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this is a bewildering thread.
first off, i dont understand what is going on with cynthetiq's posts about eating red meat. where are they coming from? who are these Perscuting Others who cause you to get so defensive about your dietary choices?
maybe one reason this thread tripped this particular wire is that it is framed so badly as to make coherent discussion nearly impossible.
the problem is that it raises questions concerning industrial farming as over against--well nothing, actually. eating meat only comes up in the context of some tedious sophistry concerning global warming. and that makes no sense either. this is one of the few threads in which crompsin's tactic of lobbing goofball quips instead of bothering to construct arguments seems appropriate to the content of the op.
you have a host of problems with arise from industrial farming practices.
researching them is easy peasy---you'd think that if you are going to bring this matter up that you'd do at least a little basic research.
for example: the question of whether one "should" eat meat at all is only one way of thinking about this.
you could also juxtapose industrial farming to sustainable, smaller-scale farming, and decide that the problems industrial practices raise can be addressed at the level of consumption by purchasing locally produced, sustainably grown meat and vegetables. you could argue for the latter on the basis of health and on the basis of taste, and on the basis of environmental concerns (monocropping vs. diverse cropping, reliance on chemicals to replentish soil as a result of monocropping vs. other more rational types of field rotation, etc)
in other words, if you do actual research and come to be critical of industrial farming practices, the alternative is NOT simply "dont eat meat at all" but every bit as much "change the types of meat you buy."
this is an indication of the way in which a poorly framed op can open onto ay number of red herring arguments, particularly when the op itself is little more than a red herring itself.
within this, charlatan raises an important question concerning the relation of sustainable practices to scale. you see this debate all over the place--look at john mackey's blog on the whole foods website for a very interesting debate between mackey (ceo of whole foods) and michael pollan (who wrote "the omnivores dilemma") on this. it is an important question. this thread has not done it justice at all.
dietary disclosure: i am mostly a vegetarian but will eat meat on occasion. when i do, i prefer to know at least something about how it is produced as my committment is not so much to being vegetarian as it is to not eating industrial foods, not eating processed foods.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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