Day of Action: Whole Foods is going to start selling rabbit meat

[Inle_Rabbit]

Whole Foods is going to start selling rabbit meat. For more information please see the link from the House Rabbit Society.

(broken link removed)

 

[pigger123]

I don't see how rabbit meat is any worse or different than, say, pork. Or beef. Or chicken. Animals are animals are animals. People decided at some point that "this animal is a cuddly pet" and "that animal is food," but why? It's not like rabbits and dogs and cats and guinea pigs are more intelligent, more capable of having feelings, more able to form bonds, than farm animals are.

 

[LucidCavies]

I don't mean to offend you but how is this different from any other form of poultry. Just because a rabbit may be more close to your heart than a cow does not make the idea of it being sold for meat any worse.

This is is seriously a sure-fire way to piss me off.
I understand where people are comming from when they think this is cruel, but it is a very narrow standpoint. I personally will not support this because I do not see a difference between bunny meat and cow meat.
Just because they are cuddly and are more of a pet-like animal does not make a difference when it comes to poultry.

I dont agree with the idea of animals being killed for my own satisfaction, so I'm a vegetarian who is converting to veganism. People cook dogs, that is something that deeply affects me. I can't make a valid argument about how dog meat is wrong but cow meat isn't. Because both of them are wrong, that is why I have stopped eating meat. If bunny meat affects you this much then you should just quit eating meat. Your argument is invalid.

 

[pigger123]

@cheyenneee, I totally agree with you, but there's something I wanted to point out. Rabbits aren't poultry. Poultry are domestic fowl, as in birds like chickens, turkeys, geese, ducks. I know this isn't really relevant to the argument, but it bothered me.

If people want to be so opposed to a store selling rabbit meat, it's only fair for them to be equally opposed to the sales of any meat, regardless of what animal it came from.

 

[LucidCavies]

@pigger123 thanks for pointing that out! I never would have guessed

 

[Bodhi]

The one thing is that rabbits are pretty damn smart. I don't really agree with domesticating rabbits at all.

Chickens really aren't that smart and cows aren't either.

Unfortunately, from an environmental standpoint, an objective view of raising rabbits for meat leads to the conclusion that it will probably become more prominent in this country.

 

[lissie]

Some people have cows as pets. They will tell you that cows are smart too.

 

[stray hares]

I grew up with cows (and chickens too). Cows are incredibly emotional creatures with extremely strong family bonds. They grieve deeply for a lost herd member. Chickens are quirky, funny beings who knew, for instance, when to come warn with urgency us if there was a snake near the chicken coop. Rabbits are my favourite species of animal in all the world, but still, it's much better to eat no-one than cherry pick the species you put on your plate.

Even if cows and chickens were stupid (by whatever standard you're measuring them against) it doesn't make it any better to eat them. They feel fear, and pain, and loss: that is enough.

 

[Bodhi]

I do disagree somewhat.

As a human, I would never have as much problem eating fish or poultry compared to mammals.

Cows and rabbits are so different, that it is hard to compare. I recently visited a cow operation and a rabbit operation, though, and I can tell you the cows had it much nicer.

 

[stray hares]

I guess I've grown up around so many non-human animals and have been vegan for so long I've learned that every creature has its own way of existing. That's what I've personally found anyway. I try to tread softly and all of that.

 

[TheDNDWizard]

I don't want to offend anyone. But I have personally eaten rabbit and it is very tasty!

 

[RainyDay]

Rabbit used to be a very common source of meat, in fact, growing up I knew quite a few people who raised the big ones for their dinner table. Rabbits kept people fed through the Depression. Rabbit meat is very healthy and cheap to produce. I am pleased that Whole Foods is putting it on their shelves. I know rabbits are cute and all, but I don't think it's fair to put them above chickens or cows.

 

[pigger123]

@Bodhi, you claim that rabbits should not be domesticated and raised for food like other animals, because of their intelligence. You have no problem with eating fish or poultry or cows because they "really aren't that smart."

This is from farmforward.com:

The impressive advances in scientific knowledge about fish cognition were documented in a recent study by the biologists Culum Brown, Keven Laland, and Jens Krause for the journal Fish and Fisheries: "Although it may seem extraordinary to those comfortably used to pre-judging animal intelligence on the basis of brain volume, in some cognitive domains, fishes can even be favorably compared to non-human primates," the scientists observed.

To reinforce this conclusion, Brown, Laland, and Krause cited more than 500 new studies of fish that show the animals’ advanced capacities for reasoning, memory, and social interaction. Fish are now known to be capable of using tools, recognizing and distinguishing between other fish in their shoals based on social hierarchy, and exhibiting impressive feats of memory and problem solving, such as recalling a specific escape route from a net up to 11 months after having learned it.

