Rob Brown – You might like a book titled “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”. it’s about food, and the issue of how to treat animals intended for food is one of the big topics. (Others include industrial farming, organic farming, and how Corn conquered the world. Very interesting book, for anyone who eats.)

Way to make people take you even less seriously, guys.

But you know what they say about stopped clocks…

Especially when it comes to ethical vegetarianism – those people who anthropomorphize animals to make it appear that we are so biologically close to one another that we must treat them like people as well.

Treat them exactly like people? No. But I’m totally against animal cruelty.

I’ve got no problem with eating an animal that was treated all right during its life and killed quickly and humanely. I wouldn’t even have a problem eating one of the turkeys shown in the background of that one Sarah Palin interview, provided that they hadn’t been kept in terrible conditions their whole lives.

The trouble is that a lot of animals that end up being used for food are kept in pretty terrible conditions; for example, this. That’s from Wikipedia, not anything PETA related, and it goes on to say “Female pigs used for breeding (called ‘breeding sows’ by industry) are confined most of their lives in ‘gestation crates’ which are so small that they cannot even turn around. The pigs’ basic needs are denied, and they experience severe physical and psychological disorders.”

You might laugh at the “psychological disorder” part, but if you ever had a pet dog then you know that a dog can be either happy or miserable, and if you cared about your pet dog then you didn’t want it to be miserable and you felt bad for it when it was.

Plus, when people heard about how veal calves were raised, a lot of non-vegetarians stopped eating veal. This is pretty much the same thing. So I don’t see why it should be different with adult pigs, or chickens, or whatever.

Fish? Sure, I’ll eat some kinds of fish, if it was caught in the wild. I sure as fuck don’t think they’re anything like kittens. I’d eat a deer that was shot in the wild if I knew where to get some meat from one and I knew it was taken down with one precise shot instead of being…I dunno, caught in a steel trap or something. You probably get the idea. I’m not opposed to killing animals, but I am opposed to breeding them just to treat them cruelly for their entire lives to the point where death is actually a release for them.

The worst part is that PETA has all these awesome pamphlets and shit with actual, useful info about animal cruelty in different industry and what companies are testing on animals, etc etc. And with all the stupid fucking stunts they’re pulling, it’s starting to be like you just see the PETA letterhead at the top of the pamphlet and you want to laugh and assume the shit in there is nonsense, when it’s actually pretty good factually

Exactly. PETA has proven that there’s absolutely zero truth to the adage that “any publicity is good publicity.”

I am Lobster McCleod. Of the Clan McCleod. And I am *immortal*.

The problem with Sea Kitten as a codename is that it’s only one letter away from Sex Kitten. God, knows how well that would go over….this sounds like a job for Alan Moore!

http://weirdseamonsters.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/grenadier-fish.jpg

As part of Elseworlds rules, Selina Kyle takes up the name Sea Kitten.

I’d still hit that.

It made me think, though: is ‘old age’ ever actually the cause of death? I mean, laymen might say so, but doctors probably say heart failure or suchlike as official causes, no?

There is an “old age” effect that has to do with degradation of your genetic code. Your body is constantly fixing itself, and the process of copying cells that are – themselves – copies of previous cells, gives you that “copy of a copy of a copy” effect that, over decades, causes some loss of resolution and quality. The end result is “aging”. And when your heart or lungs or bones or whatever “age” to the point that they no longer work, you die.

So in that regard, yeah, it may technically be “heart failure” that kills you. But its not because of something you ate or because you got stabbed in the chest. You still died of old age.

You talk about an Elseworlds story where Arthur Curry watches his parents get shot in front of him after going to see the Little Mermaid. As part of Elseworlds rules, Selina Kyle takes up the name Sea Kitten.

No affiliation with Catfishman, natch.

Sorry, no. That’s a ludicrously exaggerated position, and you don’t need to hold it to have an issue with PETA. Many people have lived a vegan lifestyle. You might have a point with raw foodists or fruitarians, but… seriously. The main issues with veganism are iron and vitamin B12, both of which are available as supplements And yes, the irony of the fact they’ll be living on more industrially processed food than if they were omnivorous (like *in nature*) is not lost unto me, but I’m a pro-science ex-vegan and I don’t care that I’m eating processed food. I would certainly eat artificial lab-grown meat over ‘real’ meat if the option was available and commercially viable.

It made me think, though: is ‘old age’ ever actually the cause of death? I mean, laymen might say so, but doctors probably say heart failure or suchlike as official causes, no?

Still, makes me wonder how old the oldest recorded lobster’s been. Gonna work out my Google fu tonight.