Would a Vegan Diet End Animal Suffering?

I’ve just seen a comment on the letters page of the Daily Telegraph that suggested animal suffering will be alleviated with the adoption of a vegan diet.

I think the comment displays a noble but very naive desire.
The problem of animal suffering is more related to market forces and factory farming practices than by meat eating.

Humanely raised livestock, given an equally humane end to life results in far less suffering than many creatures experience “in the wild” as part of a natural foodchain.

A universal vegan diet would ultimately thrust those creatures currently raised domestically for food into “the wild”. It is unlikely that millions of these animals, no longer required for food, will be kept as pets or in zoos. What kind of habitat would be given over to them to allow them to roam in freedom and could they survive?

What suffering would they endure and for how long, until they slip to endangered status and eventually to probable extinction?

Veganism is NOT the answer to animal suffering, but being more selective with meat: eating less and choosing meat from animals raised and slaughtered humanely is a step in the right direction.


Black Cow by Petr Kratochvil

Please note, this blog is mostly inactive. I have moved to wordpress. See here:

http://onesimusfiles.wordpress.com/

Comments on this blogspot site will no longer be posted.

October Garden

An October photo of the various garden beds I now have and a description of how they are being used: see the following link.

http://onesimusfiles.wordpress.com/2012/10/03/october-garden/

How Does My Garden Grow?

…Few things are more off-putting than finding boiled caterpillars hiding within the stalks of broccoli on your dinner plate….


Full article here:

http://onesimusfiles.wordpress.com/2012/09/28/how-does-my-garden-grow/

Announcement

I've been concentrating more on my new wordpress blog in recent weeks. At the moment that one is easier for me to access, even though it seems more difficult to use than this one. As I've said before something has changed. I can only access the dashboard of this blog and not the actual blog pages. As a result I can't even add comments or reply to comments.

Most of my posting to the blog is done via a work computer and either blogger have made some changes or the work IT system has been changed. Access to most blogs found on blogger has been blocked, the automated reason given is something called "placeholders". I don't have a clue what that means.

This also means that I can't view other blogs with a blogspot address, so unfortunately, if you have a blog on that system I can't access your blog either. I therefore haven't been able to read some of my favourite blogs for some time.

I'll keep this blog going and will make an occasional entry like this one, but unless the situation changes I'll be posting most things on wordpress from now on. This is the link to that blog:

http://onesimusfiles.wordpress.com/

This "announcement" will also be posted onto my other blogspot sites.

2012

I’ve clearly done very little blogging in recent months, see here for a brief and partial explanation.




http://onefiles.blogspot.com/2012/03/2012-first-months.html

Simon Crean Leadership

It seems I'm not the only one to have my suspicions about Simon Crean.

This morning's Sunrise on channel seven were reporting that he was another potential challenger for the prime ministership, who could step in as an alternative to break the Gillard-Rudd tensions.

I told my family to keep an eye on Crean a couple of weeks ago after a reported snub of Julia Gillard when he failed to show up at a barbecue she had arranged to discuss matters with the party. This was straight after one of his early outbursts against Kevin Rudd.

Then a couple of days ago, after Crean had a series of media appearances blasting Rudd I wrote my previous post suggesting that we keep our eyes on him.

I think it would be unlikely for Crean to make a leadership move now. If he does make a move I think it will be after the next election (which Labor is almost guaranteed to lose). Then he will give himself a better opportunity to establish himself in leadership with the hope of winning the following election to become Prime Minister.

Aussie Politics

Keep your eye on Simon Crean and the way he weighs into the Labor leadership debate. He may be one to benefit from a Government implosion: being a possible candidate for leadership after Labor (most likely) loses the next election.

To some ambitious Labor members losing the next election could give them the opportunity they desire to step forward to attempt leadership - sweeping away past leaders currently embroiled in powerplays, and presenting themselves as the ones to bring back the stability needed to regain power.

For The Dead Men, Lucy Ward

Georgeous voice.
Great song.

No Wiggle Room for Bad Decision.

Australian children’s entertainers the Wiggles may have made the worst business decision of their careers. The recent sacking of yellow Wiggle Sam Moran to make room for his predecessor’s return not only generated their worst ever publicity, they missed out on a perfect opportunity to perpetuate the Wiggle’s brand for years longer.

None of the original members are getting younger – in fact they are noticeably aging, and three of them have experienced serious health issues. Geoff (purple wiggle) and Greg (returning yellow Wiggle) have both had heart problems, while Anthony (blue wiggle) has made no secret about suffering depression. How long can they continue with age and health against them?

Instead of casting Sam aside like a now unneeded maternity-leave relief worker, he could have been the first in an ongoing replacement program. He was well-established and loved by today’s toddling audience, proof that life could go on without the original Wiggle cast, that the brand has grown bigger than its individual (original) cast members.
Recently I read how most of the Wiggles annual multi-million dollar income has little to do with actual performances. Most comes from other sources such as advertising endorsements. With the dismissal of Sam they missed the perfect opportunity to sequentially replace all of the original members, allowing them to move on to other things – or into a comfortably wealthy retirement financed by their shareholdings in the Wiggles brand. They could have left younger men like Sam Moran to continue the hard work of entertaining children.
__________
One thing that seems to have been overlooked with the Yellow Wiggle situation is that Sam seemed to do most of the singing for the group during his time as a wiggle. Whenever I saw them on TV, such as Carols by Candlelight, the other members acted as backing vocalists for Sam the lead singer.

Would Veganism Prevent Animal Suffering?

I’ve just seen a comment on the letters page of the Daily Telegraph suggesting that animal suffering would be alleviated with the widespread adoption of a vegan diet.

I think the comment displays a noble but very naive desire.
The problem of animal suffering is more related to market forces and factory farming practices than by meat eating.

Humanely raised livestock, given an equally humane end to life results in far less suffering than many creatures experience “in the wild” as part of a natural foodchain. Man is only one species of meat eater, and the only one with the potential of reducing the suffering of the animals he eats.

A universal vegan diet would ultimately thrust those creatures currently raised domestically for food into “the wild”. It is unlikely that millions of these animals, no longer required for food, will be kept as pets or in zoos. What kind of habitat would be given over to them to allow them to roam in freedom and could they survive?

What suffering would they endure and for how long, until they slip to endangered status and eventually to probable extinction?

Veganism is NOT the answer to animal suffering, but being more selective with meat: eating less and choosing meat from animals raised and slaughtered humanely is a step in the right direction.


photo credit Black Cow by Petr Kratochvil