Mumsnet Talk

Do people not realise how gelatine is made?

I don't eat my meat from plastic packs. I get it from the farm shop where you can see the animals in the field before they end up on the counter. They are killed locally - I wouldn't have a problem with it. As a child if we were at my aunts and we had chicken for dinner she went and killed one.

if veg were lower carb, i'd consider it, much prefer veg.

BlatantLies Thu 14-Feb-13 23:29:10

I think you have the right to make an opinion if you have worked in an abattoir. I don’t have the courage but I do have compassion.

For some reason we ALL think we have rights about our food, in fact, we should be most grateful that we have plenty of choice. To be honest I think if you have the guts to eat meat you should have the guts to see its life being taken.

Plastic packs don’t really go any way to tell the story of fear and death. Think we’d all cull our intake of meat if we were party to daily slaughter, sometimes only to see it thrown out to skip bins, past its date, what a waste of life. Organic or intensively farmed

I do have to laugh at those mortified by horse meat contamination, don’t you realise that the jelly at the kids parties is from Gelatine, horses hoof, cattle hoof?!

Your kids are already ingesting horse, and all sorts. It is up to you to to be aware and vote with your money and compassion. I quite like Quorn a few days a week now for the family...

TheOriginalLadyFT: I object to the CIWF because they mix up truth with untruth/hyperbole...I've dealt with the stuff that comes out of CIWF on a professional level and some of it is simply untrue, while some of it is spun to make their point...Like any campaigning organisation...they need funds to roll in and that means using highly emotive issues and manipulating people's feelings.

Firstly, it would be helpful to give examples to substantiate this.

Secondly, your point of view about CIWF seems to directly oppose those held by the BBC Radio Four/Farming Awards quoted earlier, who said:

"...Compassion in World Farming had created an exceptional body of sound scientific evidence that’s had an impact round the world. They’re never shrill, they don’t rely on emotion and hype to make their case, but on rational, unarguable evidence available to anyone with an interest in how we treat the living creatures who are a major part of our food supply."

Others seem to echo the above view (including respected writers on food production). My impression is that CIWF has had a considerable impact over the last few decades, improving standards (some pretty grim) in farm animal welfare.

LadyFT:

I know you were alluding to me when you said you have been called a liar. I did not call you a liar, I said you are biased. Of course you are! You farm animals, that is your livelihood. If you started to think it was harmful in any way you'd have to stop doing it or continue in bad faith, so you cannot be objective.

I don't have anything to gain from my stance. Someone asked why I was vegan so I replied.

I believe you when you say animals are not treated cruelly on your farm, or indeed in most British farms. Good. But you believe we should breed animals to use and kill and I don't. I don't care how nicely you artificially inseminate cows and take their calves away, or how politely you castrate your lambs - I do not believe we should be doing these things at all. It is violation, and crucially, it is not necessary.

And as to your question of whether I have some thing about AI: kind of, yes. I don't think we should impregnate a cow against her will and take her calf away - and repeat this process until that cow is spent (then kill her) just so we can take her milk (which we don't need). Again, who do we think we are?

To the person who asked: Would I eat meat grown in a lab? Why not? If there was no other reason not to, like energy waste or something. As I said, I loved meat. I just don't like how it gets to me, and now I don't particularly fancy it. I would try it out of curiosity and if I liked it and there was no other issue - great.

To the person (sorry, I can't remember the names at the moment) who said if we were meant to be vegan we would have evolved to be vegan - I think we are starting to. Vegetarian and vegan diets are increasing in popularity all the time. How we were 'evolving' since the dawn of patriarchy has been detrimental to us and the planet. We need to stop dominating each other and other species: it doesn't work.

I assume that if you feel like that Daddelion that you are a vegan.

I think it must be hard work if you choose to be a really strict veggie. There are so many things with animal byproducts in them. I suppose you get used to it.

My DM used to have vagen lodgers, it looked a complicated way to live.

I don't eat messed about with meat so the BSE scandal and this latest horse scandal don't effect me.

LOL Daddelion! That reminds me of one of my favourite stand up shows, Dennis Leary...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQR4-cl9ODc

He is actually taking the piss out of vegetarians, but he makes some good points which also apply to many meat-eaters!

