Support Independent Farmers

i think even if they have had a good life, it's still not right killing them.

farming is a chosen profession just like any job/business, the key word is "chosen" if the price of meat isnt high enough or your farms are being bought out/put out of business by The Corporates, if you have any complaint at all about being an animal farmer then I guess life isnt fair and u should choose another profession.

I have no sympathy for those who profit from animals, animals are not commodities.

I see everyone here chooses not to eat meat because of morals. But thats wrong,  nature doesnt work by morals. Would you like all animals to die from hunger based on morals? To have life you eat life. Plants are life, animals are life we eat them to survive, morals don't exsist in natures world.
Because man has developed morals -one being vegitarianisim, that doesnt mean humans have to adjust our way of life because of an idea.
I listen to my body and when im hungry I eat what my body needs and thats protein, vitimins etc...
If you make a choice based on morals thats fine i respect that decision, but humans will always eat meat. So if you want the better care of animals wouldn't you want Australians to have independent farming not factory farming?
Factory farming is torture, pigs are living in tight cages, chickens are diseased, wings are mutated, big business doesnt care for their life.
Independent farming is diffrent. Animals dont live in torture, they are healthy and they run around free, they have given a healthy life to live just like us. But In the end they will be eaten, weather its by a human, cat, racoon or fox. Thats the essence of life.

Adora, if morals dont exist and you think therefore it's ok to treat some animals badly, why stop there?
Why can't we rape and beat others to death? After all, in nature there are many cases of this. How about cannibalism? Why are all these things wrong?

And more to the point, if there's no issue with slaguthering an animal for pleasure (the fact is it is either out of ignorance or pleasure as it is absoultely unnecessary if not a hinderence towards living a long and healthy life) then why on earth would you complain about factory farms?


As far as I'm concerned, and I'm sure as far as you are too, it's wrong to deliberately inflict pain on another for explicitly unnecessary and selfish reasons. Just as torturing/killing/whatever-ing another human is wrong (on the basis of sex/race/gender/sexuality/religion etc) it can only be reasonable not to torture other animals simply because they are not human.
On top of this, even if we're doing it for selfish reasons, in the end it will kill us. Animal Agriculture (not just factory farms, infact mostly it is cattle who live probably the 'freest'lives of all 'farm animal's. ) is arguably _the_ biggest environmental disaster. It's is a major if not the major contirbutor to climate change, it is a huge water-waster, it contributes to destruction of biodiversity and land degradation etc.
On top of this it uses copious amounts of drugs and food that could be used to feed and make healthy the millions of people starving to death and dying of curable diseases.
On top of all that, if you still just want to worry about yourself, there are many current studies from many notable authors that have proven links between animal products and all kinds of diseases - obesity, cancer, osteoporosis..........just to name 3.

On behalf of the animals, the planet, and the human beings on this planet who die every 3 seoncds because of the 'food shortage crisis' I ask you to seriously consider stop supporting animal agriculture. It may seem hard or weird at first, but it becomes second nature and you'll feel better for it.

hi adora and welcome 2 the unleashed forums
i have 2 disagree with you on the fact that your body eeds 2 eat what it wants .
Im a 13 year old vegan and i have frequent doctor checks and imall good and healthy.
to ome on to an animal rights forum and boast about rural farming is a personal opinion whihc u make some money out of . But do you really love your animals?? i say not because u slaughter themfor profit

I think everything that needs to be said has been, but I'll add this; I found this quote quite disturbing... In a way, that aspect of it is worse than factory farming.. The people who work in factory farms & abattoirs can do so because they are completely cold & emotionless towards the "product". You making friends with a cow then chowing down on her, well, can you see how that's a little sick?

Sorry, but morals are wrong?  But surely you yourself are using the argument that factory farming is morally wrong, that the animals aren't treated well.  The fact is that if people had no morals about eating animals, then the animals would probably be in even worse situations than they are now.  

Society is dependent upon morals, imagine a world without them!

You can't take an argument and twist it to suit your means.  We do not need to kill animals, we can easily survive without eating them, therefore eating them is purely for our pleasure - and that is wrong.

I actually think we need more morals, not less, the world would be a better place!

And really humans don't exist in natures world either.  We are so far removed from nature in our air conditioned houses, with machines and technology, driving around in cars, wearing clothes, buying our food neatly packaged from the supermarket - a lot of people don't have the first clue about anything to do with nature.

Plus you're wrong, we don't need to eat animals to survive.  Unfortunately most people are like you, under the illusion that they do need animals to survive, which is why animals are crammed into factory farms like they are now.

As you say, plants are life - we can easily survive, and thrive, on a diet based on them.

So if you apply that philosophy to other things, then sure it's ok to kill people you don't like, reproduced with whomever you like, even family, even if its against their will, steal whatever you feel like, roam the streets naked.  

