Rich Speaks…

Here's Lloyd's original article.
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I have had this title on this web-site for some while, but had not got round to writing the article. Indeed, I have been planning to write this since I was at university. Part of the reason that I have delayed so much, is that there are simply so very many reasons why vegetarianism is a bad thing that this essay threatened to develop into a tiresome tome of a thousand pounding reasons not to become a veggie. Here follows what I hope will be a tolerably short list of reasons, most of which attack the subject by countering the many and various daft arguments in favour of vegetarianism. At the end of the essay, I shall offer my theory to explain why people really become vegetarians, which is quite a different reason from the one they cite.

I became a vegetarian because it is a better nutritional diet.

This is a bizarre argument, largely because the reason is so flagrantly false. The tiniest amount of enquiry into the subject quickly reveals that meat is exceptionally nutritious. Weight for weight, almost any meat is more densely packed with nutrients than almost any plant. There are a few nutrients which are impossible to get without eating meat, and a significant number which are very difficult to get without eating meat. Whereas a meat eater is in little danger of missing out on these nutrients, a vegetarian has to be very careful to eat the right foods in order to get enough of them.

Vegetarians are healthier because the average vegetarian is lighter than the average meat eater in Britain.

This is a fact. It is true that veggies are on average lighter. This is an argument based on modern wealth and excess. For almost all of the past, the problem for humans has been getting enough food. Obesity in a significant proportion of the population is a modern problem, brought on us by the ease of access to large amounts of sugary food, plus a lesser amount of exercise, and a retention of old instincts which made our hunting and gathering ancestors crave sweet things, fatty things, and salty things. Early humans evolved these instincts in a world where very sweet things were very rare, salt a vital rare nutrient, and wild prey animals were lean.

Now things are different, and whereas our instincts did not in the past lead to obesity, today they often do. This is not an argument for vegetarianism, however. This is an argument to persuade people to play more football, go dancing once a week, avoid Mars bars, and not to stuff cakes and cheap burgers into their mouths while watching Jerry Springer. Cheap, low quality meat with a high fat content does contribute to obesity in the modern world, but plenty of people manage to stay fit and lean and eat meat. There is nothing unique about meat for making people fat. A sedentary veggie eating cake all day will get fat too. However, vegetarians are perhaps less likely to stuff cakes into their mouths all day, because the sort of person who goes to the drastic step of forbidding themselves to eat meat is also the sort of person who is unlikely to stuff cakes down their hatch. The type of person who becomes a vegetarian is clearly the type to be quite obsessed by their diet, and so unlikely to over-do it on the cake front. Indeed, one only needs to view the denizens of the local “health” food shop to notice that many vegetarians are clearly underweight, which brings that average weight figure down quite a bit. Being underweight is not healthy. It is a modern and pernicious misconception that thin is good. Thin is not good. Fat is not good. Just right is just right.

A recent government report said that one in four sixteen year-olds in Britain is over-weight. It is also true, however, that the unfortunate offspring of middle-class parents quite commonly suffer from something which has been dubbed “muesli-belt malnutrition”. These children are fed on low-fat, low-sugar, low-salt diets by their health-faddish parents, and therefore not unnaturally end up with sometimes quite serious malnutrition. Skimmed milk is not for giving to growing kids, who need fat to grow. It is dreary grey water which might possibly suit over-weight adults.

If modern meats which are commonly available in shops are a bit too fatty for modern sedentary life-styles, then this is a reasonable argument for people to exert very effective consumer pressure by simply buying leaner meat. The farmers will quickly get the message, as indeed they already have.

I became a vegetarian because I was told about what happens to meat in the gut. It stays there for ages and rots, getting infected with bacteria.

This argument is based on squeamishness and terror-tactics. That some veggies were converted to their creed by this argument is evidence that scare stories can work, even if they are rubbish. The notion that meat stays in the gut for much longer than other things I find amusing. The intestines are long narrow tubes, and food is worked along these tubes by the automatic contraction of bands of muscle around them. How might some vegetable matter over-take some meat? “Beep-beep! Pull over! Fast-track non-meat produce coming through!” Similar myths exist for meat’s sitting in the stomach for an age, in some cloistered waiting room, apart from less sinister food forms. No it doesn’t. Take a look at an anatomy text book and look at the shape of the stomach, then tell me where the separated-out meat stays for its alleged extended period. Also, offer me a mechanism by which the meat might be separated out in the first place. Last, offer me a reason why on Earth the body would have evolved to separate out meat and then harm itself by letting it go toxic.

That meat rots in the gut is true. However, it is also true that all food rots in the gut. The gut is filled with bacteria all the time. The bacteria break the food down. This is how digestion works. When your food exits your body in the form of faeces, a quarter to a half of its weight is made up of bacteria. If you hate the thought of bacteria in your body so much that you wish to avoid any breeding in there at all, then I’m afraid that even if you ate no food at all, you would not achieve your aim. There are more parasites living in and on your body than there are cells of your own body.

I became a vegetarian because I care about what I put into my body. I don’t want to put chemicals in there, nor anything dead. Plants are natural, so they can’t be harmful.

Everything about this argument is so fantastically wrong that it is difficult to know where to start. How caring about what one eats should lead to vegetarianism of all things is a little baffling. The notion strongly implies that meat eaters do not care what they eat. There is clearly no logic in this.

The use of the word “chemicals” makes it clear that the user of this argument has no idea what the word chemicals means. All matter is 100% composed of chemicals. Your body is made up entirely of chemicals, as are all kinds of food. Do you ever drink water? That’s a chemical. I can give you the formula if you’d like: H₂O - two hydrogen atoms in a molecule with one atom of oxygen. Personally, I mix mine up in a lab myself, because I don’t trust anyone else to do it properly.

Some people seem to believe that if a substance is made, refined, or used by man, then it is a chemical. Weed killer is by this definition a “chemical”, although sometimes this is exempt from “chemical” status if it is derived from a “natural” source. That people shopping in modern supermarkets might somehow avoid this type of “chemical” by avoiding meat is bordering on the insane. Look at the list of ingredients for almost any packet or tin of food and you’ll find all manner of colourings and preservatives. Have you noticed the amazing way that the piles of fruit today are near blemish-free, and all the apples in the apple tray are the same size and colour, and beautifully shiny and round? Now guess how many modern refined chemicals it takes to achieve that. Ever noticed that a French Golden Delicious (a) tastes of nothing and (b) lasts for months in your fruit bowl? Do you ever read the list of ingredients for a pack of fresh meat? There isn’t one. True, in America, farmers do use growth hormones in raising meat, but this practice is banned in Britain, and there is so far as I know no evidence that the vaccinations that animals get have any effect on humans who eat them. I don’t see why they might have. Animals develop immunities to thousands of pathogens they encounter in their lives. Vaccinations just introduce them to a couple more, so why should their immuno-response to these pathogens be any worse for the meat eater?

That a person might not want to put anything “dead” in their mouth is a weird notion. How might one define dried and then boiled pasta as “alive”? That would require a rather broad definition of “life”. I don’t see that a slice of raw apple is really “alive” either. It cannot reproduce itself. It is the product of life, certainly - a complicated arrangement of chemicals, but an arrangement which is unstable. The slice, whether you eat it or not, will not remain a slice of fresh apple for very long. Your toenail clippings were created by a living form, so are they alive? The pips of the apple might be defined as alive, just as all seeds, such as wheat, since they contain all the DNA of the plant in a viable form which might lead to reproduction. However, few people eat many raw seeds in this viable form. Even if they did, those seeds are surely moribund once they are swallowed. So, vegetarians eat very few things which are alive, and those that they do eat die inside them. Not a convincing reason for vegetarianism. Some seeds are tough, of course, and pass through the digestive system without being harmed, and exit the body still in a viable form. That they can do this means that they pass no useful nutrients to the eater, which doesn’t make them a very effective diet.

The last part of this argument, that plants are natural and therefore harmless, is so very definitely wrong that it should be a compulsory part of school education that children are made to see the tremendous error of this nonsense. The plain fact is that all plants are poisonous. They are poisonous in that they contain toxins. However, people can eat plants and apparently suffer no ill effects. The reason for this is that animals such as humans have evolved an ability to tolerate those toxins. We can eat some cabbage and live, because our bodies go to some effort to counter the toxins in a cabbage. The reason that plants generate poisons is simple: they don’t want to be eaten. The leaves of a cabbage are its solar panels and its body. If a grazing animal comes along and eats those leaves, then there is no more cabbage. Consequently, cabbages have evolved to produce poisons, so that fewer things can eat them. Some animals will evolve the ability to eat cabbages anyway, however. Evolution is a constant arms race between species. Some animals, like cats, are carnivores, and these have very little tolerance for plant toxins. Feed a “healthy salad” to your cat and very soon you will have a very ill cat. Try giving it celery if you want it to die quickly. Other animals like deer can eat all sorts of leaves which would kill a human very dead. Between cats and deer on this spectrum are humans. Our bodies can tolerate the toxins in some plants, but not most plants.

Some of these plants which we can eat, we farm. Farming changes the rules of evolution somewhat. If a plant like a cabbage is too toxic, it won’t get farmed. If it is less toxic, then it gets farmed, and humans help it to reproduce despite is poisonousness. Humans continue to breed the plants for their own ends, producing tastier, hardier and prettier varieties. Sometimes, however, the breeding programme has the side effect of increasing the toxicity of the plants. A couple of years ago a variety of lettuce was withdrawn from sale in British shops because it was found to be too toxic.

So, if you want to avoid eating toxins, then eat meat. Animals keep their poisonous parts very definitely separate from their non-poisonous parts, and the only poisonous mammal is the male duck-billed platypus, so if you stick to mammals and as long as you avoid eating the poison sacks on the feet of the male duck billed platypus, then you can be 100% certain that your diet is toxin-free. If by contrast you want to guarantee that everything you eat is poisonous, eat plants. If you cook some plants, you can kill most of the toxins. Potatoes are a good example. Fruit is different, because fruits evolved to be eaten, but not necessarily eaten by humans. Certain fruits when perfectly ripe are seldom very toxic. If you eat unripe fruit, then you will get ill. If you eat over-ripe fruit, then you might get ill. If you eat the wrong fruits then you might die. Fruits are of course only naturally available at short periods of the year, which explains that there are no examples of healthy human frugivores. Humans could not have evolved to eat an all-fruit diet, because in the wild past, all those that tried, died.

I became a vegetarian, because I want to live in a more natural way.

A lot of modern feminist and vegetarian literature is today propagating a lie. There is a myth that that “Man the hunter” is a myth. It is not a myth. A huge amount of study has been done on the hundreds of human hunter gatherer societies around the world. There is no tribe in which the women hunt and the men gather. Nor is there any tribe which eats only plants, although there are a few which eat all-meat diets. Typically, hunter-gatherers alive today eat about one-third meat, one third fish, and one third vegetable diets. Of course, today hunter gathers are living on the margins, not in the best hunting territory, and so can’t hunt the big herds they once could, so plants are probably a bigger part of the modern hunter-gatherer diet. In Britain, archaeological data and calculations based on climate and the like make it clear that humans relied on large ungulates (hoofed animals, especially deer) for about 80% of their diet.

Part of the daft modern myth is that our distant hunter-gatherer ancestors did not hunt splendid and dangerous big beasts, but instead for the most part grubbed up worms and the like. This is wrong. Hunter-gatherers try to kill the biggest animals they can find. This is their best strategy for two reasons. The first is purely economic. To feed itself, a group of twenty hunter-gatherers would have to work hard and gather 20,000 mussels per day, which would require access to an enormous mussel bed, which wouldn’t stay enormous for very long. By contrast, one man killing one cow will feed the whole group for nineteen days. The second reason is status. A man who brings down a giraffe will be far more impressive than a man who bests a gerbil. In Africa, elephants only have Man to fear. Humans for many tens of thousands of years have been the predator species which specialises in killing the really big prey. The best theory for explaining the extinction of a lot of giant species such as the auroch and the woolly mammoth, is that human hunters killed them off.

So, smile at yourself in the mirror and observe your omnivore’s teeth, and rejoice in your good fortune that you are a member of a species which gets to eat such a wide and tasty diet. If you want to live more “naturally” then for the latitude of Britain, you will almost certainly have to increase your meat intake dramatically. Remember to eat all the bits, mind. Many modern people make the mistake of eating just the muscles of the animal. Eat the heart, the liver, perhaps the contents of the stomach, and savour the delicacies like the eyeballs.

The equating of natural with good is a mistaken one. There was a time, when few people lived to see old age, and when people celebrated Man’s gradual triumph over the savage natural world. Nature was red in tooth and claw, and life for most was nasty brutish and short. Today, pampered middle-class idiots who have never known which years were bad for crops, let alone feared a bad harvest, have the ludicrous luxury of associating nature with goodness. To them, earthquakes and cuckoos, vipers and vampires are all good, because they are natural. Presumably unnatural things like schools, vaccinations, police forces, and photography must all be bad because they are unnatural.

I became a vegetarian, because stock farming is not economically viable. We could feed the Third World if everyone became a vegetarian.

Stock farming is viable. We know this because people do it. If it were not economically viable, then no one would rear animals for slaughter. They do, and have done for a very long time. Meat commands a good price in the shops. People all over the world like meat, and are prepared to pay good money for it. This is not a passing fad.

The belief that we could feed the Third World by being vegetarian is not only misinformed, but cruel. For one thing, we could feed the Third World already, without killing off all our herds to make way for cereal crops. Moreover, it would be the cruelest blow to the Third World if we did. After World War Two, it was realised that asking Germany to pay “war reparations” would be a mistake. This had been done after the Great War, and had been a failure. How could Germany pay? In money? No - she (or, since this is the Fatherland, he) was bankrupt at the time. In goods? Perhaps, but this would bankrupt the countries receiving those goods. Think about it - you are a manufacturer of lorries in Britain. You hear that Germany is going to be forced to give Britain lots of lorries. Does this make you happy? No, of course it doesn’t, because you know that as long as free lorries are coming from Germany, no one but a fool is going to want to buy your lorries. You should sell up quickly, and lay off all your workers. The Third World is largely an agricultural economy. By giving free food to an agricultural nation, you at one simple stroke render the country bankrupt, and make beggars of all its farmers. Why should any African farm owner go to the effort, risk, and expense of farming, when he knows that he is in competition with free and superior products from the rich world? Meanwhile, why should any British farmer go to the effort and expense of producing food if he knows it would just be given away, and he get nothing for it? Becoming a vegetarian will do nothing at all to feed the Third World. One thing you can do to help the Third World, is invest heavily in GM crop research.

I became a vegetarian because I don’t want to finance death. I don’t mind wearing a woollen jumper, because they don’t kill the sheep to get the wool.

By being alive, you compete with other animals. You take up space, breathe air, drink water, eat food and a thousand other things in competition with other animals that would like to do the same. Thanks to people like you, there are no wolves or bears in Britain, but there are more rats. The notion that wool is okay because it doesn’t kill the sheep is a tortuous and pathetic rationalisation. In parts of Britain where sheep are scattered and far from market, it is not worth shearing them, because the trouble and expense wouldn’t be worth the price of the “clip”. Even where sheep are in neat fields near towns, some farmers question the value of shearing. The hair of a sheep is a tiny proportion of its weight. It then requires a lot of processing before it can be made into trendy jumpers, so most of what you pay for it in the shops is for that processing. It is not economically viable to raise vast herds of sheep just to harvest one percent of their bodies. Sheep are reared for meat. Lamb is the meat of young sheep, and is much more popular than mutton. Half of all sheep are male, and very few of these are kept for breeding. At least the argument that wool doesn’t finance death isn’t quite as daft as the argument that the leather on your shoe uppers doesn’t either. It is very difficult to get an animal’s skin off it without killing it - it just won’t keep still.

In fact, of course, by eating meat, and wearing leather and wool, you are financing life, not death. The sheep was a species which was close to extinction in the Middle East before it became farmed, and thanks entirely to farming, sheep are some of the most common mammals on Earth. Being domesticated is one of the best things that can happen to a species. Humans become the slaves of that species, and work to promote the genes of that species. Grass is a good example. A huge proportion of the Earth’s dry surface is covered with grass, thanks to Man.

I became a vegetarian because I think that farming animals is cruel. Farmers do not care about the welfare of their animals.

No, farmers do care about the welfare of their animals. Partly this is because the sort of person who chooses to spend his life looking after animals is probably the sort who would care. Stock farming is not for the faint hearted. A dairy farmer has to milk his herd up to three times a day, every day, including Christmas Day, and when he has flu. Moreover, the farmer has a very strong vested interest in his stock. The healthier his stock is, the more money he makes. Money is a tremendously motivating factor. Over-crowded, over-stressed, under-fed, diseased cattle produce little milk, and get a rotten price at market. Content, healthy plump cattle are the reverse.

That someone might think that farming is necessarily cruel seems to belie an ignorance of reality in the wild. In the wild, a sheep would have to look for food, compete for it, jockey for position in the herd, look out for predators, guard its offspring, and it one day would die because of some accident, perhaps a fall, some nasty illness, or it would become weak and have its throat ripped out by the local predators. By striking contrast, the life of a farmed sheep is rather different. A farmed sheep has complete protection from predators; all the food of exactly its favourite kind at its feet all day every day, for which it does not have to compete; no competition for mates; no need to guard offspring; free health care; free haircuts; it is very unlikely to die in childbirth, and unlikely to die a nasty death. True, half a ewe’s offspring are taken away and killed. However, in the wild, a ewe would lose most of its offspring anyway, and in nastier circumstances. By the standards of the natural wild, a sheep’s life is about as cushy as a life could possibly be.

To suffer, a creature has to be aware that it is suffering. There is no reason to believe that sheep are conscious as humans are, and very good reason to believe that they are not (see this essay on consciousness - you will have to use your browser’s BACK button to return here).

The above used sheep as a main example. Some animals, one might argue, are less lucky. That farming can be cruel can be argued for certain particular examples. Pigs are quite intelligent, and there have been times and places where sows have been chained in tiny pens while rearing piglets. Such practices have been banned in many places, including Britain. Even if one accepts that such practices are cruel, these are not arguments for vegetarianism. They are arguments for farming reform. If it bothers you that much, buy free range meat. If some manufacturer of a type of chocolate bar did something of which you disapproved, would you then refuse to eat anything with sugar in it? You might if you were mad, but were you more sane, you might remember never to buy those chocolate bars, and you might write to your MP to lobby the company to stop being naughty. If all the people who really cared about animal welfare became vegetarians, then the only people left buying meat would be the people who didn’t care whom they bought it from, and these would just buy the cheapest or tastiest, regardless of cruelty. The caring people will only pack an economic punch in farming reform if they use their money to buy meat from the good farmers.

One type of modern animal lover is the little old lady who lives in her country cottage, with seventeen cats. While she writes letters to newspapers about the cruelty of modern farming, her cats are catching, playing with, torturing, maiming, and occasionally eating about twenty small creatures a week, each.

I became a vegetarian because crop farming is more efficient than stock farming. 100 units of food energy fed to an animal become only 10 units of meat, so meat production is inefficient.

That a well-fed middle-class town-dwelling person should be so concerned about the efficiency of farming is questionable. There are many inefficient things in the world. Dancing is a waste of energy. Most males of most species never breed, so malehood in general is inefficient. This sort of argument is, perhaps even more than the rest, a clear indication that the reasons a person declares for being a vegetarian are very different from the real reasons they became one.

In fact, stock farming is efficient. That’s why it has never died out. For thousands of years, people have farmed, and feared starvation, and throughout all that time, they kept animals for slaughter. Animals are a way of keeping food fresh, and making it mobile. Their hearts beat, their immune system immunise, and their legs walk. Animals are a way of using up otherwise useless vegetable matter. You grow a pea plant, and harvest the peas. The peas are a tiny proportion of the plant. This seems wasteful, but you can then feed the rest of the plant to a pig, which turns the pods and stalks into pork. Shelling peas requires effort, and then you have to store the peas. Letting your pigs into the field where the pea plants were takes two minutes, and the pigs do the rest. While they are there, they root about, and turn over the soil for you, and fertilise it with droppings. Animals are also a good insurance policy. Crops fail, but the mass loss of stock is very rare.

Figures for how much more one acre of vegetable land can produce than one acre of pastureland are often used to support vegetarianism. The comparison is an unfair one. Producing vegetables intensively, requiring high inputs and high labour, on good rich downland soil, near towns, is no fair match for the extensive farming of sheep on a distant Welsh upland. The actual test is economic. If vastly more could be produced and sold per acre of one type of farming rather than another, then everyone would swap to the type of farming which would make them all rich. Try intensive vegetable farming on the Brecon Beacons and you will go bankrupt.

I have heard arguments based on the “10% per trophic level” concept which seem to contravene the First Law of Thermodynamics. 90% of the energy fed to a pig does not disappear. Energy cannot be destroyed this way, but it can be converted into other forms. Most of it falls out of the other end of the pig in a very useful form indeed, although it does smell a bit. The rest is converted mainly into heat. That pigs produce methane is sometimes cited as a worry by climate-change doom-casters. Animals have always produced methane. The huge wild herds of ancient British deer are now gone. We have pigs, cows and sheep instead, and I’m unconvinced that pig methane is worse than deer methane.

I don't want to eat anything that I wouldn't be prepared to kill myself.

This one is an interesting argument, that at first glance might seem to be an effective attempt to grab the moral high ground. On closer inspection, however, it turns out to be rubbish. Is a rich advertising executive prepared to harvest a field of wheat? Probably not, but he’ll still be happy to eat the bread. Would he be too squeamish to kill a cow himself? Perhaps, but is squeamishness good?

Modern removal from the process of killing has left many people with a distaste for killing. The strongest association with killing in people's minds today is with killing other humans, and this is a thing done criminally or cruelly. People who like killing other people are a menace to society, but men who liked hunting deer were a boon to the society of our ancestors. There can be no innate distaste for hunting, or we would have died out. The ability humans have evolved to be squeamish is almost certainly one that was to do with self harm and the harming of allies or the provoking of human enemies. Squeamishness itself is not a virtue in all circumstances. If it were, we would all be trying to fake it all the time: “Oh no – a shoe! Yeargh! No I can’t bring myself to touch it! You put it on for me!”

What is the analogous example we can find that shows this argument to have logic? “I don’t want to watch any stunt that I wouldn’t be prepared to do myself”? “I don’t want to view any painting that I wouldn’t be prepared to paint myself”? “I don’t want to laugh at any joke that I wouldn’t be prepared to tell myself”? None of these makes sense, so why does the meat eating one make sense? Some people are better than others at telling jokes. Let them be the comedians. Today, no one has to kill all the meat he eats.

A man might argue that he doesn’t want to enjoy the products of a company that exploits its workers cruelly. This is fair enough, and it could act to make the world a happier place for others, and thus it would be morally good. Broadly, the argument would be “I don’t want to benefit selfishly from something that makes the world a sadder place overall, because it would make me feel guilty, and my feeling of guilt is a sign that I am a good person.” This is fine, and it could be applied well to, for example, buying wildly over-priced trainers made in a tiny sweatshop in the Third World. For it to work with the meat argument, however, it would have to be demonstrable that the effect of eating meat is to make the world a sadder place overall. For my answer to that one, see the rest of this essay.

I became a vegetarian because we don’t need meat.

It is possible to live without eating meat. It is also possible to live without watching films, without conversation, or without holidays. We don’t need to drink tea. This is a total non-argument, and when I hear this being used, I know that the person saying it has no idea why they really became a vegetarian. The idea that we should ban ourselves from doing anything which isn’t necessary is so stupid that this section can be very short.

I became a vegetarian because that’s the way society is going. Thousands of people every minute are becoming vegetarians.

There are so many figures going around for how many people are becoming vegetarians that it can be very confusing. Yes, the curse of vegetarianism does seem to be generally on the increase, though I suspect that it may have peaked. The current generation is already rebelling against the eco-nazis and global warming pessimists, and I suspect will back-lash against the tree-hugging leaf-eaters pretty soon. What the vegetarian lobby sometimes forgets to mention is the number of people who recover from vegetarianism, and start eating meat again, which is over half of them. It also for convenience often includes fish and even bird-eaters amongst “vegetarians”.

That other people do something is an indication that it is fashionable. Fashion is not good, it is just fashion. Most people wear daft fashionable clothes, and later see photographs of themselves as they were and cringe from embarrassment. Most people do all sorts of inadvisable things, and this is no reason to copy them. The only reason to copy other people’s bizarre practices, is to keep “in with the crowd” for social safety’s sake. In 1930’s Germany, it was very fashionable to go to Nazi rallies, but hindsight has taught us that perhaps this wasn’t Germany’s best move. Again, this argument simply does not work. If anything, it is an admission that the speaker of it has not thought for himself.

I became a vegetarian, because I care about biodiversity.

