is fighting Iran, who is fighting Iraq who we also support against ISIS, while fighting Kurds who we support while they are fighting Syrian rebels.
Vorlon wrote:My first thought...Kinda reminds me of a Great Unclean One...
Second thought....how is this any worse than what a bear or shark does to their prey? Humans won the evolutionary arms race.
Because as humans, we have the intelligence and resources to kill quickly. Comparing us to other animals just doesn't work.
Im not necessarily saying that killing the whales for meat is wrong. I hunt for food, I refuse to hunt for just sport but thats my own personal feelings.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2010/08/04 22:16:46
mattyrm wrote:Not really mate, think on it for a moment and its an easy conclusion to come to.
I understand where you're coming from in regards to killing in anger or because you have to. Pipboy didn't qualify his statement in any way though. If he'd said, "I'd find it easier to kill a human in battle than an animal in spite," I wouldn't be bothered by it. His statement was just a flat:
I found it easier to shoot a human than an animal. Now if it came down to survial then yes I would kill an animal for food. But in this day and age the slaughter of animals in such a way was uncalled for.
Which to me sounds like he values animal life over human. Now there might be something more to this, some background of Pip I don't know like maybe he's served in the military and been in your situation. If so I get it. However just reading through the thread and coming across that statement, it's a tad chilling to me.
mattyrm wrote: I will bro fist a toilet cleaner.
I will chainfist a pretentious English literature student who wears a beret.
Soladrin wrote:Good thing pain is the only thing that can make one suffer.
I'll assume that you were referring to the act of slaughter.
The abbatoir has no effect on any other form of suffering for the cattle other than pain, which it minimises.
The workers at the abbatoir can't go to the farm to ensure that they are properly fed and looked after, just to ensure that they aren't suffering as they pass through the slaughterhouse can they?
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