Gigs, it's not the transportation of animals that makes animal agriculture so pollutant, rather the animals themselves. That doesn't change if it's industrial production or 'organic' farms. Bio-meat is an incredibly misleading label - there's no such thing. As a matter of fact, 'organic' meats only exist to make people who disagree with industrial farming happy with themselves and still enjoy the taste of flesh, but at the end of the day the whole concept is still an oxymoron. A marketing stunt. A fraud. You can't possibly expect people who make profit with the death of animals to care about their existence, or if they're well treated or not. They're not.
Bio-meats from so called organic farms are little to no better than industrial farms: animals never reach half of their life expectancy. You see, a cow can live up to 25 years, organic farms are as much as dismissive of this as it would simply be too costly and unprofitable to have them reach anywhere near that age. Have you actually ever seen an image of said organic/bio farms? Bio and organic only means the animals are fed organic (id est, crops supposedly without genetic modifications, all for our sake, not the animal's), which means most of the times they still spend their lives caged and in filthy sheds, exposed to abuse by psychotic farmers and force fed. People have to understand it's all about the money, and a farmer will do everything in it's reach to proft the most out of his situation: farmers don't give a rat's ass about animals, otherwise they wouldn't be making money out of their deaths and bodily secretions in the first place. And in the end, there can never be happiness in something that ends in death. Why apply this dishonest standards just so we can feel good about ourselves; make a miserable situation a little less miserable, and it's still miserable. Why not ditch meat for good. Why not opt for the most compassionate (and least expensive) option.
The moral question can never be if they (animals) lived a happy life or were killed humanely (how much more contraditory can it get?) - that's not even half of the issue. That's soothing one's conscience while not necessarily addressing the violence and injustice being experienced by others. In the end, they're killed. Against their will, for the sake of our palate and nothing else. A sentient life for seconds of a lesser pleasure. What's it worth a happy life that's predestined to end with a pneumatic bolt through the neck, a slit throat, a grinded body while very much alive, and the final moments of terror lived by the animal. That's where bio-meat ends and comes from, too.
The fundamental point is, animals are not ours to eat, wear or exploit in any kind. They're provided with their own interest in living, self-awareness, emotions; they have the capacity to empathize, create bonds, share love with one another, care for their family. These are all faculties the human arrogance tried and still tries to trivialize. We ought to put ourselves in the victim's perspective to understand and come up with an answer. This is not a moral issue with regards to us, we can't discuss the worth of a non-human sentient life by placing ourselves in the middle of the dillema. It's not my intention to sound agressive, I'm not. I wasn't born vegan nor vegetarian, but am glad someone was brave enough to drop some truth bombs near me. I'm glad I felt attacked once, which is not what I'm doing now, mind. I hope you (plural) read this in a friendly tone.
If slaughterhouses indeed had glasswalls, everyone would be a vegetarian, as once told by that famous singer. I often share the documentary Earthlings, and did so in the beginning of this thread, but I'm almost one hundred per cent positive the people it is aimed at never do watch it. I believe that anyone who's adult enough to face reality, not an uncaring, senseless brat, who manages to view a single bit of that film, will stop eating meat. It's quite possibly the most devastating film you'll ever see, but as the other Singer said, there is an obligation of those who eat animals to at least know where that corpse originated from, how it ended up in their plate, and the horrors behind it. I've had the sad privilege of witnessing first hand some of the despicable things humans can do to animals, which are well portrayed in that video: a calf being taken away to slaughter from her artificially impregnated mom, while the latter screams the screams of a mother. And as much as we in our true priviledged lifes in this planet want to paint the opposite, that was no different than human desperation.
http://www.humanemyth.org/
http://www.earthlings.com/
The b12 issue has become more of an argumentative buzzword than an argument itself. B12 originates from bacteria in the soil, it's not something cows produce themselves. Cows and others get this from plants they eat. Basically meat-eaters get b12 third-hand whereas vegans and vegetarians have a much more direct intake. What happens is that since cows and other herbivores eat larger quantities of plants, that reduces the loss of said vitamin to the person who eats the animal's flesh (i.e, not all is synthesized and so remains). However, due to the degradation of the soils and pastures, due to intensive animal farming, most if not all meat is already fortified with b12, making it no more natural than, say, a vegan taking supplements. I for one only take supplements once in a while, same as most of my vegan friends, as we can fulfill our daily intake values without it. As I said, we share larger digestive and physiological traits with herbivores than we do with carnivores and other omnivores, I leave that for another post.
''We all live in the same atmosphere. Why then, do we separate and distinguish. Always striving against each other, for power, and supremacy. The harmony of being, is when we feel the suffering of EVERY creature, in our own hearts. ARE WE NOT ALL EARTHLINGS? EACH AND EVERYONE OF US. Not the same, but EQUAL.''
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