The best people for increasing biodiversity in Britain are probably game keepers. They oversee the pheasants, most of which do not get shot, and they manage all sorts of habitats which are shared and enjoyed by many other species of both plant and animal. Stock farmers tend to have smaller fields, and hedgerows of Britain are not just a significant proportion of the land, but act as highways from one place to another for all manner of species, since they are connected unlike little islands of woods.

If no one were allowed to farm animals, farms would grow crops instead. The first thing to go would be all the animals. Once the rural landscape were rid of cattle, sheep, and the like, fields would get larger, for the convenience of the combine harvesters, and hedgerows would go. Wild animals like rabbits would now be a more major pest. No farmer would want animals eating the plants, and so the war on such animals would intensify. Grown in the fields would be domesticate species of food crops, and so the number of plant species would decline.

All the parasites of animals would suffer too, and the parasites of the various rarer or extinct plants forced out by the prairies of wheat. Also, the predators, the foxes and stoats, would die out.

An alternative to the above is that Britain could become a giant playground, reliant on foreign imports of food, and turning over its landscape to dirt bikers, paint-ballers, horse riders and other such people who might find a use for a bit of ex-farm land. This is a rather large discussion topic of its own, and beyond the scope of this essay, but I do suspect that this is not a great future.

I became a vegetarian because it is the future.

There is an annoying connection made by many people that the way things are going is necessarily good, and/or inevitable. Perhaps the current trends are bad, and the future will not be as good as it could be. Perhaps things are heading a certain way, but this does not mean that we are powerless to stop them, nor does it mean that we should not try. This argument does not work either. One has to supply actual reason for vegetarianism, and this is not a reason, it is just an excuse at best.

In the future, farming may change beyond today’s recognition. Perhaps plants will all be grown in super-efficient orbiting greenhouses, with no soil but liquid nutrient vats instead. Perhaps geneticists will breed seeds which give rise to nutrient-packed super-tasty foods, every cell of which will be dedicated to feeding humans, and not to supporting the weight of leaves, or making thorns to ward off non-existent predators. By the same argument, perhaps lean tasty meat will grow in vats in perfectly cubic bone-free lumps. Today it is possible to grow human skin for grafts. Perhaps one day we will be able to read and write in DNA code so well that we will be able to grow leather jackets. The time when a tray in the shape of a leather panel of a jacket could be used to grow a perfectly even follicle-free sheet of pure white leather is probably not very far off. Whether any of this will come to pass has no bearing on whether one today should become a vegetarian.

Misc.

One danger of vegetarianism of which I became aware when I lived with two nurses, who had seen examples of it, was damaged babies. Vegetarian parents had misguidedly fed all-vegetable diets to their poor babies. Babies have small guts, and cannot cope with a large volume of food. Since meat is so much more nutritious than plants, it is necessary to feed babies very large amounts of vegetarian food to satisfy them, and hence the problem arises. This used to be rare, but some hospitals are now seeing a steady trickle of cases. One could argue that it should be illegal to inflict this sort of nonsense on innocent babies, and that vegetarianism should be unlawful below a certain age. One might also argue that personal liberties include people’s right to damage their own children.

A daft myth I’ve come across is the “fear toxin”. The notion is that animals release these into their blood-streams at the point of death, for some reason. The reason is never included in the myth. When an animal is about to be eaten, the one thing it wants more than anything else is not to be eaten, and all manner of chemicals are released into its bloodstream to save it. If the chemicals do not save the creature, for it to live on and breed, then they are of no consequence for evolution. A cow is not bright orange, warning predators that it is poisonous. Cows are not poisonous, which is why in the wild they fear predation. A warning signal would stop the predator from attacking in the first place. Once the creature is dead, poison is too late. Evolution does not select for spite. There is no reason that the chemicals associated with fear would be any more toxic to a predator than any other emotional chemical. The warm feeling of contentedness chemical might be the deadliest. Fear is not a thing, tangible and bad. It does not taint in the romantic way that believers of this myth would like to think it does.

Any butcher of carcasses knows that a well-slaughtered animal is easier to cut up. An animal which dies tensed up will be tense after death and difficult to cut up. An animal which dies relaxed will be easier to cut up. There is therefore a definite vested interest within the industry to kill animals without stressing them first. If “fear toxins” really existed, wild predators would be very ill much of the time. Actually, evolution would quickly see to it that any predator became immune to the effects of such chemicals.

I became a veggie simply because I don’t like meat.

At first this might seem like the most reasonable of arguments. People are different. Some people can eat aniseed and keep a smile on their face. Perhaps a person might genuinely not like the taste of meat. If so, then it would be unreasonable to drag them into the street and force feed them lard. On reflection, though, it doesn’t quite add up.

People like the same things. People prefer comfort to pain, temperate warmth to bitter cold, kindness to cruelty, strength to weakness, fun to boredom, laughter to grief. A species that evolved to eat a mainly meat diet will also have evolved to like meat. We do. We even prefer good meat to bad meat, cooked meat to raw. Indeed, anyone who eats meat and enjoys it will know that meat is the most gloriously delicious thing there is. It has a peerlessly nice texture, and a great taste. More, after a vegetarian meal, a person misses out on the protein rush that meat gives. This, I’m told, is one of the cues which switches off the feeling of hunger (others are the physical feeling of a full belly, and a steep rise in blood sugar levels). Consequently, vegetarian meals are never as satisfying. It is very unlikely indeed that a person would really not like meat. Further, there are many types of meat, and it is even more unlikely that one person would dislike all of these tastes by coincidence.

The meals these people do eat often imitate meat, and meaty things. This does not match the argument that they do not like meat. If a lack of liking were the only reason, then they would have no objection to eating meals with a little bland meat in them. A little mince in a stew wouldn’t bother them in the least, but strangely, it bothers them a lot.

The people who claim that they don’t like meat just happen to be predominantly of certain predictable sorts: females, trendies, liberals, politically confused, collectors of allergies, urbanites, dungaree-wearers, etcetera. While it could be coincidence that these people also happen to be the people who happen not to like meat, the chances against this are ten to the power of my overdraft to one against. There must be another reason.

AT LAST - THE REAL REASON PEOPLE BECOME VEGETARIAN

Vegetarianism is the new Puritanism. This is my belief. It is also one of my arguments against vegetarianism, and although it may at first seem a flippant argument, I believe that it is very powerful. Vegetarianism is miserable. It attacks one of life’s greatest and surest pleasures - enjoying good food. Anything which makes people less happy is bad.

The jump from not liking meat very much, to banning oneself from eating any of it ever, is a huge one, and one which is made by people behaving in a religious manner. If one didn’t approve of certain pork farming practices, one would not then refuse at a dinner party at someone else’s house to eat a stew because it had been cooked in the same pot as some beef mince. One would not read the label of a packet of ice cream to see if there were “non-dairy fat” in it, nor look at the label of some jam to see if gelatin has been used. That people go to these wild extremes is proof that their behaviour is religious in nature, and not rational.

Puritanism isn’t fashionable at the moment, but vegetarianism is. Puritanism is founded on the belief in gods and such like, and these beliefs do not reside comfortably in the modern world, when we know that the Earth is round and the galaxy rather big. Instead, we have vegetarianism, which appeals to the same people for the same reason. Vegetarians have the same notions of purity of behaviour.

Self-denial has certain advantages. It is a discipline, and requires effort, and the success makes the person so succeeding feel stronger and more in control. It also makes them feel superior to the rest of us who indulge. We become the weak in their eyes. We indulge in sinful meat eating, enjoying ourselves, while they smile inwardly at their specialness. If we all became vegetarians, they would lose their specialness, of course, and the Christian church has found this many times. People want to know that they alone are going to heaven and everyone else is going to fry in hell. The church always split every time it got too popular.

Enforcing self-denial on others also has its advantages. It is a test of loyalty. A woman knows that a man must love her if he forsakes sex with all other women. A woman looks for self-denial in a man, since it is a sign of strength and loyalty. Such a man might make a better father. The ability to defer pleasure shows maturity. A man who just wants fun fun fun now is unlikely to be a responsible father. A man who can plan ahead so far that he only gets his final reward in heaven is a man who will stick around and help pay for the kids.

Most vegetarians are women. In Britain, a person is doubly likely to suffer from vegetarianism if he is female. Part of the reason for this is that women like the taste of meat less than men. This stems from the fact that women have inherited the instincts of gatherers and men those of hunters. In all hunter-gatherer societies today, however, women prize meat. They love meat, just not quite as much as men do. The greater reason, I believe, is that women use vegetarianism to test men. By requiring men to deny themselves pleasure, they test the resolve of the men, and their loyalty. It is a very effective test of loyalty. The proof of this is that the VAST majority of men who succumb to vegetarianism (I’m afraid I have lost the figures, which weren’t 100% reliable anyway, because the accurate comprehensive study of this has not be done - it would cost a fortune, and no one needs to know that much) either have vegetarian sexual partners, or are trying to get some. Just as tellingly, when men split up from their veggie girlfriends, they near invariably start enjoying meat again. This goes to prove amongst other things that men really will do ANYTHING for sex.

Of course, some men do stay vegetarian for many years, even if they are without a girlfriend. A man who has been a veggie for many years has proof of his dedication to the god of plants, and will perhaps one day impress a chick with this loyalty. It is a long term strategy. To disprove this, you will have to find that there are many men who have been vegetarian for many years, and in that time have had large numbers of girlfriends, most of whom have not been vegetarian. Good luck.

Put this theory to an average veggie and he or she will deny it. I am not saying that this is why people consciously choose to become vegetarians, but I believe that it is the underlying reason, and whereas the reasons given by veggies invariably collapse under the tiniest of scrutiny, my theory is consistent with the facts as I know them. My theory explains why someone who claims to be a vegetarian because he once saw some pigs living in a squalid sty, then makes the illogical leap to making a complete pain of himself at a party by insisting that the ham be served on a different plate from the potato salad, as if somehow his touching of that contaminated plate could harm a pig, despite the fact that everyone else is not just touching the plate, but actually eating the ham. The wild illogicality of this stance combined with the firmness of it makes it clear to me that such people are not clear rational thinkers, but instead worshippers at the alter of the New Puritanism.

The cure?

I think that if my theory became widely understood and agreed with, then vegetarians would look and feel increasingly silly, and would more obviously occupy the moral low ground. I don’t think that there is any real danger that vegetarianism will ever become the norm, because meat is too nice, and membership of a club is no privilege if everyone becomes a member. The club has to be exclusive in order to be appealing.

On the other hand, bacon works better than anything else. For American readers, I should say that bacon as the British know it is a rather different thing from that which gets called “bacon” in the States. Our bacon is mostly delicious meat, with enough fat to make it scrummy.

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You obviously have a powerful dislike of vegetarians, i hope that doesn’t stop you in engaging in a little debate on the topic? i am a vegetarian and after stumbling across this article with its unnecessarily violent title i can’t help but take the defensive. Even though i do not begrudge anyone for eating meat, i think vegetarianism is a perfectly natural/acceptable alternative.

I became a vegetarian because it is a better nutritional diet.
This isn’t bizarre- meat may have more nutrients in it but studies show that the average meat-eater in the West consumes far more protein than is necessary for a balanced diet (one of the contributing factors to the obesity epidemic)

I became a vegetarian because I care about what I put into my body. I don’t want to put chemicals in there, nor anything dead. Plants are natural, so they can’t be harmful.
I don’t deny that vegetables can contain pesticides which are harmful- and that some have natural defence mechanisms which stop them being consumed by animals, just as many insects and some reptiles and fish contain poison to protect them to make them unsavoury to predators. But i think the real danger here is not naturally occurring toxins which can be found in whole species and so therefore avoided by anyone with common sense! Meat has a much more dangerous potential. You may not know about the BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy – which was dubbed "mad cow disease") epidemic in the uk in the 80s and 90s- where people were contracting an incredibly dangerous disease which causes brain deterioration, personality changes and progresses rapidly and usually culminates in death over the course of a few months to a few years. The disease was believed to be caused by farmers in the uk who were feeding rendered bovine meat-and-bone meal to young calves- a form of cannibalism.
Also might i draw your attention to the numerous other potentially fatal diseases which can easily be contracted through eating meat and animal products – salmonella poisoning- and ecoli - Escherichia or ecoli is a bacteria that lives in the intestines of cattle, goats, sheep, pigs. It cannot be cooked out. An infected person will get severe stomach cramps, vomiting and diarrhea with blood in it. Some people get better in a week , others die. 10% get a complication called hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) in which their kidneys stop working.
I might also add that as for medication fed to livestock- America continues to use rBGH, a controversial synthetic hormone widely used in the United States (but banned in Europe and Canada) to rev up cows' metabolism and boost their milk production. Because of the increased production, the cows suffer from mastitis, a painful infection of the udders. Antibiotics must then be injected, which find their way into the milk, and ultimately reduce people's resistance to disease.

I became a vegetarian, because I want to live in a more natural way.
Your evidence for the claim that there are a few hunter gatherer communities which eat all-meat diets is lacking- where in the world can these people be found?? Even the most northerly peoples would eat some legumes- whether it be seaweed, perennial soft fruits or hardy root vegetables- i don’t think you could eat only meat, as the uncountable sailors who contracted Scurvy on long voyages pre the 18th century could testify!
Also i definately disagree with your statistics that in hunter gatherer societies they live off 1/3 meat 1/3 fish and 1/3 vegetables- this is bullshit. Number one there are varying factors to consider- the location of these societies for one. Bushmen of the Kalahari desert diets consists of 70/80% nuts, berries, roots and melons. Similarly the Nuaulu people in Indonesia rely predominantly on Sago starch for their protein. If you think it has ever been easier to hunt wild game than forage for plants you must know very little about hunting. And as for Britain- when does this archaeological data date from? People as far back as the middle ages were predominantly vegetarians because if they weren’t owners of property (which the vast majority wasn’t) they were subject to the forest eyres which banned them from hunting animals- and taxed or castrated them if they did! These laws were enforced by William 1st and only revised by Henry 3rd in 1217.

I became a vegetarian, because stock farming is not economically viable. We could feed the Third World if everyone became a vegetarian
The wealthier a country is the more meat it consumes. Fact. I don’t know if you are very widely travelled but i have been to Tanzania and recognise that the majority of people in poor countries rely on the animals they rear and kill themselves- not on huge factory farms which churn out huge quantities of meat a day to be shipped out to and sold in supermarkets.
I don’t believe everyone should become vegetarian (i do believe people have a right to eat and not eat whatever they want- you seem to have a more tyrannical viewpoint). But it is true that the staple diet of most poor countries is maize, rice or some form of grain. In America the soy and wheat production goes almost entirely into feeding its livestock (and about a third to producing biofuels)- with a small percentage going to Food aid- a most invaluable source of emergency supplies for countries like Haiti.
Countries such as China, which are facing massive industrial expansion – have also increased in its livestock production- making the competition for grain much fiercer and the consequential food crisis in poor countries much much more serious. if the West itself cut down drastically on its own meat consumption it wouldn’t have such a monopoly over the grain distribution, allowing other countries to eat meat too! also grain could be more widely distributed as a legitimate food source for humans- not just animals. And it should be pointed out that though an influx of free food from the west would cause poor farmers to go bankrupt- an influx of food sold at a standard internationally recognised price might just help alleviate world hunger! Biotechnology and gm food is one possible way to assist farmers (or rather ‘gardeners’ if our idea of farmer is someone with a couple hundred hactares of land) in producing enough to feed their families (though with the monopoly over disease resistant crops which corporations such as Monsanto hold- and their nasty habit of selling one yield GM crops to poor countries -it would undoubtedly make things far worse- like the Green revolution did in India)- but allowing for a more equal distribution of the resources needed to support livestock could make alot of difference to improving the diets of both rich over-fed countries and poor malnutrition ones.
If becoming a vegetarian can help cut down meat consumption in the uk (and stop us using animal feed produced on what was once dense rainforest in the Amazon) then it is a legitimate political choice.

I became a vegetarian because I think that farming animals is cruel. Farmers do not care about the welfare of their animals
Ofcourse this isn’t true across the whole spectrum of farming- just as your narrow-minded view of exactly what type of person becomes a vegetarian isn’t true- as for one i happen to live in an agricultural area of the uk. Organic, free range or welfare standard meat is a growing industry as people have started to recognise the ethical implications of eating meat produced on an industrial scale.
If you want to see the uncountable mistreatments of animals which can at times be tantamount to torture than watch ‘the animals film’ a British documentary which is available on Bfi relese- it is a horrific account of the sort of treatment animals get in factory farms. Much of the abuses have been legislated against in the last decade in the UK but we still have battery farms for chickens.
I would question your familiarity with farming as you seem to have a very idyllic concept of a red nosed sneezing farmer stumbling out to milk his fattened cows on a wintery Christmas morning. If a farmer is to make any money in this country, what with the distributor chains such as Tesco fixing prices arbitrarily and more cheaply than the product is worth- which only hurts the farmer, the only viable business strategy is to either mass produce, or market your food to a niche market such as the organic one, but even that costs over £1000 a year just to renew your soil association certificate, which many smallholders can’t afford.

I became a vegetarian because crop farming is more efficient than stock farming. 100 units of food energy fed to an animal become only 10 units of meat, so meat production is inefficient
This isn’t a topic worth arguing with someone who equates the energy used in dancing with the energy used in meat production- i would have to explain that the world contains a finite amount of resources- that we are drinking the same water now as our ancestors did thousands of years ago- and that the production of 1kilo of beef requires 13000 litres of water compared to 1 kilo of potatoes which require 100 litres. Not to mention the finite resource which we call oil- our increasing dependence on it for all forms of agriculture and it’s imminent peak in the foreseeable future. Modern forms of food production are all inefficient – what is needed is a more sustainable alternative like permaculture.

Concl.
I think all in all you suffer from an extreme prejudice if you cannot accept that some people may dislike meat- and extreme stupidity if you think that a meat dominant diet is a normal human diet. I do not eat meat because i have never enjoyed it- as a child my body rejected it and i used to be sick- now as an adult i am more disposed to try meat – but I believe there are fundamental problems with the way meat is produced in the uk.
I know lots of native British people who think vegetables are those bland steamed coloured things on the side of their plates but if you have ever tried a real Indian curry, or a chilli bean burrito, or a vegetable Tagine, or ugale or a thai veg stir fry then you would realize how boring and uninspired cooking with meat can be- and how creative and wonderfully diverse cooking with veg is.

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Greetings from America. We have this sick problem here too. Keep spreading the truth. I had a good laugh at the veggie's and all their self righteousness. My venison steak dinner will taste so much better now.

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omg!! i'm only 12 years old i became vegetarian BY CHOICE when i was 3 (i saw a tv show and wanted to try it out (being vegetarian) and i loved life like that!) you know all you said in that article was RUBBISH!! nothing was true, i am perfictly healthy and stop trying to insult vegetarians by saying that we will eventually realise we look silly. obiusly you are very against vego's, but i mean seriously? i am one of the healthiest at my school and i have to admite i am a bit lite for my age but that's my dad's genes. when you eat meat your eating a dead animal, it's like eating your pet goldfish when you eating fish. don't you hav any fealings at all?? do you deserve to die? no. so why do animals?? for our enjoyment?? well that's what it seems.
look, i'm not trying to turn you into a vego but just don't promote eating meat. i mean they die in fear and what are we eating?? FEAR!! and wats this about sheep not knowing fear?? OF COURSE THEY DO!! they are just like us, we're animals aswell. if we hav feelings why wouldn't they hav feelings?? meat was originally an ocasional thing but now meals are based around meat or meat is the meal. hamburgers, sausages, hot dogs, do you even know wat your eating??
you don't want to know.
and meat these days is usually cooked with some sort of fat clogging up your arteries causing heart attacks. and vegetarianism's taking the pleasure out of food?? no way!! i can still have lollies chip popcorn chocolate icecream. and in meals i can hav bok choy (my fav), mash potatoe roast vegies chips vege lasagne, i could go on for hours but i can't be stuffed. lol. anyway you can take the meat out of any meal and it tastes so much better. you are still healthy if your not vegan. not trying to demote veganism but it get's rid of all dairy from your diet (and you couldn't hav chocy or ice cream!). but you hav dairy if your vegetarian.
anyway i better wrap this up now so if you read this thank you and think again next time you go to buy a hotdog! if you didn't read this GO BACK AND READ IT. it is important! (and it took me like and hour to write this!). I DIDN'T WRITE THIS FOR NOTHIN', READ IT!!
thanks,
VERY healthy vegetarian.

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there are absolutely no facts in his article to back anything said in it up, saying there are nutrients in meat that you cannot obtain from a plant source really will not register with alot of people unless you actually put what nutrients.... unlss this article is just a silly backlash and a childish rant.

Hahahahahahahahaha...Double 'r', double 't' - theory proved!!!!!

Oh, and I've had more sex in the last 5 years with my little Ginger Bear than most 'couples' have in a lifetimes marriage, try Alt.com, but it's probably too 'meaty' for you!!!!!!

Sex is meat - read 'The Butcher' by Alina Reyes.....

woah there!
if i didnt know any better i would say this is you acting out all your hate for a vegetarian ex-girlfriend who dumped you. you sound so bitter throughout all of this sweetheart. perhaps the reason why you are probably single and not getting any sex is because you have a venimous tongue. no-one wants to be with someone that has that kind of capacity for bitterness.
perhaps councilling of some sort would be better than seeking support from annonamous people on the net.
xx

Well...what to add?

Firstly, we have - in no particular order - Blubb, Killing.., Johanna, Jess, Alisse, Good Stuff, Uggh, Emma, Fukk u (not worth reading), Mijnheer (did he mean Mein Heer?), Matt, R.daneel.., Izzy, Veggbitch, Gloomy and Weggy, all, you will notice, having a double letter, often against the 'rules' of English. Is this some secret badge or code denoting membership of the higher carrot-crunching council? As I (pretentiously) call myself Peerpressure, two doubles, can I be chief carnivore-botherer?...great thanks...oh hold on...I've got bacon under the grill, I'll have to join later!

Speaking of bacon, I used to share a house with a vegetarian, we (me and another ex-army lad) used to cook (fry) onions and bacon every day after work, just to wind him up!! But he got the last laugh...

In direct contradiction to comments made by James, 'Vegan' and others, but backing-up Big Al's comments on the subject, a veggie diet is not easier to digest, although as someone else pointed out it does pass through quicker than an omnivorous mix. Only because the body does not break it down properly and requires meat to obtain the right nutrients efficiently. As a result this flatmate would - while we were eating our bacon fry-up with a side salad or veggies and a couple of roast-tate's - stuff his face with two whole sweetcorn, a plate of nut-cutlets and mixed vegetables and (before he went to bed, to - presumably - stave-off that not fed feeling) a large bowl of muesli. In the morning he would get up, have another vast bowl of the same rabbit-food, drop a bog-blocking swamp-gator, around 12 inches long, and giving the chain a cursory pull, bugger off to work on his cheese-eating surrender-cycle. We would then have to get up to a house that smelt as if a cow had reversed down the stairs with it's tail up!

So; NO, you're shit is not sweeter, and the amount of time some of you have spent trying to convince the rest of us below that it is , only backs up the puritan fanaticism stated in the original post.

In fact your shit stinks and you produce tons of it! The poster who suggested that we omnivores don't go for days, is also barking up the wrong tree, if after a few days with not much meat, you have a full-on meat meal you will get the runs, likewise, who in the last few festive weeks has not got a little 'over-regular'? lots of chocolate, cheese-boards, poultry, nuts etc.

Over-eating rich food; We need a balanced diet, omnivorous, everything in moderation. If you over-do protein you WILL bung-up, something exploited by 24-Hour and 10-man ration packs in the 80's. The need to keep men warm in cold trenches, and ready to fight 5th Soviet Guards Shock Army, meant they fed us a protein-enriched diet so that we wouldn't need to 'go' (primarily to keep us from breaking the seal on our NBC 'noddy' suits), on the 7th day you would lay a vegetarian-like cable!

Which brings me to Shane. I was a soldier too, and you are an abusive fuckwit, you will notice there is no gap in my fuckwit, if you wish to push your intellect to it's limits by subscribing to a national periodical, at least learn to read your 'Viz' eh? Terry.

Fake onionman - someone dealt with your stupidity. Ben Davis - breath of fresh-air among the retarded scribbling of cave folk. Dave - Wheat, corn and rice are not super-foods, they're 'staple's, super-foods are usually hideously expensive things like Guava and cranberries, which your average Joe, whether omni or veggie, can't afford in the developed west, let alone the third-world. Being reserved for Chelsea-tractor driving corporate retards to find on their plate, decorating the 'jus' spread liberally over their French 'crated' veal.

