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?

lurked is right stars, there are a lot of people who would be going 'Oh how horrid' about a dead deer (probably as they tuck into their shitly-produced cheap mince bolognaise). People don't always want to be reminded that the food on their plate was once alive.

I can actually sympathise there because I didn't like to think about it either, to the extent of only choosing boneless skinless meat so that I couldn't possibly encounter anything grisly. Thankfully I realised this was all a bit unnecessary and just stopped eating meat. For me, that was the best way forward as I felt that my previous behaviour (closing eyes and pretending it had never been alive) was frankly disrespectful to the animal and indicated my moral cowardice. I do think that if you're going to eat meat then you should absolutely be able to confront it (as it were) in its unprocessed state - my husband and FIL do, and I believe many conscientious carnivores do. If eating meat is what you want to do, then fine, but please try to buy with an eye to welfare. It's the mass produced meat derived from very unhappy animals that properly upsets most veggies/vegans (and many omnis too I think).

I recommend growing up in a Muslim country as an antidote to squeamishness in adulthood re dead animals waiting to be butchered.

Every Ramadan, you see all sorts of large dead animals (lambs, mostly) hanging, their throats cut, being skinned, etc. Then you eat their meat that day. Tastiest meals ever. Mmmmmm.

I don't know cote, I did just that and it didn't help! I can't stand the idea of making things dead (whilst being an advocate for euthanasia, weirdly). Terminally squeamish, me.

Really? I watched animals being (rather humanely, imho) killed and cut into edible pieces throughout my childhood as part of Ramadan and have to say that it instilled in me a very healthy viewpoint about the food I eat and where it comes from.

We are omnivores who have evolved particularly to eat meat (with incisors & molars, hydrochloric acid in our stomachs, enzymes to quickly digest animal protein & fat.

I have no problem at all with vegetarians or vegans who don't eat animal products because they feel bad for the animals, but I do with those who try to argue that humans aren't meant to eat animals, can't digest animal products, or similar nonsense.

I don't think things like that at all cote. We are certainly adapted to eat animals - for most of human history they've been the most readily available and most concentrated protein sources we could have had. I'm grateful to live in a country/place where I have the option to abstain, but if I were lost in the wilderness I'd eat meat just because I would have to to survive. I wouldn't feel guilty either.

As for being squeamish - we are all differently affected by incidents in childhood I guess. It can inure you to such things, or sensitise.

Good for you. It sounds like you have a healthy take on the whole issue.

"Adapted" sounds like humans have ever lived without eating meat, which is not the case. Quite the contrary, our ancestors got their calorie needs almost exclusively from animals. If anything, we have adapted to eating many grains thanks to bacteria living in our colon digesting it for us.

YABU.

Not sure what me doing away with streaky bacon Mondays, beef curtains Tuesdays, liver and onion Wednesdays, tough old boot gammon Thursdays and indiscriminate freezer gristle Fridays are going to do about global warming in the face of the massive industrialisation of China, Brazil, Russia and India.

Alright, we have EVOLVED to eat meat (as in, we started out as single-celled organisms and evolved into multicellular ones which were optimised for digesting meat).

This thread is teaching me to choose my words carefully!

YANBU

I agree we should all less meat, I am not a vegetarian, I eat fish and chicken mainly with occasional red meat. I think I could be a fishtarian (?) and not eat meat just fish quite easily.

I suppose it depends on what you class as squeamish. Dd from a very young age has been quite happy with the visual presence of dead things, (unless of course it's complicated by personal loss either hers or someone else's) she can be sad it's no longer going about it's business whilst accepting death is part of life, and viewing the body makes it no less dead. And in fact with pets it helps acceptance it's gone.
However she was about 7 before I went any deeper than 'the people who make/sell them aren't as kind to animals than we are' into why we don't buy or use some products. Dd was the child in her class expounding on the quality of life (lack of) and various methods of destruction during the horse meat scandal to the horror of the 'squeamish' little girls eating their intensively reared ham sandwich and crying for the pretty ponys. And yet I wouldn't yet want her knowing some of the more brutal details, for the same reason I don't wish to view footage myself.
I suppose personally squeamish comes down to whether it's wanting to avoid reality, in which case it's not on. Or whether you are fully aware of reality and viewing certain images ( visual or otherwise) will do nothing to change either that reality or anybodys behavior.

