To believe that eating meat should be illegal?

I think the think you’re missing is that most people do not think it is wrong to eat animals. We just don’t agree with you, you don’t have some sort of absolute moral authority .

Farm animals do not have higher cognitive functions. They do not have human feelings, some people just choose to anthropomorphise them. I am perfectly happy to kill and eat animals, I have no ethical problem with it at all. It is healthier to eat some animal protein, many studies have shown that protein quality is more important than straight quantity. And environmentally speaking there are many things that are far worse. So as far as I’m concerned absolutely no justification for any form of ban.

Your last paragraph can basically be summed up as humans are becoming more and more disassociated from the life we are meant to be living. We should not be living in cities, plugged into screens consuming endless piles of garbage seeds. This is so far removed from our natural state.

They won't know, or care, that their species will become extinct. What a bizarre argument. I'd rather be extinct than farmed and slaughtered.

Farmers will do something else, naturally.

Surely carriage drivers were put out of business when the car became mass produced.

You’d have to take my steak from my cold, dead, hands quite frankly.

Whilst we’ve still got whole continents of people eating 3 meals a day with plastic plates and cutlery there are far far far bigger fish to fry in the name of saving the environment.

Before we ban meat eating we need to move to a 1 child policy and allow euthanasia.

The problem is there are far too many people. How the heck do you plan to feed everyone on vegetarian diet OP?

Your environment would be fucked by the amount of agricultural land we’d need.

In 100 years the population has quadrupled to 8 billion, that’s the bigger problem.

Far far far too many people .

I ate no meat whatsoever for 22 years. I turned from that diet because of the harm that a high-carbohydrate diet (fats come from animal products) did to my health.

I consider that I've done my bit for the planet. And you know what you can do with your inflammatory thread title.

"look after"? 😂You only "look after" them until the time comes to slaughter them, at which point, I doubt they are feeling very looked after.

Why do we need global consensus?

Where are daisy and Larry going to get their food from without the farmer facilitating it? I mean Jesus sheep are constantly trying to get themselves killed and that’s with a lot of looking after. There would be piles of dead sheep everywhere. I don’t think k they actually know they are farm animals!

I agree. My children have many vegetarian friends, and a handful of vegan ones - it shows that times really are changing.

As a farmer, this type of thinking drives me insane.

The answer is not no meat, the answer is meat that is carefully and thoughtfully produced in a manner that is both good for the environment and for the animals we look after.

we own a very small farm. This has been returned to the farming practices used in the days before intensive farming. we did it as there's no way to make this place pay buying feed and fertilisers and using a tractor a lot. we send our meat to the very discerning who are prepared to pay and who are very fussy about where it comes from.

so my fields are now meadows, which is a 'seral' environment and requires animals grazing it to continue to survive. Since the 2nd world war we have lost 97% of meadows in the UK and the impact that thats had on the insect populations and then birds and bats is just awful. this summer 11 species of bats were 'heard' here.

so please stop saying that what we do is the same as the meat bought in supermarkets. 100% grass fed beef is a very different proposition than supermarket grass fed.

I run a closed herd and use an abattoir within 15 minutes. normally this is their first and only journey.

tell me I should lose my income.

by the way my fields are not suitable for arable. not all fields are created equal.

Would cows, sheep and pigs really just exist in the wild if nobody owned them?

They're not a lot of use to humans if we can't eat them or their products; probably not that attractive as pets either. With no human interest or input, sheep would go unshorn, any disease would go unmonitored, animal mothers would be left to their own devices, unaided, when giving birth - and so may well die painfully and traumatically if there are any complications.

They would obviously need to find food for themselves, which I'm sure they could; but they may then just become useless competitors to humans for the crops - so even if we can't eat them, we still may well kill them (deliberately or accidentally) to prioritise those crops for us, just like we do now with fieldmice and combine harvesters.

I would gladly serve time if it was a result of being caught eating illegal bacon butties.

Nonsense.

There is protein in legumes, cereals, grains. seitan, and tofu.

I think the lack of variation in the diet puts a lot of people off.

That's a misconception.

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/collection/budget-vegan-recipes

I bet you're fun at parties.

Well it is great you can all manage to eat a wide variety of foods with no need to source vitamins and nutrients from non food sources not everyone can

This, absolutely.

Can be a bit dry at times but nothing a decent sauce can't fix. I'm also sure I'm unusually aggressive these days on account of the odd stray fragment of shot. I consider this a good thing.

I get a fresh mixed random delivery from a local supplier every week. I do top up at the supermarket, and will also buy soya milk, pasta, bread etc, but we do it very wholesomely, as much as possible, with the odd treat night out to Wagas or Express, but definitely trying hard to do the right thing. And sure, the occasional sweet treat like chocolate and Easter Eggs when in season. Not big on avocados in this house, not almond milk (actually don't like it at all). If everyone gave up meat and dairy, we'd have better supplies of alternatives. A farm near where we used to live grew all sorts of exotic produce in large clever modified glasshouses - it was truly amazing what they could grow.

I am a veggie of 30 years now - however ethical approaches require wide agreement- eg we widely agree on ethical and moral stances on rape, murder, child abuse and other crimes but I do not think you would get the consensus for what is a wide impact change on an ethical basis - this would impact huge parts of people's lives and health (people are very linked to their diets on many levels including emotional) and there are also huge industrial changes- whole industries and therefore people's livelihoods impacted- and possibly beyond what you can imagine where other industries rely on animal products. And it would require a huge cultural shift.

And people do not all view animals in the same way - so you would be unlikely to reach consensus on the ethical point at all.

You definitely would not get global consensus at all.

Don't pull the environmental card. It's simply not true if you want to convert the whole world, but not then force them to eat locally sourced, seasonal food.

In fact the best impact we could have would be to return to village style sharing of produce including locally sourced meat and veg.

But anyone looking to adopt a vegan or vegetarian diet for environmental reasons may also want to consider whether there are some plant-based foods that also come with a heavy price.
“Nothing really compares to beef, lamb, pork, and dairy – these products are in a league of their own in the level of damage they typically do to the environment, on almost every environmental issue we track,” says Joseph Poore, a researcher at the University of Oxford who studies the environmental impacts of food. “But it’s essential to be mindful about everything we consume: air-transported fruit and veg can create more greenhouse gas emissions per kilogram than poultry meat, for example."

That's all still saying one thing; meat for the rich, none for the poor. If that's your stance at least be honest about it.

This always produces such a defensive reaction. I really think it's one of the things that will massively change, ethically. Perhaps not in our generation but certainly in the future.

The cognitive dissonance required in enjoying the bodies of sentient beings is gradually, very gradually crumbling.

I am vegetarian and I think YABU. We are omnivores and are meant to eat meat. I don’t because I don’t like the thought of eating a dead body but my health isn’t as good as it could be as I miss out on certain nutrients. I wish I could eat meat but I just can’t do it.

There’s a lot wrong with the world that can be fixed by people being less greedy and wanting stuff so much but since the beginning of time humans have eaten meat. If they didn’t then we wouldn’t have survived as a species.