To think ethics in shopping count? (Aldi and Lidl)

[penguinpear]

There was an article in the Sunday Times this weekend about dairy farming. Over the past decade the number of dairy farmers has halved and more are going out of business all the time.

Aldi and Lidl are reported to pay only 56-59p for each four pints they sell. In contrast Tesco pay 73p and m&s 78p.

I am really upset by this, as I think we have a bleak future if people care only for their own pockets and not anyone else, including animals whose welfare will get worse if people have no interest in the supply chain.

Ok, leaving aside the more hysterical aspect of your post, I ask again.....what difference does your view on meat eating make when discussing the fact that supermarkets under pay for their milk?

Aldi and Lidl pay their staff a living wage, which is a pretty important ethical consideration. The staff in my local (non UK) Aldi are great. They scan quickly, but they're very friendly and they take someone off shelf stacking to help a couple of regular customers with disabilities.

Would we all be ok with eating our cats and dogs

Yes. I would. Because I accept that I cannot make a moral choice between 2 different sorts of meat based purely on their species. If I am happy to eat cow, I cant refuse to eat guinea pig just because its a guinea pig.

Banging the "meat is murder" drum hasnt got any relevance to this thread!

I wasn't being hysterical, just facts.
My view is that the farmers are an evil lot - killing and cruelty is their business. Why should I feel sorry for any of them, that they are being underpaid. And do remember, they are actually being SUBSIDISED by the government. They do not deserve any sympathy for trying to make a living by being cruel to animals.
Let's go back to my slavery analogy. Would you feel sorry for the human slave trafficker that he was being underpaid?

Interrobang, is PETA a USA based organisation? Because we have much more stringent labelling laws in the UK, so 'organic' can mean something different over there than it can here.

Interrobang You are aware there is no ethics in any mass farming or in modern consumption?

Soy, whether for cattle or people, is destroying rainforests and kicking indigenous people of their lands as is the new popular fad of quinoa which is literally starving the groups that have lived off of it for centuries because the West has made the price so high.

Mass growing of wheat and the current products used to increase yields has destroyed the food sources of multiple pollinators that have nosedived and compounded because some pollinators are being transported from farm to farm to pollinate foods has destroyed many other pollinators. The monocultural farming methods needed for farmers to make enough money to survive is environmentally destructive (and still often leads to most farmers and their workers being in desperate poverty which is violence in and of itself).

Most foods picked worldwide are picked by exploited workforces, often migrant workforces with no rights. Not just food from developing countries which are often brought up, in the US about a quarter of food will be collected by those under 18 and cases have found children as young as 6 working full days to pick food. There are companies that will bring in undocumented workers, pay them crap because they can't complain (or force them to for free to pay 'debts') and when they get caught and sent back, the company just brings in the next batch and death rates are high. Even normal farmers have far higher death rates because of ho hard they need to push to survive. This has been seen worldwide, this has been seen in the UK. Those people collecting the vegetables and pulses that make the most ethical and unprocessed vegan diet deserve just as much consideration as the animals when considering ethics, yes?

And that's before we get into Western countries taking away people's livelihoods and food to make it more profitable without punishment (best example is Haiti, entire food system screwed and an entire species destroyed to force the importing of a foreign species that needs far more care in that environment to make several companies more money).

Being vegan does not get one out of the major ethical problems in the food industry systems - and in fact many vegan fads have made things worse around the world. There is no such thing as ethical consumption in modern-late capitalism, the system is set up to maximize exploitation of people to maximize profits. Going on about dairy industry conspiracies without recognizing that the entire food system is built on exploitation, blood, and lies of values, grinding farmers and other agricultural workers at the bottom in a system that will dangle labels to consumers for us to feel better without any real change.

Individuals will have to make their own best choices to survive and thrive as best as one can within the systems we have and find ethical guidelines they can live with, but the whole thing needs to be taken apart and new built - just taking animal consumption out of the picture isn't a real global answer (and many organizations that have pushed in on indigenous populations who already had sustainable practices and prevented hunting have caused starvation and increase in prices for other foods which said groups have done nothing about).

zippy, I believe they started there, but we have our own in the UK, too: www.peta.org.uk/.

