I was raised in the country, and sure don't remember roasting a pig the way you say it. Our's was usually after a long day of hunting wild hogs, and drinking only came into play after the meat was fully cooked, and served up. I can speak for myself and the hundreds I hunt with, "We NEVER DRINK before or during a hunt, and we NEVER DRINK WHILE HANDLING A FIREARM...NEVER!!!!!

I encourage *you* to become informed and educated, Kelsey. Let's assume the average pig is killed at 6 months old, half a year. Pigs' natural life span is 12 to 15 years. I trust you can do the math, which comes out to -- just as I said -- toddler age. We're talking about animals who are the stage of life equivalent to a 2- to 3-year-old human toddler. And if we're talking about the "roaster" babies killed at 6 to 8 weeks, yes, we're talking about the equivalent of a human infant -- maybe a 1-year-old.

People who want to kill and profit from the animals decide when they've reached "full, market ready age" -- it's about economics and demand, how much it costs to keep the animal alive versus how much the carcass will bring in and how "tender" people want the baby animal's flesh to be.

And I'll just let the American Dietetic Association correct your remark about what's "necessary" for a healthy diet: http://www.eatright.org/cps/rde/xchg/ada/hs.xsl/advocacy_933_ENU_HTML.htm

There's not a single "falsehood" in the post, Kelsey. But there is spin and falsehood in your comment.

Kelsey P,

At what ripe "old" age were you desensitized by your parents or classmates or school teachers or pastor? Were you three years old, or six, when you lost your pure, selfless love for all animals? Everyone knows that children always see animals as friends, as compatriots, unless and until they are brainwashed to believe otherwise.

Having just read a haunting story about a young lad whose best friend was a pig, and whose father forced him to butcher his best friend, and whose adulthood as a pig farmer was filled with shame and remorse covered by a hard shell over his still-soft heart, I can only imagine the  indoctrinating steps your respected elders took to get you to painfully "process" the false information that pigs are created by our mutual Maker to be food for humans.

For the record, only when the above-mentioned tender-hearted-boy-turned-pig-farmer broke down one day and admitted that he still had a heart for pigs -- only then did he become a true man. And, ironically, at the same time, he freed himself to become as a little child again, a requirement that the Master Christian gave those who hoped to attain the harmony of heaven in their lives (including here-and-now heaven).

Now this free-to-be-as-a-child man takes joy in rubbing the bellies of his 10 little pigs, and sharing that pleasure with school children, so that they won't lose their innocence the way he was brutally forced to do.

Not incidentally, he earns a better living farming an organic garden than he ever did as a pig farmer. Everything in his life smells sweet now, both physically and spiritually. After all, he has regained the most important quality: his once-lost clear conscience.

Kelsey, it is fallacious to posit that in order to have a valid opinion or proffer evidence on this particular issue, one has to have agricultural experience. I find it hard to believe you would value my opinion any more than Stephanie's because I've worked on farms, milked cows, helped "process" piglets or participated in the castration, tail docking or shearing of sheep.

There are no laws regulating age of slaughter that I am aware of. Market weight has varied over the years and welfare regulations affect age of slaughter as well. For example, in countries where castration of male piglets is prohibited, male pigs are slaughtered at a much lower weight and thus are younger than castrated pigs. On farms with heritage or slower-growing breeds of pigs, slaughter age is higher than on CAFOs.

It would be silly of any producer to try and regulate age of slaughter when there are so many variables at play.

"Therefore, when the hog is ready to be processed, this is their "full-prime" time in order to provide humans with the proteins that are necessary for a healthy diet and appropriate by-products."

You have missed the point of this post. Call a spade a spade, Kelsey. Stop using vague, feel-good terms like "processing" and "providing". You are slaughtering/killing and taking/butchering the flesh of an unwilling nonhuman. There is no giving on the part of the animal - he cannot (would not?) consent to that. At the very least, stop couching slaughter in euphemistic terms. Be honest with what you and are not doing.

First, I was asking for your credentials to write about animal agriculture.  I am informed and educated. I have a master's of science in agriculture and agriculture economics and am a professional in the agriculture industry. I believe that you should only write about what you are educated on, and if not, you should cite your source.

