Ominivore vs. Vegan Article

Imagine learning about a certain subject for years. You are not in school learning this subject; you learn because the information is all around you. You've heard it so many times that it seems as if it should be common knowledge; however, it's not. For me, the subject is vegetarianism. Every vegetarian has heard, "Where do you get your protein?" How old is that line? All food contains protein!

Anyway, the point is that I read an article in Energy Times magazine (click on the title of this post for the article). The vegan verses omnivore debate wasn't what really bothered me. It was the responses from the readers that made me shake my head in disbelief. Human beings like to have their fantasies about us being fierce predators at the top of the food chain. They point to the two tiny incisors that could not hurt anything but a vegetable, and say that it's clear humans were made to eat meat. I find the responses to the article to be full of people with those beliefs and attitudes. It also has the "I believe God put these animals here for us to eat them" argument. Is that similar to so-called justification people had about Africans when they decided to take them from their home and force them into slavery? There was the same attitude of superiority, the same idea that one people is designed to be exploited by another.

In the comments section for the article, I see that a lot people believe in the myth of humane farming and slaughter of animals. I know that even though there is information on why free range animals are not necessarily treated humanely and that they are still slaughtered the same way the non-free range animals are slaughtered, it is not widely spread. People are not realistic about what happens to the animals they call food.

People talk about respecting the lives of the animals they eat, but I think if you are eating an animal for any reason other than survival (most people do it for taste), then you've supported the killing of a being unnecessarily, and I don't see that as respectful. Imagine a cow thinking it was fine to turn her son into veal because you prayed over his body before you ate it. If the lives and bodies of animals were truly respected then there would not be question about eating "meat". Every animal on a plate was a victim, and when there is no acknowledgment of this, it becomes "a personal choice". Is it a personal choice to kill other humans, or is it a crime that would result in jail time or execution? The difference is that we think one is fine and the other one is wrong because of our own speciesism.