to think that you can't watch this and still want to buy eggs?

[Tollund]

Just to follow on from my epic veggie thread last week - it got me thinking and doing a bit more research and I stumbled across this .

It made me sob, I mean it's really upset me. I've stopped buying eggs from the supermarket about 6 months ago and just get free range from the farmer's market now, but having seen this I think I can only get them from a woman up the road who has a some of chickens and sells anything she has left over. I'd really like to keep chickens myself but we don't have the space at the moment unfortunately.

AIBU to think that you can't not rethink what you do after seeing that?

"DBF, as others have said, you can't be a dog owner and still claim you have the moral high ground over non-vegetarians."

Oh yes I bloody well can, for the reasons I've already given! :o

I'm a rescuer, Shelly, both hands on and via networking, an active AR campaigner and I put my money and blood sweat and tears where my big mouth is.

All my dogs are and always have been rescue ones, including pound dogs. And all the while I continue to campaign actively for change and to spread the word so to speak. I've been doing something related to that best part of today as it goes.

I am also the first to say that I do not agree with dog breeding and that I will never advocate that an individual buys from a breeder whilst there are so many pound dogs dying.

I could go on... and on... and on... and I do and have, so I'll leave it there for now!

Oh and by the way, my (very!) healthy dog eats V Dog

The best thing you can do for animals that are bred for meat is not to become vegetarian but to only buy meat that has come from animals that have had a good life before they were slaughtered - ie create a market where farmers are rewarded for treating animals well.

I disagree, pickgo. The best thing to do is boycott all animal 'food' products.

Just out of interest, how do you know that the animals have had a good life?
When you buy that joint of beef, how do you know the animal was stunned correctly?
When you buy those free range eggs, how do you know that male chicks weren't crushed alive in the process?
When you buy that quiche, how do you know the eggs are free range?
When you buy that organic milk, how do you know the cow didn't cry out for her calf who was taken from her?
Etc, etc, etc, etc.

Maceration looks awful, but is instant death. The chick doesn't suffer. I know explaining this won't make it ok, but thought I'd explain.

WRT supermarket eggs, even those advertised as high welfare aren't. I won't go into detail - I've done that at embarrassing length on other threads . A couple of years ago, there were a few videos showing "high welfare" units monitored by the RSPCA. I can't find thenm any any more, I can only imagine the RSPCA are so shamed by what hidden cameras found in farms that were supposed to be fabulous places for a chicken to live, that they somehow had the videos removed. I'll have a proper trawl one day! (the RSPCA aren't my favourite animal organisation!)
I know several people who either own or work/ed on chicken farms - ranging from battery to organic, and the welfare between them isn't that different. If you are buying organic eggs from a supermarket, you might as well buy battery and save your money.
Like chickens said before, if you can, find a backyard keeper, then you can see for yourself that they are happy hens.

Dogsbestfriend, um, i'm not naive about Dairy farming, since I spent 26 years on one, nor am I being deceitful. No animals are killed to provide people with milk where I grew up. I'd rather you didn't swear at me about it.

The cows I know at home are quite "happy" (although cows don't have the same capacity for emotions as humans, a statement which will probably annoy you), come round and visit. If you choose not to drink milk or eat meat, that's fine, but many farmers aren't as bad as the ones you have obviously spent time with. We've shed tears over cows who have been injured or died before their time. Please don't lump the whole industry together.

'animals are killed to provide milk for humans to drink.'

Er.not necessarily. If you are trying to persuade people,m try and avoid the sweeping generalisations please.
NO, of course I don't agree with some of the stuff shown in teh programme, did you not read the 'i like animals' part of my post?

If you slaughter a high number of animals in one day then some of the kills will not be clean, unfortunately that is a fact of the high demand nature of the job. Slitting throats is a hala process as well, not necessarily all pigs are killed that way. I have been in slaughterhouses and witnesses butchers with animals I have raised. No, it's not pleasant, but I appreciate where my meat comes from.
People who eat meat for years, see this video and are 'sickened' are too stupid to be eating meat in the first place.

