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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

to find vegans really annoying?

422 replies

seriouslynowdontbesoearnest · 16/05/2017 00:12

Just that really. I know a few and my god do they ever preach on and on about their coconut oil macha powder cacao powder chia seed energy balls and milk industry and calves being killed etc. It's the over earnestness and attitude that they are the most enlightened people to walk this planet that wind me up. It reminds me of being 18 again.

OP posts:
Notmyrealname85 · 17/05/2017 19:35

Ethics is subjective

I ensure any meat and dairy I buy is sourced from decent farms (our local farmshop). To me, that's sufficient. I've seen how they operate, I've seen the local abbatoir.

I find the zealous vegans are just alienating. Too often they merge with Instagram "dietitians" who give false advice. I'll get advice from my medical professionals and that's it. It's also detracting from more sustainable campaigns eg on food sourcing. I also don't trust their stats - eg researching milk intolerances just now, one gov website says 2% of adult population in UK have any intolerances. Website owned by a company making lactose free products says 16% without a link to the research (the latter figure correlates more with general European stats, where ethnic variation plays a part)

You get good vegans and good meat eaters, but the shitty people hog the discussion (no pun intended)

Notmyrealname85 · 17/05/2017 19:40

And yes there's something ridiculous about some zealots saying we should change our ethics and sending that message from a smart phone. Where do you think the pieces of that phone came from? Who was underpaid to make it? Which corporation is paying zilch tax to sell it to you, just so you can scroll on Mumsnet about the food markets not being fair

Change it by degree, and all of it, or stop being so middle class about the one issue you're willing to trade on

Pinkponiesrock · 17/05/2017 19:47

I could send you a photo of my cows in the field right now to judge if they look stressed or quite content, actually we could FaceTime and you could ask them if they are currently worrying about their impending end or if they just want to find the best bit of grass to eat.

Like I said in my initial post I fully respect anyone who is a vegetarian/vegan, that's their choice and they are free to make it.
Of course there are bad farmers out there, same as there are bad electricians, dentists, lawyers, teachers, politicians, lorry drivers, any industry will have it share of bad guys but that doesn't mean they are all bad!

Yes there are videos of bad practice in slaughter houses, farms, livestock transport and it's not acceptable but there is proof of dodgy practice in any industry or crooked deals if you look for it. Please don't tar us all with the same brush. No one farms for the money believe me, as there isn't much of it in farming!

derxa · 17/05/2017 19:50

Emily from bite size vegan But she's just the sort of person I was talking about. From the USA and showing giant industrial farming units.
One of her youtube videos was banned by youtube.

Turisas · 17/05/2017 19:53

I wonder if people think calling farmers rapists, meat eaters murderers and um... deliberately misspelling names Hmm will actually change anyone's mind.

Cheepandorm · 17/05/2017 20:25

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

CoteDAzur · 17/05/2017 21:14

"how could you possibly know whether your cows are contemplating their own mortality, or indeed mentally reciting the complete works of Shakespeare?"

Brilliant Grin

Do your posts make sense to you, user? I'm just wondering this is an elaborate joke that you are playing on us. Surely nobody would say the above with a straight face.

LauraMipsum · 17/05/2017 21:14

Annie I'm not under any illusions that veganism is going to end all suffering everywhere ever. Nor are my fair trade Vego bars. Obviously. That would be totally fatuous.

But that's the fallacy of perfection, isn't it - you have made some choices which cause damage therefore there's no point making any choices which don't.

It is impossible to have a truly ethical diet, never mind a truly ethical lifestyle, in a western country in 2017. Someone somewhere is being exploited. I have a computer and a mobile phone, I'm deeply unhappy about the way coltan is produced but ironically, I can't do my job, which includes representing refugees from eastern Congo fleeing the war fuelled by the demand for coltan, without them. Like everyone, I make choices about what I can and can't (or realistically, will and won't) do and even if I'm doing something as innocuous as buying lettuce, if I go to a supermarket there is probably a supplier being fucked over, which is why I said earlier my ideal would be to grow my own.

