PETA

Really?

Because IIRC the space needed to grow crops of an equivalent calorific & nutritional value is less than the space needed to graze a herd of cattle, for example.
One of the leading arguments by many veggies is that crops are far more space-economical than animals.

 

maybe- maybe not

the problem with comparing land use it that grazing land is often useless for crops due to terrain features, water availabilty, soil type and other factors. to claim that going veggie would free up land for crop use is only partly true at best because the shortfall would have to be made up by tillable land before any increase would be noted. having land avaible for crops is not a problem on a world wide scale anyway so the whole argument is phony. food probuction levels are high enought to feed the world easily. shortages arise because of other factors with the most common being the use of starvation as a weapon. other common causes are local conditions such as drought that disrupt patterns of trade and supply in the short term. poverty is also a large problem that needs to be addressed.

 

For the record, i work for a company that packs new drugs up for testing once they have been through the animal testing to try (and I stress the word TRY) to ensure nothing dodgey gets out into the market.

Given that only one in a hundred compounds actually gets to market for various reasons including toxicity, think of how many people would have been killed or adversely affected in the drug went straight onto the market before any testing had been done on animals.

Humans are used to test drugs (after the initial testing on animals), go to Google and type in ‘the various phases of clinical trials’ and look at the results, most of the hits appear to come from US sites but trials are the same worldwide.

I’ve grabbed this from a website and it give a quote good desription of the various phases in clinical trials.

Done at hospitals and research centres around the country, clinical trials are conducted in phases. Phase 1 trials try to determine dosing, document how a drug is metabolised and excreted, and identify acute side effects. Usually, a small number of healthy volunteers (between 20 and 80) are used in Phase 1 trials.

Phase 2 trials include more participants (about 100-300) who have the disease or condition that the product potentially could treat. In Phase 2 trials, researchers seek to gather further safety data and preliminary evidence of the drug's beneficial effects (efficacy), and they develop and refine research methods for future trials with this drug. If the Phase 2 trials indicate that the drug may be effective--and the risks are considered acceptable, given the observed efficacy and the severity of the disease--the drug moves to Phase 3.

In Phase 3 trials, the drug is studied in a larger number of people with the disease (approximately 1,000-3,000). This phase further tests the product's effectiveness, monitors side effects, and, in some cases, compares the product's effects to a standard treatment, if one is already available. As more and more participants are tested over longer periods of time, the less common side effects are more likely to be revealed.
Sometimes, Phase 4 trials are conducted after a product is already approved and on the market to find out more about the treatment's long-term risks, benefits, and optimal use, or to test the product in different populations of people, such as children.

Phase 2 and Phase 3 clinical trials generally involve a "control" standard. In many studies, one group of volunteers will be given an experimental or "test" drug or treatment, while the control group is given either a standard treatment for the illness or an inactive pill, liquid or powder that has no treatment value (placebo). This control group provides a basis for comparison for assessing effects of the test treatment. In some studies, the control group will receive a placebo instead of an active drug or treatment. In other cases, it is considered unethical to use placebos, particularly if an effective treatment is available. Withholding treatment (even for a short time) would subject research participants to unreasonable risks.

A process called “randomisation” often decides the treatment each trial participant receives. This process can be compared to a coin toss that is done by computer. During clinical trials, no one likely knows which therapy is better, and randomisation assures that treatment selection will be free of any preference a physician may have. Randomisation increases the likelihood that the groups of people receiving the test drug or control are comparable at the start of the trial, enabling comparisons in health status between groups of patients who participated in the trial.

In conjunction with randomisation, a feature known as "blinding" helps ensure that bias doesn't distort the conduct of a trial or the interpretation of its results. Single-blinding means the participant does not know whether he or she is receiving the experimental drug, an established treatment for that disease, or a placebo. In a single-blinded trial, the research team does know what the participant is receiving.

A double-blind trial means that neither the participant nor the research team knows during the trial which participants receive the experimental drug. The patient will usually find out what he or she received at a pre-specified time in the trial.

Animal testing is required by law - something our government here keeps very quiet about when trying to woo the animal rights vote.