I ask again, if seeing slaughterhouse practises turned you veggie, what did you think happened to animals when they were slaughtered.

scuse typos, sorry

btw a bigger issue is that LOADS of meat now sold in UK supermarkets is unlabelled halal, and halal killing is not nice at all. That would be worth a big media campaign if someone wants to look into it.

Chickens - the farming I did (with my father) was a classic mixed farm growing wheat, barley and oats as well as rearing and fattening pigs, cattle and sheep.

I do remember as a young child going with my Dad in a landrover pulling a trailer to the local cattle market and selling animals to local butchers who then slaughtered them in the local area. I also remember how all that suddenly changed and how our pork pigs, for example, were loaded on huge articulated trucks at 5.30 am and then taken to a huge factory abbattoir near Birmingham for sale to supermarkets on contracts. It happened partly when EU regulation changed on slaughter which made small slaughter houses close. It partly happened when supermarkets became more powerful with large central buying functions.

It is what consumers demanded. It was not a choice my father or I agreed with but we had no choice. The alternative is for people to buy more locally from local producers but that is time consuming and more expensive for consumers than buying in supermarkets.

No ,illing is nice wuwoo. Stunned animals iften come too when hung upside down by one leg

As someone on teh thread has already stated, if everyone boycotted all animal products then every pig, cow, sheep and chicken in this country would be culled.

Thanks MoreBeta :) Do you mind me nosing a bit more? So is meat from the local butcher more likely to have come from small scale farms? Or do they all source their meat from the same factories as the supermarkets now? Ooh, and in your experience, how much should, say, a joint of beef cost for Sunday lunch if it has been reared and slaughtered with high welfare standards?

And if the farm animals were not in the fields, there would be no need for hedgerows
east Anglian agriprairie
minimal wildlife
no pretty country walks
and NO hill farming activity - bye bye British countryside

By the way, the only true way to impose high animal welfare standards in the UK is to ban all meat imports and impose a higher legal welfare standard, rigorous inspection and draconian fines. Farmers do in the vast majority happily comply with animal welfare laws and if they were tougher standards and farmers were not forced to compete with cheap imports of meat produced to lower standards they would not complain.

Chickens
this is my local butcher
www.uptonsbutchers.com/eshop/

that is true riven, my point is that the slaughter on the film linked to shows halal killing of pigs only, and imo is misleading in it's comments by not remarking that this si not the only method of slaughter for pigs.

Err, there would never be halal slaughter of pigs. Muslims and jews, who have similar slaughter, do not eat pigs!

very good point talkinpeace2 I hadn't thought of that.

Chickens - unfortunately, some 'local' butchers buy their meat from wholesalers who buy from large abattoirs that buy on contract or even meat importers. Small local butchers do not always mean local meat produced to higher welfare standards.

There are some good local butchers though - you really have to do your homework though and go by reputation.

To guarantee high welfare standards for your Sunday Roast, we would have to ban all meat imports. Then we would have to pass laws to limit the distance animals were allowed to be transported (one area that does cause extreme cruelty). Then we would need to return to using small local abattoirs. Its hard to say how much more all that would cost but the increased cost would not really be on the farm but in the processing costs. I have a feeling it would be about 25%.

Incidentally, I do not think we could or should adopt Organic Standards as the norm. Moreover, I strongly feel the organic food movement is not the best way to improve food quality and animal welfare.

Ilythia
It is a common misconception among bunny hugging vegetarians that all the cute fluffy animals they see will still exist if everybody was veggie like them.
Its bilge.
Hedges, copses, walls, fences, boundary trees, hillocks, tumuli, archaeology
the lot would go to allow mega tractors
no more ground nesting birds
and don't kid me that they would be organic.
Not possible without a source of non oil fertilser (manure)

Interesting. I actually thought you'd say that price increases would be much bigger than that. Why don't you rate organic? I don't either, but wonder if it's for the same reasons

morebeta
at Christmas, Uptons buy the prize winning cows from the market
we get to pick which animal we want our steak from
and he ALWAYS has the postcode of the farms available

talkin, I had figured most of it, but for some reason the hedgerows had escaped me.