What I don't accept is that if I am making some bad choices which cause harm (using a computer, owning a car) then I may as well compound them with a chicken sandwich and a kit-kat. I can limit the damage I cause. I'm not naive enough to think I can eradicate it.

user1487175389 · 17/05/2017 21:32

So varied facial expressions are the marker of 'food' vs 'not food'? Hmm

Or maybe 'something I can fist in order to produce delicious pus filled milk'? Vs' something who would rip me a new one if I even tried'? Hmm

I've just had a read through the red tractor assurance bumf. Tbh it reads like the bare minimum you would expect in order to produce meat that isn't immediately life threatening to consumers. And it's definitely more about that than providing any kind of quality of life for livestock for its own sake. I can't believe how indifferent to all this shit I used to be

user1487175389 · 17/05/2017 21:33

Something which

LauraMipsum · 17/05/2017 21:46

And for those worried about the environment - bad news:

"The global livestock industry produces more greenhouse gas emissions than all cars, planes, trains and ships combined, but a worldwide survey by Ipsos MORI in the report finds twice as many people think transport is the bigger contributor to global warming."

from here: ourworld.unu.edu/en/eating-less-meat-essential-to-curb-climate-change-says-report

based on this: www.chathamhouse.org/PUBLICATION/LIVESTOCK-CLIMATE-CHANGE-FORGOTTEN-SECTOR-GLOBAL-PUBLIC-OPINION-MEAT-AND-DAIRY?dm_i=1TY5%2C30JL0%2CBHZILT%2CAUGSP%2C1

I don't have any investment in whether any individual chooses to use transport, but not eat meat or dairy; or whether they choose not to use transport, but to eat meat or dairy; but for the vast majority the option isn't either / or. Most people do both. It's kind of irksome when people who follow a vegan diet are accused of not caring about climate change for using transport, when globally the livestock industry does more damage than transport.

CoteDAzur · 17/05/2017 22:54

"So varied facial expressions are the marker of 'food' vs 'not food'?"

No no no. You are wide off the mark.

Tasty meat is the main criterion for food vs not food.

HTH.

CoteDAzur · 17/05/2017 22:55

"It is impossible to have a truly ethical diet, never mind a truly ethical lifestyle,"

So the only ethical choice is to kill oneself?

The plot thickens.

Rantymare · 17/05/2017 23:02

Of course one can't have a totally ethical diet
Does this mean it's right to think 'fuck it I'll just not care at all about my ethical impact because I can never be totally ethical?

No, it doesn't.

LauraMipsum · 17/05/2017 23:06

Well, not really Cote, the only ethical choice is to do what you can, within the parameters your life affords, while accepting it won't be perfect.

My particular version of "what you can" is going to be different to others' but it's not complicated.

CoteDAzur · 17/05/2017 23:19

Depends on what you call "ethical".

Do living beings (plant and animal) have to die so that we can go on living? Yes. Does that mean we are unethical? No.

That is because we are part of the Food Chain. Not because we are not ethical beings. The lion isn't "unethical" because it eats the gazelle.

ArcheryAnnie · 17/05/2017 23:21

But that's the fallacy of perfection, isn't it - you have made some choices which cause damage therefore there's no point making any choices which don't.

Oh, I agree, Laura, which is why I made that exact point already, twice. It's just I think if you are going to tell people they are rapists and slavers (and while you haven't done this on this thread, others have) and say that you are having a vegan diet to avoid causing distress, you do have to be upfront about which kinds of distress you think it's worth berating other people about, and which kinds of distress you feel happy about keeping quiet on.

I've known (and fed) a lot of vegans over the years, and as I said, we often eat vegan even though we aren't even vegetarian, but I think it's actively counterproductive for vegans to posit themselves as pure - as opposed to the nasty rest of us who have hearts of stone - when reality isn't like that. We all have battles to choose, and often they are different battles to yours.

A practical question: I would rather the Bank of England use vegetable oil in the new fiver, instead of either the current tallow, or the proposed palm oil, but if push came to shove and we have to choose between tallow or palm oil, I think the least ethically bad choice would be for them to stick with the tallow, and I have written to them to tell them this. What would you choose, Laura?

LauraMipsum · 17/05/2017 23:47

Tallow or palm oil isnt a great choice! I'd need to read more about the sourcing and quantities but wouldn't be surprised if on balance tallow were the lesser of two evils.

I don't think it's helpful for anyone to equate AI and rape, and I find some vegan memes quite misogynistic. I really upset a man on FB who was going on about eggs being chicken periods and would you eat a period? URGH! by saying I ate my own placenta so it wouldn't bother me in the least.

blerp · 18/05/2017 00:29

I think if you are in 'floods of tears' about how exactly like a person being raped the artificial insemination of a farm animal is, you need to reign in your fantasy life a bit so you don't say such monumentally disgusting things in public where there are real rape victims.

Totallypearshaped · 18/05/2017 01:18

I'm an X farmer in the EU, unlike the farmers in the U.K. who will have to figure out their own laws about animal welfare post brexit, animals in the EU are protected from cruelty by law.

Pinkponies, I agree with you, yes you see the lambs being born and they feed on organic grassland swards, they're allowed to roam in kin groups and also housed in bad weather, dipped and shorn. Of course you get attached to them, they're lovely.

They have one bad day. I love lamb as meat, it's organic and has no pesticides hormones nor growth factors or antibiotics. It's delicious and nutritious.

