Perhaps I'm needlessly sensitive but I don't respond well to hostility.
Well, you came to the wrong message board. Everyone on here is an asshole, it's actually a step below 4chan in that regards. My excuse is that I'm just trying to keep up with the natives.
But relax, Mr. Wookie, it's only the Internet, and I actually admire your cajones for standing up to socialist anthropocentrism. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to willingly submit to some sort of envisioned eco-dictatorship where humans and Wookies are banned from hunting for meat and practicing animal husbandry to prevent the alleged "suffering" of animals. (In truth, predation is actually important to the collective health of herbivorous animals. I have had white-tail dear actually come up to my trailer and bang against it with their hooves and antlers in attempt to provoke me into hunting them.)
I can't speak for your particular case, but I will say that a vegan diet does not automatically make one healthy. It must be well planned. A vegan merely consuming potato chips and Dr. Pepper--not suggesting you were--is not going to be the model of fitness. That said, there's a growing consensus among dietary experts that giving up meat, at least, is good for one's health.
I personally was not a potato chip and Dr. Pepper vegan. I was a new age health-food nut who was into "cleansing" and fasting, organic produce, omega-3s, etc.
I'm by no means a medical expert but I've found from personal experience that people with thin, frail constitutions (a condition referred to as vatta dosha in Vedic medicine) such as myself have extreme difficulty with digesting legumes in quantities required to obtain sufficient protein. I sure as hell tried and all it resulted in was indigestion and anemia. If you can manage a vegan diet, good for you, that's your personal freedom, but you can pry my organic beef jerkey from my cold dead hands.
And "dietary experts" are nothing but a bunch of totalitarians who want the nanny state to regulate what individuals choose to eat. (And they're certainly not all vegans. Read Sally Fannon)
all food does not necessarily have to be grown locally.
How can you reconcile the fact that dependence upon industrial mass-transportation and mass-distribution for subsistence actually results in more pain and suffering than the localized practice of hunting and animal husbandry? (Note: I am not trying to create some dogma where all food needs to be grown locally, however independence from the capitalist mode of production will require some degree of localism, whereas if someone living in Tibet was trying to be a vegan, she would basically have to accept the complete globalization and colonialism of her homeland to do so)
Merely appealing to tradition is not a compelling argument--at least to me.
To be fair I'm appealing to cosmology here, not "tradition". Even if you are unconcerned with plants or don't view them as living conscious beings, you should note that you are still harming microscopic animals by talking, walking around, etc.
Evidence, please.
See my link-dump....
Lets define our terms. By "animal liberation" are you referring specifically to the utilitarianism of Peter Singer?
No, I'm referring to a general tendency of opposing the capitalist commodification of our animal comrades, and respecting their general right to autonomy and liberty as we would a fellow human being.
ESPN Outdoors states
Not exactly statisticians or sociology experts, you must admit
"The average hunter today is a middle-class, white male in his mid-40s who lives in a suburban area, has some post-secondary education and makes about $50,000 a year, or more."
Cute, but "middle-class" is a bourgeois-sociologist category with no basis in economic reality. (Hence why it is being used by hackish mass-media outlets such as ESPN) This hypothetical person described by our friends at ESPN is in fact firmly in the working-class, albeit perhaps the labor aristocracy.
Either way, in Appalachia, where I live, that's certainly untrue. Most deer-hunters around here tend to be among the most economically and socially marginalized segments of the rural working-class who hunt mostly out of economic survival.
Furthermore...Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences states “The average expenditure nationally on deer-hunting licenses, hunting equipment, food, travel, and lodging is about $1,500 for each deer harvested.”
Here in Virginia, most hunters don't bother with licenses, fancy hunting equipment, or lodging....as for food and travel, it seems to me that they would be spending the same money on food and travel regardless of if they chose to hunt or not....remember what Disraeli said about statistics.
Not true. Read above. Also here: http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SavingandDebt/SaveMoney/GoVegetarianToSaveMoney.aspx
As I've said, most people cannot properly obtain most of their protein from legumes which is essentially what that article is suggesting. (Again MSN is not exactly a source of authority)
I will not defend PETA
At the same time you are taking the same position as PETA...you view the actions of the working-class in Appalachia who choose to hunt white-tail deer as some sort of abuse against the animal world.
Local historical context: when this region was colonized by European settlers, systematic over-hunting exterminated all the indigenous white-tail deer along with the large predatory mammals such as pumas, wolves, and black bears. Later, around the late 19th/early 20th century the capitalists chose to import white-tail deer to the east coast from out west, not out of any concern for the restoration of the indigenous ecology, but for sheer economic motivations. Obviously they did not choose to import any of the deers' natural predators. (pumas, wolves, bears, etc.) Although the bear population has rebounded and many claim there is still an eastern puma population, (if there is it is probably about less than a dozen throughout the whole southern appalachians, for more information I recommend C. Bolgiano's The Eastern Cougar) due to total lack of natural predators there is now an obscene overpopulation of white-tail deer in Appalachia. (We're talking going from zero to millions)
At the same time we have hunting seasons, (which are nothing more than another example of totalitarian state-draconianism) luxury tourist resorts which claim to be "green" because they outlaw deer-hunting, (I'm specifically referring to nearby Massanutten mountain) state-parks such as Shenandoah National Park which are littered with propaganda about the alleged ecological horrors of dear-hunting, (when in fact the parks are over-infested with deer, and the entire park-system in the Blue Ridge Mountains was founded on the forced relocation and cultural genocide of indigenous Appalachians anyway) and a liberal Democrat mayor of Harrisonburg VA who opposes urban deer-hunting allegedly out of "safety", but in truth out of concern for the sensibilities of his petit-bourgeois suburban constituents alongside the typical reasons that politicians support efforts to disarm the masses.
