This is a subject that is extrememly close to my heart, I myself am a vegetarian and have been for most of my life, my Mother is a vegetarian, so I was raised in a family that did not eat much meat, and as I got older I found that I absolutely hated that 'meat' taste, it physically makes me sick, and I can now taste beef products in many foods, like Subway bread rolls, biscuits, oils that foods are cooked in etc, that 'animal' taste really does not agree with me..........However all of this aside I think that when one is wanting to turn vegetarian you have to considered why it is that you are doing this, is it because you dont like the taste of meat (which in the begining was my main reason) or is it due to ethical reasons.......
I strongly believe in an ethical treatment to animals, as I feel that they are sentient creatures and are not devoid of feelings, with this being said I do not have disgust at people who choose to eat meat or wear animal products, such as leather shoes etc, I feel that if one is aware that these animals are not solely put on this earth to serve our needs and therefore actively seek out products that have been reared in an ethical fashion than this is a lot better. I understand that humans are omnivores and therefore a little meat is part of our evolutionary practice, however the mass production of chickens to fuel the ever growing consumption of the KFCs and supermarkets of the world and the over feeding of grain to live stock, which if it were better allocated could easily feed many of the world's starving people, is just wrong, and there are alternatives, sure they may be more expensive, but if you are ethically minded then this should not be a problem......
If anyone is interested in the ethics associated with food prodiction I recommend reading anything by the Australian ethicist Peter Singer, he is working as a guest lecturer at the moment at Princeton University and he has some remarkable things to say about this issue.......here is a brief transcript....
Do Animals Feel Pain?
by Peter Singer
Do animals other than humans feel pain? How do we know? Well, how do we know if anyone, human or nonhuman, feels pain? We know that we ourselves can feel pain. We know this from the direct experience of pain that we have when, for instance, somebody presses a lighted cigarette against the back of our hand. But how do we know that anyone else feels pain? We cannot directly experience anyone else's pain, whether that "anyone" is our best friend or a stray dog. Pain is a state of consciousness, a "mental event", and as such it can never be observed. Behavior like writhing, screaming, or drawing one's hand away from the lighted cigarette is not pain itself; nor are the recordings a neurologist might make of activity within the brain observations of pain itself. Pain is something that we feel, and we can only infer that others are feeling it from various external indications...
If it is justifiable to assume that other human beings feel pain as we do, is there any reason why a similar inference should not be justifiable in the case of other animals?
Nearly all the external signs that lead us to infer pain in other humans can be seen in other species, especially the species most closely related to us--the species of mammals and birds. The behavioral signs include writhing, facial contortions, moaning, yelping or other forms of calling, attempts to avoid the source of the pain, appearance of fear at the prospect of its repetition, and so on. In addition, we know that these animals have nervous systems very like ours, which respond physiologically like ours do when the animal is in circumstances in which we would feel pain: an initial rise of blood pressure, dilated pupils, perspiration, an increased pulse rate, and, if the stimulus continues, a fall in blood pressure. Although human beings have a more developed cerebral cortex than other animals, this part of the brain is concerned with thinking functions rather than with basic impulses, emotions, and feelings. These impulses, emotions, and feelings are located in the diencephalon, which is well developed in many other species of animals, especially mammals and birds. [1]
We also know that the nervous systems of other animals were not artificially constructed--as a robot might be artificially constructed--to mimic the pain behavior of humans. The nervous systems of animals evolved as our own did, and in fact the evolutionary history of human beings and other animals, especially mammals, did not diverge until the central features of our nervous systems were already in existence. A capacity to feel pain obviously enhances a species' prospects for survival, since it causes members of the species to avoid sources of injury. It is surely unreasonable to suppose that nervous systems that are virtually identical physiologically, have a common origin and a common evolutionary function, and result in similar forms of behavior in similar circumstances should actually operate in an entirely different manner on the level of subjective feelings...
The overwhelming majority of scientists who have addressed themselves to this question agree. Lord Brain, one of the most eminent neurologists of our time, has said: "I personally can see no reason for conceding mind to my fellow men and denying it to animals... I at least cannot doubt that the interests and activities of animals are correlated with awareness and feeling in the same way as my own, and which may be, for aught I know, just as vivid." [2]
The author of a book on pain writes: "Every particle of factual evidence supports the contention that the higher mammalian vertebrates experience pain sensations at least as acute as our own. To say that they feel less because they are lower animals is an absurdity; it can easily be shown that many of their senses are far more acute that ours--visual acuity in certain birds, hearing in most wild animals, and touch in others; these animals depend more than we do today on the sharpest possible awareness of a hostile environment. Apart from the complexity of the cerbral cortex (which does not directly perceive pain) their nervous systems are almost identical to ours and their reactions to pain remarkably similar, though lacking (so far as we know) the philosophical and moral overtones. The emotional element is all too evident, mainly in the form of fear and anger." [3] ...
That may well be thought enough to settle the matter; but one more objection needs to be considered... There is a hazy line of philosophical thought, deriving perhaps from some doctrines associated with the influential philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, Which maintains that we cannot meaningfully attribute states of consciousness to beings without language. This position seems to me very implausible. Language may be necessary for abstract thought, at some level anyway; but states like pain are more primitive, and have nothing to do with language... Human infants and young children are unable to use language. Are we to deny that a year-old child can suffer? If not, language cannot be crucial.
So to conclude: there are no good reasons, scientific or philosophical, for denying that animals feel pain. If we do not doubt that other humans feel pain we should not doubt that other animals do so too... Animals can feel pain.
References
1. Lord Brain, "Presidential Address," in C.A. Keele and R. Smith, eds., The Assessment of Pain in Men and Animals (London: Universities Federation for Animal Welfare, 1962).
2. Supra note 1.
3. Richard Sarjeant, The Spectrum of Pain. (London: Hart Davis, 1969), p. 72.
This article is excerpted from a classic of the Animal Rights literature: Animal Liberation, Peter Singer, 2nd Edition, New York: Avon Books, 1990.