The same corporate retards who own the Agri-Businesses that have lead to most of the problems in food production (and transport) globally. Red - couldn't agree more, there are real problems in intensive farming, or industrial agriculture. But that's no reason to wish ill on omnivores as some of your compatriots have done below. It requires peer pressure and legislation, the former is lacking a good single voice, the later requires a type of politician we may never have in the numbers required? opting out, and preaching veggie'isem is - in my view - just a bit of a cop-out. As a footnote; Britain has done more than most to control the wilder excesses of agri-business, however with quite a few non-vegan veggies 'allowing' themselves chicken/eggs and/or fish - the two most industriallised/over harvested forms of meat on the market - I'm afraid 'the movement' lost the moral high-ground on day one!

Fukk U - you said you'd be brief, you lied. And most of it was ill-informed garbage, do you not know bacteria are millions of times smaller than cells? his fact was accurate, you look as dumb as you read. Weggy - His article is filled with floors is it? Lucky for us he built it on a foundation of truths and added walls and a roof of common-sence, leaving a fine structure'd document!! Unlike your flawed shed supporting Vacey's ramblings.

Veggibitch - your tolerance to others food use is refreshing, your ownership of an AK-47 suggests I need to marry you, I have a revolution to organise!

Several people question the Weight-for-weight nutrition thing, well quite apart from the scatological mumblings at the start of my post, there is a great myth about the whole planet going veggie. It is this; No matter what you do with the animals (they would need to be allowed - at the point of a bolt gun - to go extinct), you could not then produce enough food if you covered the whole planet in crops, killed all the pets, made everyone live underground and started hoovering up all the oceans algae and sea-weed, period. Meat 'crops', are an efficient way of turning hard to digest 'roughage' into easy to digest nutrients.

Monkey - re. above para; You missed the point, the sheep we have today were/have been bred (sort of GM) from those in the middle east that nearly went extinct, yet again an anti-poster shows his/her ignorance, yet again the author was correct in his facts. You were also - along with several of your fellows - wrong about Vegans. Vegan Children are (I believe) all (it may only be some) put on the 'at risk' register, and the state, through social services, makes sure they receive the supplements they need to survive infancy under their parents faddish dietary regime. If someone has the correct figures please educate me!

One other thing on the animal/methane subject, all the livestock under human husbandry, do not in any way equate to the vast wild herds that roamed the planet before Sumer arose in the fertile crescent and 'invented' modern farming.

Dusty - You just missed the whole point. Questioner - Assuming she has been veggie since birth...If she was breast fed, I'm sure she can swallow (but if you've been eating meat would she WANT to?), if she was raised on formula, probably best if she spits (even if you've filled yourself with melon!!). Charlie - a lot of sense, a high-meat diet for all bar eskimo/Inuit people is as damaging or likely to damage as a no meat diet. But I'm afraid 'they' DO 'care' and it's their screeching preaching that obviously formulated this post in the authors mind.

Vegan - I've already had one go at you how unfair is that? You say "it's good for pulling", proving one of the more contentious conclusions? To play devils advocate for a moment, there are several posts dealing with gay/lesbian issues re. vegetarianism. Now here is another group that has been quite vociferous in their evangelism over the last 30 years (although given the persecution they suffered in previous decades/centuries they have a better reason the the veggie lobbies "I am so you should" line), it is also a group that - whenever I have encountered/observed it seems to A) have a lot of sex, and B) have among it's members people who may only be 'Gay' FOR the sex? Am I to assume therefore that the Lesbian Veggies above are having so much sex they just don't actually have time to cook meat??!!

Night - Your theory about smells holds no water, ask a Japanese girl about Western men (or girls, if she's taking advantage of the saphic sex surplus!), and she will tell you we all smell as you describe, It's our Dairy-product intake, not the meat. The Japanese don't touch dairy products at all, and we all smell like old greasy dustbins to them. The fact you have convinced yourself that you are somehow better smelling than us, puts you in the same camp as those mentioned above who think their shit is sweeter, while at the same time lining you up with those who think 'Paki's stink. In other words you are a delusional, intolerant bigot. The sort of person who at the first hurdle would fail the Stanford Experiment?

Which leaves...

Veggieromance.com - you fucking sad insecure misguided fools. When your followers tell people to "get a life", are they in fact saying; get a life like mine? how Stepford would that be?

Newcastle University - You should be thoroughly ashamed of your actions, which bring our centres of learning into disrepute, it's only a few years ago you were all bleating about Govt. interference, now they've turned you into businesses, needing to turn a trick with foreign students cheque-books, you dare to whore yourselves on the altar of political correctness? Where is your intellect? Educate yourselves!

"Plant Ovaries"....Laughed out loud, the sign of true humour!

Filipe Colez - Believe me a similar post against Born Again Christians would be a complete waste of time, their answer's are rehearsed over and over, in the churches and chapels with their ministers, and in thousands of books, pamphlets and flyers. They have a biblical quote ready for every piece of logic you throw at them or the answer is in the bible. you are talking about people who believe dinosaur bones were put in the ground 7.5 thousand years ago, by god, purely to give archaeologists something to do! You will get some idea of what it would be like reading 'Vacey's post.

What a selfish, uninformed world you live in.
Your protestations are obviously a result of the guilt you feel and your psychological need to project this onto those more enlightened than yourself who feel no need to take part in the fear and pain of others to live a full and happy life.

Excellent piece!

Animals don't have rights by the way commenters, I'd hate to see what happens when we let them have property or protect them from each other?

Plants can feel things just because they cant scream or they don't have cute faces.

I've been a vegetarian for much of my life, with occasional lapses. But 2 years ago I went to Farm Sanctuary in Watkins Glen, NY, USA and met cows, pigs, goats, turkeys, and chickens for the very first time. Being an open hearted sort of person I immediately connected with these beings.

I chose to become vegan then because I simply can't take part in the practice of animal exploitation.

In part I have to say the Occupation of Iraq also played a part in my thinking, because here was a clear case of the powerful elite sending off National Guardsmen to serve as clay ducks while they steal the wealth of Iraq. Seeing what came of this - Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, USA Patriot Act - I was suitably appalled, and determined never to side with the oppressor.

The thing is, I don't believe that just because a being has absolute power over a weaker being they should use it. Cows must be repeatedly impregnated to produce milk. A huge number of male calves produced by the milk industry end up as victims of the veal industry. There is no good argument for veal. However it's socially accepted because everyone around you is uncaring or unaware.

My concern for animal welfare has led me to question authority and power much more deeply than my prior denial-state allowed. I have come to understand how pervasive power dynamics are, and how people are disempowered by apathy and a lack of compassion. It is astounding to see how readily we domesticated apes trade our solidarity with fellow beings for any distraction or justification that our media and peers peddle to us.

Why don't you love the cow? I hope it's only because you never met her. Because if you had, how could you still look her in the eye and kill her anew every day?

I'm very pleased with the results of changing my diet. I am much happier in general, more energetic, slimmer, and brilliantly happy to no longer be working for an industry that treats animals and humans alike so cruelly. My hope is that one day the majority of people in the world will give up their dreams of domination and end the cycle of cruelty.

"Starve a vegan for a week and they will eat meat anyway."

I can promise you if you were to do this to me I would still NOT eat the meat. I can not stand the look or smell. I do not hold a holier than thou attitude. I do not eat it and would rather that other people did not but hey it's their choice at the end of the day.

My boyfriend is an avid meat eater who goes hunting. My veiw is if you can not kill it you should not eat it. He can kill it so he eats it. I can not so do not!! Makes sence if you ask me.
I can not have animal milk as my body can not process them so makes me ill same with eggs. Also as it has been so long that I have not eaten meat more than likely the needed digestive enzymes would not be available so meat would initially at least make me ill also. I'm healthy and made my own choices. One day I will be a dietitian and will be able to give information out about diets that are healthy. If they included meat or not is a different matter as it has to be to the persons individual need!!!

I have to agree with Vacey's excellently written response. Your article is so filled with floors. I can't be bothered to go back through every incorrect point you have made, but as mentioned, Vacey's response pulls your arguement to shreads. I imagine you are in sales as you use typical confident language backed with no substance to try and convince people you're right. I personally am vegetarian because I was brought up this way from birth. I don't really care if people eat meat - but I don't give you a hard time about it, there's no reason to give vegetarians such a hard time. This sits along side such arguements as which is the best TV program, football team or favourite colour! Just get on with your life and don't be so patronising and degrading to others.

You are the best person in the world, I am a farmer, I have chickens and cows, that we have for dinner regularly. Anyway, you are the best. Excuse me, I have to go eat a 100% all angus beef hamburger

I am a vegitarian because my mum made me eat the crappy parts of animals as a child. It disgusted me and I think that only disgusting personalities eat crap like that.

Also if I were eat say, chicken, I couldn't really stop my imagination from showing me the bird and spoiling the meal. So I am over-imaginative, whatcha gonna do?

My message to Veggie/Vegan 'true-believer types'... stop being a bunch of holier-than-thou's and stop banging on about how meat eating is wrong. Jesus, you make 'normal' meat-dislikers look like a bunch of cranks!

My message to meat-eater types... Remember mad-cow disease in the UK. If you get CJD don't bitch about it to me! Oh, and don't you be telling me I am undernorished because I don't eat 'proper' food. (I know I am - get over it.)

LIVE AND LET LIVE or I will come after you with my AK-47 you extremist bastards.

One of the most well structured pro carnivore essays i've ever read! well done!! Gonna show this to my veggie girlfriend! I'm always trying to make her change her mind. You're right, vegetarianism is like a religion and needs to be wiped out before its stupidly ignorant voice gets too strong!!

ok- these veg heads need to chill- one of the reasons ive heard of for people becomeing one of them is that they feel the animals are mis treated, abused, ect, ect, well i just finished up a semi-related paper for my english class- just a few facts...

When most people think of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), they imagine a group truly concerned about animal rights. However, that is not the case. PETA’s extremely exaggerated ‘facts’ that support their argument against Future Farmers of America’s livestock production programs are not only irrelevant, but in almost all cases 100 percent false. The banning of the programs would be irresponsible and not only hurt the youth involved, but also our agricultural economy.

The National FFA Organization was founded for the purpose of further educating youth about the pleasures and hardships of the agricultural lifestyle. (FFA Creed 1). As of 1961, the third of the FFA’s nine purposes states, “to improve the farm home and its surroundings, to develop organized rural recreational activities and to create more interest in the intelligent choice of farming co-ops.” What PETA fails to realize is the word ‘intelligent’. Logically, there will always be human meat-eaters, that are how the earth was created, and that’s how the balance works. Hillsborough County Farm Bureau had it right when they released the bumper stickers, “No Farmers-No Food.”

If PETA succeeds in eliminating the livestock programs, thousands of students will miss out on the most hands-on learning experience any program can offer. That means years less training and trial-and-error years for America’s future farmers. You would think an animal-rights group such as PETA would at least acknowledge the FFA for raising the next generation of farmers, a generation that will carry on in the tradition that the majority of American commercial farmers practice of humanly treating and well caring for animals. (Ag Info 1) Youth exhibitors across the nation are becoming exasperated with the constant pressure of having to attend ethics seminars across the state, the hounding of PETA activists at fairs, being misquoted, and receiving unrighteous criticism from pen side.

One of the “points” PETA activists such as Jacqueline Domac uses against FFA are incidents such as In 2005, Yakima County, Washington, prosecutors recently filed felony charges against five youth, 12 and 13 who were axed, beaten and left to die in the school barn and a handful of other incidents. (PETA’s Nonsensical…) She also mentions in an article on PETA’s website that “what the media missed is a string full of similar events occurring across the nation-all stemming from Future Farmers of America.” What the article did not mention was that in every reported incident that PETA refers to, FFA students were not involved in whatsoever. They were the victims. The children involved were in no way related to the organization or agriculture students. (PETA’s Nonsensical…) Why make children suffer for their fellow student’s lack of discipline and common sense?

In conclusion, PETA’s irresponsible finger pointing at the National FFA Organization is plainly dim-witted. If PETA keeps this up, a vast number of agriculture students are going to become discouraged, as well as chasing away potential supports of the National FFA Organization. They should leave the animal production to the experts.

... peta & their followers need to stop singing songs of friendly animals around a campfire and shut up about FFA& other sources of animal production. i dont care if you dont eat meat at your house, but please, act like normal human beings outside of your huts made of wheat and burlap and get real.
-thanks for letting me vent

1a. If we all went vegetarian, we’d be overrun with animals?

Farmed animals are not allowed to reproduce naturally and farmers only breed animals when they can make a profit out of doing so. As demand for meat goes down over time, so fewer and fewer animals will be bred. That means that we will not be overrun by millions of farmed animals, as some people seem to imagine. Eventually, the few that are left can be allowed to go free: pigs can root around in woodlands as it is natural for them to do, sheep will graze the hillsides like deer and so on. Their populations will find their own natural levels, just like every other animal.

1b. If we all went vegetarian – all the animals would die out.

The converse of the above question – we veggies hear ‘em all! It's true that the number of animals will fall as farmers breed fewer and fewer animals as the years go by. Farmed animals live a controlled, distorted life, often filled with pain and fear. The vast majority of farmed animals are kept in indoor units where they never see the light of day. Those that are kept outside are only kept alive for a fraction of their natural lifespans before being slaughtered for meat - often in the most barbaric manner imaginable. All farmed animals are born to die at our command - a disgusting idea. Also some breeds have been so changed from their natural ancestor that it would be kinder to let them die out. For example, broiler chickens and turkeys bred for meat are often so obese that they can barely walk and suffer from crippling leg disorders. However we could set up large nature reserves for the more traditional (now rare) breeds that haven't been so changed.

There would be much more land available for reserves because most of it is used to grow crops for fattening animals at present. Also, there would be more space for forests and woods and other wildlife reservations where genuinely wild British species of animal and plants could flourish. In other countries we could encourage the breeding of our farm animal's wild ancestors - the wild pig, turkeys and jungle fowl (the forerunner of the battery hen) by stopping the destruction of their homes.

Many people forget that all farmed animals have been bred from wild animals – and that their natural ancestors need preserving.

In a vegetarian world animals would not be kept for profit and greed but would be allowed to exist in their natural state and live their life in freedom.

2. Our teeth/digestive systems are designed for eating meat.

No, they aren’t. We can digest meat, but our digestive systems are different to carnivorous animals: our guts are longer (so we can digest lots of plant materials) and our teeth are not designed to slice and tear flesh. Our teeth and mouths are the wrong shape to be able to kill and hold captive struggling prey (compare our jaw shape and teeth to a lion – or your pet cat or dog!). That’s why humans cook meat before eating it and why we’re no good at crunching and munching uncooked bones. As for our sharp teeth, gorillas are entirely vegetarian – as are almost all primates – and yet have far longer and sharper canine teeth than human beings. The diet of the ancestors of human beings was vegan until they began hunting about one-and-a-half million years ago but even then meat formed just a tiny part of their diet. That’s why people live long, healthy lives on vegetarian and vegan diets but would quickly die if they ate nothing but meat.

To find out more, see our Nutrition Myths page or read our guides, Fruits of the Past and The Healthiest Diet of All

3. Eating meat is natural.

As we’ve just seen, it isn’t. Humans have only eaten meat in relatively recent evolutionary history and then only through the use of tools like spears and fire. Only when we started farming (hardly natural!) did meat become even a regular part of most human beings’ diets and eating meat on a daily basis is very recent - since the advent of factory farming after the Second World War. This brought the cost of rearing animals down and the meat eating explosion was the result. In 1946, for example, the number of poultry eaten in Britain was 31.9 million and in 2001 it was over 800 million. And what’s natural about factory farming, live exports and slaughterhouses?

To find out more, read our Guides, Fruits of the Past, Justice for All and Murder, She Wrote

4. Lots of animals kill for food: why shouldn’t we?

Animals do lots of things we don’t do and wouldn’t do! Anyway, we shouldn’t kill because we have a choice. Lions and tigers etc have to kill to survive (they are known as obligate carnivores): we don’t. Animals can only follow their instincts but we human beings can think about the consequences of our actions. We can recognise the suffering of other animals and we can choose not to inflict it on them. If we choose to make them suffer, what does that say about the human race?

Eating meat is causing mass pain and suffering; it is destroying the earth and is costing the health services millions.

To find out more, read our Guides Murder, She Wrote, Planet on a Plate and the healthiest Diet of All.

5. It’s alright to eat animals if they’ve had a good life.

Would it be alright to kill and eat people if they’d had a good life? And what do we mean by a ‘good’ life, anyway? In the case of animals, we certainly don’t mean a long one. ‘Meat’ animals are killed as babies in the case of lambs and veal calves or as soon as they become physically mature – the equivalent of human teenagers - and never get to lead any kind of adult life. Animals, of course, want to live just as much as we do. The first instinct every animal has is to survive. By killing them at all, we are taking away from them the most important thing they have; we are denying their intrinsic right to life.

It is also naïve to imagine that any farmed animals lead good lives: the overwhelming majority of them are exploited, neglected and frustrated on factory farms – forced to lead lives of misery by a farming system which sees them only as ways of producing a profit. They then face a violent, frightening death in the slaughterhouse: despite supposedly humane stunning, millions of animals are still conscious when their throats are cut. Even free range and organic animals suffer on farms (see Question 6) and they face the same shocking death at a young age as factory-farmed animals.

To find out more about the lives of farmed animals, click here. To find out more about the moral argument against killing animals, read our guide Justice for All.

6. I only eat organic/free range/fish/chicken anyway

Good. Any choice that people make which reduces animal suffering is a welcome choice – but why stop at some kinds of animal or some kinds of suffering? Fish and chicken feel pain and have an instinct to preserve their own lives in just the same way as cows and pigs. They may be less attractive animals to you but that doesn’t mean that their lives and suffering are less important to them.

Similarly, although free range and organic animals usually (although not always) lead better lives than factory farmed animals, they still suffer in many ways. For example, so-called free range egg farms may involve thousands of hens being kept in a shed with limited access to outside and to limited land. Even in the better free range/organic egg farms, all male chicks are killed within hours – useless by-products as they do not lay eggs and are too scrawny for meat. All animals kept for farming are prevented from mixing in normal social groups, and ducks never see their ducklings; hens their chicks; pigs have their piglets taken away much too young; dairy cows have their calves ripped from them at one day old. Even on free range farms the male calves are shot as they don’t give milk and are the wrong breed for beef. All farms prevent animals from living natural lives. And all are sent for slaughter as soon as there is more profit in killing them than in keeping them alive.

There is no need to farm or to slaughter any animal. Eating any kind of meat contributes to animal suffering – and to the environmental and world hunger problems caused by the meat industry. The less meat people eat the better and many people find that cutting out meat gradually works best for them – but ultimately, the only truly consistent and ethical choice is to eat no meat at all.

7. Plants scream when they’re pulled out of the ground or are cut up for food.

Yawn, yawn! This question is usually seen as a bit of a joke, but if you want a serious answer here goes!

Plants do not feel pain. They do not have pain receptors, nerves or a central nervous system. The ‘screaming’ that sensitive equipment has detected when plants are damaged is thought to be caused by movement of gasses. The cut releases the pressure allowing gases inside the plant to move towards the cut, making a noise as they do so. And even if plants did feel pain, the average meat eater is responsible for ten times more plants being killed than the average vegetarian (see Question 10) – because all the animals that meat-eaters consume, eat huge amounts of plants themselves.

8. If you were stuck on a desert island, you’d have to eat meat.

Maybe – but if you were stuck on a desert island you might have to run around naked, never take a shower and wipe your bottom with leaves: that doesn’t mean that you should do those things the rest of the time.

9. God put animals on earth for us to eat

Most of us in the UK do not follow religious rules in our lives - but even amongst people with strong religious faith, there is considerable disagreement about whether God wants us to eat animals. No major religions command their followers to eat meat and many devout Christians, Moslems, Buddhists and Jews are vegetarian as are all Hare Krishnas and Jains. Most Hindus, of course, eat no red meat. For most religious people the question remains one of individual judgement. Most religions, however, celebrate compassion, kindness and mercy. The abattoir and the factory farm do not seem consistent with that.

10. If we all ate vegetables and crops, wouldn’t we need more pesticides?

No. Setting aside the question of whether pesticides are needed at all, if everyone were vegetarian we would use less pesticides because we would actually grow less crops. Meat animals all eat plants and they convert them into food very inefficiently. On average, a farmed animal has to eat 10kg of plant protein in order to make 1kg of meat – in other words, if the same land was used to grow crops for people to eat, it would be ten times more productive. To put it yet another way, 90% of the crops we feed to animals are wasted. If we didn’t eat animals, we wouldn’t need to grow those crops or use chemicals on them.

To find out more, click here.

11. Eating fish doesn’t cause suffering.

Yes it does. Numerous scientific studies have confirmed that fish do feel pain. Industrial fishing causes them immense suffering because they are killed either by being crushed in the net, having their swim bladders explode when they are brought to the surface or by asphyxiating (being starved of oxygen) on the decks of trawlers. Many fish, especially salmon, are also now intensively farmed and suffer from infectious illnesses, parasites and overcrowding.

12. What would happen to the countryside if we stopped having animals grazing on it?

As we’ve already seen, we would need to use less of our countryside for agriculture if we were all vegetarian: that means that more of it could return to a natural state. Britain has less woodland than any other northern European country – we could change that if we didn’t need to use land to grow crops like soya and rape for animal feed.

Far from being a loss to the countryside as some people imagine, ending livestock farming would mean a huge toll of suffering would be eliminated and wildlife allowed to recover (see 1b).

13. Why not do something for people instead of animals?

Vegetarianism does help people. The meat industry causes environmental degradation through things like deforestation, soil erosion, water pollution and the production of greenhouse gases – we would live in a cleaner, better world if we were all vegetarian. Secondly, because meat production is such an inefficient way of producing food it consumes resources which should go to human beings. In the developing world, land is increasingly being devoted to the production of animal fodder for export to the rich world instead of being used to grow food for the local population. Finally, vegetarianism improves human health, which brings rewards for individuals and also to society as a whole which needs to spend less on health care and lost working days through ill health.

Compassion towards animals is not in competition with compassion towards people. Vegetarianism is a choice each individual can make which improves the lives of animals and human beings. It is also a choice about what people eat – not where they work, what they do in their spare time or how they vote. Many vegetarians dedicate their lives to human welfare – Gandhi is the classic example of that.

To find out more about how vegetarianism benefits human beings, click here.

14. Hitler was vegetarian.

No he wasn’t. He ate meat – just like Himmler, Goering, Adolf Eichmann, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Attila the Hun, Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, Harold Shipman, Timothy McVeigh, Myra Hindley and almost every other killer in history. So even if he had been vegetarian, it would prove nothing. But he wasn’t.

15. All the farmers would be unemployed if we stopped eating meat.

People will still need to eat when we are all vegetarian so there will still be plenty of jobs for farmers! (In fact the intensive farming of animals has caused severe unemployment in agriculture as so few people are employed to look after so many animals. A vegetarian world would mean more employed in sustainable methods of farming.)

However, even if farmers did become unemployed that is no reason to keep farming animals for food. Eating meat is harmful to animals, to the planet and to ourselves – if it is right to stop it, the employment prospects of those who work in the meat industry are no reason to keep it going. As has been pointed out, if we got rid of all crime, the police would be out of work and if we got rid of all illness, doctors and nurses would be out of work: that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to get rid of crime and illness.

16. I don’t mind you being vegetarian – but you shouldn’t try to impose your views on other people. It’s a matter of individual choice.

Trying to persuade people to change their minds is not “imposing your views” upon them. It is the kind of healthy disagreement which democracy depends on and which is essential for change to take place.

What we eat is also not simply a matter for individuals. Meat-eating and vegetarianism are not two sides of the same coin: one brings death and suffering to animals, damages the planet and harms human health and the other doesn’t. The reason that vegetarians try to change the minds of non-vegetarians is because their “individual choice” affects countless other beings, human and non-human.

17. What difference will one person giving up meat make?

A huge difference. The average British meat eater consumes, in the course of their lifetime, 5 cattle, 20 pigs, 29 sheep and lambs, 780 chickens, 46 turkeys, 18 ducks, 7 rabbits, 1, geese and half-a-tonne of fish. That is a lot of lives saved. Just as importantly, the best advertisement for vegetarianism is a healthy and happy vegetarian: if you turn veggie you will be able to influence others to become part of the movement towards a more compassionate and rational world.

18. We’ve eaten meat since we were cavemen.

We’ve lied, stolen, killed one another and made war since we were cavemen too. That doesn’t make those things right. (See questions 2 and 3.)

19. Why do vegetarians always look ill?

They don’t. That’s like asking why toupees always look bad – it’s just that you only notice the bad ones. If you know someone (who knows someone….) who was ill they do not represent vegetarians! People like Martin Shaw, Pamela Anderson, Joanna Lumley and Carl Lewis, winner of 6 Olympic Gold medals look pretty good on their vegetarian diets. And you should see the Viva! staff: we’re like gods and goddesses here . . .