 Next, female pigs reach sexual maturity very young, at about 250 days old, and from that point on, a breeding sow's life is a cycle of pregnancy, until she's reached the end of her reproductive usefulness at age four or five. This is called a breeding sow.  A market hog is normally between 9 and 12 months old when it is ready for slaughter, depending on the breed of hog and how it was fed.  Since you want to compare this to humans, if a human lives to be 100 and we call a hog's life to be 5 years, that would put market hogs processed at 12 months around 41 years old in human terms, which I would consider an adult.

In no way am I an "animal-hater". I grew up on a humane ranch, raising cattle very humanely and I still have show cows that are my friends that I keep in the cow-herd. I love animals. The livestock industry uses the word processing because it is turning the food-source from its natural form, through a *process* to provide food and other products such as artist's brushes, chalk, crayons, buttons, fabric dye and certain natural forms of medicine to help save humans. (http://www.pork.org/NewsAndInformation/DidYouKnow.aspx?c=Products)

As far as the poor little lad whose father made him kill his pet, I feel sorry for him, truly. But this can't be blamed on the livestock industry. That should be blamed on his father.

Lastly I want to mention that anyone's decision to eat meat or not is their own opinion and I don't judge against those that don't eat meat.

If anyone has questions about pork, beef, poultry or other animal facts, here are some great, credible resources.: http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/!ut/p/_s.7_0_A/7_0_1OB?navid=ANIMAL_PRODUCTION&parentnav=AGRICULTURE&navtype=RT

http://www.nass.usda.gov/QuickStats/indexbysubject.jsp?Text1=&site=NASS_MAIN&select=Select+a+State&Pass_name=&Pass_group=Livestock+%26+Animals&Pass_subgroup=Livestock

http://www.pork.org/

http://www.nppc.org/

Kelsey:

1. Animal ag- & "pork" industry-run Web sites are hardly unbiased credible sources.

2. That someone is challenging and disagreeing with your assumptions or your industry's PR doesn't make the person "uneducated" on the topic. Your education has been anything but unbiased; you've been educated by the system itself.

3. Spin it however you want: "processing" is clearly a way to avoid saying "killing." And "the food-source from its natural form"? This is exactly what Marji was calling you out on. We're talking about an animal, an individual, a "she," a "who" -- not a "food-source" and her "natural form." 

4. The numbers you provide and how you came to them are impossible to take seriously. You just compared how long you *let* a pig live to the highest end of the natural human life span, which most humans never reach. That's ridiculous. You don't get to compare human's natural life span to the pig's cut-short life and come up with a number that way. Consider this: If women in a hypothetical community are typically killed by the men when they're only 40 years old because they're "at the end of [their] reproductive usefulness," and then some girls in the group are killed when they're 10 years old, would you argue that those girls were *actually* the equivalent of 20-year-old adults simply because other older females were killed at a fraction of their natural life span too? No. They're still 10-year-olds. What you're arguing makes absolutely no sense.

What's relevant is how long the pig *could* live if humans didn't kill her -- which is 12 to 15 years. Crunch the numbers between the 12- to 15-year-old natural life span of the pig and, say, an 80-year life of a human, and you'll see how absurdly off your comparisons are: .5 years/12 years = 3.3 years/80 years; .5/15 = 2.6/80. Like I said, a 6-month-old pig is the equivalent of a 2- or 3-year-old human child.

I don't know that anyone here called you an "animal hater," Kelsey, but you're clearly not an advocate for animals, and I believe you need to reexamine some of your perspectives and assumptions about your own industries and your participation in unnecessary violence. That you're here going to such great lengths to justify that killing, to the point of trying to make toddler-age pigs out to be nearing middle age, is troubling.

Hm, you actually sound like a decent guy, Kelsey, if I take you at your word.

Here are the things that most people on this site believe are prerequisites for someone who says they love animals. That person wouldn't think of:

~ using animals for our own gain (profit, power, pleasure, or prizes)

~ describing an animal as an "it" or a "that"

~ eating the flesh or secretions of animals

~ breeding animals

~ taking away a mother animal's baby at birth, or at any stage, really

~ locking an animal in a cage for any length of time, much less for life

~ packing animals like sardines on trailers

~ forcing animals to lie in their own manure and be pelted with the feces of animals in crates above them

~ abandoning an animal in a dead pile or bulldozing an animal to make her stand

~ forcing an animal to be in a rodeo

Those are just a handful of things we AR folks wouldn't dream of doing to someone we love.

