Ironically, PETA have already complained about that as well :S About people keeping too many pets I mean (they don't even WANT us to have pets so what is the alternative? Kick every cat out and then see a million of them walking all around because none will be sterilized?). There's already several cities in Belgium that have a severe cat problem. If PETA had their way, the world would explode in a ball of paradoxes.

PETA must be destroyed before we develop time travel, they're a threat to the time-space continuum

There is a reason why you can't kill someone who has only a few days left to live anyway. The whole foundation of the German law is based on the worth of human dignity (although politicians broadly ignore that in the past years).
What would happen if someone would proof that all animals have a soul (something that I believe in, by the way)? Would that make them eligible to have the same dignity? Is there a fundamental right of living beings to live for as long as nature gives them to live or should we kill everyone who has no further use for society, such as extremely ill people, murderers that spend the rest of their life in prison etc.? The very philosophical reason that we should respect life is that we want to be respected by life! The same, by the way, goes for respecting dead people - we also want to stay respected when we die. The pragmatic reason would be to kill them since they only do bad to others, even though they might not intend so. What makes humans different from animals? The soul? So if animals have a soul, what then? And who proves that other humans have a soul and are not robots? Is it wrong to kill at all?
Difficult questions but one must consider them if he talks about life.
With all due respect before nature itself, the very essence of life that we originate from, we should set our standards as high as possible. We should trust in nature that it always finds the right way, the balance that is needed for this planet's ecosystem to work.
Since humans have begun populating this world widely, the number of extinctions of species has raised so much that many people are talking about the sixth mass extinction - one that humans and other big mammals won't survive, but that might reset the nature to a status in which it can ultimately survive and spread again.
And yes, PETA sometimes is very stupid!

I don't believe in souls. We're all organic machines and that's that as far as I'm concerned. We die = our machine ceases to run. What sets us apart from every other living being on the planet is that we're self aware. If we kill a being, we can question the motive for killing it and our motives can be diverse. Animals would kill another animal and wouldn't question anything. Basically, animals work on instinct and because of this, society deems them not responsible for their actions since they're driven by nature.
For humans, every action we do needs to be justified. A guy who screws another girl and cheats on his girlfriend? naturally this would be caused by a sexual drive. In reality, the guy needs to explain why he'd want to have sex with someone besides his girlfriend (even though the answer is simple: it's a natural drive for a male to spread his seed). My point: humans are supposed to be above his instincts but in reality this is bullshit - even if many people try to pretend it's not. We're not that different from animals besides the self-awareness which lets us examine our instincts and let us override it with logical thought. "If I cheat on my girlfriend, I'll hurt her and I care for her so I don't want to cheat on her". An animal would think "willing female = sex!". There's your difference.
And then you come to the subject "murder". Killing to protect yourself is an instinct. Killing to survive is an instinct. "Murder" is more than just killing: it's killing with the express purpose of killing that which does not need to be killed. You can't murder a burglar after he took a shot at you. Neither can you murder an animal to survive in the wilds. Killing animals for food in general? Hard to say. You could argue we don't need to kill animals to survive but we've been eating meat for dozens of millennia and maybe even hundreds.
In nature, there's no such thing as respect - respect is something mankind invented. If you want to respect nature, you got to respect the fact that there's no such thing as respect either.

How is this for bad taste.

There is a definite distinction between big industry meat and the old fashioned family farm meat. Either way, the animal is killed, which I'm still against, but at least in one scenario they have a shot at living a decent life before led to slaughter, and arguably a better life than had they been left to fend for themselves in the wild. Even if you do choose to eat meat, my hats off to those of you that at least bother to buy from companies that treat the animals well while they are alive. I know using animals for food is a hugely controversial issue without a clear cut right answer. There's a huge cultural and biological tradition of eating meat, so it's not a simple black and white thing and everyone has to make a personal choice. I do appreciate those that at least make an effort to reduce the suffering of animals, even if we disagree on whether they should be killed for food or not.
Also, I'm sort of surprised you don't like Quorn. Not completely shocked, since meat eaters often don't like a substitue for the real thing, no matter how good it is. Quorn's most recent products have been quite excellent though (the fake chicken breast and diced chicken especially), as have some of the recent Morningstar Farms products (bacon, hamburger, and sausage). Of course, I haven't had real meat in 8 years, so heheheh, I probably have a different experience of it than someone that can compare it to the chicken or bacon they ate yesterday. Sometimes it is just a matter of how you cook them, since they don't cook in the same way as real meat does.
If we lived closer, I would invite you over for a meal. I am a good cook and I'm always on a mission to prove through my cooking that vegetarian cuisine can be delicious. People always look forward to what I bring at potlucks and dinners. It is possible to eat well without meat! : )

The problem is I'm strapped for time most days and real meat is quickly ready and needs little to no effort. If I do the same for vegetarian options, I get something that is barely edible. I checked several forums and they all say that Quorn is mostly a substitute in terms of nutritional value and that you got to "camouflage" its taste but that means more effort and a lot of trial & error. Aside from the cordon blue I mentioned, all the other things I tasted were pretty nasty:
- "chicken" nuggets (very squishy without the crisp nature of the real thing)
- chicken filets (not that bad but has a weird after taste)
- steak
- vegetable burgers (weird taste that I can taste for hours after)
- mince meat (well in spaghetti sauce it gives texture but without the flavour)
This is the one I like the most:
http://www.quorn.be/befl/cmpage.aspx?pageid=380&productid=120
Other than that, it's often the texture and after taste that feel very wrong.
What I do make, as often as I can, is a vegetarian spaghetti meal with tomato sauce, lots of mushrooms, carrots, paprikas but that takes a lot of time so it's only possible in weekends. During weeks it's rush rush rush.
Really, if more companies made an effort to offer vegetarian alternatives, the taste would go up and the price would go down due to competition and people might actually consider it as a real alternative. As it is, a cordon blue made of pork costs 2 euros for 350 grams while Quorn cordon blues cost 3.5 euros, a massive 75% increase in price.

Why don't you go out then to kill the animals you want to eat with your bare hands and mouth, just like every animal does?
And yes, PETA and GP sometimes behave like terrorists.

You forgot one
3) Pwned!!!!11
heh I've just reaised, thanks to my dental surgery I'm more carnivore than herbivore, the balance of teeth has changed substantially

Well, normally your teeth should be that of an omnivore, but it seems you're restricted to eating mostly rats, snakes, frogs and whatever other kind of animal there is around that you can naturally rip apart with your teeth. Good hunt! ;-)

I have hands, I have tools, I have the ability to go to mcdonalds
I DON'T because I care about my insides but I CAN

Not everything you CAN do is meant that you SHOULD do it - as you already pointed out in the same posting. ;-)

Human beings are not the only animals that can make and/or use tools. There are plenty of others that do it - from using straws to catch ants to using rocks to break sea shells and nuts. There is nothing unnatural about using tools.

Don't remember ever saying anything about humans not being cruel. Not sure what your statement has to do with what I said.
Exactly. Suggesting one way of getting it is cruel and the other is not, especially when they both require the death of something living, is a viewpoint I will never understand. Maybe people would think twice if we started calling crops kitten plants.