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From: raghu@ut-sally.UUCP (Raghu Ramakrishnan)
Newsgroups: net.veg
Subject: Re: milk?
Message-ID: <5571@ut-sally.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 15-Aug-86 00:16:23 EDT
Article-I.D.: ut-sally.5571
Posted: Fri Aug 15 00:16:23 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 17-Aug-86 07:56:25 EDT
References: <495@water.UUCP> <497@mit-vax.UUCP>
Reply-To: raghu@sally.UUCP (Raghu Ramakrishnan)
Distribution: net
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 27

In article <497@mit-vax.UUCP> oaf@mit-vax.UUCP (Oded Feingold) writes:

>    Today's milk cattle are bred (and fed, and maybe  drugged) to pro-
>duce titanic quantities of milk, with minimal  relationship to calving
>cycles.  The moral argument against milk in  the  diet should not rest
>on whether you're depriving the calf.  A more promising concern is the
>unhappy life the  cow  leads.  (I can't  really define "moral,"  so  I
>won't sustain a question on my correctness in using the term.)
>
>    I have no good idea how  to treat such  a question, and would wel-
>come suggestions.

I am a vegetarian (lacto-ovo, to be precise). The reason is simply that
having been a vegetarian all my life ('cos my family was), I'm unable
to bring myself to eat meat. Curiously enough, I can see no reason why
killing animals for food is wrong 'morally'. (I share Oded's unfamiliarity
with - and distaste for - this word. It usually represents the collective
prejudices of a group of people, with little or no ethical basis.)

Fish eat worms. Big fish eat small fish. And fishermen eat stupid fish.
The point is that there seems to be an ecological food chain. I do not
understand how morality enters this. I do consider some things to be 
unjustifiable. Unnecessary cruelty is one. Wasteful killing (in fact, 
waste, period) is another. But I see nothing wrong in killing for food,
per se.

raghu