Your torment is delicious.

[Psychic Robot]

Yes, I had to share this.

[RobbyPants]

Wow. What's amazing is how ridiculously specific some of those recipes are.

It's one thing to come up with something interesting out of necessity, or scrounging around to see what's left in your fridge. It's quite another to think "Hey, I bet raw fish would be better if prepared alive and put back together![/b]"

[Prak]

man if I ever meet someone who eats or prepares this s**t I will kick him in the nuts.

Pretty much my reaction to these, only I was thinking "punch" and "face"... and I'm actually going to be a chef, so, hell there might be knives around... fun.

I wonder what the chinese for "live asshole" is...

the "oh I'm so glad I don't eat meat" and "now I feel bad about eating meat" bullshit pisses me of... Vegetarians can go fuck themselves for all I care.

[Crissa]

They're specific because it requires a special type of animal to be eaten whole or have lived with humans long enough for us to know what becomes most tastiest when the animal overeats.

The bird recipes come from times when animals would be 'stored' alive and fed to be kept alive or got into food storage and overate. Many animals do not have a 'I'm full' response. (Such as horses, geese, etc).

I notice there's no crab or insect recipes on this list, which are just as specific and gruesome, except of course, not as cute. Nor is the American Hamburger:

Take a few hundred cows. Stick them in a pen only large enough for them to turn around. There's a single sprinkler to keep them cool and relatively clean, they're otherwise tromping in mud black with their and their predecessor's feces. This is how they're kept their entire lives, eating a mixture of antibiotics, vitamins, and grain they cannot digest, and turns all their tissues fatty and bloated. They're unable to fight off the slightest injury or disease like this, with perpetual diarrhea. Death is staved off by an endless supply of water, food, and medicine. These cows are then corralled into the nearby building, that has stood over them their entire lives. There they are shot in the head (the only thing actually regulated) and then torn to pieces by employees who aren't legally there, and therefore can't form a union.

The unappetizing pieces are sorted by meat and fat content, then washed in ammonia and shipped off to another factory, where they're blended with another few hundred cows from other factories across the country. This meat is them ground, re-mixed, and washed again in ammonia before being turned into patties or chubs, and then frozen or fresh, shipped off to thousands of restaurants.

After it's been shipped, one sample of every ten or hundred vats is tested for bacterial invasion. After it has been eaten, the results come back as to the bacterial content of those hamburgers.

And you say those foreign dishes are torture?

-Crissa

[Psychic Robot]

And you say those foreign dishes are torture?

Yes.

[mean_liar]

Concur, +1.

[TOZ]

One torture does not excuse another. But we being humans, and they being food, don't care.

[Kaelik]

The main point of most of those tortures, Duck being the exception, is that they do it in front of you to make it so you don't get to pretend that it's okay.

Also... The ones were they are cut up while alive, or boiled alive or whatever, is pretty easily argued as worse than not moving and eating a lot.

If you never see the cow though, that's the point. It's a lot easier to pretend it isn't happening when the fucking thing happens far away then when you are literally eating a live animal that is right in front of you still alive.

[Prak]

The difference between a hamburger and a little bird drowned in brandy is this:
A hamburger is a dish that can be prepared just as well from a cow that lived out in a sunny pasture all it's life, ate grass, was well taken care of, etc. as from a cow that lived a torturous life.

the bird MUST be tortured for the dish. Probably at your table. And the reason the bird must be tortured is that the entire point of the dish is to bite through into it's brandy filled lungs and stomach.

Just because you have to kill animals to eat meat does not make a hamburger and a cute little bird drowned in brandy the same. Killing a cow humanely, as quickly and painlessly as possible to make burgers from it is not the same as cutting into a still living donkey.
And the equivocating of vegans saying that any carnivorous activity in humans and torturing animals is the same pisses me off. If you're too much of a pussy to live up to your species and the dietary requirements, feel free to go kill yourself, but don't fucking moralize about it and then call me a heartless evil bastard because I eat meat.

there are plenty of other good reasons to call me a heartless evil bastard.

[erik]

Well, now I'm hungry. =-(

[mean_liar]

And the equivocating of vegans saying that any carnivorous activity in humans and torturing animals is the same pisses me off. If you're too much of a pussy to live up to your species and the dietary requirements, feel free to go kill yourself, but don't fucking moralize about it and then call me a heartless evil bastard because I eat meat.

For most people it's simply a lack of respect for what they're doing.

Also, with the exception of B12 there aren't many things you can get out of meat that you can't with vegetables. It's just easier to get them from meat, because they've already done the boring work of wandering around eating and digesting those vegetables.

[Kaelik]

See Prak, I totally disagree.

The reason these "torturous" meals are different than cows stuffed in a booth for their lives in a shitty way is because we are forced to be aware of it, and so feel different.

Not all meat eating is necessarily torture. You could raise and kill them pretty humanely. We don't, and that's fine. Now personally... I don't see why you would bother going out of your way to do so.

You are seriously killing it and eating it. You obviously don't give a shit about it's feelings. Fucking torture it if that makes it taste better. The reason torture at the table is different is because the people eating it feel different.

