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You know, Angeliquee, I think the biggest problem is what we might call "disconnect" where we don't "get" the connection between "beautiful red leather" and a killed animal. We often just don't think about it and have had leather presented to us our entire lives as "luxurious" and "durable" and that "leather is the best material" and "if you really care about getting someone the nicest sort of gift, it will be leather." These are just euphemisms about what is really going on so that we do a disconnect from the reality of it, to gloss over the fact that it is the skin of a once-living breathing animal that was killed so the "meat" and skin that the animal needed - and had a right to - could be taken by force. I think it's part of our culture to disconnect these two realities so that we can live in a kind of unaware state and keep using leather and eating meat, but if we really stop to think about it and feel it, we would make a different choice. Imagine if aliens from outer space were coming to earth and slaughtering and skinning humans and sometimes not in that order, and making "leather" from our skins so they could make their stuff out of our skin or even wear our skin - imagine how we would feel and what we would try to do about it. Certainly we would fear and hate them. I think that is how the animals must feel towards us. We pen them in so they don't even have a fighting chance against us and there is no escape. What if that were happening to humans? Well, in fact, it did. It was called Auschwitz, except the meat was burned and only a little of the skin was made into leather for lampshades and book covers. How do we feel about that? When I drive past a feed lot and I know they are all doomed animals, I feel so sad. I would like to free them all, but stopping what is happening to them has to start on the "demand" end. Unfortunately, the bad news is that, while meat consumption actually did drop in the United States, the "meat industry" merely began aggressively marketing "whole carcasses" to Japan and various other countries, so the demand didn't drop just because of the reduced consumption here in the US. So the solution has to be worldwide. The best we can do for now is to at least not be part of it. Go Vegetarian. And work to change attitudes worldwide.

Someone was saying on this thread that they didn't see how not eating meat would help end poverty or hunger worldwide, and I can think of one thing as an example. There was a program of supplying goats to villages in Africa so they people could have the milk and also slaughter the goats for "meat." This would supplement their diet of root vegetables and greens and other gathered or farmed foods and would increase health in the region.

However, the plan backfired. The goats made even more goats and were considered a status indicator, and the more goats, the higher the status, so people bred them and moved the herds around the local area, and pretty soon, the goats had eaten all the grass and shrubs down to the dirt and ruined the land with overgrazing. So the people could not do the farming part of the plan and gradually were eating primarily goatmeat. Eventually, there was just arid desert land and a lot of goats needing food and water, so they moved the herds, and, in this way, ruined even more land. This just kept happening, and whole regions had nothing but goats which people would eat. Eventually, with the ruined land and the goats mostly slaughtered for food, the people began migrating to feeding stations and having to be fed by relief agencies or starve. How can I say it more clearly - in addition to the animal suffering involved, animals used for meat are a very poor and inefficient use of land, crop, and water resources. Eating meat completely unbalances everything.

We don't notice it as much in this country - the U.S. - because it is hidden by "subsidies" for the "meat industry." But the water on the western range of the U.S. will not last - it's basically an arid place that was once fed by the Ogallala Aquifer - a huge underground ice-age lake. The "meat industry" and oversettlement of the West has pulled water from this aquifer so much that there are only a maximum of 10-20 more years possible from it. The Indians knew about the aquifer, or they at least knew about the natural springs in the region, and relied on it but never overused it. The destruction of this aquifer by the "meat industry" in just a short 150 years - including the dominant "animal feed" crops raised for food to fatten the cattle, plus the water fed directly to the cattle (and millions of cattle and other animals drink a lot of water every single day) - this damage to this aquifer cannot be repaired or replaced. Even if the Ogallala Aquifer were left alone, it might fill again in thousands of years or it might never fill again. So the meat industry and western towns and cities are going to be without this water and the "meat" economy of the region, and the government isn't talking about this, for obvious reasons. But the people out West do talk about it and know about it. I am making a short collection of information about this aquifer and will post it when I have it. Corie