CavySpirit said:
But if you know that animals will be killed by your machinery, then it's no longer accidental death. An accident is an unforseen event.
I totally disagree with your attempt to manipulate semantics. At some point in my life, probably an animal WILL BE KILLED by my car. Therefore I KNOW it will happen. I do not intend or forsee killing any animals when I get in my car. Neither does the farmer INTEND or FORSEE killing any animals when it gets on top of it's tractor or combine. See the experience statement below. It's an ACCIDENT.
Actually, you don't
know that you'll one day kill an animal with your car. You may be prepared for the possibility that it
could happen, but that is no guarantee that it
will. It's like playing the lottery-you can buy a ticket every week for the rest of your life-just because you do so doesn't guarantee you'll win. As for the farmer not intending or forseeing the deaths of animals via his combine, I don't agree. The farmer may not
want to be responsible for their deaths, but he or she knows on some level that driving a machine fronted by huge spinning blades through a field that contains wildlife will result in deaths-they accept this as being an innevitable part of the harvesting process, and carry on. It does not however make the deaths accidental.
CavySpirit said:
And if you want, go ahead and change my words from accidental to SUDDEN. My point is TORTURE and ABUSE.
I won't be changing anything, thanks.
CavySpirit said:
I've had a million people ask me about the little animals that must get killed by the tractors and combines in the fields. Truth is, in my husbands 20 years of farming (and my father-in-law longer than that) we have NEVER seen a dead animal in the field or any sort of evidence of them in the combines, rakes, plows, etc. When walking through the fields to check for worms etc. (checking by hand is still the best way to do it), I have never run across an animals nest. On RARE occasions, you see small animals run from the fields when harvesting, but believe me, they are not stupid and they get out of the way in plenty of time. I wouldn't be too concerned about animal deaths due to farming.
No, because that is an accident-an unforseen event-you being out driving and having an animal run in front of your car is beyond your control-taking destructive machinery into their enviroments knowing there will be deaths is completely different.
See the statement above.
someone's misconception about their diet.
To that I say, 'bull.'
First of all, your sources are extremely suspect. You have no real clue about the number of animals.
Right. So my sources are 'extremely suspect', yet the above example about 'I've never seen an animal killed during harvesting' comes from a vegetarian, completely supports your argument and therefore is accepted without question. Funny that. Ok, but I've lived in the same place for 28 years. As kids me and my friends used to play in the fields behind our houses, and we saw plenty of dead animals. Mainly rabbits and mice, but what was surprising were the amounts, and how in a lot of cases you couldn't recognise an animal, merely that what you were looking at had once been
part of an animal. And you're right-I have 'no real clue' about the amount of animals killed during grain harvesting, but then again, neither do you.
The fact is that animals do die during harvesting, and if you want to gloss over that then fine. Oh, and if '
they are not stupid and get out of the way in plenty of time', how do you explain the various animals that you see smeared over roads? Those animals have the benefit of being able to see traffic coming from both directions-they aren't disorientated by hearing the noise of the combines yet being surrounded by wheat that blocks their view to disorientate them further-yet these animals still manage to get killed by cars, when they have a better opportunity to assess the direction from which the danger is aproaching. Also, if (let's say rabbits here) rabbits in a field easily avoid something as large as a combine that they can't see approaching, then surely it would be easier for them to avoid a car (which is a lot smaller than a combine), especially when they can more easily see them approaching? What about that animals, like humans, are prone to being frozen to the spot with fear at times? What about the fact that depending on the size of the field, there can be more than one combine at a time in operation-what if the animal(s) run clear of one, straight into one of the others? But none of that is relevant is it?
CavySpirit said:
even if we were all to go vegetarian over night, would the problem of small animals being killed during harvesting suddenly dissapear
If you want to reposition your statement about urban living, fine. Your argument correlates to the same argument breeders use about the extinction of guinea pigs. In my opinion, it's not worth the effort to even type it. It's hypothetical, theoretical and will not happen. If we ever get to the point of everyone being vegetarian, then odds are very high that by that time, the whole nature of our food supply will have changed anyway and the face of agribusiness will likely have changed dramatically.
I'm not repositioning anything, thanks. My position still stands, and remains what it has always been-that due to the fact that small animals die as a result of grain harvesting, a vegetarian diet is not a bloodless one. I don't expect you or anyone else to do anything about this, and would not judge you either way. What I can't understand is how you can deny the plainly obvious, especially as you seem to care a great deal about animals-I would have thought that you would welcome the possibility that some vegetarians may decide to take their dedication to the well-being of animals that much further after reading all this.