Thankfully, some humans are able to realise that there is right and wrong to their actions.  I say some because some live outside of these rules, which is where many of society's problems come from.  

If we didn't have morals society would collapse.

You may not realise, but many plant foods, in fact most foods contain protein.  In fact plant foods contain a lot more vitamins than animal foods.

No farming cares for their life, if they did then they wouldn't steal if from them.

Again, it is simply not necessary, humans don't need to eat other animals, it's not the essence of life to keep animals confined (whether it be in a stall or a field), to cram them in a truck, to transport them to a slaughterhouse, to hang them upside-down by a hook, to kill and dismember them and package them neatly into plastic containers and to truck their dismembered parts to large supermarkets.

It's not natural, or the essence of life to remove babies from their mothers so we can steal their milk and drink it.  Drinking milk from another species is not natural and certainly not the essence of life.

to be honest, i am not a vegetarian or a vegan. the main reason for this is there isn't enough options to be a vegetarian where i live, (in the middle of nowhere).  I tried being a vegetarian for six months straight, apart from still eating fish because eitherwise i wouldn't have had enough protein.  So i gave it a go, and it was just too hard with the rest of my family still eating meat, mum simply couldn't AFFORD to organise me seperate meals every day. Now i believe if the animal is free range im ok with eating it because it must of had a good life beforehand. There is a cycle of life and in this there are natural predators for particular animals. we are natural predators for pigs, sheep etc. On the other hand, if i had a choice i would be a vegetarian because of the fact that there is so much factory farmed products out there, it can be really hard to make sure you are eating something that has had a good life, rather than something that has been treated cruelly. I hate animal cruelty, it makes me sick. but please don't forget the people who simply dont have a choice there are also people who simply cant AFFORD to buy free range products, thanks to woolies and coles, most of us dont have a choice, thankfully i am not one of these people, and i can eat free range happily knowing that i am eating something that has had a good life.Unfortunatly tis is not a black or white situation, there are shades of grey too and we need to see this. I still want to be a vege when it becomes an option, but until then i do what i can. Now part of this is supporting independent farmers, i agree, we have a pig farmer that sells his product at the local market, and that is all free range. also a pre-warning, dont buy bred-free range its a crock, that just means that the pig or other animal was born somewhere free range then put into intensive farming. gosh these cons annoy me i just wish everyone could be more honest rather than lying to make as much money as possible. and as for the would you eat your dog? well i honestly don't know, i haven't been brought up to eat dog, but again they aren't bred for that, you do have to think about the fact that, although i don't want to agree with this point, these animals are bred for meat, they wouldn't be here otherwise, but that CERTAINLY DOES NOT MAKE FACTORY FARMING OK. so all you vegans and vegetarians out there, i agree with you up to a point, but just remember that some of us dont have a choice just yet and until then the independent farmers thing is a good idea.  

Everybody has a choice!
And for the people who think "the animal has had a good life, so its ok to slaughter it"
Have another think... if this animal is not laying on its death bed what gives you the right to take its life??
And I am not saying I would eat an animals flesh if it died naturally because that is just disgusting... my kitty died but I have the morals to burry the little guy and put him to rest.

Many free range animals are not treated well at all.  Take free range meat chickens for example, most are not actually kept free range - as in outside living a happy life, but actually in a large filthy barn.  Their access to outside is generally very limited - often just a small area accessed through holes in the side of the barn which many of the animals are unable to reach.  The chickens are still bred to grow quickly so their legs can't take the weight of their body and they often end up crippled and unable to walk and reach water or food, many die.

The same goes for free range eggs, except in the egg industry the male chicks are still killed, and the hens are still killed once their laying drops.

The parents of these birds (both meat and egg) are kept in large windowless sheds for a year, the females continually mated by the males, their backs are red raw.  After a while their waste builds up until it looks like a moonscape - the air is disgusting.

Plus they are still trucked to the slaughterhouse and killed in the same manner - nothing nice about that.

If you eat dairy, then whatever way you look at it the calves that don't go back into the dairy herd or for veal, are a waste product and get killed.

I know someone that has been in a slaughterhouse where free range pigs were being killed - they said it was one of the worse things they've seen because the animals are not used to being confined and handled, they panic and scream more than factory farmed pigs.

I do sympathise if you are living at home, if you're dependent on people shopping and cooking for you, but where there's a will there's a way!  

You say that you can't afford to buy vegetarian - yet you can afford free range meat and fish?  Tofu, beans, lentils, tempeh are all great sources of protein - and CHEAP!  Much cheaper than meat - and readily available, if you have a supermarket near you then they would sell some of these items.  Plus it's not hard to put a veggie buger in the oven to sub for meat, and not much more work for your mum if she's cooking meat for everyone else.  

I don't know how old you are, but if you really want to be vegetarian maybe you could try researching some veggie meals that don't break the bank and helping with the cooking sometimes?