I want to know how cats and dogs have managed to shift the attention to the other animals. Rabbits have done a fair job as well.

Pigs, cows and sheep need a better PR representative.

On my journey to vegetarianism it was watching 20 or so lambs being rounded up, removed from their mothers and taken off for slaughter. I couldn't eat lamb after that.

Lambs are cute, baby animals their PR is really crap.

"Of course I agree with fair treatment of all animals but where do you draw the line? Have you ever squatted a fly? Trodden on a spider? That's not exactly fair."

I don't kill anything, even though spiders freak me out and fly's annoy the hell out of me!!! I catch them and release them outside.
The only time I would purposefully kill any living creature is if it is a direct threat to my health/safety and there is no other option!
As a rule I try to treat others as I would want to be treated.

Live and let live!

I would hate to see rare farm animals confined to farm parks as oddities Daddelion. I also wonder how they will keep landscapes like the Lake District without grazing sheep ( and if they want the wool what they do with dead bodies). What will the dogs and cats eat?

Do you eat dairy products though, EleanorRigby? A clean death seems much better to me that the treatment of the cow and calf in dairy production.
In answer to the question - I can't see anything to make me give up meat.

SonofAradia I started this thread in amused exasperation wtf would it take!

I know and reading the discussion has been great. It's been really civil for the most part.

I can't think of anything that'd stop me eating meat - certainly this horse thing hasn't even made me consider it for a moment. It doesn't bother me that it's horse (eaten it before), but the fact that it could be dodgy/adulterated in some way does.

Even if the mass-produced/foreign sourced stuff became completely screwed up, there'd always be local suppliers, so I'd never actually give up.

When historians look at this period, the mass breeding of animals, killing and turning into processed food I wonder what they'll make of it and how future generations will see it.

Of course this'll be after the great discovery of 2140 that pigs and cows can talk.

Dsis is a veggie - she never liked the taste or texture of meat, even as a very small child. I think some people just don't like it in the way others don't like certain veg, or fish etc

Personally, eating raw tomatoes makes me vomit. Just thinking about putting one in my mouth and biting into it makes me <barf in my mouth emoticon>

SonofAradia I started this thread in amused exasperation wtf would it take!

I stopped eating meat way back in 1986 when the BSE scandal broke people didn't stop eating it then and I knew they wouldn't now.

Personally I find the thought of eating meat abhorrent others for reasons I've never really understood find it acceptable or even preferable. Leaves me blooming wondering if it's addictive or something lol.

So there we have a difference of opinion. I think people are getting more comfortable with that difference in opinion now whereas veggies and meat eaters used to really poles apart and not even open to discussion or understanding.

It was good to see interesting discussions from this thread.

My parents turned veggie then and although I was given the option of eating meat (they still cooked it for DB) I just never fancied it. I rebelled at age 12 with a Big Mac but I couldn't even finish it, it was foul!
Never had cow's milk either but only because I hate it (and cream etc).

I certainly won't stop eating meat because horse meat has been found in Lancashire! I'll certainly be making more use of the local butchers rather than Tesco, though.

Nah people who "love" their meat will never stop eating it.
Why did you become a veggie aged 4 btw?

Maybe that's the tipping point Elenor?

Yum Soylent Green!

I am a veggie and have been since the age of 4, I don't think of meat as food so it's not a conscious decision for me. Of course I agree with fair treatment of all animals but where do you draw the line? Have you ever squatted a fly? Trodden on a spider? That's not exactly fair.

Not sure what point I'm trying to make so will hand out Soylent Green to all meat eaters as an amuse bouche.

Agree with hully sugar is terrible stuff!

Just heard from Andrew Neil on the Daily Politics, horse meat has been found in school meals in Lancashire

Fascicle, TG's books are far from romantic. Her book explicitly about livestock handling is this one, but you may find that another, more general book, like Animals in Translation, more readable. It is more general, focusses more on her life and how she sees things, as she believes that her perceptions work more like an animal's. It does include quite a bit about how sh saw better ways of designing abbatoirs, which led to an overhaul throughout USA, and some in UK have followed suit. Both are fascinating reads. (All her books that I have read are fascinating, but I am very interested in autism, so come at them from that angle.)