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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Azul" data-source="post: 2607157" data-attributes="member: 11779">I'm definitely not a vegitarian and I can't really imagine trying to live off a vegan diet.  It's both personally and culturally rather alien to me.  I understand and respect why someone would choose vegetarianism (both for moral and health issues).  I simply disagree on the morale issues (humans are omnivores by nature and it seems silly to me to feel guilty about our biology).That being said, I do have significant concerns regarding inhumane agricultural practices such as factory farming.  Sure, I'm fine with eating an animal but I think that animal should be given a reasonably good quality of life and a painless death.I guess it is a question of respect and of avoiding unnecessary cruelty for me.  I am fine with eating animals but I feel that any food animal deserves to be treated with as much respect as possible.  Wherever I manage to find options for more humanely treated animal products in my food purchases, I pretty systematically go for those.  I wish more such non-factory farmed animal products were available.This philosophy also lead me to support controlled hunting where the hunter makes optimal use of the animals he hunts (e.g. using the meat, fur/hide, whatnot).  I used to generally dislike hunting (it seemed cruel at first glance) until I realized it was less cruel than how much of our meat is produced.  This form of meat production provides the animal with a humane life up until the day it is harvested.  In my view, such hunting is a more ethical alternative to many current farming practices.  Sport hunting, on the other hand, is something I view as needless waste and cruelty.  Killing to eat is one thing.  Killing for fun is another.  For the record, no, I'm not a hunter but several of my friends and relatives are.If my views were strong enough to override my innate desire to eat meat, I imagine I'd be a vegetarian or nearly so (perhaps I'd raise a few animals myself or buy only from humane farmers I knew) .However, I just don't feel strongly enough about it to make radical changes in my lifestyle like that.  For better or wose, other issues (both personal and political) are more important to me.  I just try to minimize my contribution to supporting less savoury farming practices whenever I can and use my purchasing power to encourage more humane practices.  Maybe it's just my conscience speaking, but animals that lead happier lives seem to result in tastier animal products too.As for vegetarianism, I'm always happy to accomodate those who I know that have made that choice.  It seems like a fairly tough thing to be in much of North America since our culture involves a lot of meat eating.  The vegitarians I know have all seemed to struggle against a deep craving for meat.  Perhaps it is merely a psychological craving since none were brought up veggie (i.e. they remember the taste of meat and the smell of a steak still makes the drool).  They also seem to be motivated by moral issues rather than any health or cultural reasons.</blockquote>

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