Yes, often it’s better than the video clips of lions eating their prey. I have helped my family put down animals on the farm. Maybe that helped. It’s a part of life. Something has to die for something else to live. Now if you watched a video of a plant in slow motion before it’s cut down for consumption – would you still eat it?

(Plants are alive too… ;)

What is worse – I think, is the crammed animals in very little space. It’s not about how they die – it’s about how they live. Or not live for that matter. I prefer free-range animals. And do check for it.

I did a Documentary on Slaughter House’s.

I still ate steak. But I have a hard time with veal.

If you had to watch a video clip of all the sewage going into the river from which your drinking water came, would you still drink it?

I used to raise chicken in coops that held 20,000 birds per coop. I know what we feed them and how we kill them.
I enjoy fried chicken and BBQd chicken, but I am not too fond of chicken sushi.

Yes. I would be willing to kill the animal in order to eat the meat. Fortunately, i don’t have to.

However inconsistent it appears, I would probably become vegetarian. I mean, I already know where my water ultimately comes from, but I drink it anyway.

I would still eat meat. But I mean, across the board you would have to do this…restaurants, everywhere.

Sitting down for a romantic dinner, the waiter has a little video device if you order that steak….lol

I could still do it.It beats taking down a cow like a timber wolf ;)

I say to myself, I could handle it. But, I would definitely be eating a lot more veggies. Oh, and if you got a meal with multiple animals, you’d have to watch multiple videos.

On the other end…would there be a black market for meat where the slaughter went unrecorded?

would practices change since such a large audience was viewing them.

You don’t need to watch every video. Just watch the Academy Award nominated documentary ‘Food, Inc.’ It’ll have you reconsidering all that you eat.

We could put a little button @ the end to report that this slaughter was cruel.

Read the book “The Jungle,” by Upton Sinclair.

Do we also get to watch the video on the illegal migrant worker who gets paid $2.00 an hour to stuff your carrots in to a machine or a video on the worker who just finished a 20 hour shift pulling vine tomatoes in the heat? Or better yet a video on the migrant worker who gets paid shit to work super long hours on farm land that was bought by the major company who now employees him since his father originally owned the land? Let’s watch a video on him while he watches a video on the cow that he is about to eat. That sir would make for a movie.

What do we call the people who go buy meat just to watch the clips?

Lets not forget the migrant worker that took a dump on those tomatoes and carrots you are eating.

@Ltryptophan Meataholics

How many packs of drumsticks did that meataholic just buy? He’s not going anywhere for a while…

The absolute best was Palin being interviewed at that Turkey Farm and the worker doing the deed in the background. What a rukus that caused!!

Doesn’t anybody care about the carrots??

It was my daughter that warned me to wash raisins from unlabeled packs before eating them. She once worked in a bakery. The fruit is imported in great bags and then repackaged for retail sale. At every stage of production, she said, the fruit is being handled by people who may not wash their hands often and who may not have toilet facilities, anyway. @ChazMaz , take note.

Oh and if you bought hot dogs you would have to watch a multi split screen massacre.

I’d have to say no. I am not a big flesh eater to start with because of this. Of course packaged meat in a super market does take away reality. But then think of those restaurants with live lobsters where you get to choose. I still wouldn’t be able to eat them.

The line @the ball park would be shorter maybe, or longer maybe.

Fluther.com is out of hand today.

Sure. But how dreary would that be? I wouldn’t even want to watch a stand-up routine every time I wanted to eat meat.

I think hunting, fishing, and livestock would become much more popular.

My father was a hunter. I grew up seeing and eating some nasty stuff. lol

Hahahaha this is the craziest question ever. Imagine how the implementation of this wold work (or rather, totally fail) at places like McDonalds – no waaay they know which specific animal they’re feeding you! Hell, there’s probably like 12 different chickens in every McNugget!

lol – as a vegan I love this idea. Very interesting. Similar for milk/cheese/eggs… especially eggs.

And a video of the sweatshop where your everyday low price T-shirt and Nikes were made, yes, yes!

I come from a family of farmers so it woudn’t be anything new. I can’t watch animals suffering in disgusting conditions which is why I like to know where my meat comes from.

I just might make me want to become a vegetarian. :-) I refuse to eat deer because my grandpa made me watch him prepare the one he had hunted when I was a kid. Because I loves my meat, I am glad that there are no video clips so that I may continue to live in denial

Not a problem. Much of our meat comes from the farm that my husband works at. I’ll just watch the butcher that processes our meat. Hell, maybe I’ll lend him a hand.

I wouldn’t be really affected by seeing the last few minutes of a fishes, shrimps, crabs or lobster life prior to my consumption.

Guess it’s more a mammal thing. Seafood lovers rejoice.

Shrimps would have to be watched by the thousand or something.

