@Tamerlane:
I actually checked a couple of animals wellfare webside, and the method they recommended as the most humane, was like you do it - freeze, then boil. So you're on the safe side
Originally posted by Obsidian
I think the point CE is making is that the way we treat animals is wrong as opposed to the eating of them. For example, Cows fed in stalls become so obsese they cannot stand, or chickens who are fed in tiny cages and have thier toes grow around the bars, only to reform, ironically linking the chicken to its prison.
Personaly, I agree with Chanak. The human body is designed to eat meat, and vegetable matter. The process of how we get them should be natural to however, not a process of convience and mass corporations.
@ CE how do you know the plants don't scream when the combine comes for them them?
Obsidian is correct, I am an omnivore and the human body is certainly adapted to an omnivore diet. However, vegans often rise the point that
although we have evolved to omnivores, we now have a choice where we can choose to quit eating meat for moral reasons. I agree that we can, but I haven't made that choice simply because I don't think it is immoral to eat other animals. The immoral thing is to inflict pain and suffering on the creatures we eat, and that's where transportations, caging and methods of killing enter the discussion.
Re plants screaming - maybe they do scream, in a planty fashion, that we can't hear. Like Chanak points out, there is a lot we do not know about plant functioning, and it is a facts that plants can react to far more stimuli than light and heat.
posted by Chanak
This is true of most arthropods, I think. I like to think of them as efficient little organic robots, capable of carrying on even in the face of dismemberment. Such things normally incapacitate a mammal, for I believe that pain is the incapacitating agent. It's possible that the "pain" they feel is localized, and not transmitted throughout their rather simple nervous system.
First, welcome here Chanak
Like you say, arthopods in general have no centralised nervous system like a brain, instead their nervous system consists of several ganglia, ie "lumps" or groups of cells. However, pain is a signal with a survival value, and also a lobster or a spider should feel some sort of discomfort towards for instance fire or dismemberment. As I said, I must ask the people at the sensory & motor lab when I come back to work
I wonder how plants become aware of other stimuli, besides sunlight. They do, in fact, react to a wide range of external factors. The evolution of colorful flowers, alone, is enough to convince me that something's up. Those flowers attract a wide variety of organisms, chiefly insects, that aid them in reproduction.
My guess is that it's a lot of chemical signalling going on in plants, that we don't fully understand. Most likely, a lot of other signalling we don't understand is also going on