Sunday, September 20, 2009

HOW EASILY WE FORGET ABOUT OTHERS

Here's one thing most of us agree upon, but it still deserves some attention, and while i'm not here to post on every topic out there that deserves attention, i will on this one.

Animal cruelty, it comes in so many forms, and you all only know about the tip of the iceberg. This is because over 90% of incidences of animal cruelty, both domestic and government related, are never seen or heard about. No actual national system for reporting cruelty exists, and we must rely on local and state collections of data both for stopping the violence, and for our statistics and research. Lets start at domestic abuse. How come we only seem to notice this subject when people like our dearest mr. Vick show up on the news. Is dog fighting and abuse of pets not interesting enough for you all to think about unless it happens to be a celebrity doing it. I think that's ridiculous. And to all of you who are or are trying to be a vegetarian or a vegan, its a commendable choice, but why don't you stop taking perscription drugs when you are sick too because those are tested on animals as well and are all too often lethal to. Heres a video about the eggs you and i eat, and what happens to their brothers.

I'm not going to go deep into the food production industry, or into animal testing, (thats a video link) or into simple animal abuse, but i want you all to know, its worth thinking about more often than you do, and its worth contributing to more than you do, and most of all, its always worth it to fight for something you believe in nomatter how much money it costs you, how much time you spend, and nomatter how hopeless the fight may seem.

remember, you've only ever heard about, and probably only ever will hear about, just the TIP, of the iceberg

15 comments:

Franklin Wu said...

I'm not sure what to say on this.. I agree that animal cruelty is a horrible thing. However, is this the price of technology? With such a large growing population, if all of our beef suddenly came from pasture fed cows, well, first off, where would we get the land? How many people can afford more expensive meat? Soon, the question isn't really how well we can treat them, but rather how can we treat them well and still produce food products cheaply and efficiently? It's not as easy as it sounds to feed over 300 million people..

Victor Sukhovitsky said...

how would you look upon taking the baby male chicks from that video, and shipping them around the world to impoverished places where people are starving, so that they can raise the chicks at a natural pace, breed them, and use them for a stable supply of food.

Kasper Kuo said...

I think the problem about feeding the world is not an improbable issue to overcome. We do in fact have enough food to feed everyone in the world [http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm]. However I think one of the obstacles from achieving that objective is the current distribution of the food- not enough food is sent to those in poverty/third world countries. Government oriented policies geared towards poverty, such as Lyndon B Johnson's proposed "great society" can be one of the solutions to such a problem.

That being said, I do agree with Franklin and Victor that any form of animal cruelty is inhumane. Things like dogfighting is highly unnecessary.

Patrick Huynh said...

Victor, although I agree with your stand post, I really think you shouldn't make inferences and assume everyone thinks the same way and knows the same thing. There are more diverse people within the Aragon community. Just because you know something doesn't mean everyone doesn't know the same thing. Not everyone is uneducated. We're all in AP Government because we, in some way care about what's going on around us.

I have pets too and realize that there are better things to do with animals than make a living off them. Although animal cruelty is a sad fact and an unfortunate aspect of the world we live in, not everyone is unaware that it is happening and how bad it is.

Yoda Yee said...

Are we trying to feed the world or this nation? Because feeding 300 million people is a much more realistic goal than to feed 6.7 billion people.

Most of the time, watching animal cruelty videos make me sick, but at the same time, there's a lot of people that need to be fed. In reality, we cannot completely eliminate animal cruelty. We need to feed a lot of people, and I think small amounts of animal cruelty is acceptable. With that being said, there needs to be a line on how much animal cruelty should be allowed and on what animals.

Kasper, during Johnson's "Great Society" and Roosevelt's "New Deal," there was a lot of government spending for the lower class citizens. With Bush being our president for the last eight years, the deficit has increased. How are we going to end up paying for the programs? hmm...

Kasper Kuo said...

Yoda you provided a really good claim about the Great Society and New Deal and it allowed me to think about this. But isn't it true that the New Deal was also during times of massive deficit? The New Deal is similar to today's Obama's stimulus plan in that it strengthens the lower/middle class financially and form a type of "bottom-up" economy, which I think might be beneficial in a sense towards fighting poverty.

I find it interesting how many people have heard of animal cruelty or have seen forceful damaging upon animals, yet very few of those take the initiative to do things. Your post title is very fitting.

Victor Sukhovitsky said...

"I think small amounts of animal cruelty is acceptable. With that being said, there needs to be a line on how much animal cruelty should be allowed and on what animals."

that is absolutely ridiculous yoda, this isn't a personal attack, just critique of the statement. Lets draw the line at torturing animals before they die by starving them, testing poison on them. Seeing how many medications give them heart attacks and strokes. That sounds like a good place to draw this line, because that's probably what our scientist researcher friends will recommend to whoever gets to draw this line.

