Answer is no because I have pointed out the massive amounts of animal deaths classed as collateral damage debating those hypocrites and not one of them is honest enough to really consider that carnage or reason that animal welfare laws only apply to meat eaters .



National Review Online (NY)
Veganism Is Murder
If God didn't want us to eat cows, he wouldn't have made them out of steak.
By Wesley J. Smith
July 22, 2008
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MTM5YTMxZTVhNjllNTM4OWE4NTdhYmJmM2EwNWZiNzI=

PETA — People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals — is at it again.
When actress Jessica Simpson recently wore a T-shirt bearing the words
"Real Girls Eat Meat," the animal-rights zealots pounced. "Jessica
Simpson might have a right to wear what she wants," a PETA
spokesperson said, "but she doesn't have a right to eat what she wants
— eating meat is about suffering and death."

Listening to animal-rights activists bray on about the wrongness of
slaughtering animals for food — summarized in their advocacy phrase
"meat is murder" — one would think that the choice we have is between
a diet in which animals are killed and a strictly vegan diet involving
no animal deaths.

But life is never that simple: Plant agriculture results each year in
the mass slaughter of countless animals, including rabbits, gophers,
mice, birds, snakes, and other field creatures. These animals are
killed during harvesting, and in the various mechanized farming
processes that produce wheat, corn, rice, soybeans, and other staples
of vegan diets. And that doesn't include the countless rats and mice
poisoned in grain elevators, or the animals that die from loss of
habitat cleared for agricultural use.
Animal-rights activists certainly don't mention this inconvenient fact
in their advocacy materials. But if the matter comes up in debate,
they have a problem: They believe it is "speciesist" to grant some
sentient animals — including humans — greater value than others; as
PETA's Ingrid Newkirk so famously put it, "a rat, is a fish, is a dog,
is a boy." Thus, they cannot contend that it is more wrong to kill a
pig than a rabbit. Nor can they argue that field animals experience
less-agonizing deaths from plant agriculture than food animals do from
food-animal slaughtering. Field animals may flee in panic as the great
rumbling harvest combines approach, only to be shredded to bits within
their merciless blades; they may be burned to death when field
leavings are burned; they may be poisoned by pesticides; they may die
from predation when their plant cover has been removed.

No question: The animal-rights forces hold a weak intellectual hand.

I asked an animal-rights leader, Rutgers law professor Gary Francione,
what he thought about this. He claimed that the key issue is intent:

Forget about animals. The very same situation exists with respect
to humans. We build roads knowing that people will die; we raise speed
limits knowing that an additional 10 miles means X deaths. . . . There
is an enormous difference between harm that happens that we do not
intend to occur and that which we intend. We should obviously endeavor
to commit as little harm as possible but we cannot eliminate harm. We
can, however, eliminate intentional harm. And eating animals involves
an intentional decision to participate in the suffering and death of
nonhumans where there is no plausible moral justification.

Francione also claimed that omnivores occasion a far greater
animal-death toll than vegans: "It takes 3 ¼ acres to feed an omnivore
for a year; 20 vegans can be fed from that same space. Therefore, to
the extent that there is harm caused to sentient beings by the
production of plants, that harm is only multiplied by the omnivore."

But neither "intent" (as Francione defines it) nor utilitarian
comparison of the carnage is the real issue. The argument made by
animal-rights activists is that meat is murder, while veganism is
supposedly cruelty-free.

Moreover, even if the relative number of animals killed were the
morally decisive issue, veganism might not be the most ethical
solution. In 2001, S. L. Davis of the Department of Animal Sciences at
Oregon State University, Corvallis, wrote a paper claiming that the
diet most likely to result in the deaths of the fewest animals would
be beef, lamb, and dairy — not vegan. Davis found a study that
measured mouse population density per hectare in grain fields both
before and after harvest and estimated a harvest casualty rate of ten
mice per hectare. Then, he multiplied that figure by 120 million
hectares of farmland in the U.S.; meaning that 1.2 billion mice would
die each year in food production if America became a wholly vegan
country. Next, he estimated the number of animals that would be killed
if half of our fields were dedicated to raising grass eating forage
animals (cows, calves, sheep, lambs, etc.) from which to obtain meat.
He found that there would Be 300,000 fewer animal deaths (.9 billion)
annually from such an omnivorous diet than the number of deaths (1.2
billion mice) that would be caused from a universal vegan diet.

