Extreme vegans presenting at DSs' school

[Tipsntoes]

DS1 is in lower sixth as part of their General Studies element (they call it something else but I forget!) they have guest speakers. This week it was what he describes as "extreme vegans". Apparently they gave a very one sided presentation about the evils of eating animal products, supported by lots of graphic images.

DS and his friends are outraged at being lectured to in this way and have spent the day having heated discussions and formulating a counter argument. AIBU to think this is exactly the reason the presenter was invited?

The school shouldn't be allow one sided presentations like this. It would have been more useful to the students to have seen the extreme vegans debate with a pro meat lobby or something like that. Letting people present really one sided arguments without being questioned or contradicted is just providing a example of intellectual laziness.

@hermoine British meat is not fine, it is not 'humane' meat. The animal arrives in one piece and alive and leaves in 20 pieces. There is nothing humane about that. British meat or not, it has still been killed. And in many cases had a poor quality of living before it arrived at the slaughter house.

Perhaps they could invite a nice enlightened and environmentally conscious farmer (think Tony or Pat Archer!) to come and speak about rearing animals for food well, ensuring they lead natural and stress-free lives and are humanely killed.

(My DH had a tour round s local small abattoir and was impressed with how the animals were treated. Not that I'm suggesting that by any means, it could rebound spectacularly. 😢)
But a counter-speaker to the Meat Is Murder man could work. Vegetarians in the school could, and probably would, also question the speaker.

I do believe that if you aren't prepared to look at the images/videos etc then you shouldn't be allowed to eat it. If you are happy with what it was and how the industry works then bon appetit.

Lynette Scavo

You sound utterly clueless and wilfully ignorant of the torturous lives of animals reared for meat/dairy. You would have probably benefited from attended the presentation with the OP's son; however as you've already stated you'd rather stick your head in the sand.

I've been vegan for 7 years. I don't bang on about it. But of course all my friends know I'm vegan because if you go to a restaurant there is no easy vegan option and you have to bang on a bit. Or ring ahead, in which case they come out and ask which of you has been awkward enough to order ahead off menu. I hate that. If I'm invited round for dinner somewhere I bring my own bit of nut roast to go with the lovely veg they always provide. If I invite folks here for dinner I will cook fish or a paella or chicken with an alternative for myself.

Fortunately, in recent months, I've noticed a lot of the more chain restaurants, even Toby Carvery, have been quietly putting vegan options into their mainstream menu. This is welcome and really brilliant because I can go in and know that I can sit down, and order off the regular menu just like everybody else without a single mention from anybody about what I can, or will, or will not eat.
Even if there's just ONE vegan option, I'm more than happy.
Some places even have two or three options!
Most vegans would rather not face the hassle of going to a restaurant that cannot accommodate their diet. We really don't want to have all the malarkey about whether this or that has cheese or egg in it. We just want to enjoy the evening like everybody else, with minimum fuss and bother, and not mention being a vegan even once.

We visited mil recently, and she wanted to pop into her favourite café.
for lunch. There was nothing on the menu that was meat and dairy free so I asked if they could do me chips and beans. I asked the waitress very quietly, in advance, on an engineered trip to the loo, before we ordered, so it came as no surprise to the waitress and it wasn't a problem. Job done.

"Why on earth did you ask for chips and beans?" asked mil. "Isn't there something a bit better than that?"

Me "Well, no. Everything else is meat. Or has eggs or cream"

She "Is that going to hurt you, all that much?"

Me "No it won't hurt me. But I don't eat it and I don't want to eat it.
And I've ordered what I want to eat. So no problems here"

She "It wouldn't have hurt just this once"

Me "Perhaps not. Anyway. I've ordered chips and beans now. So no

problem. Can we stop talking about food now?"

She "Does (dh) get cross with you about this?"

Me "About what?"

She "About making all this fuss when you go out to eat?"

Me "I'm not making a fuss. You are making a fuss"

DH "Mother, just enjoy your food and let us eat ours."

She was not going to let this go. "Don't you get a bit cross though? Do you have meat at home? Are you allowed to have meat at home?
Does Lemon cook meat for you?"

DH is her grown up son who is 60+ and retired from paid work. But still extremely active in the running, golfing, gardening, quite a lot of hands on charity work, and a few hours a week doing his own thing with Language lessons (Spanish at the mo)

I still work full time and I don't get home till 6pm, so the concept of me coming home and cooking any meal for dh, meat based or otherwise, is quite ridiculous when he's been home all day doing what he pleases.

So "No, Lemon doesn't cook meat for me" Sad face.
"She never cooks at all"

That's pretty bloody true, but Lemon is still bringing in a substantial income when she doesn't need to and could quite happily chuck it all in tomorrow.

This post has turned into a mil thing, when it was meant to be a vegan thing.

Vegans don't want to upset you, or bang on about being vegan.
They just want one or two vegan things on the menu which they can unobtrusively order. No vegan wants to make a big massive fuss.

No meat. No milk. No eggs.
That's all there is to it. It's not complicated.
Just those three things.
No meat. No milk. No eggs.

But I presume the images were real images.
I'm not vegan, I'm not even vegetarian but what vegans preach is usually true. I believe them when they say we're all brainwashed to eat meat. I've watched a video posted by a vegan friend of male chicks being crushed as their useless, yet I continue to eat eggs. That's horrifying. I'm working on mentally getting to the place to give it up.

*they're

What’s a extreme vegan? One that won’t drive through a town ending in ham??

I thaught vegans were pretty extreme, my niece is staying with us for the winter and I am struggling to feed her!