20. If the animals weren’t happy and healthy, they wouldn’t grow/lay eggs etc

Just not true. People don’t grow big because they’re happy and neither do animals. Meat chickens today grow almost twice as fast as they did 50 years ago – yet they live in far worse conditions, crammed into stinking, windowless broiler sheds by the tens of thousands and suffering from lameness and other problems. They don’t grow big because they’re happy but because they have been selectively bred to gain weight quickly, are given growth-promoting drugs and are fed on special diets.

Similarly, dairy cows have been bred to produce far more milk than is natural to them. In fact, the dairy industry relies upon making animals unhappy – by taking their calves away so that humans can drink their mothers’ milk – in order to function. Laying hens have been bred to produce so many eggs that they lose calcium into the shells and suffer from brittle bones and fractures as a result. They don’t lay eggs because they’re happy: they have no choice.

Good on ya!

It's about time we spoke out against those sanctiminious freaks and their holier-than-thou BS.

I call for a national meat-eaters day where we can all publicly stuff our faces with a banquet of juicy red meat and then throw the bones at lentil freaks everywhere!

Most vegetarians I know are pretentious. I was a vegitarian for two years. I gave up meat for lent and just stuck with it (yup, pretty puritan there). Aside from the fact that I am now an atheist and I've discovered that I truly LOVE a good rib-eye or a perfectly grilled slab of pork ribs, I turned away from my veggie religion because it was unhealthy. I was malnourished (according to my doctor) and I started blacking out. My nails were always blue/yellow. I was constantly short of breath. I was anemic. And I did and continue to work out 5 times a week or more.

Another reason I quit the veggie fad was because of a product called 'Veat' which I can only assume means 'veggie meat'. It was a disgustingly over-processed gelatinous soy mass pressed into the shape of a turkey. SICK! What the hell was I putting in my body!?! And how hypocritical was I to look down my nose at meat-eaters when I'm eating a product called 'Veat'!!!

To John Mayer (the other one) I think you are misguided. There is absolutely NO fact behind your premise that vegitarians live longer or are healthier or are leaner. Please give me a source for that coming from someone other than the PCRM (extremist AR idiots who 'advised' the supersize me movie). Not only is it completely foolish/ignorant/hypocritical for you to assume that meat-eaters and fast-foodies are one and the same, but it makes you look very much like the pretentious veggie clown of which the original poster speaks.

I don't care if you are a vegitarian. Just don't YOU make up 'facts' about it being healthier for you when there is simply NO evidence to support that claim. Come on, do the math. I work out, I avoid processed foods and I eat a well balanced diet of veggies (most of which I grow myself) and lean meats (including beef, pork, poultry, fish). I get it all... Fiber, protein, B12, taurine, omega 3's, iron, calcium, etc. etc. What 'chu got???

Good essay. There is plenty of backlash on evil vegetarians these days, like that website VegetariansAreEvil.com and others.

Vegetarians have overplayed their hand with their ill advised campaigns on people who eat meat by calling it "meat addiction" and by spouting such inanities such as "Meat is Murder" and "The Holocaust on your Plate".

Most of us have had enough.

There is even a blog called Vegetarians Are Evil and now even a Google newsgroup which goes by the same name.

Vegetarianism is WRONG!
Why?
Anatomically humans are omnivores, we have canines and incisors for ripping and tearing flesh.
We also have molars for crushing and chewing coarse vegetable type foods.
This is fact, and to deny ones true purpose is self destructive.
Vegetarians should pay a Tax on based on anti-humanism!
Oh! what's black and brown and fucks bunny wunnies? a shotgun

Vegetarianism is WRONG!
Why?
Anatomically humans are omnivores, we have canines and incisors for ripping and tearing flesh.
We also have molars for crushing and chewing coarse vegetable type foods.
This is fact, and to deny ones true purpose is self destructive.
Vegetarians should pay a Tax on based on anti-humanism!
Oh! what's black and brown and fucks bunny wunnies? a shotgun

Vegetarianism is WRONG!
Why?
Anatomically humans are omnivores, we have canines and incisors for ripping and tearing flesh.
We also have molars for crushing and chewing coarse vegetable type foods.
This is fact, and to deny ones true purpose is self destructive.
Vegetarians should pay a Tax on based on anti-humanism!
Oh! what's black and brown and fucks bunny wunnies? a shotgun

Dairy products are animal protein and there are vegitarians who do not consider them to be flesh. Correct me if I am mistaken, but from a nutritional standpoint can't everything of nutritional value found in a beef patty also be found in milk, cheese, yogurt, and the like?

i love meat! death to the veggies!

There's no point in arguing against somebody who's making up the other side's supposed arguments and making up the facts he uses to refute them. Can't you at least do a little googling to come up with some actual stats? But I'm sure you're not really concerned with facts; your goal is to justify what you're already comfortable with; if you were given irrefutable evidence that eating meat took seven years off your life (which it does, on average), or that packaged hamburger is actually the flesh of homeless Guatemalen children (which, as far as I know, it isn't), you'd still strain to justify eating Big Macs.

But, just to start at the top, you (or Lloyd, or whoever; I followed a link here from another, unrelated site) say: "The tiniest amount of enquiry into the subject quickly reveals that meat is exceptionally nutritious. Weight for weight, almost any meat is more densely packed with nutrients than almost any plant." Almost any plant? What are the exceptions? You don't know, because you just made that fact up, right? It's meaningless, because "nutrient" is defined by context; it means a very different thing to a rutabaga plant than it does to you. Try feeding your pet rabbit - please try to refrain from eating him - a diet of steak and see how Floppy flourishes with this "nutrient rich" diet. Or see the film _Supersize Me_ to see how humans flourish with with a diet of hamburgers. We are able to use the amino acids in meat, but so are cattle (cows have fallen for that vegetarian fad, too). Adding meat to cattle feed is how Mad Cow disease came about.

You add, "There are a few nutrients which are impossible to get without eating meat, and a significant number which are very difficult to get without eating meat. " Gee Rich, or Lloyd, or whoever I'm talking to, aren't you going to enlighten us vegetarians and save our sanctimonious lives by sharing the identity of these vital, meat-only nutients with us? Or is your reticence on that score prompted by the fact you just made that fact up, too? Come on; you've got an internet connection; don't be so lazy. What nutrients are we missing? Turns out there is not one single nutrient that one can get only from meat; not one. Vegetarians get every nutrient our leaner bodies require without meat and the pounds of lard you meat-eaters are consuming without being force-fed. You continue,"Whereas a meat eater is in little danger of missing out on these nutrients, a vegetarian has to be very careful to eat the right foods in order to get enough of them." Again, what nutrients? Actually, we don't have to be "very careful" at all; aside from making sure there are no meat products involved I don't give my diet much thought. There is no need to consciously combine certain plant proteins, as even some vegetarians mistakenly believe. Our bodies are very efficient; all we need is a varied vegetarian diet. But, to save your having to do ANY research, I'll help you out with the one nutrient some vegetarians DO have to be careful about: those vegetarians who have advanced to veganism DO have to be sure of getting enough B12 (doesn't take much; 3 micrograms a day, 3,000,000ths of a gram, of which there are about three in a penny, and your body can store B12 for a long while). There are supplements and fortified cerreals to address this one concern. Even primitive vegan cultures seem to manage, though; it seems in less sanitary cultures than our own B12 can be obtained from the ultimate source of all B12: bacteria. In fact, far and away most B12 deficiencies are not dietary deficiencies at all, but digestive disorders in folks who cannot produce enough intrinsic factor.

So here we've barely scratched your first point. Whole treatises could be written on B12 alone, but I don't think this is the place to invest that sort of energy. It's a lot more time-consuming to make a case when you actually have to deal with real facts and figures, rather than just throw out unsubstantiated claims. When I find time I'll do a web-page covering some of these points and come back here and leave a link; I'm really not into web blogging, chatting and all; no time. I'm in school actually studying this stuff. By the way, about half the instructors in the nutrition department at my university are vegetarians.

Not that I begrudge you all the lard you want to swallow; now that smoking's on the decline double-stacked bacon-cheddar-burgers are about the only chance Darwinian principles have to manifest themselves in our society, weeding out the mentally deficient. (You DO believe in evolution, don't you? Or do you bother with any of that science stuff? If so, you might want to read up on Australopithecus afarensis, our VEGETARIAN ancestor.) Anyhow, eat all the lard you want. Just don't try to force ME to do anything without a couple of your lard-assed, meat-eating buddies along. I don't fit your vegetarian stereotype.

Yours truly,

John Mayer
(The Other One)

What the Hell is screwtany ????????????

Why the fuck should I reply when I'm not allowed to linked with you? you motha fucka

I do agree with most of the blog, I have to say. Not too shure about the pruritan bit, and didn't quite like the anti-Christian rant towards the end (Christianity of course a religion which teaches that animals are solely for the use of humans and that vagetarianism is, therefore, fundamentally wrong...)

however, I do, infact, have friends who actually do dislike meat. These friends have not vowed never to eat meat, and infact do sometimes indulge, although they dislike it each time they do. they simply chose not to eat meat. Because of this I believe that, with the removal of this particular argument, and possibly re-wording of the puritan bit, this essay would be perfect.

ps. Foxxy, your watermelon argument does not hold water, as vegetarians do not choose to avoid a single variety of meat. If your argument was: "If I didn't like watermelon, would you question my choice to prohibit myself from eating all fruit," this would fit the article, but would make everyone think you a nutter. This is what was trying to be conveyed in the article.

Wow. Talk about haters!! Why does what other people decide to do with their life offend you so much? Everyone on here just sounds mad. What you need to come to terms with is that there will always be someone out there that chooses not to eat meat. What I 've noticed since deciding to go veggie is that people seem to feel like you're trying to say that you're better than them or you're too good to eat meat. Although I've never made comments like these, the looks that I get when I tell people I don't eat meat is a look of " well excuse me miss picky!!" I just personally don't like the taste of meat anymore, I've eaten it day after day for years and I can't stand it anymore. Nothing's wrong with that, but when I come across veggie bashing blogs like this one it kinda makes me feel like people think it's freakish. Look at it like this, if you didn't like watermelon I wouldn't tell you that you were wrong for not eating it, but imagine how you'd feel if I did.Wouldn't feel good would it? What kills me is people find it so repulsive to eat a dog or a cat, but eating a pig or a cow is okay. Give veggies a break guys!!! Lighten up!!

Ha ha - you haven't met too many vegetarians..where did you come up with all those reasons? in any case let me offer you up my thinking:

it's not about being 'right' or 'wrong' i don't see how i can say it's immoral to eat meat since if i did - what would i feed my pet cat?? not that i have one but you get the picture.
I love animals, and if i have to kill one to eat it, i'd really rather not. i've luckily not been in the posish of having to - i'm sure it would be different if i were that desperate - having the luxury to choose food is just that - a luxury. the thing with me is luckily in the society i live and have lived in, people don't eat cats and dogs. a lot of meat eaters have pets..but would they be keen to eat their pets? i think not. some - mebbe - sure - but most people would be a bit wussy about that. cos we've socially justified eating one type of meat and not another - real carnivores would be like ..fuck it, i'll eat whatever. so there's already quite a lot of 'well we eat meat but we don't eat pets' thinking about. me - i guess i just feel like a woolly baa lamb is pretty cute and 'petlike'.. same for chickens etc. So i generally don't eat meat, unless there's nothing else on offer. personally i wouldn't kill an animal unless i really had to - and i'd avoid that situation.

of course i actually avoid calling myself 'vegetarian' because i find there's hassle - from both 'sides' - people either think you're on your high horse, or feel you're part of the same 'religion'. Phooey to that. I eat what i want and what doesn't make me feel uncomfortable..

You've got a degree? I find that hard to believe. If you're so intelligent then you would understand the real reason behind your anti-vegetarianism complex - you, like so many other fucked up fascists, are scared of what you don't know and evidently know nothing about. So go and whore yourself in a butchers shop, and i'll rest asured in the knowledge that as a vegetarian, i look waaaaaaaaay to good for you, babe. Oh, and by the way - who is this cunt? I want to slaughter him.

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Testing new anti-spam

I've read this twice. First up on El Reg, read the blog and thought 'Yeah OK' Come back again, via El Reg, and the only diference is??? 'Yeah, OK!!' I don't want to use this phrase BUT 'The Bottom Line Is . . . !!' You'll have to wait a few moments for that. Carnivore (Meat Eater), Herbivore (Veg Eater) or Omnivore (Meat and Veg Eater),correct me if I'm wrong but I believe that our diet is supposed to be a balance of all. There's no Right or Wrong, just a balance. I do agree that there's a Bias on behalf of the author but I guess it came from 'Peer Pressure' when all around decided to go Veggie!! A bit like "You're not wearing Nike's!! There's NO WAY I/WE CAN ASSOCIATE WITH YOU!!" But I don't truly believe that. He makes a well balanced argument on the reasons of His experience of those around him who believe their reasons for Vegetarianism. Apologies to Author and All but I will say this much . . .! We all need the variety of food that's at our disposal, because whether it's Animal, Vegatable or Both, What's truly missing and can never be made up is the natural nutrients that have been depleted from our soils!! It doesn't matter what 'faction' you are from, where you believe these essential nutrients come from, Meat or Veg or a Balance of the two, what matters is they're in short supply in whatever diet you choose to pursue. No rant, just think! BTW I'm not a member of friends of the earth, friends of the veggies, friends of the meat eaters or any such other stuff, just read and re-read all that is here. I wish you all a happy and prosperous journey in life . . . whatever you believe.

It's sad that there are still so many right-wing British "Tories" around. Vegetarianism saved my life and a life of high blood pressure. Because of vegetarianism, I have been able to control HBP without pills. My doctor was so surprised that my blood pressure went down so fast.

About the distructive effects of ranching, I can say much. Unlike the stereotype of Texas being full of Bar-b-que joints, well that's just a myth. BBQ is more of a southern thing. Texas is more known for it's spicy Tex-Mex cuisine that lends itself to vegetarianism quite well. Cactus(Nopalitos), veggie enchiladas, and beans are standard fare.

Ranching of both sheep and cows has ruined the Texas West because both animals use so much water. This is why ranchers are moving away from husbandry and moving to grape growing and more exotic agricultural products. The energy expenditure to get a pound of meat costs to much, while a pound of grapes is much cheaper.

Sorry guys, but ranching is expensive and bad for the ecology.

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What a brilliant article , having been thro the whole thing myself , the propganda of the veggies and had to wrestle some sense into young daughters whose health is being harmed by this vegetarian nonsense its great to see someone articulate some common sense at last ...well done !! and thanx

ps can you do something on fundementalist christians next ? I mean when you're exposing propoganda then there's a lot to go at there .

What a brilliant article , having been thro the whole thing myself , the propganda of the veggies and had to wrestle some sense into young daughters whose health is being harmed by this vegetarian nonsense its great to see someone articulate some common sense at last ...well done !! and thanx

ps can you do something on fundementalist christians next ? I mean when you're exposing propoganda then there's a lot to go at there .

Excellent writeup, with an appropriate strain of humour throughout. I say though, the font is indeed horrible. I turned off your stylesheet to read this, and am glad I took the time to do so.

Excellent writeup, with an appropriate strain of humour throughout. I say though, the font is indeed horrible. I turned off your stylesheet to read this, and am glad I took the time to do so.

Holy godamn - change the font, this absolutely unreadable.

Wow, uhmmm, that's just, wow.

All I can suggest is for people to actually check your 'facts'. I didn't see any references listed, so where did the facts come from? It seems to me that most of the statements/arguments in the document are obviously pulled from thin air, or the long standing beliefs of the writier, which doesn't make them right. Not to mention the poor logic in many of the statements....*sigh* can't anyone actually do research themselves any more?

And I must ask, why should anyone be force fed anything?

Worst.Font.Ever.

the font sucks. this is more of an argumentative rant than myth busting.

Your font makes me want to rip my eyes out to avoid them being so defiled in future.

Reading it is like jamming hot pokers in my eyes with my eyelids held open in a Clockwork Orange style to reveal a video of a naked, cavorting Anne Widdecome.

Do you see?

Your font makes me want to rip my eyes out to avoid them being so defiled in future.

Reading it is like jamming hot pokers in my eyes with my eyelids held open in a Clockwork Orange style to reveal a video of a naked, cavorting Anne Widdecome.

Do you see?

One can use legible fonts on one's webpage. To do so improves efficiency. According to 10% per trophic level theory, applying comic sans small-caps italic immediately converts 90% of the affected information to pig manure.

Yes, this is one of the most 'orrible fonts ever, isn't it? Why must you inflict it on us? Is there a way to make sure that vegetarians see this awful font, and regular blokes see something easier on the eyes?

-Kabong

Yes, this is one of the most 'orrible fonts ever, isn't it? Why must you inflict it on us? Is there a way to make sure that vegetarians see this awful font, and regular blokes see something easier on the eyes?

-Kabong

Bravo, sir! You have eloquently encapsulated my ever problem with vegetarians in essay form. I would very much love to hand a printed copy of this to any vegetarians I may encounter. You have my sincerest thanks.

You have, quite possibly, the Ugliest page I have ever read.


I have question you failed to answer. Why is it your problem what people eat? I'm not a vegetarian, I love my meat, but I can't stand it when people start bitching and moaning about other people's habits, when they're not affecting anyone other than themselves.

Get off your high horse, get used to the fact that people will do what they want to do... when it starts affecting you, then say something, but if they're living life the way they want to live, let them, it's not your place to judge them.

Great stuff. My only problem is with the typeface, which is exceptionally hard to read.

Re: I became a vegetarian because I care about what I put into my body. I don’t want to put chemicals in there, nor anything dead. Plants are natural, so they can’t be harmful.

You state that "So, if you want to avoid eating toxins, then eat meat. Animals keep their poisonous parts very definitely separate from their non-poisonous parts".

This is not how thing actually work. Many toxins, such as mercury and other heavy metals, are present in all flesh of the animal that eats them. These toxins are not flushed out of an animal's system and accumulate over time. (This is why, for example, handling lead or mercury is no considered so unhealthy. Exposure to these metals is cumulative) As you move up the food chain, each step progressively concentrates more of these toxins in an animal. While you might have to eat 1000 calories worth of krill to get X ammount of mercury, you'd only have to eat 100 calories worht of sardines, or 10 calories worth of tuna, or 1 calorie worth of shark-meat, etc to get the same ammount. This is more a problem with seafood since we tend to eat animals higher up the food chain. Beef contains relatively less toxin since cows are one step above grass, basically.

As for the notion that humans cultivate only non-toxic plants, that is patently false. For example, take Bitter Cassava. This is a plant that was domesticated in south america, and one of it's key benefits is that no animal besides humans will touch the stuff. It's *highly* toxic. It can contain upwards of 100 ppm of cyanide. You can plant this stuff in the jungle and not worry about scaring off other animals that would eat it, like they would corn or squash, etc.. Traditional practice is to plant it, forget it, and then harvest it later. Of course, the price is that bitter cassava is poisoness even to humans, and must be properly prepared to be edible. The traditional method of bitter cassava preparation is complex, and one of the most miraculously effective cyanide detoxification methods ever invented without the benefit of modern science. (heck, modern science had a bitch of a time figuring out how it works!)

RE:I became a veggie simply because I don’t like meat.

Claiming that the only people who don't like meat are ""females, trendies, liberals, politically confused, collectors of allergies, urbanites, dungaree-wearers, etcetera" is to indulge oneself in prejudice, generalizations, and lazy logic. The fact is that there is a wide degree of human variability, and what people may perceive as "dislike" may be based on concrete medical fact.

One friend of mine, for his entire life, experienced excessive gas, bloating, cramps, etc.. For most of his life he thought these were all normal. He and one of his brothers later tried a raw-food diet. He ate less meat on this diet, but was not strictly vegetarian. A grilled steak was out, but sushi or relatively small ammounts of meat were just fine. This diet eliminated most of the symptoms he and his brother had previously experienced. In fact, a large portion of his extended family switched to the same diet as well and experienced the same benefits. It seems likely that there was some genetic deficiency in his family that resulted in problems digesting a diet heavy in cooked foods and meat. He didn't choose his diet because he disliked meat. Quite the contrary. He loved a good BBQ the same as I and was constantly tempted by it. For him, a good BBQ was like a tequilla binge is to most of is. Wonderful, but with a price attached.

So a diet low in meat and cooked products is beneficial to some individuals, and it is quite likely that many vegetarians genuinely feel better on a strictly vegetarian diet, even though they could probably indulge in some meat consumption without any ill effects. If a vegetarian claims that their diet makes them feel better than when they ate meat, they may be telling the truth even if such a diet produces no benefits for you or I.

If we compare the diet of hunter-gatherers and proto-human species to those of Western civilizations, meat consumption is, for our genus, much lower than what is common in Britain or North America. The proportion of uncooked foods such as nuts, berries, etc. is, conversely, much higher. While the human digestive tract is highly adaptable, we are eating more meat now than at any point in our evolution. The notion that no meal is complete without some animal protein is highly misguided.

Re: I became a vegetarian, because stock farming is not economically viable. We could feed the Third World if everyone became a vegetarian.

Regarding this myth, you urge people to invest in GM crop research to help feed the third world. This is somewhat misguided. Pretty much all GM crop research done to date has focused on producing crops that grow fast and produce exceptional yields while being resistant to bugs, pesticides, etc. on nice first-world farms where there's lots of fertilizer, etc.. In practice, when these GM crops are planted in a third world farm where the only fertilizer comes from the occasional plow animal, the soil is completely depleted of nutrients within a small number of years, resulting in barren soil that will support no crops whatsoever, and instead of having less than enough food, anyone relying on said crops will have no food at all. Yes, research into GM crops specifically designed for third world conditions could prove very beneficial, but poor african farmers don't have much money, and as a result, they're not targetted by many GM crop research companies.

Ergo, investing heavily in GM crop research companies may be great for Idaho, but not necessarily good for Africa at all.

In one of your points you mock the idea that meat travels through the human digestive system slower than vegetable matter. This is, in fact, not a myth at all. No, vegetable matter will not leapfrog over meat in your intestines. However, the average speed at which food travels through your system greatly depends on your diet. If you eat a diet heavy in meat, the average length of time it takes for food to travel through your diegestive track can be several times longer than if you stick to a strictly vegetarian diet. This is why people who suddenly switch from BBQ to vegelicious diet will often notice one peculiar side effect. They start produing a *lot* more shit. You guessed it, if food travels through your intestines faster, you shit more. And yes, that also means that being a vegetarian involves ingesting a greater volume of food since few, if any vegetables, are as dense in nutriets as meat.

So scratch this off your myth list. It's fact.

P.S. This is coming from a meat-eater who loves BBQ-anything.
P.P.S. The font on this page truly sucks gangrenous dingo bollocks.

what about people who merely dislike the taste of meat?

hummm... bacon....

free health care; free haircuts" - that is quality dood..I love it!!! My 2pence worth then...

1. I'm a beef farmer and as such i've never had much truck with veggie arguments

2. I've a coupla veg. mates. We've long since stopped discussing the basis of their affliction. I've always found the arguments in favour of veg. to be pretty bereft of any logic or coherence.

3. I don't agree with the puritan bit of the above..think people should be free to do what they want to do within our laws (however misguided).

4. From a biased and personal view I think a good fillet steak is the best food available as a treat. Imagine eating meals of brown rice, pak choi etc. for the rest of your life - holy shit...

5. It has to be said the supermarkets imo could be doing a lot more in promoting better matured beef. The stuff from indp. butchers taste better as it has hung longer. The tescos of this world have placed displaying young, bright red meat above mature, better tasting meat i'm afraid.

6. I hope most people here eat beef regularly at home and when out. I aways ask in restaurants if the beef is home produced .The beef industry in the country is extremely high animal welfare and very well regulated and has come out of the bse debacle better, cleaner and more customer oriented.

is this even supposed to be real? so what people dont want to eat meat, everyone does it for different reasons. people may not want to eat animals, just like you wouldnt eat a dog or a cat. is there a difference?really? i think not. also just complete bollocks, if someone decided they didnt want to eat vegetables cus they had to be removed from the earth or summit no one would be bothered. and loads of your points are wank - vegetarian meals arent as filling, ever had one mate? and the fact farmers look after animals before killing them so they can make more money, yeah that totally makes it better. what a pile of utter wank.

I see the veggieromance site has deleted the discussion that led to the banning.

Cowards.

Testing - should be back to normal now

Test

dude get a life

Nice counter arguement. some info you don't often get to hear / see unless you search well for it.

Just read this from the link on el Reg and I have to agree.this article being censored due to what is presumably a marginal group of the university population protesting is quite a scary prospect. Clearly some people don't have as much belief in freedom of speech as others do in this world.

It's something I've not understood for ages. E.g. someone listens /watches some mass-media radio / tv show. Then complains about the CONTENT OF IT! If you don't like what you're inputting into your brain then stop or change the input!!

I consider myself to be a pretty average omnivore. I go through veggie times and meaty times.

