'Bleeding' vegan burger is an 'existential threat' to beef' whines NZ MP

[8ball]

I'm a meat eater, but this is just fucking weird, IMO.

Was eating a roast at my sister's house with the fam and my nephew asked what a funny inverted-clover piece of gristle was.
I explained that it was a valve from the cow's vein to keep the blood flowing in the right direction back to the cows heart.
My sister went ape shit.

Not too squeamish to look at it, buy it, handle it, or cook it, but too squeamish to think about it.
That seemed weirder to me.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Was eating a roast at my sister's house with the fam and my nephew asked what a funny inverted-clover piece of gristle was.
I explained that it was a valve from the cow's vein to keep the blood flowing in the right direction back to the cows heart.
My sister went ape shit.

Not too squeamish to look at it, buy it, handle it, or cook it, but too squeamish to think about it.
That seemed weirder to me.

Every meal a biology lesson.

I ate ray wings last night. First time I've cooked ray, and I didn't cook it very well tbh. But preparing it reminded me that they are related to sharks, and that they don't have bones. Didn't help much when I was dealing with the mess of cartilage on the plate, but at least I knew it would be ok to bite through it. And flexing the cartilage skeleton gave me some sense of how the animal lived.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

Tasting like a BK Whopper isn't setting the bar terribly high tbf.

I have to wonder how much meat is really in a fast food burger (and how much of that is actually cow). I wouldn't be surprised if they're already 50% soy, etc.

 

[8ball]

I have to wonder how much meat is really in a fast food burger (and how much of that is actually cow). I wouldn't be surprised if they're already 50% soy, etc.

BK and McD's both bang on about being 100% beef (in the UK, at least).
Which makes me wonder what the fuck they've done with it.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

BK and McD's both bang on about being 100% beef (in the UK, at least).
Which makes me wonder what the fuck they've done with it.

My first job was working at a Dairy Queen. I still remember when the frozen burgers came out of the cooler. They were grass green* until they were dropped on the grill, then they turned brown. The thought of eating that still makes me shudder. Every time I put one on the grill I thought "Soilent Green is people."

* I think it was an anti-microbial coating or something like that.

 

[8ball]

I’d never heard of Dairy Queen til that post. The name almost has the charm of Biscuitville.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

I’d never heard of Dairy Queen til that post. The name almost has the charm of Biscuitville.

It does sound all-American wholesome. Its a fairly large chain in the US. It's owned by Berkshire Hathaway (aka Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger).

Like a large chain we'd get supply from the warehouse. You'd get huge shipments of vats of Ranch dressing. Cardboard boxes full of green burgers and sacks of fries in the perfect size to put in the deep fryer.

Institutional food: food you have to be sick, criminal, or insane to eat.

 

[Wookey]

Every meal a biology lesson.

I ate ray wings last night. First time I've cooked ray, and I didn't cook it very well tbh. But preparing it reminded me that they are related to sharks, and that they don't have bones. Didn't help much when I was dealing with the mess of cartilage on the plate, but at least I knew it would be ok to bite through it. And flexing the cartilage skeleton gave me some sense of how the animal lived.

I saw rays at Bolton Aquarium many years ago, flying and swooping around their tank like magical beasts, utterly captivating and beautiful.

That same day, I went to the supermarket and saw the same animal lying in chunks in the fish section, dead, dissected, motionless and ruined.

I haven't eaten any fish since then and I never will. They belong in the ocean.

Killing any animal in the hope of seeing "how they lived" strikes me as the height of kinky human self-centredness, if you don't mind me saying.

 

[editor]

I've tried a vegan burger and steak, the burger could pass for a McDonald's, but not the real thing, the steak was nowhere near.

Wait till you give an Impossible burger a go.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Killing any animal in the hope of seeing "how they lived" strikes me as the height of kinky human self-centredness, if you don't mind me saying.

Where did I suggest that? I said that part of preparing and eating meat is the context of it having been a living animal. It is killed first and foremost to be eaten.

ETA: You and I are unlikely to agree on this, though. Scientific knowledge was advanced by killing animals in order to cut them open and see how they work. It was held back for a very long time by social taboos against such dissection.

 

[editor]

Where did I suggest that? I said that part of preparing and eating meat is the context of it having been a living animal. It is killed first and foremost to be eaten.

Does the bit about the animal being scared shitless as it's being slaughtered play any part in your contextual eating?

 

[8ball]

Wait till you give an Impossible burger a go.

Think I will - which supermarkets have them again?

