Mice: the biggest losers with vegetarianism

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cooran
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Mice: the biggest losers with vegetarianism

Post by cooran »

Hello all,

surprising research: :jawdrop:

Mice: The biggest losers with vegetarianism

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/pro ... sm/4660498

With metta
Chris
---The trouble is that you think you have time---
---Worry is the Interest, paid in advance, on a debt you may never owe---
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tiltbillings
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Re: Mice: the biggest losers with vegetarianism

Post by tiltbillings »

That's what I'm really asking for; just accept the fact that in order for us to survive, other animals are going to die. It has been the way of life in ecosystems long before humans were on the planet. We can't change that, we can't stop death out there.
While that is very true, we can, at least, try to reduce, the damage by our actions.
>> Do you see a man wise [enlightened/ariya] in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.<< -- Proverbs 26:12

This being is bound to samsara, kamma is his means for going beyond. -- SN I, 38.

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plwk
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Re: Mice: the biggest losers with vegetarianism

Post by plwk »

These cute little guys, you can often see them twitching their nose and looking at each other but we didn't realise until somebody listened to them with an ultrasonic recorder that they are actually singing.
Like this? :tongue:
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purple planet
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Re: Mice: the biggest losers with vegetarianism

Post by purple planet »

As reading the comments there a few points from them :

animals who are produced for meat eat grain also - lots of the grain grown today goes to animals

animals that are produced for meat milk and eggs suffer there whole life from bad conditions and if not bad at least not good - mice even if they die a slow death they still live free and happy
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manas
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Re: Mice: the biggest losers with vegetarianism

Post by manas »

if.only.people.stopped.taking.vast.quantities.of.that.grain
and.feeding.it.to.cattle.who.are.kept.in.cramped.conditions
and.then.cruelly.slaughtered,then.maybe.we.would.not
have.to.grow.quite.so.much.grain.in.the.first.place,thus
sparing.many.mice.from.getting.killed.as.well.

metta
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To the Buddha-refuge i go; to the Dhamma-refuge i go; to the Sangha-refuge i go.
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Kare
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Re: Mice: the biggest losers with vegetarianism

Post by Kare »

plwk wrote:These cute little guys, you can often see them twitching their nose and looking at each other but we didn't realise until somebody listened to them with an ultrasonic recorder that they are actually singing.
Like this? :tongue:
Or like this?

Mettāya,
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DNS
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Re: Mice: the biggest losers with vegetarianism

Post by DNS »

The author's bias against a vegetarian diet is evident:
We are omnivores, we need those nutrients.
Not true. Hundreds of millions of people live off a completely vegetarian and vegan diet and are very healthy.
The rest of us eat a bit of meat and a bit of plant material. After all, that is our heritage. We come out of a noble line of omnivores.
"Heritage"? So was slavery; not saying slavery is the same as meat, just that justifying something because it is culture or "heritage" is meaningless and certainly not something expected from a professor. "Noble"? Again, very inappropriate.
purple planet wrote:As reading the comments there a few points from them :
animals who are produced for meat eat grain also - lots of the grain grown today goes to animals
animals that are produced for meat milk and eggs suffer there whole life from bad conditions and if not bad at least not good - mice even if they die a slow death they still live free and happy
Correct; the argument the author makes is a very old one. A vegetarian diet causes the unintended consequence of killing to numerous insects and small animals. This is due to the plant-based agriculture to produce grains. The meat based diet causes these killings too. The animals are fed grain for years; so there is this same amount of killing plus the large animal that was fed for consumption. The best we can do is limit the amount of suffering and killing to the lowest degree. But he is correct that neither diet is completely pure and free of killing.
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Lazy_eye
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Re: Mice: the biggest losers with vegetarianism

Post by Lazy_eye »

One possible alternative is to eat meat but buy it from small-scale, independent farms that are making an effort to provide a better quality of life for their animals and avoid environmentally destructive practices.

This is not a perfect answer either, but it may be that we have to choose from among various imperfect ones.
Spiny Norman
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Re: Mice: the biggest losers with vegetarianism

Post by Spiny Norman »

David N. Snyder wrote:Correct; the argument the author makes is a very old one. A vegetarian diet causes the unintended consequence of killing to numerous insects and small animals. This is due to the plant-based agriculture to produce grains. The meat based diet causes these killings too. The animals are fed grain for years; so there is this same amount of killing plus the large animal that was fed for consumption. The best we can do is limit the amount of suffering and killing to the lowest degree. But he is correct that neither diet is completely pure and free of killing.
I agree, and IMO the argument being made by this athor is a classic straw-man to justify meat-eating. Feeding people grain is much more efficient than feeding the grain to animals and then eating them, which means to eat meat one needs to grow much more grain and therefore kill many more mice, insects etc.
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chownah
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Re: Mice: the biggest losers with vegetarianism

Post by chownah »

The best way to eliminate the suffering and death to animals is to stop their births......we are a long way along this path already as seen by the environmental destruction which happens every day....if you like nature then you like the suffering and death of animals as this is nature's creation, not a human creation.
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Buckwheat
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Re: Mice: the biggest losers with vegetarianism

Post by Buckwheat »

David N. Snyder wrote:Correct; the argument the author makes is a very old one. A vegetarian diet causes the unintended consequence of killing to numerous insects and small animals. This is due to the plant-based agriculture to produce grains. The meat based diet causes these killings too. The animals are fed grain for years; so there is this same amount of killing plus the large animal that was fed for consumption. The best we can do is limit the amount of suffering and killing to the lowest degree. But he is correct that neither diet is completely pure and free of killing.
There is a little more nuance to this than first meets the eye. For instance, where I live the soil is so terrible that we can't grow most crops. However, we do have a layer of natural grasses that are able to feed cattle. Since these cattle are not feeding off an agriculturally raised feed, there are no mouse genocides. Many places that raise cattle do so because they can't grow anything else. It's one of the benefits of their four-chambered stomachs that they can turn otherwise non-agriculural land into productive land.

On the other hand, often these natural grass diets are often supplemented with agriculturally raised grains, especially just before slaughter. And when animals are fed entirely on agriculturally raised grains, the amount of grain that goes into a serving of steak is something like 40 servings of grains, a horribly inefficient ratio involving many more mouse deaths than when we just eat the grain ourselves.

My primary reason for reducing my meat intake is health and environment, which this article never attempted to address.
Sotthī hontu nirantaraṃ - May you forever be well.
5heaps
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Re: Mice: the biggest losers with vegetarianism

Post by 5heaps »

please accept this "stupidest sh-t i've read all day" award
A Japanese man has been arrested on suspicion of writing a computer virus that destroys and replaces files on a victim PC with manga images of squid, octopuses and sea urchins. Masato Nakatsuji, 27, of Izumisano, Osaka Prefecture, was quoted as telling police: "I wanted to see how much my computer programming skills had improved since the last time I was arrested."
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