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: : Same old tired argument. Plants do not feel the pain that animals feel. It's been talked about so often on this board, and yet time and again one is forced into discussions of central nervous systems and the capacity to think and feel and suffer, and minimizing any suffering one might cause by limiting one's killing to plants, but in the end, I don't believe for one second that you think plunging a knife into a cabbage causes the same amount of pain and fear as plunging a knife into a cow. : Yes it is the same old argument. However hunting is not plunging a knife into a cow.
I was making a point here: that there is a common sense difference between the capacity of a plant to feel pain and fear, and that of an animal.
:even on factory lines i am almost certain that cows are killed instantly(because people just wouldn't allow it to happen any other way)
WHAT??!!!! What planet do you live on? Wake up, Hunter! Factory farms are despised precisely because animals suffer terribly in them. Go to www.farmsanctuary.com for a beginner's education in the horrors that animals endure in modern farming. You are absolutely wrong on this one, my friend.
:In hunting animals are killed instantly almost always.
Let us hope. You seem to be the kind of hunter who tries to kill the animal as quickly as possible, and barring that, I'm guessing that you make sure you track down the wounded animal and kill it. Would that all hunters did the same.
:So your argument about the central nervous system and all that stuff means nothing.
Again, I brought that up because you equated my killing of plants for food with your killing of animals for food, and as I explained, there are profound physiological differences between plants and animals.
Also, as a hunter you are depriving a thinking, feeling being of its life when this is not necessary. Furthermore, I don't know what kind of animal you hunt, but bear in mind that the animals you kill may have mates who would mourn their loss, or children who would die if left parentless.
As I've written before, hunting bothers me the least of all "animal" issues because the hunted animals, unlike animals in factory farms, for example, get to live their lives free and unmolested until killed by a hunter. So, though I'm arguing here with you on this chatboard, hunting is the one animal issue I do not actively protest. I'm simply saying to you that while I understand your enjoyment of meat and I understand that hunting means something deep, even spiritual, to you, there are other ways of living which minimize the amount of suffering and killing we human beings cause, and in my opinion, being a vegetarian is one of the better ways of doing so.