 

[editor]

Think I will - which supermarkets have them again?

I don't think you can buy them in supermarkets (or in the UK). If you have the cash, this one is supposed to be good too:
Plant: A Vegan Burger from Beyond Meat - Honest Burgers

 

[8ball]

I don't think you can buy them in supermarkets (or in the UK). If you have the cash, this one is supposed to be good too:
Plant: A Vegan Burger from Beyond Meat - Honest Burgers

I think I'm mixing up the Impossible burger with the Beyond burger (which you get from Tesco, I think).
The latter being made by the same people who do the one you quoted.

 

[joustmaster]

Does the bit about the animal being scared shitless as it's being slaughtered play any part in your contextual eating?

The point is that you can choose beef from cows that have had a high welfare life and death. And for some that is important.

 

[editor]

The point is that you can choose beef from cows that have had a high welfare life and death. And for some that is important.

Not sure that squares with the bizarre comment under discussion about how "flexing the cartilage skeleton gave me some sense of how the animal lived."

 

[joustmaster]

Not sure that squares with the bizarre comment under discussion about how "flexing the cartilage skeleton gave me some sense of how the animal lived."

I'm not much of a cartilage flexer... But I do find that knowing the breed and form of the animal, how it was farmed, along with muscle and skeletal knowledge and how aging and butchering works, really adds to my enjoyment of cooking and eating it. So I can get what he's saying.

But then I also ate a load of hotdogs from street venders in new york last week... So, you know...

 

[8ball]

But then I also ate a load of hotdogs from street venders in new york last week... So, you know...

So what did you learn about how street venders live?

 

[joustmaster]

So what did you learn about how street venders live?

what?

 

[joustmaster]

So what did you learn about how street venders live?

Oh I see. You're doing a joke about LBJ's post.
Very good.

 

[8ball]

Oh I see. You're doing a joke about LBJ's post.
Very good.

And about cannibalism, kinda.

 

[Wookey]

Where did I suggest that? I said that part of preparing and eating meat is the context of it having been a living animal. It is killed first and foremost to be eaten.

ETA: You and I are unlikely to agree on this, though. Scientific knowledge was advanced by killing animals in order to cut them open and see how they work. It was held back for a very long time by social taboos against such dissection.

I do appreciate the distinction sorry yes; the fish primarily died for food and it's just a billy bonus that you get to play with the corpse.

The point I'm (badly) making is that fingering the corpse of an animal will not tell you anything about how they lived their lives. Fish have their migration routes, their spawning habits, their place in the biosphere, their species and sub-species traits, the communities they belong to, their communicative methods within those shoals, electrolocation of food...all this can be learned from studying live animals in their natural environment. A corpse is merely a simulacrum of life, not an insight into it.

What you've described sounds like killing a miracle all the better to look under the bonnet to see what kind of miracle you've killed. It's a special kind of human arrogance imo, that animals are used that way as though they were placed here for our morbid fascinations.

We've known for donkey's years "how a fish works" - but it's only as they oceans are emptying of fish that we're realising just how complex their existence really is. We now appreciate this just as the creatures slide, perhaps forever, out of view.

I'm not aware of any social taboos about animal dissection that have held back our knowledge of their physiology; we've had fishmongers for hundreds of years who could name every bone in a fish, what's more to find out?

Animal cruelty and animal testing is a modern social taboo, but in what way has that late 20th C movement slowed our knowledge of a species' physiology? It's not their physiology that's being tested nowadays, it's their response to mascara, air fresheners and agri-chemicals.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I do appreciate the distinction sorry yes; the fish primarily died for food and it's just a billy bonus that you get to play with the corpse.

The point I'm (badly) making is that fingering the corpse of an animal will not tell you anything about how they lived their lives. Fish have their migration routes, their spawning habits, their place in the biosphere, their species and sub-species traits, the communities they belong to, their communicative methods within those shoals, electrolocation of food...all this can be learned from studying live animals in their natural environment. A corpse is merely a simulacrum of life, not an insight into it.

What you've described sounds like killing a miracle all the better to look under the bonnet to see what kind of miracle you've killed. It's a special kind of human arrogance imo, that animals are used that way as though they were placed here for our morbid fascinations.

We've known for donkey's years "how a fish works" - but it's only as they oceans are emptying of fish that we're realising just how complex their existence really is. We now appreciate this just as the creatures slide, perhaps forever, out of view.

I'm not aware of any social taboos about animal dissection that have held back our knowledge of their physiology; we've had fishmongers for hundreds of years who could name every bone in a fish, what's more to find out?

