To believe that eating meat should be illegal?

Which crops would grow on a steep mountainside?

And food security is a real issue for this country.

What about all of the other things that use animals; clothes, medicines, musical instruments etc? Also what would you do with the animals that need to be culled to protect the ecosystem? I am currently in an area where they are culling deers are we supposed to let them just rot away?

people eating less meat and having an alternative to animal by products will help but you need to look into all of the ramifications if you make it illegal. Solve the bigger picture.

Whole food veganism is about as close as we can get now after thousands of years of moving away from what would have been natural for us. None of us eat now as nature intended whether we include animal products or not. Human beings can survive and thrive on vegan diets, and by avoiding the type of animal products typically eaten we can reduce our chances of some nasty diseases, help keep ourselves at a healthy weight and up our consumption of nutritious whole foods. As a woman living in a world that has almost no resemblance to my what would be my natural state, that's good enough for me.

Would it mean there would be illegal meat dealers if it was? That you'd have to go to some shady backstreet area of town to meet a man selling pork chops and legs of lamb?

Leave them to eat the vegetarian/vegan options. Then we can go back to enjoying a nice steak

😂couldn't agree more!

You don't have to eat meat but don't try to police what I eat thanks.

AIBU to think it's time to outlaw human reproduction, because of the environmental impact?

Never seen so much rubbish in one post but I'll restrict myself to correcting one thing. Growth promoting hormones are not used in the UK or EU for farm animals.

AIBU to think it's time to outlaw tofu production, because of the environmental impact of soy production?

Chemical fertilizer just like it is now

No one is here for anything apart from propogating our DNA

Quite

They'd be dead either way

Because some people have a problem absorbing iron in the gut.

This can happen with coeliac disease, too much tea/coffee or excess use of calciulm supplements.
So too much milk in the diet can affect iron absorbtion.

the veg box I used to have stated their produce were local yet there was always tropical fruit included 😂

I get a fresh mixed random delivery from a local supplier every week.

Super. And your local supplier has enough to supply everyone in your local area? All year round?

Or, are we going to have to rely on imported fruit and veg from overseas?

Mulch.

How would all the arable land get fertilized?

If you add up all the people in the UK, multiplied by their calorific and nutritional needs, is there a strong enough food supply chain to keep everyone fed and healthy?

Putting aside ethical considerations, what about plant-based food that has a more negative carbon impact than farming?

What's the plan for all the currently active prosperous farmland that will then be useless for food production?

Basically, how would it actually work?

Will nobody think of the jobs!

But is there enough land with the right conditions to grow enough to feed everyone in the world? What about the African continent where a lot of the landscape is desert and wouldn't support anywhere near enough crops? They'd have to import the majority and it would be incredibly expensive, when already large percentages of the population can't afford to eat without breeding, raising and slaughtering their own animals, or should they all be left to starve to death?

As for in the first world, in recent years there's been so much news coverage of complete or heavy percentage crop failure all over Europe due to unpredictable weather causing droughts or severe flooding that ruins entire yields. Throw in other unpredictable events too, like war. Thats diminished the supply and pushed up the prices because of demand, such as wheat as Ukraine was a major exporter to the rest of Europe and there was massive shortage as everyone witnessed on the shop shelves. All it takes is one bad season and there's not enough food to go around, and the prices of what is available skyrocket beyond being affordable to many.

In trying to prevent animal cruelty you'd create massive human cruelty, mainly in the form of starvation. Simply put, cutting animals as a food source, drastically reduces the ammount of food there is to go around. The grain etc we feed animals isn't human food grade, so that portion of crop would be wasted or create a class system of who gets the poor quality crop rather than increase the ammount of human food grade quality crop. All the animals that would be bred for food just wouldn't exist, so if a major incident wipes out a large ammount of edible crop, there would be no animals to fall back on to eat instead, so there just wouldn't be enough food, hundreds of thousands would starve and probably die, as you can't force crop to grow out of season.

That doesn't take in to account how many jobs globally would be wiped out and leave millions unemployed unable to afford the inflated prices of fruit and veg. Because the world going vegetarian/vegan would skyrocket the prices or fruit and veg, not reduce them.

I disagree.

I think we overall need to eat less meat, and that meat should be produced in a way that has far higher welfare standards for the animals. but banned completely? No.

If nothing else if you banned meat and dairy my autistic child would starve, and I'd rather that didn't happen

I wish everyone would stop eating meat OP yes, but a govt 'ban' isn't the way. People have to realise this for themselves.

Eating beef is so entrenched in the Western psyche. Our capitalist societies refer to cows as 'livestock' - basically economic units. Cows are reared and slaughtered outside of cities. Out of sight, out of mind.

Of course the beef industry doesn't want people to know that the carbon and methane emissions as a result of the beef industry are greater than the whole airline industry - globally. Of course they don't want people to reflect on the complex social relationships between 'livestock' - but how modern farming practices routinely separate mothers and calves. I won't go into what happens to male calves. Dairy cows are milked dry and then slaughtered as they have no economic use.

In Hindu India, by contrast, there is no tradition of eating beef. The cow is sacred - the mother - providing milk which is believed to produce calmness and wisdom. Why eat the cow meat when the same nutrients are in milk and so many foods can be made from milk. Eating cow meat is seen as producing stress and anger in humans - leading to war, psychological and physical illness.

The meat industry is the evil of the world. But people don't question it. Most people don't want to know. Nobody questions the logic of why we eat cows and sheep, but not horses or whatever. Humans insist on putting animals in categories and that's it, most people just accept it or forget to question why. Maybe in another hundred years, most people will have woken up?

Regardless, the meat industry will have to drastically downsize. Those involved will one day be called to account. It is an ethical and ecological nightmare. But what is happening now, is rather than take responsibility, the meat industry (in conjunction with pharmaceutical companies only too keen to cash in) is trying to reframe itself as the 'solution' - ie. "Look we can give cows these hormones so they produce less methane, Look everyone 'carbon free cows! Yay! Buy our beef, don't buy theirs. Look at us - we are the climate saviours."

So while consumers are distracted with the of issue 'which type' or 'which source' of beef to buy, methane emissions overall are soaring and conditions for cows becoming more horrendous. Because even though methane emissions per cow may be falling, overall methane emissions are higher than ever - because reducing methane is too often synonymous with hormones that mean a cow matured and is therefore slaughtered faster. Meaning more cows in their place and the industry can accelerate even faster. More methane globally. More rainforests cleared for grazing land. Humanity looks the other way and goes to Tesco.

We do lots of things we haven't evolved to do, but that scientific advancement makes possible.

Clearly they have never heard of Serena and Venus Williams .