We are not obligated to do any such thing, of course. But I think
Davis's somewhat tongue-in-cheek study made an important point:
Contending that meat eating is somehow murder while veganism is
morally pristine because it doesn't result in intentional animal
deaths is factually false and self-delusional. No matter your diet,
animals surely died that you might live.

— Award-winning author Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow at the
Discovery Institute and a special consultant to the Center for
Bioethics and Culture. His next book will be about the animal-rights
movement.

I know quite a few vegetarians and vegans, and none of them are dillusional enough to think that their food hasn't come at the expense of another living creature. They just don't like to eat meat and, in the case of vegans, other animal products.

The PETA crowd is a different breed altogether .

I agree with Rat Pack. There's a big difference between vegans/vegetarians and PETA. There are a ton of v/v's here, but none of them are in PETA. They don't eat meat because they don't like it, think it's unhealthy, or just don't like the idea of eating meat. Fine. They're not pushing it on me.

This article makes a good point that the vegan diet isn't cruelty free.

On the other hand, I haven't looked into it but I doubt that the entire vegan diet of this country comes from macrofarms where one farmer farms 1000s upon 1000s of acres. Alot of vegans and vegetarians have a garden and grow a lot of what they eat. I don't know the numbers but I'm sure that cuts down on rodent and little critter deaths.

In all I think this is an interesting article though I question his exact numbers. Again I base this solely on the fact that not all v/v's just eat the corn/wheat/soybean diet.

I'm sure there are. And I bet that most of these same vegans and their websites are affiliated with or sympathetic to PETA.

It's the lumping that I don't like. Again, just because a person chooses to be a vegan doesn't mean they are a PETA supporter or member.

Whenever I hunt or trap, part of my motivation is profit pure and simple. I am utilizing the resource in the way God intends for me to. Of course, the majority of PETA members would dismiss my justification from scriptue that I believe is inspired by God.

Another part of my motivation is animal management. We have too many deer, fox, coon, and other animals. Say what they will, hunting and trapping accomplishes the greater good for humans and animals. So consciously, my "intent" is to profit personally and to lessen undue suffering and stress on the animal population in the way of disease and competition for limited resources.

I also enjoy matching wits with the "dumb" animals. Far to often, they make me look dumb. Do they enjoy it? No, they are trying to survive. Is it wrong morally for me to enjoy the pursuit, which means part of my intent is the satisfaction that comes from being successful? I say no, they say yes. In this case, it ought to be "to each their own." Since we perform a needed service, and since it is a legitimate utlilization of a resource, enjoying what I do is a matter of my own conscience and is between me and God, not between me and some oversized Jimminy Crickets trying to sit on my shoulder screaming in my ear.

California and other states that have outlawed trapping should prove good case studies in the next few year as to which environment animals flourish in better. I hope honest inquiry will be forthcoming on how drastically deceasing harvest rates on certain furbearers affects the overall welfare of the animals and their prey species. I won't be holding my breath though.

i know a couple vegetarians too and theyre not PETA members and they dont have their mentalitly either, they just prefer not to eat meat.

Thye dont,however, see anything wrong with a persons choice to eat meat.They just prefer not too consume animal tissues.

Theyre not against hunting, fishing or trapping either.

When I mow the yard I can hear the grass scream.

LOL @ PAredneck

Saw a pro-people publication years ago where the editor saw a sign being carried in a animal rights rally. It read something like "every time a loaf of bread is baked, so many hundreds of thousands of yeast are murdered,"

Some vegetation is seeking revenge, the Poison Ivy is spreading like crazy and attacking mercylessly.

"every time a loaf of bread is baked, so many hundreds of thousands of yeast are murdered,"