What we do dream about, after gazing into the desperate eyes of animals who long to escape from claustrophic cages and crates and chains, from transport trailers, from the biting cold or blistering heat, from hungry stomachs and parched tongues, from prods and whips and spurs, from stun guns and sharp knives and scalding oil -- what we do dream about is how we will one day convince societies around the world to change their hearts, customs and laws in order that our nonhuman brothers and sisters might live  unmolested by man.

That your heart does not feel for the sows and hogs who long as much as you do to be free, is a mystery to me. 

That you can separate one species from another, or one individual animal from another, and call one your food and another your companion, is an enigma to me.

That you are "educated" in this industry yet have no idea of the immorality of subjecting sentient beings to lives of abject misery and deaths of unspeakable terror and pain, is beyond me.

This industry of yours is a master -- and monster -- brainwasher, that's for sure. I truly pity its victims, both human and animal.

For one thing i am aware of aguculture. i grew up with an uncle who had a dairy farm.

to say a hog or any animal is killed to supply humans with any type of nutrition is you being uninformed and uneducated.

eating animal flesh does not give a person any where the amount of nurishment eating plant foods does.

it is not nessary under any circumstances to use animals for food.

it is simply out of greed and lust for the taste of animal flesh that animals are eaten. it has nothing to do with health, or diet requirments.

poeple who support eating animal flesh need to get out of the dark ages and do some serious dietary education.

it has been proved from tons of DIFFERENT sources and studies that eating animal flesh is not nessary and in fact harmful to human health.

Thank you Kelsey.  I am glad that there is someone else here who is educated on these topics as well.  I for one am finishing up my bachelors in animal science and plan on going on to get my masters in animal science.  I am told by my professors constantly that people like us need to get out there and inform the uneducated folks before they buy into this animal rights stuff.  I believe in animal welfare, but animal rights are a totally different story. 

And yes, these people here doubt my credibility due to my short fuse, lack of patience for people who don't understand this stuff, and "young age".  But until you've taken classes on animal production, economics, and visited animal production and processing facilities and see that 99% of these facilities and farms do not treat their animals like they aren't living, breathing creatures, people will never understand.  In all honesty, these people on this site are so hardheaded Kelsey, that it is not possible for them to understand.  They are a lost cause and I would not waste my time or effort trying to get them to see the reality of things.  I am quite positive that they lack that ability.  Which is why all I can do is sit back and laugh at some of the arguments , blogs, and conversations that they hold.

Thanks for letting me clarify, Dave.

Pastors and priests advocate eating meat either by looking the other way or by making references to it (or to the food animals) in their sermons -- or in conversations out of the pulpit.

There are so-called "Christian" hunting and fishing camps for kids. The counselors and campers are convinced they are serving God and being true men and women of Christ by participating in these "sports."

Is that what you mean by God being involved? Depends on your definition of God. It's not my view of Him -- or Her. :-)   

Where would you have god fit into this discourse Dave? 

Well, since you asked:

I could possibly see the plant only diet from Gen 1:29-30 where God specifically mentions plants for food for both man and animals. 

However, Gen. 1:28 NIV version states (this is God talking to man or Adam),"Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.  Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves along the ground."  Seems pretty straight forward to me.  We are to have absolute authority and control over the earth and the animals.  However, it should be noted that God does not say to exploit or waste His creation.  Since we (humans) were created in His image, we need to try our best to be good stewards with all that we have.

Now, lets look at man.  It was man who disobeyed God and then in Gen. 3:21, "The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them."    If God did it and we are created in God's image, it would seem as though clothing became an accepted use of the animals at this time.

Then we should look at the story of Abraham and Isaac from Gen 22.  Just as Abraham was about to sacrifice his only son Isaac, God stopped him and Abraham looked up to see a ram caught in a thicket.  This is perhaps the first animal sacrifice to God and we know that God desired animal sacrifices in the Old Testament.  (Jesus was the ultimate blood sacrifice and we therefor do not need to offer blood sacrifices anymore)

And how about Jesus.  He was without sin, but we know that he ate lamb and fish. Luke 22:8 records Jesus saying to Peter and John, "Go and make preparations for us to eat the Passover." The lamb was required as part of keeping the Passover feast and if He did not eat of it He could have been accused of sin.  Luke 24:42 (after the Resurrection) Jesus asked for food and "They gave him a piece of  boiled fish, and he took it and ate it in their presence."