My feeling on vegans is that it's up to them what they want to eat. Personally I think their doggedness, poor mood and lack of humour is a vitamin B deficiency. I also wonder why they have meat eating teeth and enzymes in their guts, but I don't really engage with them as their breath smells of granola Wink

Seriously, I used to be a vegetarian and didn't eat dairy or eggs, but ate fish. I wasn't very well on it. My belief is that as a species we have evolved to eat meat and vegetables, and grains.

What we are not evolved to eat is sugar. And it's sugar that's killing people. If you have to polemicise on your soap box, sugar content of foods, including sugar water injected poultry breasts is the thing to bang on about.

I feel sorry for the people in the uk who may have to take American beef and poultry as part of some trade deal now you're not in the EU.
Now, the American and Brazilian laws are extraordinarily lax and treatment on feedlots is hellish and inhumane. I certainly wouldn't eat any meat made in those canibalistic factories of misery and disease.

I've worked in abattoirs as well, and can hand on heart say that the humane way of killing animals is 100% better than halal, or slitting throats to bleed out without a humane gun first, but of course one can't say that as that might upset people.
Even mentioning I've worked in an abattoir seems to make vegan people think I'm a murderer. The thing is that I've never met a vegan who has worked in one as well, and has seen with their own eyes what they so vehemently argue against.

It's one bad day in the life of a well treated, well fed, healthy animal.

My onjective as a farmer was to produce food that was cruelty free, and is pure and healthy. Organic grass fed animals with one bad day is a pretty good approximation of that.

The situation is different in America where the humane treatment laws the EU has aren't in place and may well be the reason why so many vegans are American and so very strident about their views as they assume the laws and production of meat is the same everywhere, and it isn't. It's a symptom of the insularity of Americans who think the world is the same as it is in the USA.

Post brexit, I don't know how the uk will legislate for their own meat production, already the hedgerow acts which protect breeding birds are going to be slashed.
I've no idea how your farm to fork transparency will be policed and monitored when there is such a push to rid the UK of restrictive EU humane treatment laws. Your biodiversity will certainly go by the wayside if the politicians get their way it seems.

And the trade deals the uk makes with the USA may well see the uk flooded with pumped up toxic bse ridden meat from the USA as part of the deal. I feel sorry for you there in the uk.

I reckon organic locally grown food including organic grass fed meat is essential for a balanced diet and health. Maybe with the crap meat you'll get from the USA you'll all turn vegan by and by in the uk?

I know I won't as I live in the EU and the laws here protect animals from cruelty and inhumane butchery. Meat is delicious, toxin free and the supply chain is transparent where I live.

I eat animals about two times a week, guilt free, knowing that that animal had one bad day in a healthy and happy life under the sky, with nutritious organic vegetarian food.

blerp · 18/05/2017 01:27

Actually, EU law has quite specifically prevented UK animal rights standards/law, which have sometimes even led the world you know, from being implemented.

One of the great things for reducing animal suffering will be that EU law will no longer be able to enforce the right to transport live animals at slaughter time for many hundreds of miles, cranped in lorries all the way across (and even out of) the EU to areas for slaughter with NO legal requirement for humane slaughter (and even where it is certain it will ot happen) which was always below the standards we had in the UK and was effectively forced on UK authorities.

There is a lot of pure shit talked about the EU by people who are really "just generally in favour of it so why bother doing the research" but animal rights is not its strong suit. Countless individual animals will suffer a lot less when its legislative competence is shaken off.

Natsku · 18/05/2017 03:16

I really want to facetime/Skype with a cow now!

MyNameIsntTaken · 18/05/2017 04:07

Tbh I think even lots of normal vegans hate those vegans. I once somehow accidentally stumbled across some sort of vegan/vegetarian forum, and they were arguing amongst themselves about vegans like that and basically telling them to stfu and they're the reason vegans have a bad name etc.
I think they're just like every group, they've got an annoying, very vocal, minority who just piss everybody off. Literally every single group of people have those. Vegans are just the ones we hear more from recently because more and more people are becoming vegan. Unfortunately for vegans, it's just the annoying ones that get noticed more because they're so bloody loud. Why would we notice the vegan just quietly eating her lunch over the one gasping in horror at your choice and telling you how "feral" you are.

WestleyAndButtockUp · 18/05/2017 06:03

I've seen Forks Over Knives mentioned a couple of times.

Has anyone done their online plant-based cooking course?

Rantymare · 18/05/2017 07:45

myname unfortunately I've been on forums like that. . I didn't voice it but I did think it. Being preachy and judgmental not only isn't going to change anything but it also makes people think 'well vegans are a bunch of assholes aren't they'. Which in the case of the ones I know,just isn't true.

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