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LUVBUGZ:
Out of curiosity, since when did someone have to be a vegan, or vegetarian, to care about animals?
I care deeply about animals. It's a fairly well-known British stereotype, but there's something inherently worse about - say - shooting a burglar's dog than shooting a burglar.
I don't like the thought of animals suffering at the hands of their keepers, and I don't like the thought of *any* living thing being mistreated.
On the other hand, I don't consider - for example - free range eggs to be "mistreatment".. the little hens run round in the sunshine, with their beaks and claws still attached. They lay their little eggs on the ground, and someone comes and picks them up. Then I boil, fry or poach them, and the hen's just fine and dandy. I don't buy eggs other than those raised in free-range farms.
Likewise, I don't consider the humane (i.e. as fast as possible, with as little interval between "alive and well" and "dead and filleted" as possible) slaughter of animals for food to be mistreatment, or "uncaring".
I happen to like meat. I like the taste of meat, I like the texture of meat, I like the nutritional value of meat, and I accept that in order to eat meat animals have to be slaughtered. I won't accept that they be tortured to death for the purposes of feeding me, and I won't accept that they be shoved in little cages and shipped the length and breadth of the country (which is why I don't eat veal) but I *do* absolutely stand by the fact that we're omnivores. We're at the top of a food chain, and we eat the things below us in it - just like every other carnivore and omnivore on the planet.
If you choose not to eat meat do so that's your prerogative, and I completely support you in it - but don't presume to judge me and label me "someone who doesn't care" just because you happen to have a different point of view about a single theme than I do.
Kev
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