Disclaimer:

Disclaimer: If you are easily offended by sheer honesty, or you think me having my own opinions is "being negative", then this is not the place for you, and I suggest you leave and head elsewhere. I call a spade a spade, and I don't sugarcoat anything.

Saturday, May 11, 2013

Why I Refuse to Go Vegan

I thought it would be a great idea to talk about why I refuse to go vegan. I have some vegan friends on (and off) Facebook, and they are always giving their reasons why they want everyone to go vegan. They say things like "eating meat and drinking milk is not a personal choice, it promotes cruelty". Well, they see things differently than I do. As a writer and an artist, it's in my nature not to see things the way other people do. I look at things in totally different prospective. For one thing, I don't listen to corporations like PETA, ALF or Gary Yourofsky. That's because I know they're biased. I don't listen to biased people. They want the world to stop eating animals, so they will say any stupid thing to get us to listen. It's no different than a car sales man trying to sell a car on it's last wheel to an unsuspecting buyer by saying "this can be very easily fixed with a few turns with a screwdriver".

Another thing, the vegans try to make animals sound like they are in the same class as humans. Most animals are not. Especially animals that we eat. Cattle, pigs, chickens, etc. They don't feel emotions the same way people do. I know, I've been watching nature shows for years. I saw a video the other day, purely out of curiosity. It was about a leopard in Sri Lanka attacking a small herd of wild pigs. The leopard took a baby pig. While the mother did try to defend the baby, the leopard got away with the little pig. After the leopard was gone with the baby, the mother went back to the herd and carried on as if nothing ever happened. She did not stand there and mourn her baby. After her baby was gone, it was like it never happened. This proved to me that animals do not have emotions like humans do. Because if that was a person and it's baby had been killed by a leopard, the mom would have been in mourning for days, and even years.

Vegans say animals feel just like humans do. That is untrue. Maybe dogs and cats do, but not pigs, cattle and chickens. Those animals are designed to live only in the moment. They do not reflect back on things that happened in their past. They don't look foreword to their future. They don't have hopes and dreams like people do. I'm not saying that because these animals don't have hopes and dreams that they don't deserve to live any more than we do. I'm just saying that we should not be made to feel guilty about eating them because vegans think these animals are emotionally on the same level as humans, when in fact they are not. Vegans call people like me hypocrites. Well, I call them ridiculous. I think some of them have been watching too many cartoons and reading too many children's books that put animals on the same level as humans.

I even hear vegans trashing zoos, when I've heard all my life that zoos do a lot of good for animals. Vegans call zoos "glorified prisons for animals". I can see them bashing circuses, I've never been to a circus in my life and I never intend to go to one. I know circuses abuse animals. I saw a story about that a long time ago on Hard Copy. I could not believe my eyes. But that was Hard Copy. That had nothing to do with like PETA, or any other animal-hippie activists. That's why even I bash circuses. But zoos, I've never heard of them doing bad. I have heard of some bad zoos, but most vegans get their ideas from PETA. One of my friends posted a pic of a polar bear in a zoo, and the pic was from PETA, and it was made to look like the bear was crammed in a small cage. I would not be surprised if PETA took that pic and made it look like it was in a cramped cage to get people to feel sorry for it. The compound it was in was probably huge. Most zoos I've been to house their animals quite appropriately. Though in some countries, like China, they treat animals far differently than we in the USA do. I would believe a polar bear would be in a cramped cage there. Not here though. Unless it was a private collection, where the owner doesn't know the standards of keeping an animal like that. The point is that groups like PETA and the HSUS and other animal activist groups don't tell you the whole truth. They only tell you what they want you to hear.

I told the people on this one thread that I thank GOD for animal breeding facilities. One person said if I want to see wild animals, then watch them on nature shows. Well, I usually do. I'm not downing nature shows. But it's one thing to see my favorite animals in nature shows, and another to see them in real life. I love watching lemurs race around with each other in real life, even if it is in cages. The sight of them is phenomenal! It's not like seeing them on TV. Besides, on nature shows, you're really at the mercy of the cameraman and editors. I once watched a nature show I thought was going to be about antelope. That's what the advertisement said! And what do they show more of? Panthers! Panthers chasing antelope. It SUCKED!!!! If I'd have wanted to see panthers, I would have watched a nature show promoting panthers! Which I usually don't do! When I am at a zoo, I don't even look at any of the panthers. Not even so much as a glance. I skip right past them, and go on to the next display. But I do thank GOD for captive breeding programs and zoos. Because I don't want to see lemurs disappear from the planet forever. It would be a sucky planet if they did.

Personally, I don't see zoos as being any more cruel than nursing homes, and that is what I told this person. That's how I see them. And I would wager you that animals in zoos are treated more kindly than a lot of people in nursing homes are treated. You see zoos with dolphins and killer whales doing tricks, well, dolphins and killer whales like to have their minds stimulated. It would be worse if they were in their tanks with nothing to do. There is a place, I cannot remember where it is, I think in Australia, but I saw it on TV the other night. The dolphins actually come into the lagoon to interact with people and do tricks, and they love it. The dolphins are free to come and go out into the ocean, but they choose not to, because they love doing tricks and interacting with the visitors. This tells me that PETA was wrong about imprisoning dolphins and "forcing" them to do tricks is wrong. One killer whale has an overabundance of testosterone, and kills a couple of trainers, and all of a sudden PETA is saying the killer whale was "getting even" with it's human captors for keeping him out of his home.

I don't deny that sometimes killer whales act out of anger. I once read an article where a bull killer whale attacked an adult male elephant seal for what the witnesses believed was no reason at all. Didn't eat the seal, just attacked and killed him. It's a terrible thing to watch, but it happens. I don't believe it was for no reason though. It could have been a territorial thing because the whale had his wife with him, and she didn't do any attacking on the seal. Anyway, this is why I refer to every argument the vegans have as to why we should all go vegan as being nothing but propaganda. Because that's all it is to me. They also say eating meat makes you fat. Well, that's not true either. My grandma's great aunt ate meat, every day of her life. Back in those days, you didn't have a meal without meat. She lived to be over 100 years old, and was healthy all the way. I think my grandma must have been the first vegan the world has ever known. When she was little, she never wanted to eat meat, or drink milk. All she ever wanted was rice, and baby lima beans. If she wanted a drink, she drank water. If she wanted a snack, she ate apples. But she experienced a lot of problems because of her diet. And even though she was never fat, she did suffer from pernicious anemia, which her doctor said was from not eating meat; and type 2 diabetes, even though the vegans say you cannot get diabetes if you are a vegan. Grandma was not born with either of these conditions. They came on gradually.

The vegans have argued with me that you cannot get pernicious anemia from not eating meat. But none of them are doctors, and probably have not yet experienced pernicious anemia in anyone before. My grandma got it, and that is good enough evidence for me. It's one of the biggest reasons why I refuse to go vegan. I still let the vegans have their way, they have a right to their beliefs and opinions. But when they argue with me that eating meat and drinking milk is not "personal choice", that it is "cruelty", sorry. I cannot see things the way they do. I see things my own way. The way nature intended.

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