The Bible is filled with accounts of animal sacrifices, killings of thousands of humans, and feasts involving the eating of animals - all done for God. 

So, as for me and my family, we will do the best we can to live as Jesus did.  It's a goal that I fall short of every day.  Part of this walk is to, "...not cause anyone to stumble..." 1Cor 10:32, so therefor if anyone strongly opposed to the eating of meat were to come to our house for supper, we would either offer something specifically for them or have all dishes meatless, depending on their preference.

Hope that explains not necessarily where I would "have god fit into this discourse," but rather where I fit into God's.

If I may ask, being new to Change.org, where does God fit into all of this?  Seems as though many posters have little Biblical knowledge and put themselves and their ideas above all else - God be damned.

Dave,

It's interesting that you argue that, "Jesus was without sin" as though that was self-evident. See we can't have a rational conversation about that premise because it is a tautology: it's true by definition.

I would ask you to cite your source, and you would cite the bible or "faith" and I would have to challenge that. But your counter would be circular because you can't prove that Jesus performed miracles, or the bible is valid, etc. So we might as well stop now.   

The obvious problem is that your argument begs the question: How do you decide what parts of the bible you will accept as literal? Many instances in the old testament you wouldn't take literally, however, from the ten commandments on, without that source, the new testament wouldn't make any sense. Therefore, the new testament doesn't negate the truth value of the old testament, which means that you have to defend why you believe in the old testament, and what you believe. 

I have read the bible, cover-to-cover, and I did notice that god didn't change his terms in the garden of eden until Man broke his covenant with god. After original sin, suffering and death entered the world; prior to that, veganism was dictated.

So doesn't it follow that veganism is the ethical ideal -- how god preferred it, or why else would he have made that the original arrangement? If this is true, then why do we govern ourselves by the actions post-original sin as opposed to living our lives in reflection of the original ideal?  

Dave,

By the way, I wrote a little something about this a while ago here:

http://thatvegangirl.com/?p=957=1

Thanks for explaining your views, Dave. It's helpful to see where you're coming from, so I, for one, am able to respond.

There are in fact a growing number of Christians who see the mandate you describe in Genesis 1 in an entirely different light. If you would like to understand their point of view, here are a few tips:

(1) Read Rev. Dr. Andrew Linzey's "Animal Gospel" and/or "Animal Theology"

(2) Read Matthew Scully's "Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy"

(3) Read J.R. Hyland's "God's Covenant with Animals" -- especially the part about Jesus whipping the moneychangers out of the temple.

(4) Go to the new website NotOneSparrow.org and meet Ben DeVries, its founder and a strong evangelical Christian who is surrounded by fellow evangelicals. He will be happy to send you his recent thesis (he calls it a capstone paper, I think), written at the seminary from which he graduated. It is a clarion call to action on behalf of the Creator's creatures. He will also introduce you to some college professors who have the same understanding of how God's man is meant to relate to animals.

Ask Ben for the titles of other books, names of other authors (Stephen Kaufman, who heads the Christian Vegetarian Association, comes to mind), and links to other websites.  

If you were to put the amazing quality of childlike meekness above all else in your search for wisdom on this subject (and I have no reason to think you haven't already done this!), you will see, I believe, that God is most revered when His entire creation is loved by His children in the way that the Golden Rule espouses.

As for Jesus eating lamb and fish, the Bible does not explicitly say that he did, although he served them to his disciples and the multitudes. He did a number of "suffer it to be so now" acts. But that was 2,000 years ago, when societal conditions and needs were considerably different from what they are now. So many premises and conditions have evolved since then, including modern society's moral position on human slavery (which Jesus apparently never mentioned, though the Hebrews all around him held slaves). 

When you consider the suffering of the animals and the slaughterhouse workers, when you consider the degradation of the planet's resources in quantity and quality (a new World Watch magazine report, you may have read here, attributes half of global warming to livestock production), does it not make sense to you that we violating divine mandates and moral laws right and left in our mistaken desire to assert our "dominion" (domination, really) over the innocent animals? 