Really, there are millions of more humane ways to kill animals we are going to eat. In addition, the baby male chicks being killed in the video i posted can be given to third world countries to individual families to be raised and bred and used for food as well. No pointless loss of life, chickens living out their full life cycle,
(to reproduction), and an eventual end to world hunger. billions of people can be fed by hundreds of millions of chickens if you wait for them to multiply a few times.

Yoda Yee said...

Kasper you make a very fine point, and after a little bit of research, I am sufficiently able to reply to your statements. The New Deal was also during a time of massive deficit, but did the New Deal really get us out of the Depression? People may argue that the New Deal in fact got us out of the Depression, but WWII was the ultimate stimulation of the national economy. Because Obama's plan is similar to Roosevelt's New Deal, we can look back to how Roosevelt's New Deal affected the economy. Money was being circulated into the worker's hands, but the result of the New Deal was interrupted by WWII. So we are not 100% sure that Obama's plan will help the economy. Also, I don't think animal cruelty is in the scope of Obama's plan, and at this time I don't think we, Americans, have the money to research more on animal cruelty. An alternate method should be taken.

Victor, with the limited amount of land mass on Earth and our growing population, we cannot give every chicken, cow, pig and any other farm animal the space to mature. Alternate methods of dealing with such animals need to be found. Maybe if you're ambitious enough, you can find a way to help all the animals. That would be great. But for now, we don't have such option so we need to do something else. Drawing the line will not be easy, but I think the Government and reform representatives should talk about a realistic line. Obviously drawing the line where you pointed out is ridiculous, but I'm sure a realistic line can be drawn.

The new Kevin (a.k.a Kevin Kwan) said...

Of all topics (within my knowledge), animal cruelty is the most hypocritical one.

"Your post title is very fitting."

Fitting title indeed.

What I am refering to is the fact that the animals that you or most so-called "animal rights" activist care about are cute animals.

You feel negatively when the chick in the mentioned video is subjected to consumption, but you and many others feel 180 degrees differently when that animal is a worm, parasite, or both.

Apparently it's okay to subject parasitic organisms to painful deaths, but it's not okay to do the same towards your precious chicks.


"Most of the time, watching animal cruelty videos make me sick, but at the same time, there's a lot of people that need to be fed."

Really? Animal cruelty sickens you?
Or is it cruelty against cute animals that sickens you?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNes8uah4Cg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiHtUFuGgSA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFYdgXbCZoc&feature=related



Whatever cute animals are going through, arthropods, vermin, and parasites are treated much worse.

Truly, these parasites and of such are animals of pity.

Yoda Yee said...

Kevin, you contradict yourself. You say that we only care about the "cute" animals, but in another THC post, you suggest a sea snail venom medicine. Is a sea snail not an animal, but parasites are? hmm.

The new Kevin (a.k.a Kevin Kwan) said...

"mmmm. You should really do your research on that. The fact that snails are under its shells should be enough evidence for you. But if you want a detailed procedure, you can find it on google."

Yes, the venom sac is under the shell, but the venom doesn't always stay there right?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdmDuk3fnqc&feature=related

00:32 to 00:40

They inject venom into their prey more than once.

Just as tarantula's fangs are tricked into injecting venom into vials to be collected, a similar method could be devised to safely trick the snail into injecting its own venom. Maybe by using a decoy prey for it to inject venom into; there are a number of ways to do this. These ideas are out there; they just aren't "excavated" yet.

Yoda Yee said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Yoda Yee said...

Sorry, my first post made no sense.

Kevin, what did you quote? I think you quoted from another topic...

But it would be nice if you kept conversations separate so it is more organized. Quoting from another topic is just too confusing. Please just answer the comment just above yours.

The new Kevin (a.k.a Kevin Kwan) said...

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=1054910627465846465&postID=3615776477580461614

Yoda, see the above for you own comment.

I decided to move the topic here because we're starting to talk about issues relating to cone snails being used to develop medicine.

In a way, my answer to your previous post would just bring us back to this post and my previous one. It would be redundant to answer that.

Hen to the Ry said...

Victor, I think you are right about the animal cruelty issue. It is a paradox, among the many paradoxes in our nation. However, I think there could be a solution that could at least help the issue a little bit. Most people like eating chicken meat, but chickens are usually kept in filthy conditions and killed inhumanely (at least that's how KFC does it: http://badgerherald.com/news/2003/10/13/kfc_chicken_cruelty.php). Anyways, the chickens could be given a better life with just some more money donated to their factory conditions (I'm pretty sure the money could be squeezed somewhere out of somewhere. Also, the animal activists can focus on that, instead of bombing test centers as they have done in the past). In fact, (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/row-over-asdas-chicken-gassing-method-1000497.html), the humane way to kill chickens, instead of scalding them alive or slitting their throats, could be the gassing method (mentioned in the article). The gassing method would kill the chickens with little to no pain to the animals. This is just one step to blending in technology with halting animal cruelty. Maybe, more steps like this one can help up unwind the paradox.

-Henry Zhang