Your typical package of hamburger can contain literally pieces from thousands of different cows. I’d suggest if we had to watch 1,000 cows getting killed every time we ate a burger, we’d go numb to it pretty quickly.

Mcdonalds ordering just got a lot more freaky.

here in mallorca (spain) its quite common to go out to your friends farm pick a pig, rope it and kill it and then cook it and eat it. its kind of like a picnic, called “matanza” (a killing)

EDIT: providing its only 10 seconds ill still buy it, no longer, i dont want to be inconvenienced that way, but im fine with the killing.

We could watch videos of carrots being uprooted.
…and hearing them scream… Oh, wait, no that’s mandrake that does that.

people would not waste any food if they saw how the animal dies

@talljasperman have you ever heard the death cries of a slain tomato?

@Grisson Yeah that would look pretty bloody, too.

Tomatoes of the world, unite.

The tomatoes already united!

Oh no! I want to take the video home with me so that I can enjoy it while I dine.

I’d much rather kill the beast myself. Unfortunately it’s just not practical with my current lifestyle.

I already know that whatever meat I eat comes from an animal that was killed for it. Watching it isn’t gonna bother me, even if I absolutely had to. I’ve a stomach of iron, and I don’t succumb to guilt trips.

Wouldn’t bother me in the least other than the fact that some emo asshole wants to waste my time by making me watch videos that I don’t want to watch in order for me to get home with my steak. I have butchered beef. Not a problem. I’m convinced that since we have teeth that are designed to eat vegetables, fruit, meat and grains, that humans are omnivores, not herbivores. I also believe that the percentages of these food groups in a healthy human diet should roughly follow the percentage of teeth we have for processing them. It’s a kind of rule of thumb. I agree, for health reasons, many people of developed countries probably eat more meat than they should. The additives, antibiotics and hormones bother me. For that reason, I have tried to be vegan. It didn’t work. I felt weak and lethargic during the year of the experiment. It is very difficult to get all twelve amino acids in proper proportions without meat in the human diet.

@emo asshole you wouldn’t be referring to me would you, because I would not mind one bit. Not killing the animals we eat desensitizes us to what we are doing. I think unlike you many people have never had the opportunity to butcher anything but their own lives. People need to reconnect to their inner hunter if they are going to eat the meat.

Well, my friend, in the society we live in, that’s probably not going to happen. So, I suggest you take your activist vigor, latent or not, to more useful areas such as Human Rights, the right to privacy, anti pre-emptive war by edict, the auditing of the Federal Reserve, better education, Single Payer Universal Health Care reform, the return of the Fairness in Broadcasting Act, the reduction of corporate influence on the election process, or any other of the plethora of causes that might get your democracy back. The welfare of cows is real low on the list right now as far as I’m concerned.

You see, if people were treated less like animals, they might act less like animals.

@Ltryptophan You seem to have a lot of ideas about what other people “need” to do. I’d like to point out that what you are doing is in direct contradiction to the Christian faith that you claim to follow. Go back and read Timothy, Peter, Titus, Acts. hell, read all the New Testament. Those instructions are for the church. Not the “ungodly”. It is not your place to judge what you term as sinners, you are to set an example of love and compassion. If you don’t do that, you are being counter productive and a stumbling block. You give God more bad press, so to speak. I’m not even going to address the name calling.

No I couldn’t eat it after watching the video, pathetically out of sight out of mind.. I prefer the silence of the lambs.

@trillian, who said anything about judgin’ whether you were sinners, or ungodly??? Have at picking on my actions as a christian though, I will likely continue to garner that criticism. The only time I mentioned being a christian was to say that the rapture was true, not to say how you ought to live.

@Espiritus_Corvus I wasn’t saying what ought to be done. Just what you think about how this scenario would go, and if you would still eat meat…

My opinions might inspire my questions but they are not designed to make you do or think anything.

I Roger that, L.

Hm. I’d much more likely find a way to circumvent the grocery store – like buying farm-direct.

Not because I’m squeamish, but because the lines outside the viewing rooms would be horrendous, and I buy a lot of meat.

Totally, I watch things die all the time. I find it a little ignorant to be so sensitive to death when it is a cold fact that it is constantly all around us.

Yes, I’d probably watch it but I know I wouldn’t like it. I do love red meat though and steak happens to be one of my favorite foods so I’m certain I won’t be giving it up for awhile.

Ahem

“We evolved with canine teeth? I’d like to see you tackle a steer and tear it apart with those ferocious incisors.”

@tragiclikebowie

Yes. We’d completely expect “The Vegetarian Guide” to be completely unbiased in its reporting that humans are natural vegetarians.

Humans have been eating flesh-food and vegetables for half a million years. In the last 10,000 we added grain, removed about 50% of our protein, and gained heart disease and diabetes. Not a fair trade, IMO.

