191–200 of 215 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
From what I recall, they are seen as normal proteins by the immune system, thus not targeted. A simple illustration on prions was to imagine it like a busted cable end that would break the socket it plugs into, then the socket would break other cable ends plugged into it. This would occur until all sockets and cable ends were broken in the same way.
It's the Zip Drive click of death for your body.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you carefully examined how the dairy industry works? I'm not convinced that a vegetarian diet that includes factory farmed dairy involves much less cruelty than an omnivorous diet. Maybe more, if the omnivore were to avoid factory farmed meat and dairy. That said, I'm not a vegetarian myself, because I don't believe it's in my rational self-interest.
> ...because I don't believe it's in my rational self-interest. Can I politely suggest you uncurl from the solipsistic ball you've tucked yourself into? It's nice out here...
Seriously, there is nothing about adopting a philosophy of rational self interest that implies solipsism. In fact, solipsism can clearly be shown not to be in one's own rational self interest :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you carefully examined how the dairy industry works? I'm not convinced that a vegetarian diet that includes factory farmed dairy involves much less cruelty than an omnivorous diet. Maybe more, if the omnivore were to avoid factory farmed meat and dairy. That said, I'm not a vegetarian myself, because I don't believe it's in my rational self-interest.
There are plenty of forms of vegatarian: lacto-vegetarians that eat dairy, ovo-vegetarians that eat eggs, lacto-ovo-vegetarians that eat both, vegans that eat neither (don't eat any animal products), raw-vegan that only eat raw foods, etc If you believe that factory farmed dairy is just as cruel, then don't consume factory farmed dairy. I don't believe its in my rational self-interest Unless you count the environment…
This might clarify my position a bit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_egoism
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here I am teetering on the edge of vegetarianism, and people are talking about blowing meat chunks off spines to extract that last bit of cash, and workers inhaling aerosolized pig brains. Might be the push I needed!
Once you've killed the animal, don't you owe it to eat as much as possible of it? Isn't it a bigger sin to throw away edible meat for aesthetic reasons?
The question is then one of how you separate the edible part from the inedible part. Given that you can never do this precisely, you're going to end up either playing it too safe and leaving edible meat behind, or going too far and extracting inedible cowbits. Then the question is: is it a bigger sin to run the risk of harming humans, or to leave behind a fraction of a percent of the cow as a safety margin? Thought about in those terms, the edible meat left behind would be used, just not as food.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been vegetarian for a bit over a decade (no fish, but dairy and eggs okay) - If you live in the right area, and have the right tastes, it's downright easy. In other areas, it's quite difficult. My personal tips & notes: * If you otherwise enjoy meat, there are a lot of meat-substitutes out there and more being developed. These tend to do a great job of mimicking processed meats and a terrible job of mimicking "r…
You may not be aware of this, but the dairy and egg industries kill an insane amount of animals. I too was an ethical vegetarian for years before discovering that and reevaluating my dietary ethos.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes fair enough, maximizing what we do with the carcass once the animal is dead is only fair. I guess I was leaning more towards the lengths we've gone to, for something that doesn't make a whole lot of sense in the first place (i.e. we waste more on the animals' inputs than we get out). Although in this case getting parts of the spinal cord/fluid/brain in with sausages also sounds like a hazard.
part of that optimization is also disease prevetion, if we maximize "product" but produce more expenses in the form of diseases, we'd be losing money, not making any. the meat industry is a horror show, tbh, and they don't maximize product extraction because they want to save every last piece of protien, they do it for the cash.
I did a bunch of research (googling) back in the late 90's or 2000s when the mad cow disease outbreak first happened mainly in England. I thought it was pretty terrifying and I wanted to know what the hell was going on. I read about Kuru all the way back then and the take away was that people shouldn't eat the brain and nervous tissue of other people or Kuru could result. But also it seemed that mad cow disease was o…
"Beef brains and veal (juvenile beef) or calf's brains are used in the cuisines of France; Italy; Spain; El Salvador; Mexico, etc. where they are called sesos in Spanish and are eaten in tacos and quesadillas; Pakistan, where they are known in Urdu as Maghaz; Portugal; Indonesia; and in the United States, especially in St. Louis, Missouri, and the Ohio River valley." People do eat cow brains...I have at regular ol' r…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a, for lack of a better term, total vegetarian, do you have any moral thoughts on different types of animals? Was the herbavore vs omnivore vs carnivore thing a consideration? Did you debate mammal protein vs fish? Curious how people arrive at "their" vegetarianism.
Flirted with stints of vegetarianism. Still eat far less meat than "average" and can go many days without meat. I am okay eating animals, they are tasty. They think, they die, they go to my tummy. I try to eat grass fed and "humane" local stuff these days precisely to avoid issues that occur at mass produced meat factories (antibiotic needs, etc.). This makes meat cost more, which makes me eat less. The central reaso…
I'll agree to that. If you have a definition of "thinking/self-aware/conscious/sapient/concept of choice", any given creature either IS or ISN'T. But we can't agree on a definition, and we have no real means to test. So it's a non-subjective fact that we (currently) have only subjective means to determine, and subjective arguments over what we're even talking about.
On the topic of sustainability, I recently learned just how much of the global corn crop goes to feed animals: so much that when people talk about the industry of growing corn, they just talk about animal feed. Corn for human consumption is such a tiny slice of the market it only comes up if you zoom in on certain parts.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nature cares not a whit about "species".
Personification of "nature" is a shorthand. No one actually thinks "nature" is an intelligent entity making independent decisions about the biology of creatures (when people refer to that, they call it "God"). Rather, they mean "Could this be the way that the species' internal biological and evolutionary processes are involved in preventing cannibalism?" Personally, I think "nature's way" is a highly preferable and c…
I did a bunch of research (googling) back in the late 90's or 2000s when the mad cow disease outbreak first happened mainly in England. I thought it was pretty terrifying and I wanted to know what the hell was going on. I read about Kuru all the way back then and the take away was that people shouldn't eat the brain and nervous tissue of other people or Kuru could result. But also it seemed that mad cow disease was o…
"Beef brains and veal (juvenile beef) or calf's brains are used in the cuisines of France; Italy; Spain; El Salvador; Mexico, etc. where they are called sesos in Spanish and are eaten in tacos and quesadillas; Pakistan, where they are known in Urdu as Maghaz; Portugal; Indonesia; and in the United States, especially in St. Louis, Missouri, and the Ohio River valley." People do eat cow brains...I have at regular ol' r…
So, from an uninformed opinion, it could be that the disease develops or builds more rapidly in cases of 'cannibalism' (e.g. humans eating human as here, cow eating cow as in UK, etc), and then once developed can spread more easily across species..
side note:
Having lived >6mo in the UK during a certain period of time, I'm ineligible to be a blood donor in the USA to this day due to the mad-cow outbreak.