I am not a vegetarian, but after seeing this I may change my mind...

...new PETA video:

http://www.petatv.com/tvpopup/video.asp?video=agri_short&Player=wm&speed=_med

that is painful to the eyes. Seriously...

At the IBP plant in Columbus Junction, I about :puke: when I found out they place a cow in a small enclosure, and a huge iron? piston comes down, and beans them on the head. At that point they may or may not be dead when they slit their throats. :cry:

Killing an animal is not a pretty thing at all. If you can't take responsibility for that, then don't eat meat.

I grew up with a grandmother who kept chickens in the back yard. I remember seeing a newly killed chicken on the clothesline, dripping into the garden. She'd wring first, then decapitate when the twitching stopped. Very tidy. Sunday dinners were delicious.

It's amazing how many people don't associate what comes in the supermarket in tidy styrofoam and cellophane packages with the death and then dismemberment of a living, feeling creature.

I'm mostly vegetarian, eat an occasional piece of free range chicken or range fed, organic beef to remind myself that fanaticism is worse for me than meat is.

I just know where it comes from.

responsibility for that, then don't eat meat."

That about sums it up. I realized about three decades I could never bring myself to kill even a chicken, so I stopped eating anything I couldn't kill.

The stunning is used to make the animal senseless. The animal is killed through exsanguination. In order for almost all of the blood to be removed, the heart has to keep on pumping.

It's really quite easy to transition, so to speak.

Bear in mind, this is a video of few instances. This happens all the time at processing/slaughterhouses.

Geeze

without thinking of those cows stumbling around. I guess I'll have to get my protein from fish from now on. This is not sarcasm, that video just f@#$ed me up

Oh my god. OH MY GOD. And how do they dare to tell us that the animals are being slaughtered in a humane way...!And anyways, is there a humane way to SLAUGHTER (!) anything or anyone?

...this is Kosher processing, I hope standard processing is better.

Your regular supermarket or fast food hamburger probably came from a cow that was killed instantly by a piston-gun (and if not killed instantly, rendered completely senseless).

The Jewish Kosher tradition requires that the animals be killed by slitting their throats and, as you can see in the video, it appears to be far more brutal.

IIRC the rules for Halal slaughter are virtually identical.

a stunning device. If you really believe that US meat processing factories are remotely humane, The Washington Post did an excellent piece a couple years ago, called "The Die Piece by Piece" of which I'll bet you could Google up a copy.

I would imagine an animal would be a little bit more than stunned when a 12" steel spike is rammed into it's brain.

If the captive bolt gun doesn't hit in the right place (and there is little room for error) it doesn't kill the cow or pig. They are stunned yes but they still feel pain and they still are aware they are being killed. There are many slaughter houses that "dip" pigs into scalding hot water to take the hair off them that are still alive and still kicking and screaming when they come out of the tanks.

Factory farming is not a pretty practice.

I'm showing my ignorance of factory farming, thanks for the info. I guess growing up on a family farm makes it hard for me to understand how someone can do things like this to their animals. We raised animals for slaughter, but mainly to small, locally-owned plants that at least had the decency to use a .22 rifle to the head to make sure they were dead before butchering.

The animal needs to have a beating heart for exsanguination to occur properly.

You WILL stop eating beef.

Torn from the precious earth then dismembered alive! THE HORROR! Of course we know our friends in the animal kingdom are far more caring and gentle while they devour each other.

We, however, do not. If the entire world converted to vegetarianism today, there would be no world hunger problem. Do you have any idea how inefficient it is to be a meat eating society?

I don't think I can ever look at beef again. That's aboslutely horrible. I never thought that I would want to stop eating meat. This is probably enough to do it. I'm going to have to show this to my husband.

In 1997 I stopped eating pork, because pigs are as intelligent as dogs and I thought it wrong to raise them for meat.

In 2000 I stopped eating beef, because frankly I don't trust my government to keep the mad-cow-disease out of this country!

I still do eat fish and poultry, and along with tofu and beans have been doing just fine. If you are going to eat a lot of fish, you should know that wild fish are healthier for you than farm-raised, because they feed the farm raised fish with chopped up "waste" fish that often are high in mercury. The larger the fish, the higher on the food chain it is, and the more mercury. Yellow-fin Tuna has more than salmon, for example.

This diet also has the advantage of being lower in saturated fat, which is linked to heart disease. You just need to make sure you aren't substituting a lot of high-fat cheeses for your red meat.

seeing the video. Maybe more meat eaters should see it, though. It will make them think again before they bite into that steak or hamburger.

I know the cow was treated well and died quickly.

Just to be clear, what you are seeing is a improper Kosher slaughter. I'm not Jewish, but I'm quite sure this isn't (gad, a horrid pun) kosher.

Many of the world's massive environmental problems could be solved by the reduction or elimination of meat-eating, including global warming, loss of topsoil, loss of rain forests and species extinction.

The temperature of the earth is rising. This global warming, known as "the greenhouse effect," results primarily from carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels, such as oil and natural gas. Three times more fossil fuels must be burned to produce a meat-centered diet than for a meat-free diet. If people stopped eating meat, the threat of higher world temperatures would be vastly diminished.

Trees, and especially the old-growth forests, are essential to the survival of the planet. Their destruction is a major cause of global warming and top soil loss. Both of these effects lead to diminished food production. Meat-eating is the number one driving force for the destruction of these forests. Two-hundred and sixty million acres of U.S. forest land has been cleared for cropland to produce the meat-centered diet. Fifty-five square feet of tropical rain forest is consumed to produce every quarter-pound of rain forest beef. An alarming 75%of all U.S. topsoil has been lost to date. Eighty-five percent of this loss is directly related to livestock raising......

much more at link...
https://www.organichealthandbeauty.com/whyeatvegetarian.html

...that not only do factory farms pollute, the amount of energy needed to roast one beef patty is enough to power a small car for 20 miles.