Ok, I normally don't get involved in these debates, as much as I enjoy reading them, but this one sucked me in --
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Imagine a person driving down a road at night. A deer is caught in his headlights, stunned, frozen.
He's driving a big huge SUV.
He COULD choose to wait for the deer to come to its senses and bound off into the forest. But he likes the taste of venison so he plows the deer down, takes it home, butchers it, and eats it.
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First of all, this analogy is ludicrous, flat-out. Whatever moral issues you may have with the "superiority" of vegetarianism, I'm not sure there's anyone in the world stupid enough to take the $5000+ damage to his SUV, not to mention the potential risk of losing his life because he "likes the taste of venison." I mean, come on - while this analogy might appeal to you on an emotional level, and fill you with a righteous fervor of the evil abuses of "meat-eaters", it doesn't hold water as a real-life situation. I think most "meat-eaters" wouldn't see it as a moral choice for the simple fact that it's not one. But, to continue with your analogy, it's also hard to think that the fictional "guy" in your example wouldn't see the animal "suffer and die", after crawling out of his wrecked SUV and extricating the wounded, thrashing animal from wherever it ended up, putting it out of its agony and throwing it in the back to take home.
Secondly,
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The lion has no choice but to eat a gazelle.
We have a choice.
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this doesn't hold water either. Our evolutionary and archeological history make it quite clear that without consumption of animal tissues, we would have never progressed to the level of agriculture in the first place. (And no, please do not take this as an invitation to argue on the merits of creationism - that's been covered quite thoroughly on another thread.) Alright you may say, that might have been true for our ancestors, but not now, when so many non-animal protein sources are available. Well, you yourself in this very thread mentioned the benefits to your health that you've seen after adding animal proteins and fats back into your dietary regime.
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Now that I'm eating tons of animal fat in the form of cheese, mayonnaise, butter, and eggs, I'm losing weight, my cholesterol is down, my fingernails are healthy & strong for the first time in years, my hair is thicker, I have more sustained energy . . . . etc.
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Animals must be sustained and raised in an orderly fashion to produce these things. In other words, there are still resources being devoted to their care, feed, and upkeep, the same as if these animals were being raised strictly for their own meat. Also, when the animals reach the end of their productive life, after having spent so many resources in the animal's production, shouldn't we, morally, utilize said animal to its fullest?
Finally, I'd like to address the hunting issue. You said:
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And yes, there are some who actually do kill their own meat. Yuck.
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Is it really moral to stand by and watch the animal suffer a slow starvation due to overpopulation run out of control? Deer are quite capable of surviving in neighborhoods where any chance of natural predation has been reduced to 0%. Instead, they run out into the streets, and are struck quite accidentally by motorists and left to die slowly on the side of the road. Or, as I mentioned earlier, slowly starve to death in the winter when the available food can't support the population. Hunting not only prevents the population from reaching such dire straights, it allows for the "harvest" of animal proteins (with a better essential fatty acid profile, no less) without the expenditure of resources that giant factory farms (whether animal or vegetable in nature) require. It also enables me to raise my own fruits and vegetables in my backyard, using composting to enrich my earth by re-using resources, instead of stripping it, requiring a high expenditure of resources, as well as the injection of artificial chemicals in the forms of fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides as mass agriculture does. And finally, to interject my own personal feelings here, from a cycle-of-life, respect for animals position, giving thanks to the spirit of the animal that died so that I can be sustained is a daily part of my life.
I'm not sure how a question about colon cancer ended up in a vegetarian debate, but I think while your intentions are admirable, and respect your right to choose, "preaching" vegetarianism as the moral alternative doesn't stand up under scrutiny to me.
Just my 2 cents...now it's back to lurking for me!
