Reply #18: I feel no shame in being a meat-eater.

[Lyric]

You spend enough time going hungry as a kid, you start appreciating food wherever it might come from.

My views on animal rights are mixed. I don't support using animals for cosmetic testing at all, but I fully support animal research for medical purposes. I don't particularly *like* the big industrial farms, but I understand why they exist. I get pretty PO'd at the local crazies who show pictures of horribly deformed and mutilated animals to little kids in order to scare them away from eating meat--but I feel the exact same repulsion and anger toward to anti-choice crazies who show kids photographs of aborted fetuses. I don't like people traumatizing my kid. *shrugs*

I've taken the life of an animal that I intended to eat. I worked for several years in a poultry production plant, and saw precisely what the process was for killing chickens and turkeys. I know where my meat comes from. But I don't find it offensive enough to stop eating meat. More power to the ones who do--their bodies, their choice. My choice is my own, and I refuse to accept the notion that some people have more sophisticated "morals" than I do simply because they don't eat meat and I do.

If my son chooses on his own to become a vegetarian or vegan someday, I'll support him. I'll make sure to have appropriate foods available at family dinners, and I'll respect and defend his choice. But I'll also be absolutely sure that he understands that such respect has to be mutual.

There is nothing I despise more than someone attempting to impose their personal morality upon me.