I would argue that for cosmetics etc then you takes your chances as there are more than enough on the market already.

Something to note with labels stating 'not tested on animals' - the actual product may not have been tested but you can be damm sure the individual components have been, there are far too many lawyers out there ready to try to make a quick buck/pound/euro etc.

 

It's not about grazing, it's about the food that cattle is stuffed with to make them fat enough for slaughter. This food is largely cereals, cereals that could also be used to make bread for humans to eat. Now we're not at all talking about ground cattle physically stands on but ground that is used to produce food that is stuffed into cattle that humans then eat. It's a wholly inefficient process that allows one person to eat meat whereas, according to calucaltions I've seen (which might be biased), if not used to produce meat the same cereals could have fed 20 humans. By removing any bias you'd still end up with a substantial benefit in food production if we wouldn't eat meat.

This is why I wasn't bringing this point into the PETA discussion: I'm not a vegetarian and I don't oppose eating meat, but I can't economically or ecologically justify it.

In any case Lynn1212 is probably right in stating that there is plenty of food on the world but it isn't distributed properly or even efficiently because some nations have the money to assemble surplus whereas others don't have the money to purchase a subsistence amount.

 

I would like to point out this about some comments made to my post.

For a Christian it is far from illogical to base your beleifs on your religion.

Also, about alaska, we made the park to protect animals, not oil. Getting oil doesn't mean we hunt all the animals to extiniction. It means we screw up the life of them a little to get a much needed resource. It is like a elephate ripping down a tree to get leaves. The bird with his nest in there is out of luck, untill he moves to the next tree over. The animals can go to a different corner of the park if oil drilling upsets them. I alos think that Humans are not animal, because they are made in Gods image. That means we are able to do stuff like displace animals.

Besides the world economy runs on oil. If we don't drill it, life is gonna suck. My brother might get his wish to see the dark ages if we don't drill for it. Its ours, it was put there for us to use, so we are disobeying the God who made us not to.

 

There's a difference between the grass and straw eaten by the animalsand the grain eaten by humans.

Christian

 

Alaskan Oil

Out of intrest, how long is the oil in the Alaskan protected areas expected to last at the rate its being used today?

 

wespauldo, theology is perhaps not the best basis for long term envromental planning. different people have different beliefs and each is held to be true by the person holding it. since there is no way to decide which belief set is the true one [assuming that there is a true one] we are reduced to trying to figure it out for ourselves. this is not the place to attempt to decide who's theology is correct anyway. as it happens i agree with you about drilling wherever oil is found. oit exploration and recovery is a different game that it was years ago. it is now possible to operate with very little impact on habitats, something that was not possible before. as usual the evro- wackos distort the truth and paint the worst possible case about the issue. if you look back at other debates their projected outcomes are almost always wrong and usually wildly so.

 

How to decomission the Brent Spar oil storage platform in the North Sea being the last one

 

Yes. However, cereal is used to produce cattle food. They can live off of eating grass but they'll never grow as fat as a farmer will want them to be for him to make money off of them.

 

At least we all agree that PETA is stupid. Except when it stands for People Eating Tasty Animals.

 

Yeah, talk about eating tasty animals, Pamela "plastic" Anderson is boycotting KFC. Look here:
http://entertainment.msn.com/tv/article ... 5&GT1=6428

 

But she's a veggie - of course she's boycotting KFC, they sell dead animals. :roll:

 

I like eating dead chickens. I also like eating dead cows, dead ducks, dead rabbits, dead deer, dead squirrels, dead turkeys, dead seafood, dead pigs, etc.

 

with you on everything but the seafood!

 

Re: Alaskan Oil

Found something from the Rocky Mountain Institute - 6 months.

Which I now remember reading in the press a few months ago.

 

Yep - the only tasty animal is a dead animal!

Christian

 

i like dead humans :lol:

 

Have you ever tried to eat a living animal? Small ones are easy, but big ones fight too much to swallow them comfortably (unless you are a constrictor or python, of course).

 

I must admid, that eating live moose and grizzly bears is not something I am in the habit of doing

Christian