Sometimes I think hmm maybe i should cut down on the meat and sometimes It's mmm bacon :)

So long as you eat well and ideally enjoy what you eat also then it's all groovy!

Whoever did delete this document from it's original place must have been pressured into it by someone(s) with leverage me thinks. Whoever holds the power can wield it more y'know.

whatever

just for the record, for everyone who badmouths eating meat as an unhealthy diet, i was recently diagnosed as hypoglycemic, the symptoms of which include weakness, crippling dizziness, headaches, and confusion. the solution? more meat, less carbs and sugar (including sugar from plants, fruit being the worst offenders).

now, i have thus far been unable to keep up my high in meat, low in everything else diet, the reason being that i like ALL food far too much to limit my intake of any of it.

so, in short, in some instances a psuedo-vegetarian diet CAN lead to health problems too.

True censorship is unilateral - the fact that something is not allowed in one medium is simply a statement of its appropriateness rather than a censorship... It is not appropriate for a University representing thousands of staff and students to take sides, or appear to take sides. They just rated this artical outside the Universities watershed...

or...

Perhaps they just thought that the argument was badly constructed and written and were a little embarressed about the association with those researching important aspects of evolutionary psychology...

or...

Perhaps this column is the real experiment and the subject of the researchers real remit (too many Cronenberg films maybe!)

Censorship is as abhorrent to me as it is to any academic, however - you must first question whether it is truely censored or just restricted... there really is a difference! And in this situation, there has been NO censorship, just restriction - In fact Newcastles restriction has had the opposite effect on all of us who have never been to the newcaslte web pages - but are still discussing the issues!

"I still want to know what part of the artical that we have all clearly read has been censored??

Perhaps there is a censored part that I have not been able to read (presumably because of the censorship)...

On a separate point, I cant believe that Channel 4 has censored tonights Champions League final.... Oh well - Its on ITV I think! So I can watch it there!"

Yes, you're very clever. Or perhaps not, if you managed to miss the fact that newcastle uni censored the article (and everything else the author had published). But I doubt you did, so I guess that means you're just being pedantic and irritating.

Whether or not the article is still available elsewhere is not relevent. It's the principle of censorship that is wrong.

I still want to know what part of the artical that we have all clearly read has been censored??

Perhaps there is a censored part that I have not been able to read (presumably because of the censorship)...

On a separate point, I cant believe that Channel 4 has censored tonights Champions League final.... Oh well - Its on ITV I think! So I can watch it there!

"I just showed this to a veggie pal who went mental and said she was veggie because she had seen a video of a dog being skinned alive."

That's possibly the most illogical reason for being a vegetarian I've ever heard - not that logic is something I ever expect from vegetarians; otherwise there would be no vegetarians, only vegans. Last time I checked no animals bred for meat were slaughtered by being flayed alive so what is your friend's objection?

"yep agree there is no point ti theramble - should be banned"

So if at some time in the future a government agrees that there is no point to your existance, I trust you will have no objections when they decide to execute you? After all, if someone has one particular viewpoint then we should just act on that and to hell with what anyone else thinks, right? Idiot.

I personally found several valid points in the article that refute some of the stupid assertions that evangelical vegetarians often make. I have read many more articles that I do not agree with at all, but I would never suggest that they be censored purely because I disagree with them. Our culture advances because we can have reasoned debate on contentious issues. Whether or not a common ground is reached is irrelevent, it's the journey there that promotes growth in society. Look at countries today where reasoned debate is forbidden and you will see countries that have no cultural growth.

If you understood that, then hopefully you now understand why I didn't just say "shut the f*** up".

Yeah, we should ban everything we don't agree with.

Hang on, though, what if THEY ban everything THEY don't agree with?

Hmmmm.....

yep agree there is no point ti theramble - should be banned

never read such a load of mince for a long time.
better to keep quiet until you have something useful to say

I just showed this to a veggie pal who went mental and said she was veggie because she had seen a video of a dog being skinned alive.

She's never eaten dog and neither have I.

I stand corrected on the dates issue - real onionman. Something I read on the internet mislead me....

I have no argument in favour of censorship... I disagree with censorship completely... (you seem to miss this bit each time). A question for you... Would you consider violent or pornographic images acceptable TV for peak times... No? Neither would I - but this does not mean that it has been censored, It means that it is not an appropriate time or place for it. Companies like Universities have to give balanced arguments - the one above this is not balanced at all - the Author is a poor one working in a tenuous field of research, and the reason why his comments are published here and not in the journal of evolutionary biology... Is because they would never have been accepted. If it had been - Newcastle would have stocked the publication in its Library. Now remember - I agree with freedom of speech - But I see why Newcaslte had to pull it.... If this had been about Black students rather than vegie ones - they would have had to pull it....

Where do you stand on the BNP?
Where do you stand on ALF?

The poem you cited incidently, isnt really about censorship though is it... So I do wonder why you cited it in the first place?

[For your information though - this paragon of virtue stated at a press conference in 1945 in Naples that he admitted that he had offered to join the German Navy in 1939. He also confessed that he had "never quarrelled with Hitler over political matters, but purely on religious grounds". This kinda undermines those resonate words... "Als sie mich holten,
gab es keinen mehr, der protestieren konnte" (beutiful)... ]

[Oh and interestingly, since this poem is not referenced to Niemoller in either of two biographies conducted before his death - Perhaps he didnt write it - nothing to do with this debate - but I thought this was interesting pubquiz fodder for ya!!"]

Wow, fakey boy - your knowledge of the facts is terrific. Those (or similar) words were written in 1945 or 1946. How exactly did he join the Nazi Party "Ten months after"? In case you didn't know, the Nazi Party wasn't reall joinable in 1945.

If your grasp of facts is this good, I know just what to make of your so-called argument in favour of censorship.

Go away and check that your rantings have at least a grain of truth to them.

Nice article, made me chuckle in parts.
Anyway.

Down with censorship and so on. It's embarrassing to see a university cave in like that.

whoever uses the "I don't like eating meat because it used to be a live, squirming thing" line of argument, think on this: when you eat fruit, you are eating plant ovaries. how minging is that??

Hey - this aint trolling - my thread aint designed to annoy or disrupt and my thread certainly is not offensive - instead it is designed to defend myself against allegations that I in some way dispute freedom of speach.

I said that this issue of censorship was certainly a digression, but not if you consider the wider debate here... Should biased opinions be published on a University website... To answer NO is not a support of censorship!

Not a bad stab at trolling. I hate people. You all suck.

Rev. Niemöller was a Nazi... read to bottom to find out why!!!

Anyway....

If I were to publish on the internet a report that STATED refutable evidence with which the public might base their medical or dietry choices - then this would clearly need to be edited. I am not talking about opinion here. In my field of research - I am not allowed to publish work that has not been reviewed by a panel of my peers. If the evidence does not support my claims then my work does not get published - this is not censorship.

This is entirley the best place for such a debate, on a blog where I can chose this page amongst the billions of other pages of shite and chose to make comment. The Universtiy of Newcastle (as any other seat of learning) has a responsibility to the public that trust that any issues reported are balanced and unbiased. I am clearly not a Nazi. I believe completely in freedom of speech - but there is a time and a place for it. You might not believe this, so let me give you an example...

Imagine that the NHS website published on its main page some joker who believed that praying was a more effective cure for cancer than pharmacological intervention. I am not saying that this viewpoint is wrong (though I would tend not to agree) however an NHS site is not the place for such comments - just in case people trust, listen and stop medication in order to start praying. Would you consider the above example to be censorship or sensible? Admitidly, Newcastle should have insisted on the author stating that these comments were not those shared by the institution.

Would Rev. Niemöller find child porn a censorship??? Maybe he would find the anarchists cookbook appropriate material for the CBeebies website... Case and point?

Oh and the comment about smoking and censorship...

Your argument was contrived. Stating that you believe that smoking is bad for you, before you make comments about censorship is not a balanced argument. My own publications about the differences between smokers and non-smokers with lung cancer does not seek to censor information or opinion - in fact it does not even give one - instead it allows the reader the flexability to assess the data in the light of their own clinic. Here would be another inappropriate place for conjecture! If this site had simply stated facts and supported them with evidence - and then given opinion then I am sure that the Univ of Newcastle would not have had grounds to pull the site...

I have not once said that this work should not be available for public screwtany, (I am rather enjoying both the debate and the digression in fact), but it is not balanced enough for an official Uni web page!

If Rev. Niemöller is all you got real onionman then perhaps you should know that his principles were not that fixed... Ten months after this poem was written they did not need to come for him - he signed up for the Nazi party... Not exactly a Martr now was he...

He was opposed to any political resistance to Hitler. He simply saw Hitler as an intruder into that part of German life reserved for the church. In fact, as Harold Marcuse's "Legacies of Dachau" shows, Niemoller tried to avoid arrest by assuring the Gestapo that he was an antisemite.

Do you see what I MEAN when I talk about balanced debate!!

Good stuff!!!
Must admit though I really want a big steak at this present moment in time!!!

Meat.... hmmmm! I enjoy hunting to put meat on the table. I still have some deer left from my December kill. To each his or her own.

Although I find it amusing the rants of the veggies here...

Meat.... hmmmm! I enjoy hunting to put meat on the table. I still have some deer left from my December kill. To each his or her own.

Although I find it amusing the rants of the veggies here...

I just do not understand why everyone seems to ignore plants. They are our lifegivers. They live and die, and wilt without water, and they bleed too. They move, their leaves following the sun. Their roots eagerly grow in search of life giving water.

Why, oh why, do we presume that animals are more worth saving than plants? Is it because they are more similar to us, and therefore more superior? why? why? why? why? Some of you veggies, do give me an answer to this, an answer that is reasonable and makes sense so you can prove your galactic hypocrisy.

I'm a vegetarian because I have an eating disorder. I will most likely never eat meet again now that it repulses me to intake meat. I also never ate icecream or cheese ever again. And heaven forbid I eat fatty foods. Am I miserable? Yeah. But I don't want meat. Maybe I want chocolat or peanuts, but heaven forbid. If it is labeled that it has fat calories I will not eat it. (Though veggies and fruit do technically have them, just not much) Basically this is my case. Vegetarians become the way they are for various reasons they believe are true. I think it's all from a belief that they become this way.

I think the parts that vegetarians found offensive were the ones that accused them of not knowing what they are doing, of lying to themselves, of pretending to care about animals just to get laid, of being vegetarian just to feel superior, and of being insane. Though perhaps the most infuriating part is that all these insults are coming from someone who is just so flippant about the whole matter.

I agree with most of that, its not the only side to things but its the one i take most of the time.

Will disagree with one thing though, i do dislike very much, to the point of vomiting if forced to eat, many kinds of meat, specifically meat on the bone, fish, poultry....

Why this is i have no idea, its not the meat itself that makes me vom, its the taste/smell and much much more importantly the texture - happily eat a sausage or a burger or mince, cannot stomach a slice of roast beef.

For that reason i found life a lot easier for a while as a vegetarian but i do love bacon (between slices of bread or the texture makes me heave).....

I think it is fair to say, that for whatever reason some people just do not like meat though!

I just think it's pathetic that anyone could be so thin-skinned as to claim to be wounded by the article. Offended I will grant, but are they so insecure in their beliefs that this highly amusing article really causes them pain?

I speak, as you know Rich, as a vegetarian myself. No, I am not logical about my vegetarianism: I wear leather, I eat cheese, eggs and milk, and I make no effort to drink vegetarian beer or wine. But I am also not evangelical about it. Evangelical veggies get on my tits almost as much as evangelical religionists. As long as I am not made to eat meat, I do not care about what others eat.

Well, there is the smell. Meat smells revolting to me. I don't much like barbeques for that reason.

And my wife is not a vegetarian either.

My sympathies to Lloyd for his very poor treatment by the University.

Like I say, I think it's just pathetic.

RE: "Regarding your infantile dismissal of meat being un-necessary. This cannot be equated with getting by without watching films etc. If a person [quite fairly] believes that farming animals purely for their slaughter is something they don't want to be associated with - then the fact that they can 'get by' fine without meat is ENTIRELY relevant."

This is true, however, looking at this reasoning from a logical viewpoint it is undeniable that most if not all farmed species *would not exist* in our world today except for the fact that they are bred in captivity. What large mammals live wild in Britain today? A few deer in remote areas?"
____________________

My reply - then so be it. Since the formation of this rather cool planet there have been billions of species - 99.9% of which are extinct. Sure, I'd quite miss seeing the odd sheep in a field on a summers day - but they're not ornaments.

I think the necessity/cruelty balance is crucial to the whole issue. Is it right to keep animals in tight cages so they can't exercise their muscles and are therefore tender on the plate? Right to eat battery eggs because they are cheaper for us? As I say - have eaten meat all my life, but I respect those who choose to eliminate the killing of animals by simply choosing an alternative.

There really are SO many holes in the argument though. Naturally I'm 100% against it being removed by a university - they should be ashamed. But it goes beyond a funny rant - it claims to argue all the points through and actually be right.

How about we start breeding babies for food - give em 5 years of life and then put them on the table. Better they lived and died than never lived? It needn't hurt - quick electric shock and grub's up. How about farming dolphins for food? dogs? cats? chickens, horses?

Or how about we eat rice, potatoes, hundreds of different vegetables, fantastic sauces. It just doesn't sound so stupid to me.

my wife is veggie and she wants to fuck all the time... my friends wife used to be veggie and used to want to fuck all the time... now that she eats meat she doesn't want to fuck so much.

i wouldn't call that scientific doctorine or anything, but if you ask me a girl should be veggie if she wants to. i certainly won't complain.

Doesn't "PETA" stand for People Eating Tasty Animals? Look, man (humans) are higher on the food chain. We will continue to eat tasty animals for quite some time. Other species do the same, and can't live any other way (Cats). Rant on!!

Linked from El Reg...

I found the article funny. I think it is disgusting that any University should remove it - Universities should be about the discussion of different points of view.

There are several points I would take issue with - eg people who believe anthropogenic global warming is real get short shrift - but I think the central arguments re Vegetarianism are sound and worth making.

"Ozone destroying methane" ? So what is the reaction between methane (a paraffin) and ozone? Are you sure you aren't confusing greenhouse gases (one mole of CH4 is about 10 times more effective at trapping heat than one mole of CO2 and two moles of H2O together) with ozone depletion?

Methane is also odourless (but thiomethanol [CH3SH], which is produced in the gut by decomposing food, most definitely isn't).

ROFL. Comments almost as funny as article. Like lighting the fuse on a humour bomb. Makes that whole Freedom of Expression thing worthwhile.

I get defensive when someone questions my choices and way of life.
It's not unreasonable.

Bravo Sir.

Whay are you veg heads getting so defensive?

Is it because deep down you know he's right?

If you had any faith in your own veg lifestyle you woul;dn't get so upset. I don't get upset when someone criticises me for not being a veggie. Why do you lot go spa when you're criticised?

By the way, whilst all those woolly liberals out there were trying to get hunting banned, they missed out on mass chicken slaughter being carried out all over the place in battery hen farms...suffice to say whilst they were protesting to save the lives of a few foxes, several tens of millions of chickens were suffering so the veggies could eat scrambled eggs for their breakfasts instead of bacon sarnies.

"Regarding your infantile dismissal of meat being un-necessary. This cannot be equated with getting by without watching films etc. If a person [quite fairly] believes that farming animals purely for their slaughter is something they don't want to be associated with - then the fact that they can 'get by' fine without meat is ENTIRELY relevant."
This is true, however, looking at this reasoning from a logical viewpoint it is undeniable that most if not all farmed species *would not exist* in our world today except for the fact that they are bred in captivity. What large mammals live wild in Britain today? A few deer in remote areas?

Has anyone else missed the point here, I'm not fussed whether someone is a veggie or not, it's another small pain in life when it comes down to preparing for dinner parties.

I'm totally unbiased...

However, what most of the veggies have failed to point out in their rants is that this is one man's views in an essay that he chose to write 'for fun', whether it to be to incite for his own pleasure or actual research. I find his comments flippant and poorly researched...

I'd also like to invite him round for dinner!

I'm a meat eater, have been all my life. However, there are some gaping holes in your argument that i find quite embarassing to be associated with.

Regarding your infantile dismissal of meat being un-necessary. This cannot be equated with getting by without watching films etc. If a person [quite fairly] believes that farming animals purely for their slaughter is something they don't want to be associated with - then the fact that they can 'get by' fine without meat is ENTIRELY relevant.

I think some of the contraditions in vegetraianism you highlight are comendable, but you leave some laughably big gaps in your own arguments.

Wow, lots of comments here in support of Lloyd's views, and a sprinkling of (often rather hateful) rebuttals from veggies. Most amusing is probably the fellow who makes the distinction between vegetarian and vegan - a distinction I agree with wholeheartedly; vegetarians are the ultimate sellout - however he sadly goes on to a rather uneducated and moronic tirade against meat eaters - apparently we "stink"? From personal experience of living with a vegan I can assure you that the copious quantities of ozone-destroying methane produced from a vegan diet make quite the opposite true. I forgive the poster for this piece of hateful nonsense though, since they are clearly the type of person who would gladly desecrate graves for THE CAUSE.

What a load of Bo----cks

Yawn! Because if we were all the same, how boring life would be. I choose not to eat meat as I don't like the thought of chewing on something that was once alive and died purely to satisfy my taste. But that is my reason, to which, last time I checked, is quite acceptable to have one.

What is your 'beef' with Veggies? If it's more about feeling excluded from this so called puritism movement or the incessant nagging some veggies force on poor carnivores who simply eat what ever is put in front of them without question of it's origin? These are things that you can choose to do something about. You have the power to change 'you'.

"Newcastle Uni pulled it in the same way they would pull a page stating that smoking was good for you"

I mistakenly cut this before posting my last comment.

Before I start, I want to make it absolutely clear that in no way whatsoever do I think that smoking is in any way good for you under any circumstances. Read the following with that in mind.

Unlike you, apparently, I would NOT want anyone censored for saying smoking is great for you. I'd rather see the arguments against a viewpoint than censorship of anyone stating it. That's what reasoned debate is all about. After all, who decides what is censored? People with the same viewpoint as you?

You seem to want a world where contrary viewpoints to yours cannot be stated. Fine, but remember the end result of your desires. They end with Rev. Niemöller in a concentration camp for views that did not agree with the received wisdom in Germany at the time. Godo luck with your censorship.

Onionman.

'darker side of vegetarianism'? malnutrition of infants is surely down to misinformation and possible stupidity, not vegetarianism or non-vegetarianism.
how is infant fomula made of veggies? most is fiddled-with cow's milk, except the stuff that is made of fiddled-with soya beans. what's wrong with breast-feeding?
i don't eat meat, but i have no problem in anyone else eating it, including my partner and some of my kids. from a quality point of view, it has to be organic - use the best or don't bother. consequently, the meat-eaters don't get meat very often, as it is so expensive.
i don't see the point in fake sausages and the like, either eat meat or don't eat meat, but stop pretending.
the smell of bacon makes me hurl, so i won't be one lured back by a bacon sarnie! ;o)

A fake Onionman said "my name is onion man.... I am a bit of a prick"

Ooh, you've got me trapped in the grip of your vice like logic there, old chap.

One again, you disagree with something posted on the web. At least this time you resort to abuse rather than censorship. You're learning. One day you might JUST be able to accept different points of view to your own. Good boy.

Onionman

If evolution had designed us as veggiemunchers, we'd sport huge guts and multiple stomachs.

Since we don't evidently somewhere we must've been designed for a varied diet.

James, allow me to correct your post:

"I'm vegetarian because [inaccuracy excised] I was brought up vegetarian by two veggie parents."

So, religion then.

"my name is onion man.... I am a bit of a prick and I miss the difference between freedom of speech and prohibition of lies... "...

What Rich says is mostly crap at best and medically dangerous at worst - So Newcastle Uni pulled it in the same way they would pull a page stating that smoking was good for you - It just aint true onion boy"

Im getting quite bored of the psuedo-understanding of evolution portrayed by many of these arguments... The lay public seems to have gleamed an appreciation of an extrodinarily complex facets of evolution from a channel 5 nature documentary... Heres another reference for you....

Charles Darwin - Origin of the species

(maybe some Dawkins too!!)

We did not evolve to be Carnivorous or Vegetarian. Sucessful species exhibit diversity within their genepool. We are diverse enough to eat a multitude of diets from a variety of environmental nieches. Consider the alcohol intolerance of much of aisa. This is caused by a lack of an enzyme Alcohol dehydrogenase which breaks down alcohol. In the west we have can do this because ancestrially we were not nomadic. In Aisa, when water went bad, the people moved. In the west, we distilled and fermented it to make it safe. Please - when you are making generalisations about the evolutionary status of our species with respect to environmental interactions - please remember that the genepool of a species is plastic in nature and can quickly respond or change.

On another note, Animals taste good because they have mostly been bred to taste good - lets leave the diety out of this one.

It's quite "natural" for you humans to treat this topic as controversial, nothing to be concerned with.

Made out of meat youselves you haven't yet sought any alternative ways to replanish your energy, so that the sheer frequency, longevity and nastiness of the food intake is confusing and annoying you. Your teeth are rotting because you eat. Your dentists are all suicidal. Your intelligence is so organic, if wattery, a carnivore with taste buds could chew on your neurons. Eat meat now or not, it makes no difference - that is a subject of your past, not future. Don't feel guilty about doing what one or other majority is doing to get fed, the guilt deconcetrates you from augmenting the realm of your species (only one medium sized planet by now, but a kingdom nonetheless).

GIve a bit more time for the trans-humanism to impose itself as a serious player in the big industries.

BTW, would you prefer to have the meat you would eat built in a clean rooms much like modern integrated chips? You know, colonies of cells growing around a scaffold, or something?

I think he is right !
Veggies should be force-fed LARD

ha.. certainly cheered up my otherwise dull monday morning..

This article leaves the big question unanswered:

Can my vegetarian girlfiend swallow, or does she have to spit?

For all the people who support the censorship of this article, remember the words below:

"In Germany, they first came for the communists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist," said the Rev. Martin Niemöller. "Then they came for the Jews and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics. I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak up."

The Rev. Niemöller spent time in one of the concentration camps.

Onionman

You missed this fact:

People who don't eat meat are cunts.

titch-
*There is the argument that men has come from its hunter ancestry, however men were also once birds, and can no longer fly.*

this is the most laughable peice of crap ive ever heard, you dont understand evolution, humans did NOT evolve from birds!!lol

plus humans havnt evolved since hunter gathering times, we are still homosapiens, the same species. so that argument is a pile of wank.

If you're not supposed to eat meat then why are animals made of it? And why does it taste good. Everything on this planet was constructed for a purpose. We as human beings are gifted at being at the top of the food chain so we have a choice. There are many animals that eat meat and many that eat just plants etc... We have the advantage of choosing between the two. I believe the author has made justified arguements although I do not feel the bias against vegetarians should be made.

hmm, veggieromance.com, eh? Maybe someone should set up a rival site, "carnivore singles" or something.......

LOL. Very funny. I'm a lacto-vegetarian (no meat or eggs) but I did find that funny.

On a serious note though, there is such a thing as a healthy omnivorous diet, as well as an unhealthy vegetarian diet. I know lot's of these 'fashion' veggie who eat nothing but quorn pizzas and linda mccartneys sausages and chips. Usually the same kind of airheads who prance around with snakeskin handbags and leather boots.

Eat meat or don' eat meat, breathe or don't breathe, hunt or dont hunt its your personal choice !! remember choice, it was one of those things we used to have, before parliament turned into supernanny.

I eat meat and don't care who does and who doesn't, yip I've killed, gutted and eaten animals, so I know the difference between a mcdonalds pattie and a piece of meat. I don't ram my beliefs on others as I don't want them to try and ram their beliefs on me.

Well, this is my opinion and strangely enough it seems I can make it clearly and succinctly without threat or profanity.

On cigarettes there are clear warnings about the risks to life.... On ALL meat products they should do the same....

"MEAT CAUSES SERIOUS DISEASE"

"MEAT CAUSES COLON CANCER"

"A HIGH MEAT DIET CAUSES HIGH COLESTEROL AND INCREASED RISK OF HEART DISEASE"

These facts are all supportable by both epidemiological and molecular science...

Once again Rich, If you are not qualified to discuss the nutrition of others then you should be quiet... I trust you are following a micky mouse qualification at University, and rather than the removal of this site being an infringement of freedom of speech, I suggest that the University of Newcastle does not want serious medical research undermined by your illinformed rantings.

Vegetarians dont give a toss what others eat... or why they eat it - Just as I dont care whether other people smoke - dispite the fact that the risks are well documented.

Some meat is healthy in a diet - though not essential. Anyone worried about their diet (meat or vegie) should consult a qualified nutritionalist - Your GP should be able to help.