Lidl does sell oragnic milk, but only semi skimmed.
I do my weekly shop at lidl, but buy (organic) milk at co op. I thought co op was run like Wailtrose, and employees had a share in the profits?

blog.peta.org.uk/2013/09/humane-meat-dont-believe-the-hype/

To address the OP, Aldi and Lidl do not buy milk from farmers. They buy it from the large milk suppliers (Dairy Crest, Muller Wiseman etc). So if you buy from a milkman, it's normally Dairy Crest anyway, so you are buying from the same source that Aldi and Lidl do!

Being vegan does not get one out of the major ethical problems in the food industry systems - and in fact many vegan fads have made things worse around the world. There is no such thing as ethical consumption in modern-late capitalism, the system is set up to maximize exploitation of people to maximize profits.

Spork I agree with you there. I think most vegans would acknowledge that their lives aren't entirely pearly white; it's almost impossible if you live in an industrialised country and rely on any mass-produced products at all.

I do choose to mitigate it where I can though, and so I choose not to consume animal-derived products. I also try to pick fairtrade/local produce when it's available, and to minimise airmiles.

amateurish I have just made enquiries about local milk as a result of this thread, as a matter of fact (my boys drink it still) and you're right, there was only one local producer of milk that wasn't Dairy Crest (out of about 15). Great

Yes we were talking about ethics - PETA have no qualms about exploiting damaging stereotypes about womens bodies to 'get their messages across' - they really pick and choose their "ethics".

There is no such thing as ethical consumption in modern-late capitalism, the system is set up to maximize exploitation of people to maximize profits.

I'm not normally so cynical but I really think this statement is true. If we engage with our purchases and lifestyle choices we can set out to minimize damage to others and our ecosystem.

But the path is fraught with perils. I give you the cruelty of quinoa - www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/16/vegans-stomach-unpalatable-truth-quinoa

sorry - I mean minimize but not eliminate.

Amateurish, I found that was mostly the case when I looked into milkmen. However, I have now found one supplier local to me where it is delivered direct from the farm.

Plumping Many do, as I said each individual must find their own ways to counteract and minimize the impact of the systems we are all in while other ways are being fought for, but more evangelical ones such as Interobangg who are comparing human slavery to animals (when enslaved humans are already sold as animals and dehumanziation such as that is part of why) and going on about dairy conspiracies and damage as if green pro-vegan organizations haven't gone down the damage and propaganda road themselves just irks me. Many indigenous communities have been harmed by these groups and the harm to these people is often erased when discussing ethics in the food system which I find quite sad and a sign of how the system has held the 'look we're kinda nice to animals' as the end all of food ethics.

Interrobang - you are aware that those enslaved people were (and are) already dehumanized and sold as animals? That enslaved children being used as animal bait and food, seen as less than even that? That the comparing of humans to animals is a disgusting, racist tactic that ignores how badly humans are already destroyed in the current agricultural system -- and the people who have been most harmed by vegan fads and organizations like PETA and Greenpeace are those people who were and are most likely to be enslaved and treated as animals (and, especially with Peta, have done massive amount of cruelty and damage to animals)?

Maybe you shouldn't buy into the humane vegan and consumer hype, it's easily debunked as the information is easily available and many other vegans (and exvegans like myself) can easily explain how you're damaging your own cause.

Ethics are for people who can afford to have them.

It would be good if there was more of a focus on providing vegetables and meat free alternatives at very competitive prices, if only to encourage better diets amongst all people, regardless of their income level.

Then again that in itself leads to problems about taking over land and robbing animals of their habitats.

People have been drinking milk for hundreds, if not thousands of years. The Ancient Greeks made cheese with it. Pretty much all the civilisations around Greece drank milk. The Ancient Egyptians used milk.

ASTONISHINGLY, humanity has managed to survive despite this.