I’ve seen animals raised, killed and prepared for my food since I was a child, I’m fine with it. Like others though, I’m not fine with animals raised in cruelty or killed sloppily. I will also admit everytime I see a flock of sheep, cows on the graze, rabbits scurrying by then I think of them being killed and how they are cut up and then cooked in various ways. Nothing morbid but I see them and know how they get to my plate. My knowledge keeps me from being a glutton but it doesn’t deter me from eating animals.

All I really know for sure is that Food, Inc. didn’t put me off meat, as I’d already read Fast Food Nation, but it sure as hell made me reluctant to buy anything made with soybeans fuckin’ Monsanto bastards.

Don’t think anyone would be up for it….

Nope. I usually say to myself, “don’t look at the food you eat, just stuff it in your mouth”. I am most likely not going to know, let alone want to know, about most of the food I eat. I don’t want to see what I’m eating when it’s alive. I don’t always want to know what’s in it, and I’d rather be stupid to the subject of that particular food if I am being strongly encouraged to eat it. However, sometimes the food is good, but I’d just rather not know about these things. Period.

I spent my early years on a farm, and hunting with my family. I am aware of where meat comes from, and it doesn’t bother me in the least.

While you are looking around for something to be concerned about, look up the statistics of how many pounds of debris you will breathe into your lungs in your life time.

It would greatly increase my discomfort level with eating meat. It might decrease sales of meat. Of course people don’t want to eat the flesh of animals who die of disease or old age.

Environmentally, producing animal protein is very wasteful and produces too much greenhouse gases, not to mention animal wastes that end up in our waterways and our water tables.

I was brought up eating beef and I still like the taste of it. I eat very little of it and I eat meat much less frequently than I used to eat it.

I could adjust to not eating meat but I find it hard to plan all my meals without including some meat in my diet.

Great question!

Lots of lurve from all of you, thanks for it! Sincerely.

With a cheeseburger in one hand and a fishing pole in the other, yes I would. The point this question misses, besides the fact that some people balk at attempts and tricks others make to guilt them into doing something, is that the problem isn’t that we eat them. It’s that the process is barbaric to the animal. The idea of consumers viewing the slaughter before buying the meat from that animal would be a moot point if slaughter houses worked more humanely.

I have seen animals slaughtered and it has not put me off eating steak. Also, people used to eat meat when the only meat they could get was from animals they raised themselves and then killed for food. I think the idea that seeing the death of the animals would put people off from eating meat is not supported by historical facts.

Seeing what they perceive as “excess suffering” might put people off from purchasing meat of undisclosed origin, though.

@Ltryptophan ”@emo asshole you wouldn’t be referring to me would you” There’s the name calling reference.
“People need to reconnect to their inner hunter if they are going to eat the meat.”
There’s at least one reference to telling people what they “need” to do.
You garner criticism from me because you represent yourself as a Christian, then point your finger and make judgments. Again, this is not how a Christian is supposed to act, and you do Christianity a disservice when you do so. Instead of being defensive, I suggest you re-evaluate how you’re coming across and ask yourself if this is the way you think Christianity should be represented as a viable alternative to the worldly attitudes.

@trillian for starters someone called me emo asshole, I was clarifying that I wasn’t trying to earn the name. The rest I’ll address after work.

@Ltryptophan Good enough.

correct, trillian.

But this needs to be clarified.

This is issue is so low on the list, yet it can still illicit name-calling? Go home and kick your dog, or something, but don’t treat people like animals (remember?). Git along, little doggy!

My christianity was brought up in reference to what I know of the rapture. I represented myself as a christian to say what I believe to be the truth regarding that matter. If you would like to consider me someone who gives christianity a bad rep maybe you should take a number, and your number will be behind mine. If I am giving my faith a bad reputation, all I can suggest is that you do not take the followers of any faith as the truth and goodness of the beliefs. Furthermore, Christianity is a religion created for failures like me. Is that a good reason to trample Jesus’ principles? Not at all. Nor would I offer myself as a good christian person. I believe in Christianity, and I fail at it horribly. Maybe I myself won’t make the cut if there’s ever a rapture! If so I have noone to blame except myself. I never offered myself as an example, and am not starting now. Furthermore, I reserve the right to have opinions about how people ought and ought not act. I am in no way trying to tell anyone what they should or shouldn’t do, but if I think something is a good approach to life then it is going to take a lot more than your opinion of me not to share it.

Hey Trillian, one good Christian thing about me is that I really don’t mind how you feel about me, good, bad or indifferent. It’s just no big deal, because it isn’t my show. Trillian whether I like it or not, I will have a day to answer for my actions. Maybe sooner than later.

What I will continue to do, however, is share God’s message in as clear a way as I know how, despite my own shortcomings.