Does anyone here know if the medical condition in which an individual is unable to manufacture taurine in sufficient quantities for survival, has a name? [other than "being a cat", I mean ..... I'm talking about the condition specifically in humans. Everyone knows a cat will go blind and die in agonising pain if fed a vegetarian diet for a couple of years. I reckon it would take about ten to fifteen years for a human, maybe longer if they were producing some taurine - cats produce none at all.]

As a vegertarian can I say a few short words:

Bird Flu
Mad Cow
Scrapes
Salmonella

Intensive farming of animals has some seriously nasty results..........

I'm vegetarian because the idea of eating meat disgusts me - it's a dead animal, it used to squirm around, and now it's dead. This is not in your list above, and none of the above arguments make any sense when applied to it. I was brought up vegetarian by two veggie parents.

While I think you have some points in the above article, most of what you say is thinly veiled assumption and dogma. Funny, you describe vegetarianism as effectively being a religion, but in fact what you are saying, your arguments, sound very much like those used by the more rational religious people I have met.
For example, your description of the digestive system is hilarious - perhaps you should read up a bit more about this. I believe you will find the basis to the health based arguments (and the reason many people suffering from certain types of illness are told by their doctors to go on vegetarian diets) is that vegetarian foods are easier to digest than non-veggie foods.

James

I really enjoyed the article, sad to hear how the writer has been persecuted though. Reading through it reminded me of how one of my oldest pals was going through a vegan stint - yes because of the girl he was living with at the time - and the look on his face one time when I read aloud from the list of ingredients on the packet of biscuits he was scarfing from. #1 on the list was Hydrogenated Beef Fat.

The good man makes a point, 'why don't eat meat?'

However, one could just as easily ask, 'why eat meat?'

I'm not vegetarian myself, however I can see the benefits.
Eating vegetables -is- more energy efficient, and there are vegetable related sources of just about every other vitamin, mineral and other necessary foodily substances.
There is the argument that men has come from its hunter ancestry, however men were also once birds, and can no longer fly. It is widely accepted that once civilisation begins, evolution stops. Thus, I do not think that the ‘it’s in our nature’ argument for eating meat is a logical and correct one.

No, rather than it being something we take to naturally, it is the civilisation and media that have prolonged this meat culture.

My two penneth.

Right on! Vegetarian/Vegan bullshit doesn't stand up to logic and reason as is demonstrated here. And to all you sad little fucks who think we shouldn't eat meat because it isn't neccessary, I think you should all kill yourselves because you idiots being alive isn't neccessary either. Only the weakest members of our species become vegetarians or vegans, because they forgot that man invented tools to kill tasty animals and fire to cook them.

I dont know whether I should eat vegetarians or not now...oh wait.....

Starve a vegan for a week and they will eat meat anyway.

It seems a veg diet causes severe damage to sense of humour.

This kind of censorship by the Uni is pathetically weak.

I dont know whether I should eat vegetarians or not now...oh wait.....

Starve a vegan for a week and they will eat meat anyway.

It seems a veg diet causes severe damage to sense of humour.

This kind of censorship by the Uni is pathetically weak.

I became a vegetarian because it's my fucking business you effete mollycoddled twat. I am an ex-soldier, and as such despise middle class cock smokers like you. I have killed and eaten things in the past; I just choose not to do so now. What the fuck business is it of yours you cheeky jumped up fuck wit? I only pronounce a judgment on your life style because, despite it being none of your fucking business, you choose to pass one on mine.

CUNT

MEAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Veggies are all lame lol

I love Veggies....

Though I don't think I could ever eat a whole one.

Old joke, just had to be said :0)

I consider myself to be an avid carnivore - in some aspects, it's tied to my own self-identity. I certainly don't mind people who are vegetarians and who leave me alone about it - that makes the majority of the ones I know.

I tire, however, of the nutty ones who are so obessive-compulsive about their vegetarianism that they won't use a knife used in preparing meat, even if it's been autoclaved! Yes, I do have access to an autoclave. This makes me wonder greatly about their motivations - food choice, or physcological disorder?

I imagine he truth is much more middle-ground. As I've stated before, most vegetarians I know are nice and concientious about my carnivorous needs. It seems that any facet of society will have its whackjobs. So long as vegetarians don't try to tell me how to live, I promise I won't try to eat them.

" It is not economically viable to raise vast herds of sheep just to harvest one percent of their bodies."

I raised sheep for 5 years. Our sheep, weighing from 150-175 pounds, regularly produced 8-12 lbs of wool each year. Is that one percent? I haven't heard of any breeds that do one percent, either.

"Being domesticated is one of the best things that can happen to a species."
Well then, I hope pigs domesticate humans. They would take such good care of us.

"A huge proportion of the Earth’s dry surface is covered with grass, thanks to Man."
So... cutting down rainforests and other areas of high biodiversity (which can help humans, i.e. medicines from these places) is a good thing?

A dairy farmer has to milk his herd up to three times a day, every day, including Christmas Day, and when he has flu.
Not too tough now with machines.

Vegetarianism is miserable. It attacks one of life’s greatest and surest pleasures - enjoying good food."
So you have never had "good food" that doesn't involve meat? Hm, I bet you shit every three days.

I remember reading about the development of the human species and apparently our brains only got to the size they are today by eating meat. Brains use a lot of energy, so we need protein, and meat is a very rich source of it.

That's not to say veggie's are thick, only that we owe our intelligence to meat. I hope nobody invents a veggie baby milk formula.

"justin" says he wants to "FUCK VEGETARIAN FAGGOTS!"
Sir: Is this an argument displaying the level of your intelligence, or is it an expression of your sexual orientation? Given the vehemence of your desire, I'm guessing it's both.

Splendid Stuff, sir, simply splendid. Illusions like this need to be challenged. :)

Vegetarian Faggots? I havn't tried them yet. The bacon substitute stuff is disgusting so I guess that would be too. Is an interesting article. I'm a veggie due to conforming at school I guess and I am just right because I eat a few good taters!

After a while, youll notice many positive effects from not eating repulsive meat as long as you eat properly. Fukk you, you sound quite intelligent, *ahem*. Perhaps if youre gona be a veggie, you better eat your greens!!

How the hell did I end up in here..? Only stopped my truck to get myself a burger... Veggies may exist in uni but they couldnt do a proper job delivering proper food and goods to the masses in the real world......... There aint many skinny undernourished truckers hauling freight around these Islands, we all need meat to be able to work... Personally its like religion..Friggin outmoded..... Wheres me axe...?

you are a genious. FUCK VEGETARIAN FAGGOTS!

Justin, below, helpfully points us to the site of one Maddox, for what Justin seems to think is a rip-roaring take-down of vegetarianism. Let's look at Maddox's argument.

Maddox claims that vegetarians are hypocrites because millions of animals are killed every year by machinery in the planting and harvesting of vegetables. He dismisses the fact that this killing is unintentional as irrelevant (though most people think there is a moral distinction between intentionally and unintentionally inflicting harm). When it's pointed out to him that meat-eating causes much more death and suffering (after all, where does all the grain and soy fed to livestock come from?), Maddox admits this is true, but says that by causing any suffering at all, even unintentionally, vegetarians are hypocrites. Since staying alive almost inevitably involves sometimes causing at least unintentional suffering to others, Maddox seems to imply that the only way for someone concerned about suffering to avoid hypocrisy would be to commit suicide immediately. As for the fact that his meat-eating admittedly causes more death and suffering than a vegetarian diet, Maddox says, So what: you're the one who cares about animal suffering; I don't!

Like Maddox, Hitler cannot be accused of hypocrisy: he didn't care about causing suffering and death. (And, by the way, as I pointed out before, no, Hitler was not a vegetarian.) On the other hand, Churchill and the Allies, who wanted to reduce the killing and suffering, were, according to Maddox's logic, a bunch of hypocritical wankers, since in trying (successfully) to do so, they had to cause a lot of suffering and death (both intentionally and unintentionally). This is the sort of brilliant logic used to defend the totally unnecessary practice of meat-eating. The bottom line is, logic has little to do with this. Meat-eaters don't want to change, and no arguments will convince them to. Change is a matter of the heart, and those who lack empathy will not be convinced by reason.

I changed my diet when the doctor told me my cholesterol was too high. I'm 26. I cut out all meat, cheese, dairy, hydrogenated oil, egg, and most saturated fat. I supplemented with a good multi-vitamin. I was strict for a few weeks, but I now eat fish and egg whites occasionally, and every once and a while I am tempted to eat meals with other people, including meat and cheese. So I'm really no -ism at all, but let me tell you the benefits I found.

1. I shit on a regular basis. Never happened before in my life. This is an improvement.

2. No post-meal energy drain. I had gone my whole life and never noticed how bad I felt after eating pizza, and some other foods. I want to take a nap. Once I was aware of this post meal drain I found it really unpleasant to go back.

3. My energy on the whole was much improved. I had lost a few pounds, nothing unusual, but I felt lighter. It was pleasant. This feeling goes away after eating rich food, cheese and meat for example, and takes some time to return.

4. I started to smell better. My overall body odor just wasn't so bad after a while. My shit was not rose-scented, but a definite improvement. The taste in my mouth when not eating improved. I was not aware that there was room to improve on any of these (especially the taste of my saliva) until it just started happening.

For me, these reasons make it worthwhile beyond the doctor warning me about cholesterol. The energy means alot to me -- I'm trying to work my 40hr/wk day job, and work for myself at night and on weekends.

** I also enjoy self-discipline. I often enjoy the idea of my food more than the actual experience. This makes me unusual, but these benefits are real. I tried to rule out that they might be psychological.

*** If anyone force feeds me with anything, I will crush their larynx.

I changed my diet when the doctor told me my cholesterol was too high. I'm 26. I cut out all meat, cheese, dairy, hydrogenated oil, egg, and most saturated fat. I supplemented with a good multi-vitamin. I was strict for a few weeks, but I now eat fish and egg whites occasionally, and every once and a while I am tempted to eat meals with other people, including meat and cheese. So I'm really no -ism at all, but let me tell you the benefits I found.

1. I shit on a regular basis. Never happened before in my life. This is an improvement.

2. No post-meal energy drain. I had gone my whole life and never noticed how bad I felt after eating pizza, and some other foods. I want to take a nap. Once I was aware of this post meal drain I found it really unpleasant to go back.

3. My energy on the whole was much improved. I had lost a few pounds, nothing unusual, but I felt lighter. It was pleasant. This feeling goes away after eating rich food, cheese and meat for example, and takes some time to return.

4. I started to smell better. My overall body odor just wasn't so bad after a while. My shit was not rose-scented, but a definite improvement. The taste in my mouth when not eating improved. I was not aware that there was room to improve on any of these (especially the taste of my saliva) until it just started happening.

For me, these reasons make it worthwhile beyond the doctor warning me about cholesterol. The energy means alot to me -- I'm trying to work my 40hr/wk day job, and work for myself at night and on weekends.

** I also enjoy self-discipline. I often enjoy the idea of my food more than the actual experience. This makes me unusual, but these benefits are real. I tried to rule out that they might be psychological.

*** If anyone force feeds me with anything, I will crush their larynx.

Vegetables cause vegetarianism. I signed a petition to have them banned.

Next up - left-handed people. We used to burn them in the Middle Ages, why not now?

A complete waste of my time... I was directed to this link by an email under the subject. "Arguments against vegetarianism" and all i could find is a loser who just likes to randomly stroke his keyboard.

I could find a lot flaws... but i'll be brief, because unlike you, I have a life.




"
This is a fact. It is true that veggies are on average lighter. This is an argument based on modern wealth and excess. For almost all of the past, the problem for humans has been getting enough food. Obesity in a significant proportion of the population is a modern problem, brought on us by the ease of access to large amounts of sugary food, plus a lesser amount of exercise, and a retention of old instincts which made our hunting and gathering ancestors crave sweet things, fatty things, and salty things. Early humans evolved these instincts in a world where very sweet things were very rare, salt a vital rare nutrient, and wild prey animals were lean.



Now things are different, and whereas our instincts did not in the past lead to obesity, today they often do. This is not an argument for vegetarianism, however. This is an argument to persuade people to play more football, go dancing once a week, avoid Mars bars, and not to stuff cakes and cheap burgers into their mouths while watching Jerry Springer. Cheap, low quality meat with a high fat content does contribute to obesity in the modern world, but plenty of people manage to stay fit and lean and eat meat. There is nothing unique about meat for making people fat. A sedentary veggie eating cake all day will get fat too. However, vegetarians are perhaps less likely to stuff cakes into their mouths all day, because the sort of person who goes to the drastic step of forbidding themselves to eat meat is also the sort of person who is unlikely to stuff cakes down their hatch. The type of person who becomes a vegetarian is clearly the type to be quite obsessed by their diet, and so unlikely to over-do it on the cake front. Indeed, one only needs to view the denizens of the local “health” food shop to notice that many vegetarians are clearly underweight, which brings that average weight figure down quite a bit. Being underweight is not healthy. It is a modern and pernicious misconception that thin is good. Thin is not good. Fat is not good. Just right is just right.


A recent government report said that one in four sixteen year-olds in Britain is over-weight. It is also true, however, that the unfortunate offspring of middle-class parents quite commonly suffer from something which has been dubbed “muesli-belt malnutrition”. These children are fed on low-fat, low-sugar, low-salt diets by their health-faddish parents, and therefore not unnaturally end up with sometimes quite serious malnutrition. Skimmed milk is not for giving to growing kids, who need fat to grow. It is dreary grey water which might possibly suit over-weight adults.


If modern meats which are commonly available in shops are a bit too fatty for modern sedentary life-styles, then this is a reasonable argument for people to exert very effective consumer pressure by simply buying leaner meat. The farmers will quickly get the message, as indeed they already have.
"

Prevention is better than cure.

And also, lean meat or non-lean meat. The result is the same. You are gonna end up looking like "Fat-Bastard" if you keep eating meat like there is no tomorrow.

----

"
This argument is based on squeamishness and terror-tactics. That some veggies were converted to their creed by this argument is evidence that scare stories can work, even if they are rubbish. The notion that meat stays in the gut for much longer than other things I find amusing. The intestines are long narrow tubes, and food is worked along these tubes by the automatic contraction of bands of muscle around them. How might some vegetable matter over-take some meat? “Beep-beep! Pull over! Fast-track non-meat produce coming through!” Similar myths exist for meat’s sitting in the stomach for an age, in some cloistered waiting room, apart from less sinister food forms. No it doesn’t. Take a look at an anatomy text book and look at the shape of the stomach, then tell me where the separated-out meat stays for its alleged extended period. Also, offer me a mechanism by which the meat might be separated out in the first place. Last, offer me a reason why on Earth the body would have evolved to separate out meat and then harm itself by letting it go toxic.



That meat rots in the gut is true. However, it is also true that all food rots in the gut. The gut is filled with bacteria all the time. The bacteria break the food down. This is how digestion works. When your food exits your body in the form of faeces, a quarter to a half of its weight is made up of bacteria. If you hate the thought of bacteria in your body so much that you wish to avoid any breeding in there at all, then I’m afraid that even if you ate no food at all, you would not achieve your aim. There are more parasites living in and on your body than there are cells of your own body.
"

There are more parasites living in and on your body than there are cells? WTF!!??? And you say you were in a university!! Is lard insulating your neurrons or something?


And also, from what I can make out of your crap, you seem to say someting about bacteria and rotting. Well know this, bacteria makes meat rots A HELL OF A LOT FASTER than any plant matter.
----

"
The notion strongly implies that meat eaters do not care what they eat.
"

Absolutely true! You fukkards eat anything that moves without a second of thought. Because of that, the result is newer diseases keep on emerging every now and then. Since animals & humans are more genetically related than plants & humans, the probability of virus and other animal borne microbes mutating & infecting humans is a hell of a lot more than plant borne infections.

If the virus likes to just kill you meat eating apes, then I have no problem. The problem comes when it mutates furthur spreads from human to human.

You know, it was kind of sad to see mass murder of birds after a bird-flu outbreak. But hey ever dark cloud has a silver lining, I mean, it did manage to kill of some of you fukks. For that I am very pleased.

----
"
Stock farming is viable. We know this because people do it. If it were not economically viable, then no one would rear animals for slaughter. They do, and have done for a very long time. Meat commands a good price in the shops. People all over the world like meat, and are prepared to pay good money for it. This is not a passing fad.


The belief that we could feed the Third World by being vegetarian is not only misinformed, but cruel. For one thing, we could feed the Third World already, without killing off all our herds to make way for cereal crops. Moreover, it would be the cruelest blow to the Third World if we did. After World War Two, it was realised that asking Germany to pay “war reparations” would be a mistake. This had been done after the Great War, and had been a failure. How could Germany pay? In money? No - she (or, since this is the Fatherland, he) was bankrupt at the time. In goods? Perhaps, but this would bankrupt the countries receiving those goods. Think about it - you are a manufacturer of lorries in Britain. You hear that Germany is going to be forced to give Britain lots of lorries. Does this make you happy? No, of course it doesn’t, because you know that as long as free lorries are coming from Germany, no one but a fool is going to want to buy your lorries. You should sell up quickly, and lay off all your workers. The Third World is largely an agricultural economy. By giving free food to an agricultural nation, you at one simple stroke render the country bankrupt, and make beggars of all its farmers. Why should any African farm owner go to the effort, risk, and expense of farming, when he knows that he is in competition with free and superior products from the rich world? Meanwhile, why should any British farmer go to the effort and expense of producing food if he knows it would just be given away, and he get nothing for it? Becoming a vegetarian will do nothing at all to feed the Third World. One thing you can do to help the Third World, is invest heavily in GM crop research.

"

You Idiot! Go and visit africa and also have you ever heard of the words called "Drought", "Famines" and "locusts", "Supply and Demand".


That's it I have wasted enough time here already. The rest of your stupidity is not worth replying to. You and you kind are nothing but virus slowly destabilising the planets ecosystems right from slashing rainforests in brazil to grow soya for the animal feed to creating grazing fields in Indonesia for "free-range" meat. I hope Bird-Flu finishes off scum like you by slowly torturing you from the inside out. Happy dying!

According to my girlfriend, vegetarian spaunk tastes better. Best Argument for Vegetarianism Ever.

I am a seriously anti-veggie. As far as I'm concerned, the only excuse for not eating meat is dislike of the taste/texture. It is particularly annoying when people force their vegetarian lifestyles on other people close to them (especially their children).

Have fun with your meat.

When I became a vegetarian over twenty years ago (I've now been veggie over half my life), I did it because I wanted to. I never looked down on people who wanted to continue to enjoy cooked flesh (how could I when I'd done it myself for twenty-odd years?). My decision affects only myself.

I work in a job that, from time to time, requires me to cook meat for my clients. I am not squeamish in the slightest about doing this. I simply let them know that they'll have to give me specific instructions on how they want it done, because I won't taste it for them to see if it's cooked properly. Being reasonably intelligent, I can follow directions, and none of my clients have died yet.

I am neither tempted nor revolted by flesh. Having avoided it for so long, on those rare occiasions when it's accidentally ingested (twice...both occasions were due to inept cooks in restaurants), it comes back up. This is not due to any terror of meat on my part, it's because my body no longer manufactures the enzymes to digest it.

I worship at the altar of Mind Your Own Business. My vegetarianism is my personal choice (absolutely...eating meat is an instinct, not eating meat is a choice). Yours differs, and that's fine.

I don't like to be told what to do any more than the rest of you. If a vegetarian is whining in public about meat being murder, tell them to shut the fuck up (religious fanatics of any stripe are annoying). Then eat your steak in front of them until they cry and go home.

For the rest of us who are quietly enjoying our food (whatever it may be), Happy Scraps.

Mike,

There's nothing inherent about GM techniques that causes seeds to be sterile. In fact, the seeds from any F1 hybrid plant will produce offspring mostly unlike the parents: that's just the way Nature works. Cabbages, cauliflowers, swedes, broccoli, oil seed rape and Brussels sprouts are all genetically-modified forms of a now extinct plant, _Brassica sativa_. Admittedly the genetic modification was done by less sophisticated means {literally, waiting for a random freak mutant to appear and breeding from it} than are used today; but the result is the same, because what an organism with a particular DNA sequence will end up looking like does not depend on how that DNA came into existence.

I will contend that GM research does need to be regulated, to ensure that firms don't create new ways of exploiting people {e.g. treating DNA as "intellectual property" and bogusly claiming that they alone can grant a "licence" to grow a particular cultivar}. But this is really a separate issue. Likewise, it would be better to develop *pest-resistant* crops than *pesticide-resistant* crops {which would in all likelihood culminate in the development of pesticide-resistant pests}. The first way, however, nullifies the opportunity to sell expensive, proprietary pesticides.

Great article.
The cruelty argument that I've often seen spouted by veggies really winds me up.

Shame on Newcaltle Uni

gday

i used to be a vego....i got over it. its a long story but one thing someone said to me once
was that meat eating is an instinct, but vegoism is a DESCISION. I agree with this statement.
Being a vego was full of descisions, does it have meat? Do they have vBugger ego meals? Has it got rennet in it ? No I cant have that because it has animal products blah blah blah.
Now I eat Crocodile, emu, kangaroo, pigs, goats, sheep, cows, snake, chooks, ducks, eels, fish, mussels, crabs, squid, turtle,shark and whatever the fuck else I instinctively want because Oz is a meat lovers paradise....bloody oath!!!

So you eat hervibores?
Don't dare to call yourself a real meat eater then!
A real meat eater only eats carnivores.
It separates us one more level from bacteria.

"vegetarian" old Indian word for "bad hunter"

BTW, Hitler was vegetarian too

"vegetarian" old Indian word for "bad hunter"

BTW, Hitler was vegetarian too

Is it just me or does most of the totty on veggieromance.com have overtly pointy chins?

Aside from that, which sane person wants the environmental disaster of having their descendants evolve 5 stomachs - spending their entire sedentary lives ruminating food and belching huge quantities of global-warming-inducing methane?

you are an ignorant person. who are you to say such obnoxious things about vegetarians. im sure you have never tried to be one, you would never be able to because you do not seem as a person with discipline.

One thing that no one seems to state is if a person were to without eating all froms of animal products for a year and then did do again, they may get sick. Whereas if a person goes without eating all forms of fruits and vegetables for a year -- if they survive -- and then did so again, their body would thank them for it.

stupid and not polite

Hi.

Mike, you dick, Africa especially is being made " agricultural " t feed cows to feed meatheads ...

I been vegan for about 20 years, and was vegetarian for a few years before then before I discovered there was such an alternative. I am leaner and fitter than most men half my age and am regularly are mistake for being as many as 8 years younger than I am which is handy when you are out pulling.

Obviously, this article is the same old recycled shite we hear year in year out by narky little pricks that think they are" oh so clever " to regurgitate it again [ ... along with the bacon sandwiches and Red Stripe breakfasts ].

But ... these types of arguments alway miss two things from both sides of whiners; the meatheads *and* the veggies.

First of all. Vegans and vegetarians are not the same thing. Don't categorise together. Vegan generally think vegetarians are bigger bullshitters than meat eaters, who despite the fact we think they are ignorant and wrong at least walk their talk. And top marks to the Irish guys above that eat all the bits of everthing and waste nothing, kill skin and gut their own.

Vegetarians generally have a big chip on their shoulder when confronted with a vegan because the vegan is at least walking their talk as well. The vegetarian just feels like a big wanker for not being able to give up cake, chocolate and ice cream, knowing full well that, a) there are huge amounts of animal suffering involved in the production of diary products and, b) eggs are not vegetables and goes into a state of panic and denial!

If as a meat eater you despise vegetarians and wind them up, you really owe we vegan a damned good tofu burger dinner because we piss all over vegetarians. They know it and we love the satisfaction of being both more humble and more superior to them at the same time. Whatever complex they have over your guys, we evaporate when we walk in the room. Think Clint Eastwood poncho swept over one shoulder.

In short, vegans are hard. And yes, we fuck back. In fact, laugh of laughs, in this Post-Bush Age, we are officially " terrorists " and probably evil doers for not eating hormonally pumped up, cancerous, industrially produced Yankee steak.


The other issue that both sides miss is the fact that basically you guys, meatheads, stink. Male and female. And the female often worse during the heavier gloopy periods they have.

It not until you give up meat and particularly dairy that one's nose and sense of smell clears up enough to smell what you filth actually smell like; there is a kind of rancid, acrid, lard or tallow-like smell to your skin, you have breath that smell like dogs and your feet are distinctly vinegar and rotten cheese. Come back Agent Smith, all is forgiven, you disease organisms that would replicate uncontrollably to destroy your environment were it not for we intelligence keeping you in check.

This smell is true even of really quite pretty meat eating women too. No wonder they have to dowse themselves in perfume and spend hours in bathrooms to hide it. It is the smell of death and putrifaction.

Frankly, I dont care any more about the whining of vegetarians either, the politics, ethics or sentimentalism. Its loser mentality. I just dont want to smell like I have been served out of a can of cheap dog food nor date some ignorant tart that does too. Shame, I had had to drop or give a miss to some really good looking women just because of this. Snog that ... pah ... barf-worthy. Think week old garbage cans of cheese rind, bacon wrappers and tripe.