It would be good if there was more of a focus on providing vegetables and meat free alternatives at very competitive prices, if only to encourage better diets amongst all people, regardless of their income level.

Hear hear!!

Also, I try to be a mindful vegan - i.e. if it turns out that quinoa is not a consequence-free grain (so to speak, and I didn't know that before now) then I will not buy it anymore, because I don't want to rob Peter to pay Paul so to speak. Surely everyone can try to choose the least harmful path that they're happy to follow? Eating less meat and ensuring that what you do buy is of the highest welfare standard available would at least be a start for omnivores.

Eating less meat and ensuring that what you do buy is of the highest welfare standard available would at least be a start for omnivores.

I agree, and if more people did this, meat consumption would drop and there would be capacity to produce what is needed more ethically, but if you try to encourage this mindset on here, you get the piss roundly taken, with accusations of magic chickens etc.

In a similar vein, there was a thread yesterday where most people held the opinion that 100 g of beef per person in a beef stew is insufficient and stingy.

But I don't think basic vegetables (potatoes, carrots, onions, cabbage etc) and pulses need subsidising, they are already dirt cheap.

We need to get away from the mindset a meal needs a big slab of meat and some air freighted out of season vegetables in it for it to be 'a meal'.

But then, if we stop buying green beans from Kenya, we take away a valuable source of income to the farmers and packers.

But whoever it is whose staple diet is quinoa can keep it as far as I'm concerned. I've tried to like it and tried cooking it in several ways, but have never come up anything edible.

We need to get away from the mindset a meal needs a big slab of meat and some air freighted out of season vegetables in it for it to be 'a meal'.
But then, if we stop buying green beans from Kenya, we take away a valuable source of income to the farmers and packers.

Oh, so you've seen me in the vegetable aisle in Tesco fretting over the morality of whether to support poorer economies at the expense of airmiles and potential human/animal rights abuses then

It is hard. I have no idea what the answer is, but I do have a rather socialist utopian dream of many local dairies/farms, with a sort of rationing system set up so that everybody gets some meat/dairy but not loads, and a system of allotments/local farms so that we rely on local veg in season or more exotic veg grown on local farms which have the needed equipment.

The short-term cost would be that we'd be depriving other countries of their income, but surely in the long-term they'd have to go back to supporting themselves (where possible, obv) with more sustainable uses of land (e.g. for varied crops rather than quinoa monoculture)?

Oh I don't know. It's entirely possible that I'm talking out of my arse.

Plumping but I think what the quinoa example shows is nothing is consequence free.

I guess the best we can do is buy seasonal, buy local, buy only what we need (try to waste less), reduce packaging etc.

Vegans/vegetations/meateaters can all make more informed shopping and dietary decisions if they want too, but it is all relative.

I'm not about to google every food stuff for the ethics of it before I shop - no one is realistically going to research Kraft foods entirely before deciding to buy a Cream Egg or not.

My own personal ethics, that I can live with is to try and eat seasonally and locally, and organically and Freetrade where affordable.

So I signed up to Able & Cole for a fruit & veggie box, thinking it would help. Except the fruit and vege came from all over UK and Europe. And due to the way they would drop off to me I couldn't recycle/reuse the boxes/packaging by leaving it out for them (I would have had to leave it on the street overnight). So that didn't really work out.

Now I'm back to seasonal f&v from the local fruit and vege stall mostly - I have no idea about the ethics of the people who own it. Yes I'll try the farmers market but they do really charge a massive premium where I am and I try to spend weekends with my children rather than shopping.

I try to work out something that works for me - but it all has to be a balance. I think it can all to easily be something to get a bit obsessed about, which isn't great either.

:)

I avoid buying in supermarkets altogether, but then I am fortunate here in Mexico that they still haven't entirely wiped out all the small shops and markets yet.

Very well said interrobang. People are beginning to see the light and wake up to how cruel and unnecessary their omni diet is. Sadly there will always be those who choose to remain ignorant and will defend their cruel environmentally destructive diet with ridiculous arguments. They are increasingly a dying breed though.