Vegan Talk Forums

MomoPeach · Advanced Vegan Talker Joined: 09 Sep 2006 Posts: 80

What about all of the people who work in the meat industry? Or the dairy industry? Or the wool, leather, etc. industry? If no one bought these things tons of families would be left homeless. People could starve. But I'm sure you don't mind a few humans losing their lives as long as a bee gets to keep it's honey or a sheep's wool isn't shorn.

WarChild · Passionated Vegan Talker Joined: 25 Feb 2006 Posts: 193

What about people who build nukes, chemical weapons?

BigBecka · Animal defender Joined: 02 Dec 2006 Posts: 412

Don't be so melodramatic! As more people eat vegetables and vegetable products instead of meat, there will be more demand for vegetables, especially some of the fruits and vegetables that are not currently popular. It often takes more people to harvest a vegetable crop, whilst a couple of people can herd sheep or cattle.

Many farms over here are turning to alternative crops like hemp or linseed, or reviving traditional foodstuffs like legumes.

My experiences in the food packing and processing industry (as a student) were that it really doesn't take a lot of training to press an 'on' button on a machine, take a food product off the conveyor belt and put it in a box, or stack the aforementioned boxes. A sausage-making machine can adequately make a veggie sausage, and a worker in a factory can stack boxes of pretty much anything.

Most people preferred working in the vegetable packing factories to the meat ones. You don't have to work in a refridgerated or freezing room. You don't have to be innoculated against botchulism (for those exciting days when a chicken literally explodes on the line). You don't come home stinking of rotten meat, with blood seeping through your socks.

ChrisCrossCMP · Posted: Feb 2, 2007 8:26 pm Post subject:

*shivers* too many details, BigBecka!

Kinda unrelated: I read that there is an incredible risk of injury when working in a slaughterhouse. Because the workers are always SLITTIN' THROATS with their KNIVES, and people are working so close together, and animals are kicking and thrashing and writhing in pain...must I go on?....there's a great risk of injury.
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AndyBa · Lord of the posts Joined: 27 May 2001 Posts: 670

Wow! BigBecka, ChrisCrossCMP great answers

Learned some interesting things...

Regarding the industry.. currently the IT industry is the most changeable..
people have to learn new things and adapt almost each ear, and no one is trying to stop the IT progress only because there are some people that can't learn fast enough and are in danger of losing their jobs.
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Andy`Ba

The human body has no more need for cows' milk than it does for dogs' milk, horses' milk, or giraffes' milk. ~Michael Klaper, M.D., author of Vegan Nutrition: Pure & Simple

BigBecka · Animal defender Joined: 02 Dec 2006 Posts: 412

Yep, industry's always changing, it's tough to stay on top of technology

I saw a documentary a while ago about how the british countryside has changed over the centuries (I guess the issues apply to other countries too). Whilst people worry now about advances in technology changing farming, the landscape has been changing for thousands of years:
- the introduction of automated farm machinery over the last 100 years (many people were worried that this would leave people unemployed, and lead to working horses dying out)
- increasing use of chemical pesticides and fertilisers, and larger fields, causing hedgerows, dry stone walls, trees and meadowland to be destroyed: the EU has had to intervene
- industrialisation causing people to move to the cities prior to that
- the clearances in Scotland and Ireland (where small-scale farmers were evicted following the potato famine and sent to either workhouses, or the USA, whilst wealthy aristocracy took the land)
- the move from communal medeival open field (strip) farming to enclosed fields, and, around the same time, a shift from farming vegetables and cereals to more profitable sheep farming

There are other factors that would affect other countries: social changes in Africa, the invasion of white people into the Americas (forcing indigenous people onto reserves or poor land), the abolition of slavery in the US, collectivisation in the USSR. Not to mention environmental changes causing famine or insect infestation in areas that were not previously susceptible.

I guess a vegetarian ( and organic?) society would therefore signify a return to traditional farming methods

Crisscross, have you seen the film "Kpax?" I don't have any experience of slaughterhouses, but Kpax is a vegetarian, and there is a pretty vivid description of beef slaughter in the film

AndyBa · Lord of the posts Joined: 27 May 2001 Posts: 670

Indeed, society today is like a horse that is galloping on a path that leads to precipice.

Kpax? hm... what is it about?
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Andy`Ba

The human body has no more need for cows' milk than it does for dogs' milk, horses' milk, or giraffes' milk. ~Michael Klaper, M.D., author of Vegan Nutrition: Pure & Simple

BigBecka · Animal defender Joined: 02 Dec 2006 Posts: 412

Should have written K-Pax - sorry - it's a film with Kevin Spacey & Jeff Bridges, about an individual called Prot who claims to be from the planet K-Pax. Prot is committed to a mental institution where he is treated as delusional, but his doctor struggles to diagnose him with an actual mental illness. I won't spoil the many twists in the film, but I found it thought provoking (an alien's interpretation of human behaviour and society), and really enjoyed it.

http://www.k-pax.com/