And let's not start on the smell of your shit. You putrify, we ferment. Big difference. We can clean out within hours, you take more than a week. You actually did get certain things wrong in your article but I cant be bothered answering.


One last comment worth making is that our cum taste much better too. I have it directly from some very good sources amongst your wives and girlfriends.

And there is nothing sweeter smelling and tasting that some lovely fresh vegan or veggie chick. Think warm sunkissed autumn meadows and ripe laden orchards.

A poorly informed rant. If you're actually going to convince people, you might use something called "evidence". That, however, would require you to back up your baseless claims.

"all vegetables are poisonous" Huh? Yes, lettuce has toxins (of a sort), that's the milky sap you see when you break a piece of lettuce close to the base. But to then postulate that all veggies have toxins? Where are you getting this information?

Plus, what about mad cow disease? What about mercury poisoning from fish? Plenty of diseases in your precious bacon, should you not cook it properly, as well.

And the blantant misogyny is just sad. I'm not a vegetarian, but I know plenty of men who are, and became so without a woman's pressure.

There are plenty of misguided, dogmatic vegetarians out there. I don't agree with them, nor follow their practices. Drivel like this, however, makes them look like nobel prize winners.

And God said "Let there be meat", and there was meat and it was good.

Known a few veggies, none of them ever tried to convert me though, they usually just kept to themselves.

Dont get me wrong I love my vegetables and fruits, but you need a good balance of everything.

when I was at a veggie friends cottage for the long weekend, all we had to eat was vegetarian meals, and I put up with it, it wasnt so bad, but by the 2nd day i was like f*** this, and went into town to pick up some fresh colbasa pemeal bacon :P

Great stuff you agent-provocateur :-)
As expected, most people seem to see this as a call to arms to defend their vegetarian beliefs (if that's the right word) or re-affirm their right to suck the life out of a sheeps entrails.
The real issue (if there is one) can be revealed by the language and sentiment of your supporters who don't seem to know the difference between a vegetarian and a vegan. Sweet baby Jesus have you no education in your country, obviously not if this is supposed to be an intelligent debate.
Being an Irish meat-eater, I've no problem eating rabbit or the animal giblets you weak-stomached "mainlanders" throw away, but your depiction of mis-guided, anaemic vegetarians was too much for me to stomach.
Such generalisation I have not heard since descriptions of the "fuzzie wuzzies" in Dad's Army (they didn't like it up 'em apparently).
Next you'll be telling me that the English should be forgiven for their complicit involvement in The Great Irish Famine (perhaps it was loyal English meat-eaters who were only looking out for the welfare of the master-race that took all the Irish meat from our shores to the British mainland in 1845-1847)

Paddy.

I'd book-marked the site months ago and was wondering why I couldn't find it anymore. I thought that kind of humourless PC-whining by those veggie types was passé. Oh well, I'm sure more people are reading what he has to say now than ever before.

I have been a vegetarian all my life i've NEVER eaten meat as both my parents were veggies too... having said that i have absolutly no problem with people eating meat, ive even been told by a few boyfriends that i make the best full english breakfasts that they have ever had :p

I love vegetarians.
But I can't eat a whole one for breakfast.
Buurrrrrppp!

i am in love with you.

And there isn't a single kind of meat I like. Even before I was a vegetarian, I found the taste and smell completely revolting. Of course, the dislike wasn't my reason for becoming a vegetarian. *

I put not becoming, haha. I need to lay down, it's been a long day.

"Consequently, vegetarian meals are never as satisfying. It is very unlikely indeed that a person would really not like meat. Further, there are many types of meat, and it is even more unlikely that one person would dislike all of these tastes by coincidence."

I'm full after every vegetarian meal I've ever had.

And there isn't a single kind of meat I like. Even before I was a vegetarian, I found the taste and smell completely revolting. Of course, the dislike wasn't my reason for not becoming a vegetarian.

Quite frankly I don't care if people eat meat around me, and I don't care if they criticize my choice, because that's what it is, a choice.

I think it's absolutely silly and a waste of time for someone to spend their time writing that. But to each is own. I wouldn't have wasted my time.

Very good to read. I am a vegetarian and although I agree with all your arguments (almost anyway), I don't really want to eat meat.

The one essay and some of the comments is that not all guys are vegetarians because of their girlfriends - I know quite a few vegetables (as I calll them), one of them is a male gay and I don't belive he became veggie to get sex.

However, I do agree that most males go veggie due to pressure from their girlfriends, I have made my boyfriend go veggie. Basically for the reasons that you have stated, actually.

Something someone said in their comments is that Bacon butties will turn any veggie back to being an omnivore - that was actually what turned me.

Interesting opinion article but on the whole, pretty baseless as far as facts.

You could start at the beginning:

"Weight for weight, almost any meat is more densely packed with nutrients than almost any plant."

Meat does not even compare "weight for weight" to the protein in Spirulina. Sorry but your statement is a bad opinion and wrong as well.

"If you eat unripe fruit, then you will get ill. "

I laughed out loud at this one.

"One thing you can do to help the Third World, is invest heavily in GM crop research."

Are you kidding? Do you not understand the biological differences that happen when you GE a crop. Some of them are toxic. When you are done with the rosy glasses please pass them to the rest of us

"The sheep was a species which was close to extinction in the Middle East before it became farmed"

Wrong again. A breed of sheep not the whole population.

"There was a time, when few people lived to see old age,"

Maybe in England but in the america's and china, natives of both countries lived to see old age.

"Babies have small guts, and cannot cope with a large volume of food. Since meat is so much more nutritious than plants, it is necessary to feed babies very large amounts of vegetarian food to satisfy them, and hence the problem arises."

What is going on in England. Who feeds there babies meat? Baby formula's are all made out of, dare I say it, veggie's. Plus I love friend of a friend stories.

"Vegetarianism is the new Puritanism."

Should have been cut after the first draft.

Reading this takes me back to my uni days - I had a few veggie friends who were always complaining about my digs smelling of cooked bacon (can't beat the stuff) whenever they'd crashed at the place after huge piss up.

This went on for a number of months, until the four of us who actually lived there and paid rent, got our student loan cheques and decided to put on a bit of (the word should be civilised but can't be for other reasons) get together.

Part of the buffet put on were the basic reground chicken meat fingers that you have to bake in the oven yourself - told the veggies that the fingers were vegetarian :D (Damn that was good Vodka I'd been drinking while preparing everything!)

Owned up a week or so later (my conscience takes some time to get it's point through the rest of my mind) and two of them gave up being veggies!!!

Result!!!

Um, seriously, this is considered a 'treatise?' I find it hard to believe that a 'fellow in evolutionary psychology' would write such a flame-baiting rant. In fact, whoever wrote this has very little knowledge of a) evolution b) psychology c) scientific reasoning d) common sense. Come on Reg, I thought your bulls**t metre was a little stronger than that.

"Most vegetarians are women. In Britain, a person is doubly likely to suffer from vegetarianism if he is female..." -- Okay dude, if "he is female" then I think he/she has more issues than vegetarianism... haha

I am a vegetarian, and became so becuase of a bet with my mum. 10 years on, I am clearly winning.

The best reason that I heard for being veggie was from a girl at my mate's BBQ. Her reason was

"I hate animals so much that I don't believe they desrve to be eaten. If I had my way, I'd kill them all now and leave them to rot in the fields..."

Good way of thwarting anyone from trying to enter into some moral debate over why that person doesn't eat meat. There are extremists on both sides, and they are equally as annoying. I want to be a vegetarian becauase, ultimately, I am petty and spinach makes you strong like Popeye.

What a waste of cyber-space, this is.

I am so sick of VEGANS. I think they should be eaten alive by wild animals to learn the error of their ways...and not by like a lion, tiger or bear, but by a chipmunk or squirrel so they get gnawed to a slow painful agonizing death (by an herbivore no less)...the same agony they inflict upon me when they try to make me feel guilty about being at the top of the food chain. I didn't evolve over the millennia to eat grass and soy.

I think we should eat vetetarians.

let's see this propagated, he is a genius

I've been looking for an essay like this for quite some time to show to a friend of mine who is EXTREMELY.... fanatical, about not eating meat. Hopefuly this will open her eyes. Also, to the vegans who say we're not designed to eat meat, look at you front EIGHT teeth, notice how they're all thin, pointy and/or somewhat wolf-like? That's because they evolved to shear meat off of bones. Not just to bite into an apple.

"I wont try to convert a veggi if they dont try to convert me!"

The best way is to not ask a veggie why they are one. Then you won't get your inferiority complex just because they're trying to do some good in the world.


"If God didn't want us to eat animals why did he make them out of meat?"

If he actually existed, then he sure made your brain out of meat.


"The fact that most veggies reading this still don't get it demonstrates their inability to grasp the fundamentals. Such stupidity is clearly what led them into this nonsense fad in the first place."

This kind of comment demonstrates the person's inability to be critical and have blind faith in whatever they read/watch and fail to realise that some of the arguments are flawed and illogical, just because they happen to like meat too. This kind of person generally joins a cult.

1. Why do you care what other people are eating?
2. As a vegetarian myself, I've never forced my choice on anyone. My entire family are rabid meat-eaters. I'm not a vegan--I eat animal products, such as milk, but I made the choice twenty years ago, and I'm not miserable. I could care less what anyone else eats. My response to meat-eaters who rag me about being a vegetarian is, "Why are you complaining? It just means more meat for YOU."

3. My first thought when I read this was that you couldn't possibly be serious. This is too silly for words. It gave me a good laugh, though.

4. I've never known a vegetarian like the ones you describe, though I'm sure they exist. There are extremists in every little niche...including the meat-eating one.

Like I said...this was some funny shit. Thanks for the laugh. I needed it!

"Meat is murder". True, but then it tastes nicer than a begonia to me. Do you call a lion a murderer? Only if you're a complete idiot.

Eating a raw tomato makes me hurl (yet I can chomp down on ketchup), so I can fully understand how some people don't like texture, which is absolutely fine by me. The holier-than-thou attitude (nearly all the declared veggie commenters have displayed it) is the one that does it for me as does the bow-to-the-loudest-voice mentality prevalent in today's society which means that opinion is censored, satire defanged and noone dares say anything to anybody and we all rot in our own tediousness.

While I greatly enjoy meat--nothing to get me salivating better than a mid-rare steak hot off the barbeque--I also understand why some people become vegetarians.

One thing that this essay does not address much is rotten meat. Generally meat does not store well, if it's hot out especially. If you can't freeze it, you need to eat it within a few days. Otherwise, it gets really nasty and unappetizing.

Many vegetables store much better. People regularly store vegetables all winter long in their cellar. This leads me to suspect that there are evolutionary reasons that some people tend more towards vegetarianism and some do not. A species can better insure its long-term survival through diversity in behavior among individual members; therefore, it may be that the evolutionary path of our species tends certain individuals towards more vegetarianism and others towards less. This makes particularly good sense for modern agrarian humans since so much of our caloric intake comes from the so-called "super-foods," none of which are animals (superfoods are wheat, corn, rice).

Best read in ages and ages...

SHAME on the spineless university... If they are the last bastion of free speech in this Blairite country, then we're all stuffed.

Why would you care so much about what other people eat that you would feel teh need to write a lengthy essay about it? I am a vegetarian and don't really feel the need to explain myself to non-vegetarians about it, anymore than I care to engage someone in a discussion of why they like lamb over beef or why they don't eat squirrel.
Some of your rebuttals are well reasoned, but all nearly have holes in them, as do the arguments vegetarians raise in their support. I won't go through the rebuttals because it would take too long. Ultimately, it's a personal choice that can no more be defended than one's preference for one football team over another or their political affiliation.
I don't eat meat because I view killing and eating of animals, and more importantly the torture of animals (which is what modern farming is) as unnecessary for people livingi n industrailized countries withj easy access to non-meat nutrition. If i was living 500 years ago without easy access to all nutrients i needed i would eat meat. If you don't care about the well being of animals just say so.

I'd like to add one to Uggh's quote: "You're much smarter than idiots like Einstein, Schweitzer, Ghandi, Thoreau and Tolstoy who were all vegetarians."

JESUS! He endorsed the eating of fish, but never ate meat or even fish in the Bible.

You're much smarter than idiots like Einstein, Schweitzer, Ghandi, Thoreau and Tolstoy who were all vegetarians.

If God didn't want us to eat animals why did he make them out of meat?

I'm a vegetarian, but I think the folks at veggieromance.com are clearly a bunch of deranged idiots.

Do you know what the worst thing about being a vegetarian is? Self-righteous, mung-bean munching, crystal-carrying, tarrot-reading, hemp-wearing, bath-avoiding, hippy vegan scum. They give the whole bunch of us carrot chewers a bad name.

I've just sent an e-mail to the Registrar of Newcastle University Dr John Hogan (John.Hogan@newcastle.ac.uk) protesting the restriction of Nikolas's IT access. I suggest that any others who feel strongly about this do the same.

i mostly agree with you, but there is something that really bothers me: you say 'We [mankind] prefer meat.' 'You like meat.' Just accept that vegetarians who say that they simply don't like meat, simple don't like it. It's not that hard to understand. I for myself enjoy eating meat a lot, but I know people that just don't find it 'yummi', analogue to people who don't like salad.

You're basically attacking vegetarians because they say you're unethical/abnormal (in the sense of 'a-natural') because you like meat. That's nonsense. On the other hand, you're doing exactly the same: You say they're abnormal because they don't like meat.

You don't have to agree with them, just accept their likings as you expect them to accept yours. After all, no vegetarian will ever bite you ;P

Regarding Pipkins earlier comments about the connection between lesbianism and vegetarianism, i'd venture the opinion that part of the whole lesbian lifestyle is about 'not eating meat' (so to speak). Although, speaking as one who bats for both teams and has an enormous amount of gay friends, I have to confess that i've never noticed any particular trend for homosexuals of either gender to lean more towards vegetarianism than straight people.

However I'd HAVE to agree with Pipkins anger towards such half-arsed creations as 'fake' chicken (my personal bugbear is fake bacon rashers) - why do vegetarians attempt to fashion their vegetables into items resembling the very food group thats their diet prevents them from eating? There are hundreds of delicious vegetarian meals available that don't require any pretence at eating meat, and you'd have to go a long way to find something that honestly tastes worse than a vegetarian sausage...

Most ammusing read!!

Bacon is apparently the main converter of veggies back to eating meat. We a veggi in the bike club doing a bacon roll after the aroma had flowed across his nostrels for a short while. Yum Yum!

At uni, there was a 'fashion veggi' in the house. She was always ill as a result of it. She went to the doctors and was told that she was not eating properly (because she gave up the meat). She refused to switch back so the doc had her on boiled nuts. Every time I entered the kitchen there was a pan of super-bland boiled nuts - yum yum!

Each to their own I guess as long as it does no-one else any harm. I wont try to convert a veggi if they dont try to convert me!

Nigel

Hey, different strokes and what not.

I am vegan and have been so for 10 years. I've never been thinner, stronger or healthier in my life. I don't get sick often; I love veggies more than any other food source and that's pretty much all i want to eat. Plus I am a great cook. But your thoughts are, you know, valid too, i guess.

dude, you hit it right on the nail.

Cant wait to light up that bbq when i get home.

:P

I was a vegetarian from Spring 1993 to Winter 1998, so just under 6 years. I've forgotten the original reason but it may have been one of the following: winning a bet, something that happened during an acid trip, trying to get laid.

One thing I did notice during my "time" was that anytime a vegetarian man visits a restaurant with an omnivorous female companion, be she his girlfriend, sister or mother, and he orders a vegetarian meal and she orders a non-vegetarian meal, every time, without exception, the waiter who clearly heard the order as it was given will invariably place the vegetarian meal infront of the woman.

The most interesting part of the whole episode, really, was my "lapse". I am allergic to peanuts {which already was making vegetarianism a tad difficult}. At a friend's house one Sunday, the options were pork or nut roast.

By this point, I was already having serious misgivings about my vegetarianism anyway; but given the choice between (1) whole-body itching to the point of wanting to sandblast my own skin off as best I could with a constricted trachea and (2) eating pork from a pig that was already dead anyway and not going to be saved just because I did not eat it, it wasn't a hard decision to make. Believe me when I say remaining hungry, or even eating just the potatoes and other vegetables, was *not* an option. My stomach was already on the verge of implosion.

Now I had heard that after a period of vegetarianism, the human body stops producing some enzyme necessary for the digestion of meat; and a long-term vegetarian will eventually be physically unable to resume meat-eating. I now suspect this to be another vegetarian propaganda myth but at the time I was wary. Turns out I had no digestive trouble as all.

Oh, and the first thing I saw as I was taking my plate back into the kitchen was a cross-stitch picture of a pig.

If God didn't want us to make animals, why did He make them out of meat?

Love it.

I've had a veggie argue the "how can you eat meat, you wouldn't kill an animal, line" I told her I have and i'd do it again.

Shut her up.

Great one!

The link to the essay on consciousness appears to be broken.

More, we want more...

I'm in for writing to the UofN to complain for taking this down, address?

Davo - his ravings sound rather well-informed, you probably just need another dozen of pounds of carrots to rack up enough energy to last you long enough to read the piece with full mental clarity. I'd throw in a few cabbages to be on the safe side.

"Most of what was written is extremely quotable and should be compulsory reading for any prospective broccoli worrier" – second that
“Why are you so obsessed with the way other people choose to live?” – because he sees the ‘dark side’ of the matter (undernourished infants etc.) and the dogmatism and – in certain cases – fanaticism that describes the way they choose to live. I do agree that vegetarianism will (most probably) never become the norm, but it doesn’t have to for disaster to ensue.

Where I come from thousands of acres of dense forest have been burned to the ground over the past 20 years, and the objection of so called ‘environmentalists’ to the logging of parts of the forest for the creation of firebreaks certainly did not help much. Save a line of 1,000 trees today, only to see them burn (along with millions of trees on each side of the line and all the wildlife that is supported by that habitat) tomorrow. I recall my grandfather (keen hunter for over 60 years) complaining that parts of a forest that was wiped out in 1998 were so dense than not even the dogs could get through due to environmentalists opposing any proposal to ‘clean’ the forest. They were not the majority, but had enough voting power for the politicians not to be able to afford ignoring their misinformed protests.

Lloyd touched upon this issue; indeed the best protectors of wildlife are the hunters (who become gamekeepers off-season). It’s all down to motivation, they don’t do it to ‘look cool’ and ‘go with the flow’, but because if they don’t look after the wildlife, there will be nothing to hunt. As for the cruelty of killing animals almost anything a human can do to an animal (apart from relentless torture I suppose) is much more ‘humane’ than what animals do to each other (there are literally thousands upon thousands of examples I can quote, but I won’t go there, just imagine a lion ripping gazelle apart – or for that matter how any cat kills).

Did anyone in the 50s imagine that fox hunting would be banned in England by 2005? Can you imagine the sale of meat in the UK becoming illegal by 2055?

My compliments!

Epic!

very good

this sums up 95% of the veggies I know.

If God didn't want us to eat animals why did he make them out of meat?

There are six people in my family, of which three are vegetarians. I'm not one of them.

My mum and dad believe vegetarianism is healthier and that their taste buds have become accustomed to subtle flavours. (i.e. blandness)

My sister used to be veggie (for 13 years) until a friend who didn't know fed her a meal of chicken. My sister though it was yummy and started eating meat again. (Smart girl!)

The thing that bugs me about veggies is when they whinge about the limited choice on the menu in restaurants. Well duh! choose a marginal diet and this is what you get. It's like going to a curry house and complaining there are not enough English dishes on the menu!

I don't live at home anymore and I don't eat veggie food anymore! Soya chunks, just say no!

Reading this really made me hungry! And I think I will dust off the grill and have myself a nice barbeque tonight! :-D

This was hilarious. It is a wonderful satire on our modern, technologically advanced, western european society, in which we are so concerned with lifestyle rather than life, that we neglect our own bodies for an ideal, whether by eating too much or too little of a given thing, becoming too large or too skinny, or playing with the chemical and hormonal balance in our bodies. We are all destroying our own and each others health and sanity by fussing about every tiny thing. I am an asthmatic meat eater, who after a particularly nasty bout of food poisoning due to has been left with a fussy stomach. My sister was a vegetarian anorexic, she is now a meat-eating bulimic. Many things serve as many excuses for many other things. In conclusion, 'tis probably best to go with what makes you happy, and try not to proclaim your choices as 'the only true path', whatever they may happen to revolve around. Right, or wrong, everyone has the right to choose for themselves.

well written, witty and funny, and since it 'attacks' some people beliefs even in such a relaxed way it was bound to attract hostility. Shame on the university

I'm a second generation vegetarian.

Yep, I let the animals eat the plants and I eat the animals. ;-)

Quality Work :)

Thx to the reg for the link.

I'm off to post this to all the veggies I know as some of them do have this "holier than thou" attitude towards meat eaters.

I liked it, Followed the link from El Reg , and thought it was a well spent 15 mins.
I have forwarded it to veggie friends (?) lets hope they like it, I also think it was a shame that it was removed and privilages removed because of it. However that dose go some way to justify the writters piont that veggie in body can equal veggie in mind, Why could they not have just replied with a simular essay about meat eaters.
...Just my 10 bob...

Brilliant article! The fact that most veggies reading this still don't get it demonstrates their inability to grasp the fundamentals. Such stupidity is clearly what led them into this nonsense fad in the first place.

"ooh, I'm eating a chicken, that's rank" ...

Did you fail to read the bit about squeamishness or simply fail to understand it?

"Wow, I never realised that some people have so much bile simmering against vegetarians, although it probably says more about them, than about anybody else's eating habits."

Only because you lot want to force it on the rest of us, admit it - it's true.
Keep your perverted habits to yourselves and the rest of us will leave you alone.

"I have been vegie since I was 5 year old (that’s over 22 years). I am a 6’3 well built man, seemingly impervious to the disease and pestilence that overwhelms those that eat meat."

Two words: Linda McCartney. Seems she wasn't so impervious to disease? I feel sad for those that have to suffer from Cancer, but to claim being a Veggie will save you from that fate is patently untrue.

The problem with being a moron and not funny is that you have to be controversial to have your ill-informed ravings read by others. Well done, mission accomplished, that book deal is just around the corner. Not. Back to the wishing you had something that others would find interesting so say I’m afraid.

Brilliant article! The fact that most veggies reading this still don't get it demonstrates their inability to grasp the fundamentals. Such stupidity is clearly what led them into this nonsense fad in the first place.

"ooh, I'm eating a chicken, that's rank" ...

Did you fail to read the bit about squeamishness or simply fail to understand it?

"Wow, I never realised that some people have so much bile simmering against vegetarians, although it probably says more about them, than about anybody else's eating habits."

Only because you lot want to force it on the rest of us, admit it - it's true.
Keep your perverted habits to yourselves and the rest of us will leave you alone.

"I have been vegie since I was 5 year old (that’s over 22 years). I am a 6’3 well built man, seemingly impervious to the disease and pestilence that overwhelms those that eat meat."

Two words: Linda McCartney. Seems she wasn't so impervious to disease? I feel sad for those that have to suffer from Cancer, but to claim being a Veggie will save you from that fate is patently untrue.

Do anything for sex? Wait...lemme think...errrmmm...give up meat? FUCK NO!

Thansk to El Reg for the link ;-)

I've known a lot of tofu-troublers who stopped eating meat because their girlfriends were veggies. And yes, almost all of them started eating meat again as soon as the relationship was over....

Since the question arose several times:
The reason why someone took so much time to write all this down is because all those veggies on their "holy mission" take that much time trying to convert us normals.
Just this once we have gathered here to thank one guy who expresses our feelings towards them and hands down a little help for the occasional verbal battle.
It occurs to me that freedom is dying by the means of intolerance. Take good care of the bits that are left of it, it is vanishing quickly.

I'm a true believer in eating anything god feels fit to provide! Meat, fish, veggies! And being with 4+ veggie GF's has never changed that! Most of the vegetarians i know are just ordinary people!
If you wish to access the forum at vegiromance it doesn't take much of an IQ to append /forum to the end of the url.
Sighned one happy omnivore!

Absolutely superb!

I work with a veggie, and she (surprise, surprise - female!) tried to argue about the "virtues of vegetarianism". My response was along the lines of "at least a cow has eyes to see you approaching with an axe, and legs to run for it - where the first thing a cabbage knows is that it's been yanked out the ground and chucking in a pan of boing water." The look on her face was priceless.

But this is soooo getting linked to my LJ.

And yes, this was because I saw the link on El Reg...

Bravo that man. withering shame on the Newcastle University administrators for failing to defend free speech. Not his right particularly, but all rights.

Agreed: Vegetarianism is an issue of faith and therefore cannto be assulted by reasoned argumnet. But you can have a good time trying.