Filleting a fish and eating it's still living fish as it slowly asphyxiates and bleeds to death is no more torture than locking a cow in a small pen and over feeding.

It's more painful over a shorter time period. That's an open question about which is worse.

But they are both torture, and who cares, because they are food and tough shit.

[Judging__Eagle]

One man's hamburger, is an other man's Penis tea.

When it comes to eating meat, there are very few innocent business practices. Most of them are pretty heartless, due to either money concerns, or time concerns; which still means money concerns.

We factory farm cattle, and we factory farm grain.

We torture and murder cows. It's how we make burgers.

We suck up and grind to a bloody paste thousands of tiny little field mice, and voles, and gophers and other animals that live in the wheat fields of factory farms. It's how we make bread.

There is no blood on your hands unless you seriously grow your own food, by hand, all the way.

Even then, that doesn't mean that none of your suppliers trucks didn't kill a few hundred grasshoppers and other insects; as well as know that they did not run over any animals.

It's all blood, and it's on everyone's hands.

Honestly, vegans trying to tell people that they shouldn't eat meat because it's murder, as just as disingenuous as a Pro-Lifer saying that abortions are murder, and should be prevented.

the vegan, because their current choice of diet is still murder of animals to provide food for your meals

the pro-lifer, because their current choice of policy will result in no less abortions, and will result in the deaths of more women.

Yeah, that's some weird territory. Both sides argue for equal, or more deaths; in an effort to stop people from hurting and killing.

Get me my wrinkled shirts, I've got me a big old case of the ol' irony here.

[Crissa]

The difference between the hamburger and the bird?

Your reading comprehension.

The cow lived in its shit, was fed crap it couldn't digest, just like the bird, killed not quickly an humanely, just like the bird, and even though we know the meat is tainted, it's mixed with two hundred other cows and then tested only after it has been fed to someone.

If the cows didn't live in their own shit, they wouldn't need our best medicines to keep them alive.

If you fed the cow grass for two weeks before slaughter, you would kill 90% of the virulent bacteria in its body.

If you slaughtered them humanely and cleanly, you wouldn't have to wash its meat in ammonia to kill the bacteria.

And if you tested each cow's meat before mixing it in with two hundred others, hundreds of people would not have died from tainted meat.

Reading comprehension.

-Crissa

[Prak]

[rant and certain remarks removed to maintain what little respect I might still have around here.]

Personally, I think animals should be treated well, like they're living things.
Yes, even the ones we're just going to eat.

The difference between the hamburger and the bird?

Your reading comprehension.

The cow lived in its shit, was fed crap it couldn't digest, just like the bird, killed not quickly an humanely, just like the bird, and even though we know the meat is tainted, it's mixed with two hundred other cows and then tested only after it has been fed to someone.

If the cows didn't live in their own shit, they wouldn't need our best medicines to keep them alive.

If you fed the cow grass for two weeks before slaughter, you would kill 90% of the virulent bacteria in its body.

If you slaughtered them humanely and cleanly, you wouldn't have to wash its meat in ammonia to kill the bacteria.

And if you tested each cow's meat before mixing it in with two hundred others, hundreds of people would not have died from tainted meat.

Reading comprehension.

-Crissa

Yes, Crissa, talk about reading comprehension. Because you haven't made yourself out to be a dumb bitch to enough people here....

There is a difference between a burger and Ortolan, or most of the other "dishes" on that list.
A hamburger does not, as part of it's basic preparation, require torture of a cow. (I'm not going into factory farming, that's another rant for another time.)
Ortolan is a very specific preparation of a very specific animal that does require torture.
Ikizukiri requires torture.
Huo Jai Lu requires torture.

A fucking hamburger does not require torture, there just happen to be a lot of heartless dicks in charge of our food industry.

[Crissa]

Funny, then why do the vast majority of hamburgers involve the torture of cows and linked to deaths of humans?

If you buy from heartless dicks, you are a heartless dick.

Your reading comprehension is poor. Your argument is poor. You face none of my points and say, 'Hamburgers don't have to torture!' without ever thinking that perhaps the way we eat hamburgers requires torture?

Because it does.

-Crissa

[Psychic Robot]

Filleting a fish and eating it's still living fish as it slowly asphyxiates and bleeds to death is no more torture than locking a cow in a small pen and over feeding.

Really? I couldn't disagree more.

perhaps the way we eat hamburgers requires torture?

Because it does.

-Crissa

You're going to have to elaborate on this for me. Why does it require torture?

[Prak]

Actually, no, Crissa.

The vast majority of cows live in shitty conditions, and are used for food.

This does not mean that torture of a cow is necessary for a hamburger.
There are other ways to raise cows, and no part of any hamburger recipe that I've ever seen has "Torture a cow for 8 years" as step one.

Just because the factory farms are shit and have no compassion for the animals they deal with does not mean that a burger requires torture.

My reading comprehension is fine, my argument is perfectly sound, and there were no points for me to address.

All you basically said was "the people who run the factory farms are short sighted dicks with no intelligence" and in that respect we fucking agree.

If a farmer raised his cows in a pasture, feed them grass, etc, YOU CAN STILL MAKE A GOD DAMNED BURGER FROM THE COWS CARCASS!

fuck, give me the farmer's carcass and I'll make a burger.