The indigenous people of Virginia, the Algonquians, did, from what I understand, view animals as people. However, they also viewed trees as people, and that didn't necessarily stop them from hunting or harvesting lumber when they needed or wanted to. Similarly, they did practice cannibalism as a funerary rite, (albeit to less of a degree as claimed by the malicious propaganda of colonial oppressors) so I think it's false to view a worldview which, contrary to capitalism, respects the personhood of beasts, as holding vegetarianism as a requisite.
Even the Kadar, who had no hunting weapons and lived
mainly on wild yams, occasionally used their digging sticks to kill
small animals for food. Hunting methods could be cruel. Mbuti
pygmies would stab an elephant in the belly with a poisoned
spear; the animal would then die of peritonitis (inflammation of
the abdominal lining) during the next 24 hours[258]. The Bushmen
shot game with poisoned arrows, and the animals died slowly
over a period that could be as long as three days[259]. Prehistoric
hunter-gatherers slaughtered animals on a mass basis by driving
herds over cliffs or bluffs[260]. The process was fairly gruesome
and presumably was painful to the animals, since some of
them were not killed outright by their fall but only disabled. The
Indian Wooden Leg said: “I have helped in the chasing of antelope
bands over a cliff. Many of them were killed or got broken legs.
We clubbed to death the injured ones”[261]. This is not exactly the
kind of thing that appeals to animal-rights activists.
Anarchoprimitivists may want to claim that hunter-gatherers
inflicted suffering on animals only to the extent that they had to
do so in order to get meat. But this is not true. A good deal of
hunter-gatherers’ cruelty was gratuitous. In The Forest People,
Turnbull reported:
“The youngster had speared [the sindula] with his first thrust,
pinning the animal to the ground through the fleshy part of
the stomach. But the animal was still very much alive, fighting
for freedom. Maipe put another spear into its neck, but it still
writhed and fought. Not until a third spear pierced its heart did
it give up the struggle...
“The pygmies stood around in an excited group, pointing at
the dying animal and laughing. One boy, about nine years old,
threw himself on the ground and curled up in a grotesque heap
and imitated the sindula’s last convulsions...
“At other times I have seen Pygmies singeing feathers off birds
that were still alive, explaining that the meat is more tender if
death comes slowly. And the hunting dogs, valuable as they are,
get kicked around mercilessly from the day they are born to the
day they die”[262].
A few years later, in Wayward Servants, Turnbull wrote: “The
moment of killing is best described as a moment of intense
compassion and reverence. The fun that is sometimes subsequently
made of the dead animal, particularly by the youths,
appears to be almost a nervous reaction, and there is an element
of fear in their behavior. On the other hand, a bird caught alive
may deliberately be toyed with, its feathers singed off over the
fire while it is still fluttering and squawking until it is finally
burned or suffocated to death. This again is usually done by
the youths who take the same nervous pleasure in the act; very
rarely a young hunter may absent-mindedly [!?] do the same
thing. Older hunters and elders generally disapprove, but do not
interfere.”; “The respect seems to be not for animal life but for
the game as a gift of the forest...”[263].
This does not seem entirely consistent with what Turnbull
reported earlier in The Forest People. Maybe Turnbull was
already beginning to swing toward political correctness when he
wrote Wayward Servants. But even if we take the statements of
Wayward Servants at face value, the fact remains that the Mbuti
did treat animals with unnecessary cruelty, whether or not they
felt “compassion and reverence” for them.
If the Mbuti did have compassion for animals, they were probably
exceptional in that regard. Hunter-gatherers seem typically
to be callous toward animals. The Eskimos with whom Gontran
de Poncins lived kicked and beat their dogs brutally[264]. The Siriono
sometimes captured young animals alive and brought them
back to camp, but they gave them nothing to eat, and the animals
were treated so roughly by the children that they soon died[265].
It should be noted that many hunting-and-gathering peoples
did have a sense of reverence for or closeness to wild animals.
I’ve already quoted Colin Turnbull’s statement to that effect in
the case of the Mbuti. Coon states that “it is virtually a standard
rule among hunters that they should never mock or otherwise
insult any wild creature whose life they have brought to an
end”[266]. (As the passages I’ve quoted from Turnbull show, there
were exceptions to this “standard rule”.) Venturing into speculation,
Coon adds that “hunters sense the unity of nature and the
combination of humility and responsibility of their role in it”[267].
Wissler describes the closeness to and reverence toward nature
(including wild animals) of the North Arnerican Indians[268].
Holmberg mentions the Siriono’s “bonds” and “kinship” with the
animal world[269]. But, as we’ve already seen, these “bonds” and
this “kinship” did not prevent physical cruelty to animals.
Can comment on articles and discussions
I suppose you only accept facts when they're convenient?