General Debate Forum - Vegetarianism debate!

I would like to start a debate on the topic of vegetarianism! I want to hear other people’s views on the matter.

I am a vegetarian. I am not, however, a vegetarian because I think eating meat is wrong. If you look all around nature animals are killing and eating one another; you would not say a lion was wrong for eating a gazelle! I think humans are part of nature, life and death is a cycle, and eating meat is natural. What I am mostly opposed to are the conditions in which animals are often kept, and the ways in which they are killed. If you raise your own chickens for example, and you raise them well, and kill them in the most humane way possible, then I don’t really have a problem with this. But almost any other times you buy meat I think it is safe to say you have no idea where that meat has come from, how the animals were kept and how ethically they were killed. In this instance, I do not think it is right to buy that meat. I do not think people should support animal cruelty. The excuse “it is dead anyway” is nonsense because it does not work that way!!!! Meat is only put on shelves because there is consumer demand for it. if people did not buy that meat, then people would not sell it. Full stop.

I’ve said that I think people are a part of nature, but being part of nature doesn’t necessarily mean one has to eat meat. Lots of animals exist in nature and eat only plants. The way I see it, it is no longer necessary in most parts of the world (and certainly in the western world) to eat meat in order to survive. I have never eaten meat in my life, so I am a living testament to this!

Furthermore, I think the majority of people if confronted with a cow, a chicken or a pig and told to slit its throat, bleed it, skin it, remove its entrails and cut it up etc etc etc would be really upset and would be unable to do it. But these same people are perfectly happy to walk into a supermarket and buy ready cut/prepared meat in nice packets wrapped in cellophane, where they never have to confront the fact that they are in fact eating something that was once alive and most likely had to suffer for them. I think this is hypocritical. Which is another reason why I don’t eat meat. I wouldn’t have the guts to kill an animal myself so I am not prepared to eat meat just cos someone else has had to do the ‘dirty work’ so to speak!

I suppose even moving away from the topic of meat eating and speaking more generally, the supermarket culture we have now has meant people are getting more and more detached from the reality of where their food comes from. I watched a documentary recently where a group of schoolchildren were asked where their food came from, and they didn’t know that pork came from pigs or even more strangely, they didn’t know that chicken came from chickens!!! When asked where beef came from they said “tesco”! Anyway, moving on!

Are you vegetarian? What are your reasons? Meat eaters join in too, what are your thoughts?