This is just completely inaccurate -- referring to a hippo's TUSKS as canine teeth is just plain mis-identification. It's like calling an elephant's tusks canine teeth.
Humans do have canine teeth and evolutionary biologists say that human teeth evolved mostly for grinding plant matter -- but also to tear and cut meat. Those are just basic facts.
As someone who is not a vegan yet -- I could not help but notice where most of the posters are from. How many of you live in a place where it snows six months out of the year and local produce is available maybe only four months out of the year?
If I were to post an argument in favor of an omnivorous diet because it was the most ecological sound choice for my local climate and environment, how would you respond? I live in the upper midwest of the USA -- the breadbasket of the western world. I look out my windows and I see nothing but corn and soy fields for as far as the eye can see.
Originally this was all prairie that was described as a "sea of grass" by explorers and pioneers. Those pioneers put the prairie to the plow, not for livestock, but to produce grain. This land used to team with bison, elk, deer, mountain lions, bears and all sorts of wildlife. They are now all but gone, not from overhunting -- but beacuse their habitat was destroyed by farmers who were growing what today we call "heritage" or "heirloom" grain.
Where I live, a hunter gatherer lifestyle, has the least impact on the land. That is how aboriginal peoples (some of them my ancestors) lived for thousands of years. Along the Mississippi a cultivating civilization arose, the mound builders, but their civilization died before the Europeans came to North America. Here, in the upper Mississippi River basin, the only cultivating cultures who survived to encounter Europeans, were ones that also included hunting, and limited the size of their towns to less than 5,000 people.
If one forgets the "ethical" question of killing animals for a moment and considers the impact one leaves n the Earth, the hunter gatherer culture and farmer/hunter culture is the ideal way for man to live in this environement here when one wants to have as little impact on th eland as possible.
As for health benefits, are any of you aware of how diabetes ravages American Indian peoples in the U.S.? It is caused by a cheap high-carb diet. On reservations in the Dakotas a homeopathic treatment for diabetes is a diet rich in bison meat. Indian people have found that by returning as much as possible to the diet of their ancestors, health can be restored.
As for the ethical question: One must always treat their food and the environment it comes from with respect. I find it unusual to equate people with animals. For example: If you were on a sinking ship with three crew members and 100 chickens would you force the people to draw lots with the chickens to see who got space in the lifeboat? That being stated, man evolved in an environment where we hunted for meat. I think so long as the animals are treated respectfully, there is nothing immoral or unethical with killing them for food. That is how nature works. If the moderators here delete this comment, I'll b quite disappointed.
I grew up in a time where small farms were normal. As a child our meat, eggs and dairy was locally produced on small family farms where the animals were well cared for. Since then, I have had a front row seat to the rise of factory farming.
The price of meat, eggs and dairy has gone down dramatically in the last few decades when one factors in inflation. But I have seen the environmental cost of this. As soy has become expensive due to rising demand, I have watched as millions of acres that had been in government sponsored conservation programs and had been returning to prairie and once again supporting wildlife, have been put to the plow yet again and become deserts, supporting only one form of life -- soy bean plants.
I joined this forum because I try to live my life in a way that has the most beneficial impact on the environment and am interested in learning more veganism. I am curious to see how some of you will respond to how my thought process works.
ALSO -- how does one be a vegan in a climate where 8 months out of the year, your food needs to be either processed and preserved, or transported in from thousands of miles away?
Do any of you think hunters benefit the environment and wildlife?
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