Should never have looked at the PETA site. I've been pretty much vegetarian for the last 13 years. When I started I wasn't going to eat any flesh at all. But back then there weren't many options for the lazy vegetarian when eating out. Menus were: meat, meat, meat, meat, chicken, a bland salad and fish. And going out to family and friends to eat there was a great panic about what to cook for the weird, attention seeking vegie. So I compromised my already pretty flimsy ideology and decided to eat fish. Ater all they have a happy and free life out in the ocean at least for a while before they are caught.But now I'm thinking what's the difference between killing a fish and any other animal? So now perhaps more inconvenience for everyone when they invite the attention seeker. Sorry.
It's really a decision I have to make every day. Isn't it alright to eat an animal if it has been raised specifically to eat and is treated and killed humanely? It wouldn't have had a life at all if it hadn't been raised for humans to eat.
At the moment for me I think this is okay for others. That is, I'm not a great campaigner for everyone to become vegetarian. But I would encourage meat eaters to be sure the animals they eat have been treated humanely.
People wouldn't eat their pet dog (unless they were starving) or even their pet cow quite often. So why is it alright to eat an animal just because you haven't met it?
I wonder if there are many vegetarians who are strongly religious - particularly in the Judeo/Christian tradition? In my limited knowledge of these things didn't God give the animals to man(un)kind for his amusement and dining pleasure? So if you were a Christian/Muslim/Jew type of person and a vegetarian would you be going against the big G's will? Perhaps even condemned to burn in the pits of Hell for all eternity?
Maybe that's the point. A God that's happy to go around smiting and condemning and being vengeful and so on would be all for the throat cutting, grilling and mastication of some of his lesser creations. Guess that'd be reason #12 in my extensive list entitled "why I'm not a Christian."
