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?

I think the organic movement has been a distraction that has largely become a marketing tool allowing a higher profit margin to retailers. In some measure the high price of organic is also due to the fact that it is produced very inefficiently compared to 'normal' food. There are also adidtional costs to maintaining a totally separate supply chain for organic food plus all the additional checks/ documentation.

That higher price of organic is very prohibitive to most consumers. Nor does it necessarily lead to better food quality or higher welfare standards in all cases. It would have been far better to focus on improving the quality and welfare standards of all food across the board. That would have required the agreement of supermarkets though.

Nice that yet again it's descended into patronising the "bunny hugging vegetarians".

Tollund
it is a patronising term indeed
but the total lack of joined up thinking by many such people is why I get fed up with them - even the ones who are very good friends

Morebeta is right ; organic is almost a distraction. Free range, local, minimal petrochemical agriculture has to be the better way to go. I was an HDRA member for many years but a lot of what they said was not practical for people with neighbours, jobs and nearby bindweed and ground elder!

I can look at that link and still want to buy eggs. Thats because I already know the process, and I object to the assumption that one must be uninformed rather than less interested than you.

Talkin - the whole wold is not going to go vegetarian, I get it, so what would happen if everyone went vegetarian is not really relevant. But intensive farming practices are shockingly inhumane and not progress in my book. There has to be some sort of middle ground.

Tollund
this has been my starting point
www.uptonsbutchers.com/eshop/

'It would have been far better to focus on improving the quality and welfare standards of all food across the board. That would have required the agreement of supermarkets though.'

agree with beta about that.

I am veggie because of the practices. I dont have problems eating animals. But while meat is seen as an evey day, 3 meals a day foodstuff intensive farming isnt going to go away. Its much better to eat it once a week (thats how I grew up) for both welfare, quality and enviroment. Do we want to see giant polluting feedlots like they have in the US to feed their over-meated diet? Thats what we will have if the whole world decides to eat like the west.
That and starvation while plant foods are fed to animals in an inefficient calorie exchange to give meat to rich people.
I'd like to see local, meat as a treat. Raised humanely.
There would be less risk of the sort of plagues that start in sick intensively farmed animals too. Bird flu, swine flu, what next?

Quite agree Riven.

Until then I avoid meat, dairy and eggs. Unless someone has raised their own chickens. Friend of mine is jewish, raises her own chickens so she gets about 12 a year. One a month. They eat all the scraps and freerange round her garden. She raises them from the previous years hens and cockerals (keeps both sexes) and then they are slaughtered. Apart from the hens with next years lot.
I'll eat them.

Riven - if meat is a treat for the bulk of us then it will still be available every day for the rich. Just like in in the fifties to which my memory goes back: meat on Sunday, poultry much less often, for ordinary people. To get where you want to go we'd have to go back to the forties and rationing. No thanks.

so Andrew. the rich are never going to be like the rest of us. If they want to eat themselves into gout while fucking up the environment then why would the rest of us doing the same be a good idea?

That video was awful.

It reminded me of that show Jamie Oliver did last year I think. It was live and he had loads of people sat at tables, like at a ball and he asked them to sort the chicks into male and female then gassed the males. It took seconds so the males don't suffer, but it was awful to watch.

The females were put in crates to send off to egg farms (although it transpired he kept them instead). After seeing that show we bought our own hens. Best eggs you can get.

Oh God, I have to admit that is really shocking. I thought free range eggs were o.k. but this is horrible. It's not so much the death but the horrible treatment, just being tipped out like they're not alive. And they should be following their Mums around, pecking at things. I don't know what the answer is, but it just looked evil. for those chicks it must be Hell. MsPlaced, so you are just less interested and proud of it? I would be ashamed myself, to have no empathy and be so harsh. i can understand being tempted to eat yummy eggs, but I can't understand being unmoved by the plight of those helpless creatures. Perhaps it's because you are watching it on a screen and you would have more feeling if you saw living creatures treated as unfeeling objects close up in real life?

Indeed Riven, the rich can still do all kinds of things every day that your average person cannot. I think going back to once a week is a responsible and sustainable thing to do.

Blindcave I think you'd have to be slightly detached in the head not to be moved by it. I still keep seeing them being dropped into that horribly twisty machine.

I'd like to see local, meat as a treat. Raised humanely.
Totally agree.

Oh nice. So because people already understood what happened in farms/chicken sexing factories and can still eat eggs we are 'slightly detached in teh head' or should be 'ashamed of ourselves and harsh'

Lovely. Bit of empathy from you would be ncie. We get it, they are not treated nicely, but have come to terms with that through being informed and educated at a young age. We haven't waited 20 or 30 years to suddenyl find out where our food comes from and been horrified by it into vegetarianism.

I have full respect for vegetarians who have been informed throughout but if you get to adult age and don't knwo where your meat comes from, and then find out and freak out, well, serves you right imo.

Is anyone going to answer my question? If you became veggie after finding out about this recently, needing Jamie or Sir Patronising Paul to tell you what happened, WHAT DID YOU THINK HAPPENED TO THE ANIMALS?

Ilythia, don't be ridiculous. I've been vegetarian all my life, not just been shocked into it yesterday.

same here.

being a veggie is a choice, being a meat eater is a choice, stop trying to force everyone into your way of thinking. I choose to eat and enjoy animal products, I cant see that ever changing. Respect my choice and I may respect yours

Exactly OldRedEyes, but take it a bit further. Regular meat-eater, occasional meat-eater, vegetarian, vegan, all should be a matter of personal choice, and not the result of economic pressure. Deliberately forcing up the price of meat to make us eat less, which is what some posters seem to suggest, would be profoundly wicked.

OldRedEyes - everyone has choices. Some people use their choices to knowingly cause suffering and death. What's to respect?

Andrew - why do you feel so entitled to eat meat five days a week? Millions of people across the world lack inadequate food and water and there's you stamping your feet demanding to eat whatever you want, when you want it. We in this country are lucky to be in that situation, it would just be nice if it came with some responsibility.

FFS Op what did you think happens to the thousands of male chicks.They should be kept as pets??

You should see what happens catching them in chicken sheds.Packing them in crates and sliding the crate full of chickens down a plank of wood where they bang on the hard floor.They reachin get hold of whatever bit of birds they can- say a wing of one and a leg of another and yanking them out through a small hole.Throw them on the floor -sometimes with with broken bones where they have to move quick before the next one lands on top of it.
I am no animal rights campaigner, but even I had to balk at that.

hmmm, where does choice come in to environmental degredation caused by meat eaters choices? Get everyone on the planet fed well with plant food first and then see what land is left for growing animals without chopping down forests.
It just wouldnt be sustainable for 7 billion people to have the choice to eat meat 7 days a week.

Tollund but you cause so much pain a suffering to the plants you eat. Still being a hypacrit then.

Everyone has to eat and in that choosing something will suffer. Its called nature. We just happen to be at the top of the food chain.

Being top of the food chain means that we can afford to think about where our food comes from, IMO. I'm not a vegetarian, btw.