In reference to doctors’ recommendations, remember they are as influenced by fashion, ideology, superstition and prejudice as just about everyone else.  Apparently they don’t give courses in logic or the philosophy of science in medical school.

Anarcissie and Bea, it’s generally true that people don’t HAVE to eat meat, but eating a little meat (red meat, about 4-6oz once a week, chicken and fish maybe once or twice, same small quantity, though it’s getting hard to find a non-mercury-contaminated fish—a lot less than most people actually consume) is recommended for some specific chronic health problems, e.g. most autoimmune diseases and anemia and other types of blood disorders, as well as for all children. Of course if you don’t eat a lot of vegetables and fruit to go with the small hits of meat it’s bad for you. Nutritionists aren’t all in agreeement on anything, and a lot of what is published as research is small-sample and not well controlled studies. If you can find a good internist who is also a nutritionist and has some knowledge of supplements and alternative meds, it’s ideal. Some of the larger hospitals now have departments of alternative medicines, and even main-line doctors sometimes recommend an herb or extract in specific dosages. It’s hard too find vitamins and other supplements that have controlled testing for standardized quality and dosage, but such do exist. 

Am not saying we have to act like animals—just that omnivore/carnivore is not a weird human deviation.

Bea—you’re right; can’t believe that everything labeled “free range” ranges freely. But it’s not too hard to check it out, and people who sell this type of meat often check the places themselves. Where I live, there are a number of small farms and ranches where you can go and buy directly from them, but they also sell their products in the local and state stores and some nationwide. (There is one local poultry place that calls itself “organic” and “free range” but when we drove out to see it, by “free range” they said they meant that the hens could walk around in their small individual cages, which are stacked atop each other.)

Sepharad:
’... Food is necessary, but wearing fur and leather is not (in our age of synthetic substitutes), so it seems wrong to kill animals and birds for their coats and feathers, leaving the meat to rot. ...’

For most people, meat is not necessary, and whatever is done to the animals which are the source of the meat is done for the entertainments of taste and custom, not the requirements of nutrition.

The fact that some animals eat other animals does not seem like much of an ethical argument for eating meat, inasmuch as humans seldom take (non-human) animals as ethical exemplars.  But most people are nihilists about this issue: they want what they want, and they don’t care about arguments about what they want one way or the other.

In nature, predator animals eat prey animals so it does not seem unnaturally cruel that people be predatory omnivores just as grizzly bears (and some pigs) are. However, the way that some growers, ranchers and slaughterhouses treat their birds and animals IS cruel by any standards, and such people should be put out of business: if the government won’t do it then consumers must.

The operations of “small” farmers and ranchers are growing in size and number as the demand for humanely raised animals and birds increases. (And just because meat is labeled “organicy” does not mean that it is humanely raised—which requires free-range cattle and chicken with plenty of space to run around—also free of antibiotics and growth hormones.) Unfortunately, there is not yet a well-developed system of humanely-slaughtered animals. And in any case, slaughter—humane or otherwise—is still slaughter. The only mitigating factor is that in the wild, the death of animals and birds is usually much crueler than the worst slaughter house (and, ironically, fauna raised in free range conditions sometimes meet with the same death as do the undomesticated ones).

Blue Eagle’s suggestion that anyone who wants to eat pork should personally kill the pig—a practice newly fashionable among hip bi-coastals, or so newspapers tell us—but I think it would be kinder to any animal to hire a professional, maybe a kosher butcher, to do the killing or at least to teach the interested persons how to kill quickly and without pain. Sharp knife, the jugular, etc. I saw some photos in one news outlet a week or so ago of couples struggling clumsily to kill unfortunate small animals.

Food is necessary, but wearing fur and leather is not (in our age of synthetic substitutes), so it seems wrong to kill animals and birds for their coats and feathers, leaving the meat to rot. 

Non-vegetarians also seem to base what they will or should not eat on the extent of their involvement with a particular species. American horsemen and women find it barbaric that Europeans dote on horsemeat, and Willie Nelson began and continues to support the fight against selling horses to slaughter houses. Occidentals also have close relationships with their dogs, which are a delicacy in many Asian countries. Woody Allen and some of my friends won’t eat anything with faces.

I personally like pigs: they are indeed are very smart, make fine household pets—one of our neighbors has one who comes to visit us—and maybe the best way to eliminate eating pigs would be to buy and thereby promote familiarity with the pig as pet.

There is an interesting overview of opinions about Hitler’s vegetarianism in Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler’s_vegetarianism.  Being a vegetarian myself, I could do without his company, but it does seem rather interesting that there is testimony that Hitler was greatly interested in animal welfare (unless, I guess, the animals were the wrong sorts of human beings).  I suppose it’s another example of doublethink, which humans are so adept at.  I wonder if pigs can do that trick?

There is an interesting overview of opinions about Hitler’s vegetarianism in Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler’s_vegetarianism.  Being a vegetarian myself, I could do without his company, but it does seem rather interesting that there is testimony that Hitler was greatly interested in animal welfare (unless, I guess, the animals were the wrong sorts of human beings).  I suppose it’s another example of doublethink, which humans are so adept at.  I wonder if pigs can do that trick?

I agree that vegetarianism is more likely to be the result rather than the cause of ethical feelings and behavior.  Being a vegetarian certainly hasn’t made me a nicer person—I’m as nasty and cranky as ever.

oh sorry, they already ARE in Congress

Pigs aren’t only smart, they’re brilliant?

lets set them up in Congress

“smart” is not basis for judging, right?  Some Right wingers are “smart”.  Some killers are “smart”.  Some imperialists are “smart”.  “Smart” is overinflated as basis for someone being like or even “worthy”.  I am thinking of how people who are retarded, have cognitive disabilities, mental disabilities are separated “out” of society.  (I have CFS/ME which has cognitive disabilities that go up and down.  I went from having been lifelong “gifted” - I graduated from college near my 20th birthday - to having people lose patience with me and disregard me when I had difficulty with some verbal communication in conversation with “beaurocracy”.  Great teacher of compassion is disability.)

  But I’d meant to make the joke, after thinking about this article when reading another on TD:

  Does this mean that I can’t yell “OINK” when a man is sexist?

I read the comment before posting. I had been planning to say, and will:

I suppose we shouldn’t insult pigs by calling MCPs Male Chauvinist Pigs.  I guess it’ll just be male chauvinists.

Now stop torturing them! If you eat pig, especially from a factory farm you are condoning the torture of these “smart” animals.

If you want to eat pig, go kill one yourself.