Do you agree with these quotes attributed to Gandhi, and if so, what does that say about our society?

He/she sure likes animals. So, I agree partially because animals seem to be needed to be used as a food source, although they don’t deserve cruelty. -Those are interesting qoutes.

Good lord, how old are you? Have you never heard of Gandhi?!?

Nope, I’m learning as we go.

No I don’t agree with these quotes. Those quotes are basically saying the more society values animal rights the better it is.

You could live in a fascist police state with strict animal right laws and still live in a pretty bad society. The matter of the treatment of animals and the measurement of a “good” society are two entirely different things imo. There are too many factors to consider for a positive society than just treatment of animals.

And yes I think cheap meat is worth it. There is a need for food in the modern world and I’d rather have people have access to cheap food and not starve, than putting animals on a high pedestal. People before animals to make it short.

@elmagico: There would be much more food available if we ate lower on the food chain. Cheap meat is mostly corn anyway. See Michael Pollan’s book: The Omnivore’s Dilemma; or “Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation”:
http://tinyurl.com/5qkuvk

@syz: ravening:-)

I am an animal lover. My house is like animal kingdom, they are family to us but I do not agree with animals having the same rights as people.

I hardly think anyone is saying that animals have the same rights as humans. Do they have a right to as close to a painless, fearless death as we can design? Do they have the right to some modicum of quality of life? Do they deserve to not be treated with callous cruelty?

Do we, as humans, have the right to meat that is not pumped full of antibiotics because we’re raising animals on a food source that is not a natural food item for them? Or meat that we don’t have to worry about neurologic disease because the animals have been fed on ground up brains and spines of the same species? Or hormones because they make it to market 6 days faster? Chicken that does not have e. coli on it because it’s cheaper to raise the next generation of chicks on top of shit rather than hose out the facility?

I stopped eating meat primarily for those reasons (I’ve been inside the processing plants – I challenge you to do that and not think twice about eating what comes out of them). I have no problem with eating (for example) beef that has been raised on grass and then slaughtered in a way that doesn’t require that several hundred animals be killed per hour because that’s what the assembly line requires.

When there was an enormous outbreak of food poisoning related to fast food hamburgers due to fecal comtamination during the butchering process, rather than clean up the meat, our government suggested cooking the meat longer at higher temps to kill the bacteria. That’s why I don’t eat commercially produced meat. I don’t eat shit.

(thanks, gailcalled, I caught the typo after my five minutes was up)

I come to this question with a bias, too. I’ve been vegetarian for many years now, motivated by these same concerns. I don’t feel that this confers any moral superiority upon me; it was a personal decision and I’m not out there trying to make converts.

Most of us would agree that compassion is fundamental to any moral system. It’s our ability to look at another being and recognize that we’re not so very different in our desire and right to be free from suffering that keeps most of us from running roughshod over anyone weaker than we are. Gandhi wasn’t the first to point out that concern for the welfare of the poor and weak is the hallmark of a morally developed individual or society. Jesus said as much, as did our founding fathers. I don’t find it a stretch at all to extend that same recognition to any creature that’s capable of suffering.

The American public has developed some pretty strange behaviors with regard to animals. One striking example is our squeemishness at the idea of eating horsemeat. Plenty of other countries have no such reluctance; many european countries relish it. Why don’t we? My state, Illinois, recently outlawed the processing of horsemeat. What’s so different about a horse? The whole nation mournes a racehorse that has to be put down on the racetrack. It’s that we’ve allowed ourselves to look at it with compassion, as a kindred spirit. Same with dogs and cats, of course.

Americans have distanced themselves as far as possible from the reality of the industry that processes its meat. We don’t want to see any part of the process until the steak shows up in its plastic wrapped tray. The general outcry that greeted the leaked videos of cows being abused at the slaughterhouse is some indication of how insulated we are from the nature of that industry. We enforce that distance from the process because both we and the industry know that our compassion can be a powerful and uncomfortable force.

This is not the same as saying that animals have the same rights as people. It’s saying that it’s our capacity to want to diminish the suffering of other sentient beings that is humanity’s moral compass. To whatever extent we exclude some beings from those feelings of compassion, we confuse that compass.

@Harp, I spent some time in Souteast Asia, where dog and cat are regular menu items. (One of the pet dogs from our compound wound up in the soup pot.) Westerners were appalled and the locals were utterly puzzled by their attitudes. I suppose it’s all a matter of perception.

when I was in high school I worked as cleanup in a processing plant. I still eat meat. I may not agree with it but I also do not hunt or raise my own cattle.

Like both Harp and syz, my dietary choice has been a conscious one, but I sometimes wonder how societies would be if we expended the same amount of effort into the protection of our own species.

My thoughts immediately turn to people who are not afforded basic health care, people with disabilities and mental illnesses, those who should be afforded a level of protection that they cannot provide themselves.

While we do distance ourselves, as Harp states, “as far as possible from the reality of the industry that processes its meat” how can and do we distance ourselves from the homeless person, who looks us right in the eyes?