Cows are empathetic and socially sensitive animals. A cattle herd is a community, and its members rely on each other for a range of emotional needs. For example, studies show that cows are less stressed by unfamiliar circumstances when they are with cows they know. They eat less feed when other cows they associate with closely are stressed. And when they are separated from the herd, their behavior becomes restless and their levels of the stress hormone cortisol spike.

Cows are also intelligent. According to the most current studies, not only are cows good problem solvers—they actually enjoy the thrill of discovering causal relationships.
Cows, he explains, appear to “react emotionally to their own learning.” When cows he studied made significant advances in learning, their heart rates shot up and their stride became more vigorous. As he describes it, they had a “Eureka moment."

The prominent avian physiologist Lesley Rogers is credited with the discovery that bird brains, like those of humans, exhibit “lateralization” (they are divided into two hemispheres with different specialties), leading her to conclude that, far from being mere “creatures of instinct” as had been previously assumed, “birds have cognitive capacities equivalent to those of mammals, even primates."

What this means in practice is that although birds are denied legal protection from abuse in the poultry industry due to a perceived lack of intelligence, the truth is that they have a capacity for learning that is equivalent (and in some areas superior) to that of most mammals. Experiments have shown that chickens and turkeys have extremely sophisticated memories that allow them to recognize and remember details about hundreds of individuals from their flocks. And recent studies of chickens have proved that they are aware of an object’s continued existence even when it has been removed from view (an ability that eludes young human children) and that they are capable of exhibiting patience—forgoing an immediate reward when they know that doing so will result in a greater reward later on. As the ethologist Peter Marler has observed, when it comes to intelligence, there are more similarities than differences between birds and primates.

When given the chance, a pig is capable of relating to a human guardian with the same degree of loyalty, playfulness, and regard as any dog. In a natural, nonthreatening environment, pigs are able to learn and respond to their own names, and they can be trained to do just about anything a dog can do.

Even studies funded by the agribusiness industry have shown that pigs are highly intelligent animals: Stanley Curtis, who is an industrial animal scientist at Penn State University, trained pigs to play a video game using a joystick that they could manipulate with their snouts. Despite the physical difficulties of the task, the pigs were able to learn the game faster even than chimpanzees. Pigs have been observed not only working out how to open gates to escape from a pasture, but working together in pairs to accomplish this task, and one study showed that pigs are capable of adjusting thermostats to keep the temperature to their liking.

 

[PiggyLover357]

Well any animal raised for food purposes is going to be different than a animal who is tame, chickens are highly intelligent but of course will act differently as pets than as meat.

 

[Ghost_Peanut]

Honestly, if you eat meat, you cannot pick and choose which animals are "worthy" of human consumption and which are not. ALL animals are sentient beings and have a desire to live. Believe it or not, cows, chickens, pigs, turkey, fish, rabbits, guinea pigs, all have a desire to live. It's hypocritical to eat one, but put one on a pedestal above other creatures. To the OP: if you feel strongly about this, I really hope you're vegan. if you're not, you're a speciesist.

 

[CavyLover88]

all I know that I won't be eating it!

 

[Princess_Piggie]

@Ghost_Peanut, I may be wrong but I think @Inle_Rabbit posted this in a professional moderator capacity to give those who do live a meat free life a heads up that it's happening, as opposed to posting it in a personal capacity. That's just my guess though.

 

[guineapigman]

I don't want to offend anyone. But I have personally eaten rabbit and it is very tasty!

So have I and it is very good!

The one thing is that rabbits are pretty damn smart. I don't really agree with domesticating rabbits at all.

Chickens really aren't that smart and cows aren't either.

Unfortunately, from an environmental standpoint, an objective view of raising rabbits for meat leads to the conclusion that it will probably become more prominent in this country.

Chickens have been proven to be smarter than dogs in some cases, easier to train in almost all cases and they learn much quicker. I can't speak for cows as I have never kept them or done much research on them but from what. I have seen on friends farms and such they are very bright animals too.

Before WW2 rabbit was a much more popular than chicken as a meat in the UK and Ireland anyway. From an environmental standpoint rabbit is the future for meat because it converts feed into meat more efficiently and can be kept in smaller spaces.

 

[Ghost_Peanut]

Princess Piggies...not really sure what the point is then? What I got from this post was "protest wholefoods for selling rabbit meat" because rabbits are somehow more special than the countless amount of cows chickens and pigs slaughtered and sold to wholefoods? I just think it's funny how some get up in arms when a non conventional animal is sold as "food" when intelligent sentient creatures are ignored, even though their mental/emotional capacity is that of a dog. I guess people don't like to question the status quo!

 

[Princess_Piggie]

Like I said, I think the point was to notify those living a meat free life that this is going to take place so as they could take action against it. I don't think the aim was to show a preference of one animals life over another.