Hunting - horrifying to see 12 year old girls and grown men slaughtering animals and feeling

[davekriss]

31. Thank you for your point of view

1) While it is true that prey animals have lived in terror since they first crawled out of the primordial goo, I am free to choose not to contribute to it. Call it a loving gesture to the universe for evolving a sense of compassion and choice.

Also I have almost no issue with hunting (though it's not for me). My post really was in response to the one above about the cruelty of factory farming. It is truly evil what these animals are subjected to before losing their lives to end up on our plates.

2) I can't agree to an argument that we should treat other feeling, sentient creatures to the cruelty of factory farming because it is efficient nor because they'd "go extinct in many areas" if we didn't enable their births and protect them for (in the case of cattle) the 6 to 9 months the factory farm lets them live.

You also actually didn't address the point in my second bullet, which is eating factory farm animal flesh is ecologically more costly than eating (even if only a lot more often) down the food chain. As a primer, let me suggest a documentary, Cowspiracy.

3) I also don't agree we could argue endlessly about the health benefits of vegetarianism over the fatty protein rich American diet. I acknowledge, though, that by eating deer you are eating a healthier meat (less hormones and antibiotics as well as less fat).

I would never hunt. Just not my style. But I neither intend to shame someone else for doing so nor tell them to stop. As long as they eat what they kill. A Buddhist author I read when a kid who was a meat eater pointed out that the universe seemed to stumble on the formula that to live means to kill. It's ok. But some of us choose not to participate in it.

(Another good primer: Forks over knives.)