To ask everyone to eat less meat and meat products?

[Breadandwine]

There are 3 reasons I eat a plant-exclusive diet:

1. I feel I'm healthier (I became veggie to avoid BSE - and my osteoarthritis has been stopped in its tracks since I went vegan)
2. Animal welfare issues (I went vegan after looking at the inevitable cruelty involved in the meat and dairy industries)
3. Global warming/climate change (the single most important thing anyone can do to fight GW is to go vegan - the world's livestock industry contributes more to GW than does transport!)

Before global warming reared its ugly head, I was quite reticent about my veganism, only talking about it when I was asked. But now that our children's and our grandchildren's future is threatened, I'm a lot more vocal.

And now there's me and the Pope on the same side - who'dda thunk it?

Yes, I have cats. They can't digest carbohydrates and salt damages their kidneys.

Thank you waste of time (great song btw)

This link may not work but it is about the surplus male chick industry.

hatchery.mercyforanimals.org/

I bet your contributing a lot to the global warming with your lentilly farts OP. Ima stick to my meats thanks.

Funny you have yet to reply to any of my posts favourite that point out the huge giant craters flaws in your ideas. I can only think you're hoping people gullible or equally misinformed will come along and be swayed by you

lurked you've told me I'm ignorant 3 times but I don't think you've asked me anything that needs a response, have you? If I've missed something please tell me and I will respond (tomorrow, as I'm gong to bed now).

I'm a low carber and eat almost exclusively meat, cheese, butter and eggs. Not changing that anytime soon as I feel healthier than I ever have, absolutely including my time spent on a vegan diet, that was the worst I have ever felt and ended up needing b12 injections and iron!

"omnivorism may have worked well for the human species but it hasn't worked out so well for the planet in general, has it?"

Whatever do you mean? Surely you don't really believe that you have isolated omnivorism as the source of all the ills on our planet Earth.

We are what we are - omnivore animals who are meant to eat meat and fish, not herbivores meant to survive on plants, nuts, and silly protein powders sprinkled on smoothies made in expensive & glorified blenders.

You are fooling yourself.

Go and research what happened when horses were replaced by tractors in farming.
Oh, indeed. The Suffolk Punch was all over East Anglia, in quantity, up to the 1950s. Now they're a rare breed: maybe 35 foals born each year.

Someone upthread said animals are badly treated on farms. It depends on the farm. Intensive farming, like broiler chickens, is pretty unpleasant, but I've looked after sheep and they have a pretty cushy life.

Someone upthread also claimed that cat food is only 4% meat. Bullshit. Read the label and consult info on the web: it includes at least 4% of whatever the flavour is said to be, but it's mostly meat derivatives. By contrast, if you research dog food for 30 secs, you soon find that, what with dogs being omnivores, there's a lot less meat in dog food.

I agree that the human race isn't good for the planet, but I think that's due to raw numbers as much as anything else.

"I have cats. They can't digest carbohydrates"

Not true. Actually, cats can efficiently digest cooked starch. My cats certainly never had any negative symptoms from eating pasta or bread.

" and salt damages their kidneys"

Wrong again. Like all animals, cats need to eat some salt. Too much salt damages their kidneys.

I think the problem is the amount of meat we eat rather than the fact we eat meat. Many years ago meat was considered a treat, and all parts of a chicken for example were used, even the bones being boiled for stock to squeeze every last flavour from it.

These days meat is eaten at almost every meal. It's not valued in the same way because it's so readily available. This is where the waste comes in and causes over consumption of meat.

What a lot of people are missing is that the OP wasn't asking everyone to give up meat. Just to reduce the amount of meat consumed. Which I don't think is unreasonable at all.

Omnivores, relax!

Because primary you keep stating the same wrong thing at me and when I correct you at no point have you had any logical response to explain why it would work, you just make the same wrong suggestion of what we should do and/or ask another question. Also I wasn't using ignorant in the rude sense but in the sense of ignorant of facts, so sorry if you thought I meant rude.

"Many years ago meat was considered a treat"

For your ancestors, maybe. Mine were nomadic tribes whose diet was almost entirely animal-based.

FGS Cote you pick holes in anything don't you? You know exactly what I mean. Nomadic tribes did not number in the billions and our more recent ancestors were a lot less wasteful than we are now. You cannot argue with that.

I am not sure where these feral farm animals are supposed to roam- landowners won't want them and there is very little common ground.
When you see a cow in pain, or one that needs a vet for a birth what would you do? Ignore or pay the vet's bill?
It must be a health hazard when you find a dead cow- who disposes of it?
We don't have a predator big enough to kill and eat them and neither do we have scavengers big enough to dispose of them.
What happens when they wander over roads and cause accidents?
Do you imagine the farmers can afford to let them roam over their fields, keep them fenced in, stop them starving in winter, call vets out? Even if they were these kindly philanthropists there will be no room- the land will be covered in poly tunnels.

Meat wasn't a treat in the Stone Age - it was the staple diet before farming. You don't find many berries in deep winter with a nomadic life style.

They were a lot less wasteful but do you really want to go back to eating tripe, pigs trotters, hearts etc? I don't.

It would be a far greater cruelty to let domesticated animals go wild , they are likely to suffer dreadfully from disease, starve, freeze, get eaten away by maggots etc.

Yanbu. I don't get why cars and fuel are taxed so heavily and all the negative publicity, but the farming of animals for meat and dairy is barely mentioned despite causing so much pollution.

If we all made an effort to consume less meat and dairy the world would be much better off environmentally.

Deliberately missing the point again Mehit? I refer you back to the third paragraph in my post at 21.47.

I do consume a lot less, but there are people on this thread who make me want to do the exact opposite. If you want to make a difference then do it yourself and set by quiet example. Telling people what to do never goes down well! ( I have never felt more like going out and having a huge steak!)

I already do that - I exoect that I have more veggie cook books than most vegetarians!

I am getting uptight about those who wish to be kind to animals and yet leave them to go feral and starve to death, get nasty worms etc

Well forget about those people and do what you believe is right. A thread like this is useful to highlight an issue which may not be well known. But to let people who annoy you change your behaviour is giving them more credit than they deserve.

Replying to paragraph 3 at 21.47 on my last post.

I am off to bed but if you want people to change stop preaching at them- bolshy people like me want to do the opposite!

I don't disagree OP but you'll get nowhere on here.

YANBU

"You know exactly what I mean. Nomadic tribes did not number in the billions and our more recent ancestors were a lot less wasteful than we are now. "

I don't, actually. Before about 12,000 BC everybody's ancestors were getting most of their calories from meat. More recently, about 1,000 years ago, my ancestors were still on a meat + dairy diet almost exclusively - not many berries on the Eurasian Steppe, especially in those days.

Yes, we are all most wasteful now but that is because there is no scarcity (for us in the Western world) anymore. It doesn't have anything to do with eating meat or lentils or whatever.