AddictedtoAIBU

The meat we eat is humane. We moved from the UK to remote Northern USA. All our meat is wild and hunted by us. We shot 2 deer in the autumn. They will last most the year

I'm also sure if I kept chickens as pets eating their eggs wouldn't upset them too much...however most vegans would find that wrong for one reason or another

Not for one reason or another. I am really very sure that they have very specific reasons. I am a vegan who has done very little research about how animals are slaughtered. From a very early age I did not want to eat sheep or cows and definitely not pigs. I've looked on happily at the recent trend for vegetarian or veganism.

I was born in the 60s. In the Metropolis that is now Leeds.
Far away from countrified stuff. But from a very young age, I could not eat meat. Not cows, nor pigs. Fish and chips was ok.

I have a friend in the far Isles of Scotland who has a smallholding of goats and pigs and she keeps them, then kills them, then cuts them up into little bits, ribs and chops, thighs and legs. She rang me once while she was doing it. She described to me how she had this dead goat splayed out in front of her. And was referring to a book that she had at hand to sort all the bits out.

Whilst it was amazing to me that she had the guts to do it, and I admired her fortitude - for the same amount of protein she could have bought a dozen cans of kidney beans or baked beans without all the hassle of keeping a goat as an almost pet and then having to kill it and dismember it in your kitchen..

The more this subject rumbles on, the less inclined I am to eat meat.
I've been vegan for 7 years so I can't be much less inclined.

I've watched a video posted by a vegan friend of male chicks being crushed as their useless, yet I continue to eat eggs. That's horrifying. I'm working on mentally getting to the place to give it up

Been there. Done that. Gave it up. The live male baby chicks are chucked into a mincer because they are useless and will not produce any eggs. They are chucked alive into the mincer.

I like eggs. We all like eggs, fried, poached and scrambled.
But surely, not at the awful cost that is factory farming.

When I was a child many years ago, eggs were plucked from a happy clutch of chickens. We had scrambled eggs for breakfast. But we knew who we had to thank for that. The chickens in our garden who wouldn't miss and egg or two, and there was no cockerel so they would not have been fertilised anyway. No chicken was harmed.
They continued with their happy clucky garden ranging life.

Now they are farming thousands of chickens to produce eggs and keeping the hens in dirty and confined spaces, huddled up together to the point where they cannot even move to use their legs,

As a child 40 years ago I ate eggs, From a healthy flock of chickens that that had free range even in the big Metropolis that is now Leeds.

Nowadays I don't worry anything at all about Leeds.
In the Trinity shopping centre food hall they have loads of very tasty and most excellent vegan stuff.
And also in the Corn Exchange.

The meat we eat is humane.

There is nothing humane about killing something that does not want to die.

Good post, Lemon. Actually my MIL would rather we were on crack then be vegan, she just doesn’t get it at all.

KhalliWali

We just have to keep cracking on. The eating of animals makes me feel sick. There was a time when it didn't. When I ate meat because everybody else does and that was the norm.

At first, it was simply a personal challenge to me, to not eat meat.
But after a couple of years of not eating meat it makes me really wonder why anybody would eat a dead animal

My dh eats meat, so I have to suck that up.
He will never even become vegetarian, let alone vegan.

But for seven years we have rubbed along. I have my lentils and he has his steak. It's ok

You sound utterly clueless and wilfully ignorant of the torturous lives of animals reared for meat/dairy

Yep, I'd rather stick my head in the sand. Like most people.

I don't like to think that the food I'm having for Christmas dinner was the same animal we cooed over on my friends farm. Actually it seemed quite happy when it was alive. Also, I get my eggs from a friends teenage son who keeps chicken in the garden. I am somewhat aware that eating eggs from battery hens isn't the best idea, and I certainly don't want to see any footage of battery hens.

I am surprised at the vegan on this thread who serves meat to guests though. Why not show guests how nice a vegan diet can be?

at lemon’s disapproving MIL worrying about her 60+ son’s meals!

“The school shouldn't allow one sided presentations”. Why? Criticism/challenge can come from the students. I assume they organise a range of topics and speakers and that students are encouraged to read and seek information widely in and beyond their studies.

Does the DS listen to Morrissey? You get some graphic images at his concerts when he sings Meat is Murder.

I'd have a problem if Britain First or the BNP were invited, or an ISIS sympathiser, but I wouldn't have objected to the group of vegans being invited. Though a farmer or someone else who produces meat being invited at a later date would make a more interesting debate.

Maybe the meat marketing board could do a presentation next term!

Do teenagers still listen to Morris

Morrissey?

That would be the same music their parents listened to when they were in 6th form.

Why invite guests speakers at all, why is it so important that students are political and have views on every topic under the sun. Schools should concentrate on educating children in exam topics, and let them develop at their own rate.

I think it's a risky move for the teacher who organised it but makes for great debate practice and engages thought and argument, etc. I think at that age, they can hack it. Would be a different story if it was primary aged children, obviously.

lynette Yes - most of today's teenagers listen to the music we listened to as teens, it's quite sweet.

My DS goes to an excellent 6th form college where they have regular speakers like this - politicians from left right and centre, anti -
abortionists, environmentalists, fox hunters, CND, Greenpeace -many kinds of "extremists" who are invited to speak and the students ask loads of questions which encourages healthy debate.

We really do need this generation to be the ones to question, to reject the status quo, to inspect and ratify the "statistics"

I would be very suspicious of anyone who was against this.

Rothbury, i’m suspicious of pressure groups with axes to grind and people determined to politicise the young. If you want the status quo to change you are free to change it, do n’t expect others to do it for you.

We could leave them all just believing everything they read in the Daily Mail eh? Not challenging anything?

I don't believe in politicising the young - but many students at a 6th form college are adult voters or soon to be voters. Big difference. Some people believe in encouraging free thinking and some don't.