All that said, I think you have a completely incorrect characterization of my questions and answers on Fluther. I mentioned that I think people ought to be more in touch with the animals lives they are taking. Do I think that if they don’t they are wrong or sinners? Absolutely not! I just think it would help.

Trillian in the future, if you think I’m wrong, tell me! What’s the big deal? We can discuss our opinions! Maybe you will change my mind. This blabbering you did here was pointless, and wouldn’t help me or you or anyone that this question interested.

I hope you continue to share your thoughts with me, and give me more constructive criticism. Please don’t any of you imagine that I expect to stand as the city on a hill for my faith. God bless those who have that resolve.

@Ltryptophan, I meant Good enough that you’d address this later.

Well maybe you have got me pegged, because if my rearing don’t fail me we believe that those who see faults in others, those faults are the faults they are most familiar with themselves.

Trillian unless you want to discuss something of substance like a grown up don’t waste either of our time, or your fingers the typing, because if you say some silly stuff like you have been saying and attacking my character, I am going to give you the time you want and make it absolutely clear how it is.

@Ltryptophan um, I thought I was telling you, and what you term “blabbering” were my reasons, given in a rational manner. I know the bible too. Your desire to share the message is admirable, but if you present yourself differently than is outlined in the new testament strictures, then your message loses validity and credibility.
I know that Christians are to show love and compassion and share the word of God. They are not supposed to be pointing the finger and telling people what they are doing wrong. And since you’re so open to it, trust that I will continue to have sialogue with you about this and other things.
I haven’t agreed with a lot of things you’ve said on this and other threads. I can live with that, and I hope you can too.
If you want specific scriptures, I can supply those. It will have to be tomorrow, I work tonight.

??? Who said anyone was doing anything wrong?

You need to wait a few more years for the olympics with the way you jump to conclusions.

@Ltryptophan Maybe I did. I can’t even remember now what it was that you wrote that caught my attention, and I really do have to gp to work. Please accept my apology for now, and I’ll look again in the morning. If I misread, you already have my apology, if I didn’t, I’ll be more specific. ‘night!

lol, w/e.

(My short answer) No.

This question had nothing to do with if the OP is a “good christian” as defined by other people. Good grief. Somebody hijacked the whole thread.

The question was would the sale of meat go into rapid decline if people knew where it came from. The answer is NO unless viewing these films was too time consuming for busy people to waste that much time on to get what they are buying.

People used to raise their own animals and slaughter them by hand. My own grandmother could wring a chicken’s neck and have chicken and dumplings on the table by noon time. The song line “chicken in the bread pan kicking out dough” comes from the fact if you do it really fast, the poor animals carcass is still twitching when you put it in a pan! LOL. My father was a deer hunter and would skin, gut, and hang the animal upside down from a tree in the yard to let it bleed out, and butcher it himself. I know where meat comes from. I still eat it. I clean fish myself, and I still eat that too.

I would prefer that sharing of religious beliefs be restricted to topics specifically rasing issues of faith.

Not every question begs an evangelical response!

I ask that moderators help keep Fluther from becoming a pulpit from which anyone can promote their faith as the answer to most any question.

@Dr_Lawrence I would just like to assert that I did not bring up my religion in my question, and only to defend myself in my answers.

Yes. I have seen animals be executed before and so long as it’s done with a substantial level of respect I have little issue with it. Even if this respect was not present my enjoyment of eating meat would likely lead me into a state of cognitive dissonance that would probably be resolved by a mental seperation of the food on my plate from the animal I am watching be killed. Based upon my understanding of human psychology this thought pattern would be duplicated by atleast a reasonably significant amount of others given the circumstances.

Incidentally, from a commercial standpoint it would be in the best interests of farmers to begin executing animals in the least outwardly violent fashion available (even if this may actually be more painful for the animal) as this would offer a huge incentive for corporations to begin purchasing meat from said farmers in bulk.

To summarise, this scenario would not inconvenience me to the degree that I would cease eating meat and nor do I believe it would have any serious effect on the market. If people want something, they’ll find a method with which to attain it. Be this simply a different approach or a complete alteration of ones mindset.

I have this unbearable craving for pork butt! I can’t explain it! I don’t know how you can look at that and not be hungry. I am definitely going to sink my teeth into a big juicy boston butt roast. I am extremely hungry and strangely aroused at the same time.

Eventually we would become desensitized to it, and we would eventually get to the point where we laughed while watching the vegitarian. Pfft, Carnivores 0_o

Sadly we all become desensitized to things we should be not be.

“Boil a lobster and you’re a chef; Boil a kitten and suddenly it’s a big deal.”

@forestGeek
Boiling kittens is still a big deal?...Uh oh

2 soft boiled kittens to go mmmmmm

Yes, know someone kill cow or bull when buy steak, is only natural. Only PeTA believe is wrong, they have no logic, try arouse hysteria. We Japanese eat live seafood, Koreans also eat it.