Yes, we are meant to "use" animals, alright. We are to "use" their marvelous qualities of forgiveness and loyalty, of peacefulness and purity of heart, of courage and honesty and so much more -- in our own lives. We are meant not only to learn, from their shining example, how to be loving children of God, loving followers of Christ, but also to learn, by taking care of them and/or leaving them alone, how to be caretakers of our own children and of our planet, which animals have an equal right to inhabit (or they wouldn't be in existence at all). They are NOT resources. Go back to Genesis 1:29 to confirm that fact. Jesus knew that, but, out of wisdom, he had to make certain concessions to his day and time. He said that we would be doing many "more" works than he did. Did he mean for all the animals and the whole earth, perhaps?    

My apologies to atheists and agnostics and to adherents of other religious traditions; I am simply answering Dave's query to the best of my ability in a public forum; I'll refrain from all further comment here and rely on private messages in the future.

God is Love. Period.

Have you read the bible?!  They sacrafice lambs in the bible, they smear lamb blood over the doors during passover.  And is this an interpretation, or is this really in he Bible?  I would love to know what book and verse you were reading this in.  Give me the numbers if at all possible.

Good job, Cow Girl. You'v mananged to make yourself the most offensive commenter here in a while. Yes, I'm skinny and bony -- and guess what? I was just as skinny when I was eating nothing but burgers and cheese and hot dogs and Twinkies every day. It's genetic. If you really think the majority of vegans "look malnourished," you're blind or delusional. You can be any shape or size and at any level of health as a vegan, just as you can be as a nonvegan. I know hardly any "malnourished"-looking vegans, as you describe me. And I think it's fair to assume I know a hell of a lot more vegans than you do.

And this? "Number one, if they were adolescents or teenagers they wouldn't be producing eggs and milk, not to mention popping out calves." Really? You do realize that adolescence and teenage years are when human females start menstruating (the human equivalent of hens producing eggs) and become capable of "popping out" babies, right? If a 14-year-old girl were forcibly impregnated (i.e., raped), yeah, she'd "pop out" a baby too, just like a young cow does when she's forcibly artificially inseminated.

And most dairy cattle are killed a lot younger than 14 years old -- 6 or 7 years old is more like it.

Your comments continue to be exhausting, Cow Girl, not because they're at all difficult to counter, but because your logic is poor, your irrelevant personal insults are many, your facts and evidence backing up your assertions are weak or nonexistent, and you refuse to actually consider that, hey, maybe you actually don't know everything. You don't.

Honey, I know that I don't know everything.  And by all means, neither do you.  Do you really think I was that clueless at 12 years old to NOT know why there was blood dripping out of me?  Thanks for pointing that out, but I'm pretty sure I learned about that when I was 10.  I wasn't insulting you, I was making an observation and using you as an example.  I know people who are vegan and they are skinny.  Weak and nonexistant?  I just presented you with numbers and factual information out of a research book.  No, you just refuse to see anything other than your side of the argument.  And you know that I'm young enough that you can try to walk all over me.  I don't know what possesses you to think this way about the way we treat animals and the way I treat animals (which is total bogus, I don't appreciate people calling me a monster because my opinions are different than theirs).  I am not a monster, I love animals, and accept that I need them to survive.  And I can be backed up on these arguments by my professors, they know that I'm right and I know what I'm talking about.  I may not structure my arguments the best that they can be, but the content is correct.  Whether you choose to believe it is up to you. 

Sexist much?

Excuse me?

"Do you really think I was that clueless at 12 years old to NOT know why there was blood dripping out of me?  Thanks for pointing that out, but I'm pretty sure I learned about that when I was 10."

This comment was in response to this comment made my Stephanie:

"You do realize that adolescence and teenage years are when human females start menstruating (the human equivalent of hens producing eggs) and become capable of "popping out" babies, right?"

I was simply pointing out that somewhere in my life, it happened to me too!  It has nothing to do with me being sexist, racist, or any other prejudice.

I was NOT judging her!  Seriously, I was using that as an example.  Maybe you are sexist implying that all vegans are women.  People are never going to stop eating meat, and until you guys realize that, maybe you won't have people criticizing you and calling you crazy.  I'm not degrading Stephanie, I'm not degrading women.  So, quit making false accusations.  I'm a woman myself who knows that no woman's body is perfect, but when you don't eat any type of quality protein you are going to look like death rolled over.  I'm implying this to human's in general.

And if I'm anything, I'm veganist and animal-rightist.