Is it wrong to kill cute animals, for food and clothing?

[Caydr]

You can probably guess what this is about. The EU recently approved a ban on seal products from Canada, due to the mortifying power of ignorant soccer-, sorry, football-moms forwarding emails of the horrific seal hunt.

I wouldn't really care too much about this, normally. To be perfectly honest, if we were living in a world where the realities of the modern farming industry didn't exist, I would be all for a seal ban too.

But reasonably, if you're going to ban seal products because these animals, which are allowed to live their natural lives in the wild, get killed by some quick blunt force trauma to the head, shouldn't virtually the entire meat industry be banned? How about chickens, which are basically tormented from birth and kept in a 1x1 cage until it's time to add a dash of seasoning and put them out of their misery?

There's a perception about the word "club" that brings to mind barbarians and uncivilized... conduct. But if it's the most effective tool for quickly and painlessly killing an animal, what better tool to use? If someone hits you full-on in the skull with a club, are you going to wake up? How about if they hit you not once, but the legally required 3 times? And although it's not enforced as strongly as it should perhaps be, even after this the hunters are supposed to make sure that the brain has been virtually liquefied before they start skinning the animal.

It's not like they just run up to the animal and start wildly swinging. The most valuable part of the animal is its hide, which hunters want to minimize the damage to. This is part of the reason guns aren't used universally. The other part of the reason guns aren't used much of the time is that when you shoot the seal, then you have to catch up to it and - get this - club it in the head! What do you expect, that they're going to administer a powerful sedative and slowly rock it to sleep, crying tears of shame and remorse for killing such a cute lil' fella? It's called hunting. It's pretty common. Get used to it. You kill the animal, rip it apart, and sell its bits to the highest bidder. You might have heard of fishing, where the same thing happens, but fish are all icky and scaly so nobody cares.

Does it always go well? No, sometimes the hunter misses. Sometimes the animal suffers terribly. Is the hunter a sadistic torturer, doing it just for fun and to entertain crowds like in bullfighting? No, that would be inhumane and disgusting.

Do you realize the horrors that go on in commercial farms? Compared to that, seals have it good. They're not an endangered species, they're actually very responsibly managed.

This is the truth here: some people have to make a living doing things that the rest of us would rather pay other people to do rather than do it ourselves. We're soft creatures that would rather not see the animal we're about to eat. We turn up our nose at the Chinese eating cat and dog because to us, cats and dogs are precious friends, if not family.

But to ban hunting an animal just because it's cute is to try to impose your values on another culture. The Inuit have been doing this for over four thousand years.(of total war) Not all the hunters are Inuit, but isn't it silly to say that if you're not born in location X it is morally reprehensible to hunt a certain animal?

But if you're going to ban seal, ban all the other meat from animals that don't volunteer to be eaten.

[HectorMeyer]

I agree.

Eating meat, yet alone imprisoning animals for the sole purpose of killing and selling them for 2.99 is absolutely against my moral and ethical values. I want to see that asshole who says: "Well, yeah, I have no issues with that, come on it's not that bad".

Another perspective on this though is that humans do this since thousands of years, the human brain couldn't have developed without animal proteins. Furthermore, animals eat each other too since millions of years.

So, from a "cultural" point of view eating meat is acceptable and I still do it today. But it's still a purely cultural, not natural thing. Killing each other is not an inherently natural property of life, it's just a little "mistake" which can be overcome.

I am convinced, that in the long term, humanity definitely has to put an end to this.

Maybe a ban on meat, if worldwide enforced, is the right thing to do, but I don't think we will see this in the near future.

[zwzsg]

I'm pretty sure cows as a specie would be extinct nowadays if they weren't farmed for meat.

[Caydr]

Cows have survived for quite some time, actually.

I don't care if you're vegetarian or a meat-eater. I eat meat. It's tasty. I wouldn't eat cat, because I would think of all the cats I've known, and how they are all fluffy and fuzzy and cute and cuddly and "awwww", and I'd probably puke.

But just because I personally wouldn't eat cats, I'm not going to impose my opinion on the Chinese as a whole and say "No! That is bad! They are fluffy! No fluffy for you!"

[RogerN]

Don't feel too badly for seals. After all, many of them eat penguins... and I doubt that the seals have the decency to club penguins over the head before taking a bite.

Oh, and Seal Clubber is my favorite class in Kingdom of Loathing.

[Caydr]

My niece once bought this seal plushie-toy-doll-thing. She would've been... eightish.

I got her to name it "Club".

"Club the seal".

I'm a terrible human being. Oh well.

[smoth]

Post subject: Is it fun to kill cute animals, for amusement and recreation?

-fixed

[lurker]

To be clear, there is no scarcity of seals, and the only issue is humaneness as you implied?

[Caydr]

Unless I'm living under some kind of unprecedented government seal-media blackout, the seal population is doing quite well yes. Estimates place their numbers between 5 and 8 million, which is much higher than in the last couple of decades. They're thriving.

Post subject: Is it fun to kill cute animals, for amusement and recreation?

-fixed

No, you want the bullfighting thread.

[zwzsg]

Cows have survived for quite some time, actually.

Only the cows that human bred to feed on. Where have all the wild cows gone?

[Gota]

My niece once bought this seal plushie-toy-doll-thing. She would've been... eightish.

I got her to name it "Club".

"Club the seal".

I'm a terrible human being. Oh well.

haha.
That is evil.

Start from game hunters...
There are people who kill animals purely for fun.

[[TS]Lollocide]

This shit is one of the thousand reasons why women shouldn't be able to vote, irrational emotional outbursts about shit they have no idea about.

Also, fuck self-righteous vegetarian's too.

Now where's my steak.

[zwzsg]

There are people who kill animals purely for fun.

Cats do that too. Yet, it is legaly wrong to kill cats for food. And anon declared it wrong to hurt dusty for lulz. Now where's your logic?

[smoth]

No, you want the bullf***ing thread.

:3

When I was in salsburg(sp) there was this truck talking about how cattle are treated before slaughter. I stopped and told them all of this cow talk was making me hungry and then headed to the mcdonalds.

[Argh]

Where have all the wild cows gone?

They lurk on the WoW forums, duh.

[Jazcash]

WE ARE SPRING. AND WE FUCKING LOVE CATS.

[smoth]

WE ARE SPRING. AND WE FUCKING LOVE CATS.

=_= newfag...

[JohannesH]

I'm pretty sure cows as a specie would be extinct nowadays if they weren't farmed for meat.

Would the original cows mind if that happened? Instead cows are being bred into steroid monsters with humongous tits, does that make the cow ancestors happy either hmm?

[smoth]

there were human breeding programs, they produced greatly athletic stock. I love basketball.

[AF]

Media would be why, and you'll be glad to know chickens are being put under the same treatment too witht he whole thing about pigs in cages and chicken farms. God forbid that these cages actually protect pigs form sitting on and eating their young or that turkeys and chickens dont knwo water kills them and they can drown in the rain outside.