We stayed in a cottage in Devon over Easter, on a working farm. House looked onto a field of sheep's and their new-born lambs and chickens. About to tuck into a roast…I just couldnt, not with a field of alive and happy hens clucking around, clearly enjoying their life, when one of their “friends” was served up on our plate. Also ruled never to eat lamb again, realised the utter cold, dark, cruelty of it, seeing the proud mums bonding with their sweet new-borns, never from one another's side, who in a few months would be torn away from each other and driven to a slaughterhouse? Its so cruel, and there really is no need at all to eat lamb!

crustsaway cheeky

Don't you want wool either? What do you do with all the bodies once they are past producing wool ?

Only reason lambs are slaughtered at a few months is cos people want the nice young meat, farmers would quite happily leave it longer if it sold.

My farm shop used to sell mutton- it was very nice. I haven't seen it since I moved.

I knit and I am quite fond of wool..... I make an exception for the more expensive organic free-range hippy wools as they probably come from slightly more cossetted sheep, but in general I just buy 100% synthetic stuff now. It's softer anyway.

Don't forget the beeswax in confectionery and crushed beetle shells used in cosmetics. My son got a bag of 'healthy' fruit-based sweets in a party bag recently that contained milk protein AND gelatin. As did the antibiotics I recently had to take. Lucky us!

Sidebar: as an ex-microbiologist I can't say I care much whether I kill bacteria or not. They're impossible NOT to kill, just by living, so it would be a waste of time trying not to. Anything bigger than a microbe gets more respect from me though.

The malaria mosquito is a living creature too, and it's bigger than a microbe, but I wish we could drive it into extinction.

Oh do climb down

I'd add fleas and headlice to Andrew's list...

My personal view is that if you accept that the meat on your plate was once part of a sentient animal, you're more aware of husbandry issues and therefore more likely to eat meat from animals which had decent lives. This is one reason why I'm very happy to eat game: though I know the end isn't always quick and clean, at least the venison/pigeon/pheasant had some freedom first.

I agree that we should eat fewer animals. However, I think that ethically farmed animals at a price that is fair for that process would not harm our collective diet. We would eat less, but good quality meat (if we weren't veggie/vegan) and we, farmed animals, and the planet would benefit.

beef curtains Tuesdays

Are you Madge from Benidorm?

So, when we say things like 'it might be a good idea to cut down on meat consumption, y'know', we are actually being immensely restrained compared to the real hardcore veggies/vegans out there. Believe it or not, we're holding back out of consideration for the feelings of our friends/family/people in general. So to be told that even this small amount of letting our feelings be known is preachy and ranty and over-bearing: well, it rankles a bit.

But why do you even need to tell someone to change their eating habits? You don't know anything about the choices I have made, any research I've done, and what my level of comfort is with my food choices. If I want information about changing my diet, I will search the internet, see a nutritionist, read a book, or if I value your opinion, I may ask for it. Otherwise, I won't talk about your food choices, so you don't get to talk about mine.

Reducing consumption of animal products. Absolute no brainer. Sound Health and environmental reasons for both.

Asking people to become vegan or completely vegetarian. Wont ever happen. Unrealistic and a waste of breath.

People need to give their money to the good guys. The small farmers. Free range and organic, local ones, and stop giving your money to the factory farmers, and directly financing animal abuse. It still wont happen. Even people who can well afford to, are more tempted by some bacon from a tortured crated pig in denmark because its 50p cheaper, than they are by something with at least some ethical principles.

How has the farming of living breathing sentient beings got to the point where shops like Iceland can sell 2 chickens for £5? Meat should be far more expensive than this, then maybe the true cost of an animal's life taken in the name of food will be shown in the care of that animal, because at the moment there is true suffering involved with prices like this.

Vegan here and have never asked others to become. Often silently wonder though how people can eat say, a sausage, without thought of how that pig suffered whilst alive.

zippyone that would be a pescatarian then.