Hamburgers don't require torture. Buying the meat we are provided in stores so that we can fucking eat, does, unfortunately, require that we sit and assent to torture.

And you know what? That's not my fucking fault for being the person eating the meat, nor is it my fucking fault for being the person preparing the meat. It's the fault of the dicks who run factory farms, so go fucking bitch at them, because I'm just barely clinging to "middle class status" by sheer fucking tenacity and can't fucking afford to buy anything else right now.

[Crissa]

You could.

But they don't.

You're arguing against common sense, Prak. Either it's necessary to an American burger, or they're torturing cows and humans unnecessarily.

You don't get to have it both ways.

You can totally afford to eat something else. That you don't means you condone the torture of humans and cows to feed your desire. And are a hypocrite for calling someone else's desire torture and yours not.

-Crissa

You're going to have to elaborate on this for me. Why does it require torture?

I don't need to. Prak did. He doesn't care that cows are tortured, as long as he gets his cheap burger.

Also, factory cows are lucky to be half the age of 8.

[shadzar]

fuck, give me the farmer's carcass and I'll make a burger.

Sadly in all this, many cows probably have better living conditions than humans. They have to be healthy to be FDA approved for burger meat. Since the brain isn't the majority, I don't think they look into its health, as much the muscles.

[Crissa]

Shad, do you know what's involved in FDA/USDA inspections for meat?

There might be one or two inspectors for the thousands of carcasses streaming past 24 hours a day. The inspectors are not allowed to touch or rotate the carcasses as they stream by. They aren't allowed to test or use equipment to examine the meat. They don't inspect animals before they're slaughtered, ever. If they cannot visually see feces on the meat from three feet away, the carcass is approved.

They're allowed by the slaughterhouse to sample one in a hundred carcasses, but those test results don't come back until after it has been sold to someone to be consumed - even though the meat could easily be held or aged in that time (as per tradition).

The FDA/USDA has no rules on the quality of how cows live their lives.

-Crissa

While the USDA does not have inspections for houses - they have some basic rules - the FHA appraiser's arbitrary rulings cannot be overridden by lenders or homeowners, only repaired. There's more papers on houses than on animals.

[Crissa]

My spouse has come up with a new plan to rid our garden of pests. Instead of throwing away the paper snails that invade our gardens, she's suggested we put them into a bucket, wash them, feed them grain for a week, then wash and boil them for escargot.

I suppose since they're dying due to asphyxiation in boiling water means she's torturing them, much like the eels.

Alas.

-Crissa

[shadzar]

The also go through metal detectors and supposed to have bloodwork done. So I was told when working meat dept at a grocer.

Operative word being supposed to.

Like you cannot* slaughter for meat a sick cow.

*"not supposed to"

[Prak]

You could.

But they don't.

You're arguing against common sense, Prak. Either it's necessary to an American burger, or they're torturing cows and humans unnecessarily.

You don't get to have it both ways.

How the fuck am I trying to have it both ways? They're torturing the coes unnecessarily, I'm not quite sure where the torture of humans comes in...

You can totally afford to eat something else. That you don't means you condone the torture of humans and cows to feed your desire. And are a hypocrite for calling someone else's desire torture and yours not.

Hm... I'm complicit in the torturous existances of the cows, I certainly don't condone it, but I don't know where to begin fighting it, short of criminal activity, and even then I don't know of any factory farm locations...

As for "torture free meat"... well there's not exactly a whole shit ton of that around is there? Not that I know of, I welcome any information that points me in the direction of meat that was raised better.

You're going to have to elaborate on this for me. Why does it require torture?

I don't need to. Prak did. He doesn't care that cows are tortured, as long as he gets his cheap burger.

Not precisely true, Crissa, but thanks ever so fucking much for the character assassination, I'd forgotten what that was like after leaving my ex.
I don't feel there's a lot I can do about factory farms, and non-FF meat isn't exactly something I can afford.

Also, factory cows are lucky to be half the age of 8.

I took a stab in the dark. I don't know a cows natural lifespan, let alone age of maturity.

My spouse has come up with a new plan to rid our garden of pests. Instead of throwing away the paper snails that invade our gardens, she's suggested we put them into a bucket, wash them, feed them grain for a week, then wash and boil them for escargot.

I suppose since they're dying due to asphyxiation in boiling water means she's torturing them, much like the eels.

Alas.

See, now this is condoning torture. Though honestly, I'm not entirely sure snails have complex enough minds to register "torture". Plus, well, they're fucking snails. Thanks for revealing that even I live by the cute-icky double standard to some degree.


Anyway, so, what the fuck is the alternative to eating FF meat? Are there companies that a household can order free range cruelty free meat from?

[Crissa]

It's not difficult to search for information. You don't need hamburgers to survive. It would be just as simple to eliminate foods which are often factory farmed from your list of 'things you eat'.

Of course you don't know where the factory farms are. That's what they want. Unless they've got you by the nads for jobs, they don't want you to know. Just like they sue Oprah for saying she doesn't eat hamburgers.

-Crissa