Animal cruelty and animal testing is a modern social taboo, but in what way has that late 20th C movement slowed our knowledge of a species' physiology? It's not their physiology that's being tested nowadays, it's their response to mascara, air fresheners and agri-chemicals.

I'm misremembering. The taboo against human dissection didn't extend to other animals. Got that bit wrong. My point about knowledge stands, though. No hope of working out how animals work without looking inside them.

The question of vivisection in general is a big one, and animals are certainly not only tested for mascara or air fresheners, in fact most vivisection is not to do with trivial things. It is however often done purely for knowledge. I am conflicted over that. In some ways it is more justifiable than killing for food. Both of my siblings would be long dead without knowledge from vivisection.

 

[Wookey]

I'm misremembering. The taboo against human dissection didn't extend to other animals. Got that bit wrong. My point about knowledge stands, though. No hope of working out how animals work without looking inside them.

The question of vivisection in general is a big one, and animals are certainly not only tested for mascara or air fresheners, in fact most vivisection is not to do with trivial things. It is however often done purely for knowledge. I am conflicted over that. In some ways it is more justifiable than killing for food. Both of my siblings would be long dead without knowledge from vivisection.

I think testing drugs on rats tells us what happens to rats when they're given those drugs. It doesn't tell us what happens in humans, and the US Drug administration says the same: “Currently, nine out of ten experimental drugs fail in clinical studies because we cannot accurately predict how they will behave in people based on laboratory and animal studies.” Link

They use one hundred million animals in lab testing the US every year. It's a fraction of the numbers we kill for food, true, but it's scientifically questionable.

As the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Dr. Elias Zerhouni was quoted in the Peta over-view linked below: “We have moved away from studying human disease in humans. We all drank the Kool-Aid on that one, me included. … The problem is that it hasn’t worked, and it’s time we stopped dancing around the problem. … We need to refocus and adapt new methodologies for use in humans to understand disease biology in humans.”

Experiments on Animals: Overview | PETA

There's a huge misunderstanding of how useful animal testing is; we've cured HIV in mice, but still can't do it in humans. If we'd tested penicillin on rats, it would never have made human trials as it kills rats.

Maybe test drugs on animals if the drugs are meant to ultimately benefit those animals. But using them as proxy humans is fraught with issues, imo.

 

[8ball]

Oh, God, not this drivel.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

There are lots of problems with and limitations to animal testing. Fact stands though that real historical advances have come from animal tests and experimentation. The discovery and production of insulin, saving millions of lives, is a case in point.

I don't know the relative numbers, but lots of animal experiments aren't done to test drugs intended for humans. They're done purely to satisfy the curiosity of the experimenter, pursuing the answer to some scientific question or another.

 

[8ball]

I don't know the relative numbers, but lots of animal experiments aren't done to test drugs intended for humans. They're done purely to satisfy the curiosity of the experimenter, pursuing the answer to some scientific question or another.

Though it can be hard to get grants and licenses if you justify them with "idle curiosity".

 

[Wookey]

Oh, God, not this drivel.

That post is really not up to a satisfactory standard - either engage properly or don't engage at all, but don't shit on my dinner plate and call it a donut, please.

 

[joustmaster]

I think testing drugs on rats tells us what happens to rats when they're given those drugs. It doesn't tell us what happens in humans, and the US Drug administration says the same: “Currently, nine out of ten experimental drugs fail in clinical studies because we cannot accurately predict how they will behave in people based on laboratory and animal studies.” Link

They use one hundred million animals in lab testing the US every year. It's a fraction of the numbers we kill for food, true, but it's scientifically questionable.

As the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Dr. Elias Zerhouni was quoted in the Peta over-view linked below: “We have moved away from studying human disease in humans. We all drank the Kool-Aid on that one, me included. … The problem is that it hasn’t worked, and it’s time we stopped dancing around the problem. … We need to refocus and adapt new methodologies for use in humans to understand disease biology in humans.”

Experiments on Animals: Overview | PETA

There's a huge misunderstanding of how useful animal testing is; we've cured HIV in mice, but still can't do it in humans. If we'd tested penicillin on rats, it would never have made human trials as it kills rats.

Maybe test drugs on animals if the drugs are meant to ultimately benefit those animals. But using them as proxy humans is fraught with issues, imo.

Do you have any trust worth links, instead of those awful cunts?

 

[Wookey]

Do you have any trust worth links, instead of those awful cunts?

Who's the cunts, the FDA or PETA?