Agreed: Committed veggies must apologise for taking up valuable sunshine and oxygen that would otherwise benefit hedge rodents.

Agreed: Meat is delicious and a valuable source of nutrition. Cowhide provides a valuable source of motorcycling gear which has benefited a large number of motorcyclists who found themselves inadvertently gravel surfing. Crocheted hemp fibre on knotted flax just wouldn't work the same.

Please Note: Amanda Treefield is not my real name, it's an in-joke.

I'm a lesbian and half my friends seem to be bloody veggie. I have no idea what the connection is between lesbianism and vegetarianism but it's bloody annoying.

My girlfriend is veggie because she "doesn't like meat", yet she frequently comments on how tasty my fillet steak smells while she's digging into her plate of warm lettuce or whatever. Finding restaurants that we can both eat in are a nightmare. I can look at any one menu and see at least half a dozen things I would eat; she'll go "Oh, fried courgette on a bed of sliced tomato, I don't fancy that."

Shopping - pain in the arse. Let's have a look at the vegetarian frozen food, shall we? Oh look, vegetarian sausages. Vegetarian burger. Vegetarian "chicken fillets". For god's sake, woman, just go over to the meat counter and buy the real thing, it's cheaper!

I've been an veggie for just over a year now, and personally, I found your article absolutley hilarious! Brilliant brilliant stuff! It certainly sums up many of the veggitarians I've met!

What you have acurately captured here are the arguments for "fashion vegitarianism"; those who dont really subscribe to the genuine argument of vegitarianism. Obviously you are aware that one of the primary arguments for vegetarianism is one of an ethical choice, that requires you to question where the line between humans and animals lies, and whether it is at all possible that suffering should ever be levelled against another creature. An argument that once examined, is a thorny and difficult one to resolve with out serious contemplation. If you interested, read "Animal Rights" by Peter Signer, the book that pretty much started the whole movement and brought vegitairianism out of the reliegious/health sections of society.

I'll end here: I'm starting to sound like one of those whiney self rightious vegan bastards! :)

Excellent document!

From a religous standpoint i've always said that if god didnt want us to eat animals he wouldn't have made them out of meat..

Also why has nobody hosted the discussion... can vegetarians eat road kill?
I think they might like it and it's a venture worth a few bob to the right celebrity chef and guilt free protien to our anemic friends!

Happy days!

Great rant - very funny, but there's just one thing that strikes me as a bit weird - why are you so obsessed with the way other people choose to live? With the time it took you to write the above you really could get a life of your own.

I've been an veggie for just over a year now, and personally, I found your article absolutley hilarious! Brilliant brilliant stuff! It certainly sums up many of the veggitarians I've met!

What you have acurately captured here are the arguments for "fashion vegitarianism"; those who dont really subscribe to the genuine argument of vegitarianism. Obviously you are aware that one of the primary arguments for vegetarianism is one of an ethical choice, that requires you to question where the line between humans and animals lies, and whether it is at all possible that suffering should ever be levelled against another creature. An argument that once examined, is a thorny and difficult one to resolve with out serious contemplation. If you interested, read "Animal Rights" by Peter Signer, the book that pretty much started the whole movement and brought vegitairianism out of the reliegious/health sections of society.

I'll end here: I'm starting to sound like one of those whiney self rightious vegan bastards! :)

Ah. Not worth reading eh, Pete's mate? Do you have any good arguments as to why not? Any scientific evidence to back that rather feeble statement up? No. That tends to be the problem with vegetarians. Lots of shouting "NO, YOU'RE WRONG!!! VEGETARIANISM IS RIGHT!!!" without actually being able to argue their point. Tsk, I dunno. What kind of people do they allow into Polytechnics these days?

One thing is for certain. Veggies unquestionably produce the most smelliest farts known to humanity. Use this as an argument for/against the veggie way of life depending on your sense of humour and personal level of enjoyment when it comes to 'letting one rip'. Personally my smooth-flowing and harmoniously regular omnivorously-propelled bowels are currently gagging for a BLT, after which I shall sit down and have another read through this excellent piece of writing. God bless you all - whatever your diets may be!

Brilliant - this has made my afternoon.

I worked with a veggie who constantly moaned about animal cruelty, the benefits of not eating meat etc... She was overweight, always ill and wore leather shoes.

Shame on the 'Thought Police' Notts. Uni and vegetarians without a sense of humour.

Comment from a veggie friend I showed this link too.

"Actually, I think youll find its not worth reading. A
blatant flame bait written to arouse knee-jerk
reactions in pseudo-liberals. Now, point out a
properly reasoned piece from a meat eater detailing
why they eat meat, and Ill read it. Plenty of reasoned
veggie opinion out there, wheres the meat eaters -
apart from articles like that one.

Perhaps the lard is slowing down the neurons a little?"

OUCH

One of the best reads I've had in ages! Bravo sir!

Comment from a veggie who I pasted this link too:

"Actually, I think youll find its not worth reading. A
blatant flame bait written to arouse knee-jerk
reactions in pseudo-liberals. Now, point out a
properly reasoned piece from a meat eater detailing
why they eat meat, and Ill read it. Plenty of reasoned
veggie opinion out there, wheres the meat eaters -
apart from articles like that one.

Perhaps the lard is slowing down the neurons a little?"

OUCH

This is hilarious. I can't believe anyone would take this article so seriously.

Well, most of it. There actually a few good points hidden in there.

The reason why I'm vegetarian: cruelty to animals. Many animals, especially pigs and chickens, are kept under horrible circumstances for the simple reason that it's a lot cheaper than treating them well, and I want no part of that.

Excellent article. Even though it doesn't go as far to state it on the essay, also proves that veggies have no sense of humour.
Going to the natural argument, why do you think we were born with incisor teeth? We utilise our molar teeth with vegetables to mince and dice the veg, but our incisor teeth cuts up meat. We are naturally meat eaters and I intend to stay that way. I am fed up however with veggie warblings being thrown in my face, and this is a major strake against their argument! When will veggies stop giving me shit for eating meat?!? All I can say now is - veggies..... suck my meat!!!! :-)

I'm a veggie, have been since 1989, and I read this with great interest. It is generally well argued, and certainly entertaining. Perhaps I'll have that steak after all....
I am very disappointed that the university felt they had to take this down. The trend towards making offending people illegal is deeply worrying. I find loads of things offensive - The Daily Mail, Eastenders, Coronation Street, religion, stupidity, ignorance, civil servants....but I accept that they have the right to exist.
I think the reaction from the veggies really confirms the point that it is a religious issue. In general, it is allegedly religious people who are so insecure about their beliefs that they feel others should be prevented from putting forward any logical arguments that might challenge their faith. Thats one of the things I find so offensive about them.

Any chance of getting the other articules put up? Think there's a good thing going here..

Brilliant - you should follow it up with reasons you should eat meat....

Like - we have pointy teeth - these are for tearing the flesh off the bones - Vegetables have no bones, if we were supposed to just eat vegetables then we would have teeth like cattle.

- We have binocular vision - means we needed to judge distance to the animal were about to eat, if we were not meat eaters we would have had our eyes on the sides of our heads to watch out 360 degrees for predators

- if you wernt supposed to eat animals - why did got make them out of meat in the first place?

how does not eating a dead animal make any difference in the world? It doesn't prevent more animals from being consumed in the future, and worst case, it wastes food. vegetenazism is a fashion, which is why it is popular with women. That and the lack of nutrition leads to weight loss, which helps them to meet their unrealistic anorexia weight goals

very amusing .... now get a life you saddo

Very good article. Problem is, you can't really argue with veggies, like all faith-based systems, rationality has nothing to do with it (having had several veggie girlfriends I've found bacon speaks louder than words). I notice a few people on here are already trying the "I think the vitriol against veggies says more about you...yadda, yadda" approach. No it doesn't, dislike of vegetarianism tends to come from a reaction to being looked down upon by holier-than-thou salad lovers.

And shame on you Newcastle Uni. Pussies.

Mmmmmmmm, Beefy.

I love you.

I am veggie but I don't care what other people do. Both veggies and meat eaters should do whatever they want to but just DON'T preach !!!!!!

Brilliant Essay, I know i'm not supposed to be a vegetarian because I looked at my teeth in the mirror this morning. Perfectly designed for cutting and tearing meat i find, veggies are there as a decoration and to accompany my roasted beef!!

I am a vegetarian. And for none of the above snidely stated reasons. If I was an animal I would not like to be eaten. (and I don't mean in some crude sexual way)

baldrick you are a .......... (people may fill the blanks)

And you most likey suppport the bombing of Iraq redneck f**khead.

Freedom of speech for everyone.

Another passer-by from el-reg.

Enjoyed the article. Can't believe castle uni banned it.

I never realised that becoming vegetarian could result in a sense-of-humour deficiency. Maybe they can find some kind of supplement in a pill for this.

Ok enough, i'm off to find some halal bacon...

Fantastic, i agree with just about everything.

If you have any more rants about other subjects then feel free... i will listen.

Meatshy molluscs have a backbone after all ?
Imagine letting yourself be mauled by ugly ungulates ! Judging from the specimens shown on their pages they need this ploy to procure themselves a partner. Tried being a veggie first year at Uni but I quickly grew out of this teenage idiocy.
The facility zealots have for being wound up always astounds me. I'm sure there is a myspace group or a blogging site where you could host your essays without fear of them being pulled.

Guess what? The forum at veggieromance.com has been removed.

ROFL :o)

Excellent piece of writing.

I am not myself a vegetarian, but articles such as the above are likely to make me consider becoming one.

I can certailyn imagine why people become vegetarians, and it has nothing to do with Puritanism. Indeed most vegetarians I know veer towards the opposite end of the spectrum, being sybarites with a taste for wine, song, and chemical excess.

A more interesting psychological question is why someone should go to such lengths to pour scorn on vegetarianism (and much of this specious - cf the risible "To suffer, a creature has to be aware that it is suffering. There is no reason to believe that sheep are conscious"). It seems to me rather obvious that certain of my fellow meat-eaters are simply guilty to be such, and unable to admit this irrational emotion to themselves.

Hey: cool article. Freedom of speech rocks, just a shame you are a bit of a twit! My brother hates eating vegetables, I don't enjoy eating meat. I do hope you have something in your life.

ROTFLMFAO

Another Parchute drop from El Reg here, can't get enough of articles like that.

It easily describes 99% of the veggies I have known. Oh, and 100% of the men, every bloke I know who has become a veggie has done it to get a shag. Once the relationship is over it's off down macdonalds for a burger.

Newcastle uni should be ashamed of themselves for bending to pressure from snivelling veggies, but not half as ashamed as those veggies themselves who attempted to suppress this. Who died and elected them the f***ing thought police ?

Ironically, this will probably draw more attention the article than it would otherwise have received. As is usally the case in such circumstances.

Doh! I guess being a veggie really does make you feeble minded.

El Reg once more.

It's criminal that this got censored. I can see why a few veggies would take offense, but this hardly warrants revoking someone’s right to freedom of speech.

In summary, Four legs (read "meat") good, Nottinham baaad.

How do lesbian Vegitarians have sex?

I'm healthy, I eat my Honey and she returns the favor!

Wow, I never realised that some people have so much bile simmering against vegetarians, although it probably says more about them, than about anybody else's eating habits.

Most of what was written is extremely quotable and should be compulsory reading for any prospective broccoli worrier

Sterling stuff, couldn't agree more! My girlfriend used to be vegetarian, worst 8 minutes of her life apparently.

Absolutely spot on.

With a hammer, Meaty, and then a light soak in Soy sauce....

A most excellent critique, well thought-out and well written.
I am disappointed by the University's response. I had expected more.

Married to a Veggie for 10 years. Made it quite clear I would never become a veggie. She tried making the kids veggie but that soon got slapped down.
Caught her eating a bacon sandwich a few months ago. >:)

A comedian I once heard had another argument: "I'm not a vegetarian because I like animals, I'm a vegetarian because I hate plants."

Ha, ha great!

I can see nothing in Mr Lloyd's piece above that is so horrendous that it needed to be censored.

Vegetarians basically proceed from two arguments, either that it is healthy, or "humane and environmentally conscious". It's certainly a great way to lose weight if practiced intelligently, but as for the second argument, my God, look how animals treat each other!

You know all these veggies who reckon you can eat shit like tofu or some other 'meat substitute' and you can't tell the difference?
Next time one comes around your house, give them a big juicey steak - apparently, they won't be able to tell the fucking difference!

Excellent article, by the way!

Great use of stereotyping here!
I think you guys missed the point of the vegetarians' upset. It was the suggested use of violence against them that was offensive. To suppose that people who are veggies are like Neil from the Young Ones, you don't have a clue. I eat chips, crisps, pizza, chocolate, cake and have fired breakfasts! I haven't eaten lentils in years! Vegetarianism isn't synonymous with left wing politics.

Vegetarianism is a choice, eating meat is an instinct!

Awesome work matey!

Me - Meat eater - Never Ill
Mrs - Veggie - Always Ill

Do the maths

Luv

Firstly, i would like to congratulate you on the article, most of the points were very well thought out.
Secondly i would like to point out one major flaw, on the "I dont like meat" argument. You say that "People like the same things", this is only true when applied to sweeping genralisations, or things that are necessary for survival, you also say that meat has a "peerlessly nice texture". I myself do not like peas, not for the taste, but for the texture, however like sushi and sashimi, and in both of these i am in he minority among my friends due to texture rather than taste. I also have a freind who does not like te taste or texture of meat, but has a leather jacket, and will still eat products such as pate and broths which have the taste but not the texture. On the other hand in many countries eyeballs are considered a delicacy, and in western culture raw oysters are considered by many to be very tasty, i have tried both of these, and hated them.
The simple fact is that humans are not perfectly evolved to like the same things, there is not evolutionary reason that i can think of, it is just one of those things.
You may argue that it is impossible to dislike all meat, but as you pointed out meat all has a similar texture, so dislikeing this will result in a dislike of meat.
I am not a vegetarian, although am friends with a few, and i am currently going out with one, who is perfectly fine with me eating meat.
You also forgot one argument that could be applied: we have no proof that plants are noy self aware, they will move their leaves to point towards the sun, so may have some envirenmental awareness.
On a more humorous note: would a vegetarian be forbidden from biting their nails?

[Kath] It was removed from the servers at Newcastle University. Details are on the post previous to this one on this blog. Click the "Back To Rich Speaks" link at the top or bottom of this page.

fantastic!!!!!

Does anyone know if you can eat vegetarians?

Should I kill them first with a hammer, or just pop them straight in the pan?

If animals didn't want to be eaten, they wouldn't be made of meat.

best rant, most sense I've heard in ages. Would someone tell me where this was 'removed' from and who by? I seem to have picked up the thread rather late in the day...

I am saddened by the lack of backbone shown by the administrators at this university. In the States, you could make a very good case for freedom of speech. From the country that gave everyone the Magna Carta and other excellent ideas about free speech, this is saddening.
I will be sending off an e-mail to the staff of the university IT department, and the administration, deploring the caveing in to a bunch of people with no humor or imagination. I will also send e-mails to the veggans hosting company deploring their obvious bias against meat eaters as it is offensive to me. Anybody else for that? Let's deluge the hosing company, get them suspended and see how they like it !!

Just brilliant!

The real truth: men will do ANYTHING for sex, and women know it.

Rule the world, eat meat!

Vegetarianism is an illness and should be treated as such, if people refuse to eat meat they should be commited to secure medical institutions until cured

Excellent, really enjoyed that!

when i was younger, i had plenty of pale pasty faced veggie friends. My mother, god rest her soul, used to sneak in gravy made with meat as she was worried that they where not getting enough vitamins!!!

lets hear it for bacon sarnies!!!

Excellent, really enjoyed that!

when i was younger, i had plenty of pale pasty faced veggie friends. My mother, god rest her soul, used to sneak in gravy made with meat as she was worried that they where not getting enough vitamins!!!

lets hear it for bacon sarnies!!!

You called it how you saw it.
Can't say fairer than that.

Personally I avoid going out
with veggies. They're a real pain
at restaurants!

Our lass is gonna knack you, Lloydey!

W1N

I used to drive my partner nutty with my bacon sarnies when she was a veggie.

I also was a pain in coooking 2 seperate meals. One real meal with meat and 1 veggie meal.

:)

Just arrived from El Reg. Most amusing. I agree with almost everything in it.

However, if the piece were to be toned down a little (e.g. removal of phrases like 'dungaree-wearers' or 'suffers of vegetarianism') then more people might consider its arguments instead of becoming ofended by it. That would also have meant that the university would have been less likely to remove it under the argument of 'intent to annoy'.

Having said that, if it hadn't been so provocative, it wouldn't have been removed, the story wouldn't have appeared on El Reg and I wouldn't have read it...

Fantastic stuff ... let's hope the cauliflower-shagging idiots who caused this are suitably mortified by their public humiliation.

The weak-willed idiots at Newcastle Uni should resign out of shame.

Completly agree, evolution over fasion fads

Fantastic rant! And such meat-licious irony that by forcing takedown of the article they have far more widely distributed it than if they had just left the poor bloke alone. Is there a word for this? Censorslip?

Dessertification is s terrible scourge! I can just see all of Afric as one enormous Angel Delight!

Superb thinking + writing - in culinary terms probably the equivalent of a filet steak in roquefort sauce - Mr Lloyd, you have done a service to mankind by beefing up our defences against veggie oppression

On the other hand, the spineless university twats who betrayed your free-speech rights with this cowardly act of whinge-induced censorship are beneath you - you should fire them all (i.e. resign) and keep up the inspired expression free from their accusing glances

Bravo!

I've enjoyed this rant. I can think of a few people it applies to that I know, and I'll be telling them to read this.

I shall also be mailing the Uni of Newcastle (my home town, the shame) to complain at their behaviour in taking this down in the first place.

Ever since the UK government re-classified offal as being "not meat" (mainly so burgers couldn't say 100% pure beef, I guess), I've been trying to persuade veggie friends that they should eat kidneys. I know a lovely recipe...

An excellent piece of work.
From my own observations, most vegetarians I've had the pleasure of winding up also seem to follow the rants of one god bothering group or another. They are genreally week minded people who have to 'belong' to some group or other, often fashionably changing groups because nobody liked them in the last one. You know the sort damp clammy hands and a limp handshake. Perhaps their level of conciousness is low enough that we could hunt them for food? They're certainly lean enough!

ANYONE WHO IS NOT A VEGETARIAN DESERVES TO BE POUNDED WITH MARSH MELLOWS.

Got the link from the register - great read ! no valid email as not like more spam

I eat meat and veg as humans are omnivores, tried the veggie only diet, but bacon butties... Pity the university has no backbone and so bend over touching their toes to be buttf??ked by the veggies who seem to be all that matters in this sad PC day...

Fantastic. I love it.

I work with a couple of veggies (men at that) and they are full of all the reasons why I shouldnt eat meat. Funnily they also consider them selves all for free speech, but then they said this article shouldnt even be published HUH?

Well I am off for a big bacon lettuce and tomato butty without the lettuce and tomato!

Mike,
came up with some good points on the third world.
But if more agriculture is leading to dessertification, surely that is a good thing.
Gives them something to eat after their wheat.

Yesman, I just went to sign up at veggieromance but I can't...
Every time I get the page up I can't stop wetting myself
HAHAHAHAHAA!!!!!

Vegitarians! those hypocritical self-harmers, with their unhealthy disire to force their views upon the masses. You've gotta love 'em.

Hmm, interesting. Where would one be able to find this so called 'meat' product you write of?

It sounds like an ideal solution to many dietary issues. It may catch on.

Bravo sir!

I too fell from El Reg, and Bravo, Bravo. You certainly hit the proverbial nail there.
I've always suspected vegetarianism is really an exclusive "I'm special" club for people that need self-deprivation.
I once had a religiously vegetarian girlfriend whom studied psychology/philosophy and used these 'skills' to argue me into a corner each time. However you Sir have not only expertly rubbished each angle, but nailed the lid shut by revealing vegetarianism is actually the same as any religion, and about as credible.
I salute you.

Top stuff - death to all tasty animals

Interesting stuff. I'm a vegetarian and my reason was not listed, so I'd like your view on it. I am now a vegetarian out of habit, I've just got used to it and I now think 'ugh' when I look at a lot of meat:

"I was watching football focus eating a chicken coronation sandwich from m and s and I suddenly thought "ooh, I'm eating a chicken, that's rank". So i became veggie. I certainly don't claim any moral high ground, though if I can be part of a movement that makes the countryside only viable for tourism and townfolk looking to esacape the rat-race, then I will be more than happy.

x

Copied to my blog and linked back to here. Attributed.

This stuff is too good to take the risk that the thought-police will take it down

Veggies are all shirt lifters!!
I particularly like free haircuts for sheep

Chin Up Back Straight, finish your sausages

The best way to rescue a friend from the ills of vegitarianism is BACON BUTTIES

Slwoly fry the bacon in the kitchen leaving the door open, allowing the smell to waft slowly around the house. In most cases treatment takes around 3 months. Exceptionally bad cases can take between 6-9 months to cure.

well said that man,

yes i want to make a comment, not a 'random warbling'- don't confuse my views with this essay, which i am still laughing at now.. perhaps there should be a tag at the bottom too; 'sponsored my mcdonalds'?. oh, and one more word - 'misguided'.

I would sugest everybody signs up on their forum (www.veggieromance.com) and let them know how stupid they are.

ps: for every animal you veggies dont eat, me and my friends eat 3.

Bravo...

Now, where did I put my bacon double cheeseburger?

You do not win friends with Salad!

I love meat, it is great. I have pretty much had steak from all over the world and I must say that Argentinean steak is the best. If you are a vegetarian in Argentina, then everyone thinks that there is something wrong with you.

Finally, I have worked at my current work place for well over 4 years and never had a day sick. However, if you look at all the salad munchers and vegetarians in my office, they all drop like flies! They say that my diet is bad, as I do not eat enough vegetables. However, they are all over weight and seem to be more prone to getting ill!

Thanks, Register, for the link - a well delivered argument whichever side you belong to. Pity about the Uni's action.

Brought here from The Register.

I agree with around 90% of these arguments. And yes, I was a veggie for a couple of years (and yes, it *was* for sex).

What stopped me being a veggie? A bacon buttie. Smelled bacon cooking and I would have killed my own mother for a taste of it.

I'm now an unashamed meat-eater and proud of it.

Legless

You, sir, are a Hero :)

Brilliant. the only thing I can pick fault with is this:

Remember to eat all the bits, mind. Many modern people make the mistake of eating just the muscles of the animal. Eat the heart, the liver, perhaps the contents of the stomach, and savour the delicacies like the eyeballs.

Certain animal livers contain toxic levels of vitamin A. Oh, and spleens are just nasty! :o)

In my extensive experience I can confirm 100% the "men are vegetarian only when going out with one" piece.

I tried to further the cause and in many cases converted vegetarians, often whole dorms full at a time by the judicious use of bacon butties, Welsh Rarebit with bacon and bacon omelettes.

Mmmm

Let them eat lard, by force if required.

Yay!

Reading that has left me feeling happy and hungry. Luckily I have some meat waiting to be eaten.

To quote from that modern sage - Homer J Simpson

"Meat, MMMmmmmmm"

Kudos to the author shame, on a Uni where the management board have neither a sense of humour or the bottle to say in true Billy Conolly style, "Hey Veggie, F*ck Off!!!"

I am A vegetarian but I think this bloke should be allowed to say what he likes.
I am a veggie because I don't enjoy meat (sorry mate you're wrong) and I find it all a bit barbaric (which may make me a puritan snob).

Submit for IG Nobel Prize.

This is perfect. I hope it gets blogged and digged to high heaven...

GM research would not be good for the 3rd World at all. Many GM seeds are sterile, to force the user to return to the source to buy more the next year. Most GM research is for commercial reasons, not social benefit. As you yourself have argued, we have enough food production to feed the 3rd World already, what need for GM?

A lot of the 3rd World, Africa especially is not or SHOULD not be agricultural. The increassing trend towards agriculturalism in the 3rd World is leading to mass deforestation, increasing load on the water table and a rapid degredation of fertile soil leading to dessertification.

Much of the land in Africa lends itself most to a hunter-gatherer lifestlye. Unfortunatley the imposition of national boundaries and other "Modern" ideas are destroying this long-established status quo.

In fact it's the New Puritan types that this rant is against who are encouraging this.

Yep, I came here from El Reg and was glad I did. This is priceless stuff, and anything which annoys sanctimonius lentil munchers (who make their own sizeable contribution to methane production, lest we forget) is fine by me.

It's just a pity that Newcastle has been so supine in the face of the sheep-mauling they hve received.

If the rest of his stuff is as funny as this, then I'd like to read it for one.

*applauds*

Betcha get a few more now this link is on El Reg

Why are there so many blank comments? Is it not working all of a sudden?

Testing 1,2,3