The World Beyond BetterMost > Anything Goes
Horse is falling off the menu in France
Sheriff Roland:
Your arguments are un-scientific. Merely argumentative, IMO.
For one thing, I didn't suggest that the only reason there's a decline in fish availability in the North Atlantic is due to the seal overpopulation. I said it has exasperated the problem in spite of efforts to curb fishing quotas.
As for the bear population of the North, just how much of it's natural food stock (berries and fresh water fish) do you think the human population has removed? Sheesh!
http://www.hww.ca/hww2.asp?id=83
Black bears will eat almost anything available. Most of their food is plant material, especially in the late summer and autumn when berries and nuts are available. Favourite fruits include blueberries, buffalo berries, strawberries, elderberries, Saskatoon berries, black cherries, and apples. Acorns, hazelnuts, and beechnuts are other preferred foods. Insects such as ants rate high, and black bears will overturn logs, old stumps, and stones while hunting for food.
Fish, small mammals, and birds are sometimes on the black bear’s menu. In the spring some bears may prey upon newborn moose calves, deer fawns, caribou calves, or elk calves. Bears are also attracted by carrion, or dead animal flesh. People often think that bears are honey-lovers (perhaps because of the story of Winnie-the-Pooh). In fact, bears are much more interested in insects, and they are probably more attracted by the larvae than by the honey they find in the hives.
Your rebuttal was baseless.
delalluvia:
--- Quote from: Sheriff Roland on December 16, 2009, 08:18:40 pm ---Your arguments are un-scientific. Merely argumentative, IMO.
For one thing, I didn't suggest that the only reason there's a decline in fish availability in the North Atlantic is due to the seal overpopulation. I said it has exasperated the problem in spite of efforts to curb fishing quotas.
As for the bear population of the North, just how much of it's natural food stock (berries and fresh water fish) do you think the human population has removed? Sheesh!
http://www.hww.ca/hww2.asp?id=83
Black bears will eat almost anything available. Most of their food is plant material, especially in the late summer and autumn when berries and nuts are available. Favourite fruits include blueberries, buffalo berries, strawberries, elderberries, Saskatoon berries, black cherries, and apples. Acorns, hazelnuts, and beechnuts are other preferred foods. Insects such as ants rate high, and black bears will overturn logs, old stumps, and stones while hunting for food.
Fish, small mammals, and birds are sometimes on the black bear’s menu. In the spring some bears may prey upon newborn moose calves, deer fawns, caribou calves, or elk calves. Bears are also attracted by carrion, or dead animal flesh. People often think that bears are honey-lovers (perhaps because of the story of Winnie-the-Pooh). In fact, bears are much more interested in insects, and they are probably more attracted by the larvae than by the honey they find in the hives.
Your rebuttal was baseless.
--- End quote ---
My rebuttal was not baseless. Considering the yearly tonnage of fishcatch from the Atlantic by several nations over the last century, the idea is laughable that seals have any sort of blame in the attempt to recover the fish populations. The devastation of which of course, the U.S. Fisheries Department repeatedly warned the fishing industry, which they chose to ignore until the prime fishing areas were depleted and closed off.
It's hysterical that ANYone would put forth even the tiniest bit of blame of the absolute rape of the fishing areas on the growth of seal populations.
"All scientific efforts to find an effect of seal predation on Canadian groundfish stocks have failed to show any impact. Overfishing remains the only scientifically demonstrated conservation problem related to fish stock collapse." From a petition signd by 97 scientists from 15 countries at the 11th Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals, Dec.1995
http://www.gan.ca/campaigns/seal+hunt/factsheets/seals+and+fisheries.en.html
--- Quote ---As for the bear population of the North, just how much of it's natural food stock (berries and fresh water fish) do you think the human population has removed? Sheesh!
--- End quote ---
I don't know. How much of that land has been paved over and made into subdivisions? How much of it plowed under to raise sheep and cattle? We're not picking the berries if that's what you thought I meant.
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: delalluvia on December 16, 2009, 07:42:35 pm ---I guess...but if I accept horse, I guess I'll have to start accepting dog and cat meat as well. :P
--- End quote ---
"Dogs are wonderful, and in many ways unique. But they are remarkably unremarkable in their intellectual and experiential capacities. Pigs are every bit as intelligent and feeling, by any sensible definition of the words. They can't hop into the back of a Volvo, but they can fetch, run and play, be mischievous, and reciprocate affection. So why don't they get to curl up by the fire? Why can't they at least be spared being tossed on the fire?
"Our taboo against dog eating says something about dogs and a great deal about us.
"The French, who love their dogs, sometimes eat their horses.
"The Spanish, who love their horses, sometimes eat their cows.
"The Indians, who love their cows, sometimes eat their dogs.
"While written in a much different context, George Orwell's words (from Animal Farm) apply here: 'All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.' The protective emphasis is not a law of nature; it comes from the stories we tell about nature."
-- Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals.
Brown Eyes:
I've mentioned on BetterMost before that, for a little over a year now, I've been eating a mainly vegetarian diet. I cheat once in a while and on special occasions (like Thanksgiving) I'll still eat meat... I mean I don't consider it an absolute prohibition. But, for instance, I don't think I've purchased meat at the grocery store once this whole year.
A variety of things caused me to do this, but the main thing / motivating factor (in addition to news about animal abuse against stock reported from time to time) that sticks out in my mind was walking through a cow pasture with Lee on the side of Brokenback Mountain during the summer of 08. Seeing those cows and their calves and being so close to them has impacted me more than I can describe or rationalize (I know it's not a logical thing). And, it's not like that was the first time I ever encountered cows before... but this image always stops me in my tracks especially when it comes to consuming beef. I didn't stop eating meat right away after that... but by the fall of 08 I'd stopped.
It seems very hard to me to judge what animals are worthy of not being eaten. That kind of judgment seems completely subjective and culturally based to me. When I really think about it... eating a pig seems as disturbing as eating a dog, since apparently pigs are at least as intelligent as a dog, if not more so.
People need to make their own decisions about what they're comfortable with, what their health requires, etc. I think it's important for people to be conscious of what they're doing when they decide to eat meat though. It seems way too easy to think of meat as an abstraction... especially with the way it's packaged in modern grocery stores.
Sheriff Roland:
In case I didn't make myself clear, it's not Beef or Horse or Dog or Seal or being a Carnivore or a Vegetarian that bothers me. It's the people who insist (like the Brigitte Bardot cults of the world) that others should think as they do.
I don't 'yuk' at the idea of eating a dog, or any meat. I don't like eating fish, don't mean I'm gonna try and discourage others from enjoying it.
I'm just tired of the sanctimonious amongst us who feel they have a monopoly on what is right for all.
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