To ask what vegetarianism achieves?

[Dancergirl]

Lots of threads about being veggie/vegan at the moment.

It's got me thinking - does being veggie or vegan have a direct positive influence on animal welfare? I can totally understand people's reasons for not eating meat or animal products, but are fewer animals killed as a result?

I understand that there is already huge wastage in meat production. Will meat production go down if there are enough vegetarians?

We watched the documentary Cowspiracy, it’s incredibly eye opening.

From this and further research we’ve moved to a plant based diet and cut out dairy too.

Cattle farming produces more greenhouse gases than the whole transportation industry worldwide.

Not to mention mega farms, and cruelty farming, pus in milk and cheese. The list goes on.

If it’s not about animal welfare then about your own welfare. Vegans are healthier, live longer and have less instances of major diseases like cancer, diabetes and heart disease.

Well it would have seemed weird years ago that products containing eggs would not have free-range eggs, then Jamie Oliver showed male chicks being culled like in the battery egg industry and a year or so later, you get “free range egg mayo” etc.
That’s not even veggies or vegans, just shows how bringing the cruelty to the public consciousness can pressure the market to change.
Do you drink Milk, Storm? Eat free range eggs? Put plastic wrapped trays of fruit or veg in a cloth tote bag? Or are you free of any and all hypocracy or contradictory behaviours?

Being a vegetarian is better for me, better for the animals and better for the environment.

It would be great if everyone was a vegan/vegetarian, but I can't control what other people do.

Why do meat eaters always have to start a conversation about why vegetarians don't eat meat? When was the last time a vegetarian went up to a meat eater and asked why do you eat rotting corpses?

By the logic of this thread because vegetarians aren't throwing themselves in front of the slaughterers at slaughterhouses then there is no point in them being vegetarian.

I mean I wonder why half the world is starving to death whilst people in the west gorge themselves and get fat. What are all the meat eaters doing about the starving people in the world? Don't they care? Couldn't they be doing more? Shouldn't they give all their worldly possessions and all their food to starving people to balance things out? Why aren't they doing this, why? Why?

FFS no one ever said becoming a vegetarian was going to save the animal population but you know it's a tiny bit of help there. And as someone who doesn't want to eat dead carcasses from other species then maybe it'll help. Maybe if meat eaters stopped seeing other peoples' choices as anything at all to do them they could possibly begin to look at ways to help the planet instead of being so self-centered!

Lots of comments about animal cruelty here. How many people have actually witnessed this or are you just accepting all the propaganda about this. I can't comment on practices in other countries but having visited many UK farms I have only seen good welfare practice, as a result I always buy British meat.

DS is the sole vegetarian in our family of five. He realises that it won't actually help animals - he just doesn't want to eat them, which is completely fair enough!

Watch Cowspiracy on Netflix. You'll be astonished at how cattle farms are much more damaging to the planet than fossil fuels.

Itll answer a lot of the questions you have and youll get factual info on this subject.

@cheesecakesunflowers there are 800 mega farms in the Uk. Farms were cows or other animals are crowded in to pens. Fed corn to make them grow quicker and slaughtered very young.

Or a dairy cow is inseminated, gives birth, has her calf removed and then inseminated again.

It’s your right to eat meat if you want, but there is a huge environmental factor to it to. It takes 660litres of water to make ONE McDonald’s burger.

By all means eat meat, but make sure you’re fully educated on practices and consequences.

I'm vegetarian and get given the spiel about the cruelty of the dairy industry by people like Storm Why are you trying to make me feel shit for doing something rather than everything while you do nothing?!

It is possible both to accept the facts and one's own limitations although it's not necessarily an instant process, psychologically. You probably aren't doing "everything" environmentally in other spheres of life either and re. animal cruelty, you probably aren't eschewing medicines that have been tested on animals. If it is really getting to you, the alternatives are: you can do more (e.g. be vegan) and are perhaps working up to it, or you would like to but aren't in a position to for a reason such as health problems that would make it excessively restrictive, or being on a very tight budget in a house full of non-vegans - or you've decided to draw the line where you draw it. The issue is really about being emotionally conflicted and how you resolve that. The backlash to a very matter of fact post just seems to indicate that people haven't fully worked it out to their own satisfaction.

I've been very conscious of these ideas for about 12 years, since someone I knew, who was not in the slightest bit sentimental about animals, but had always been very environmentally aware, decided to go straight from being an omnivore to being vegan because vegetarianism was illogical. The phrasing was something like "meat eaters are needed to clear up after the vegetarians" IIRC, and the way in which it was logical rather than emotional was what gave the idea greater impact.

The last couple of years seem to be a cultural moment where a lot more people are becoming aware of these things. There appear to be a lot more people going vegan than going vegetarian and stopping these days.

I like meat, can't afford very expensive stuff but I try to avoid factory farmed stuff whenever possible. We've reduced our meat consumption as I find most of the supermarket meat is tough and tasteless. I do think it's better for everyone if we all do our part to reduce meat consumption.

Anyone who is vegetarian for ethical reasons is kidding themselves. Just need to take a look at the egg and dairy industry.

If everyone was vegetarian how would we fertilise the soil? Subsistence farmers depend on their livestock to provide manure so they can grow crops.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-42973870

A significant number of people are vegetarian or vegan, and many more are reducing their meat intake, as per the above article. Together it does make a big difference, to both animal welfare and the environment.

I am vegan, as I do not wish to participate in inflicting surfering on animals. I believe it is important to lead by example.

If everyone was vegetarian there would still be plenty of livestock about!

But most modern fertiliser is actually made with fossil fuels using the Haber-Bosch process, or using mined phosphate. The invention of the Haber Bosch process is one of the turning points of modern industrialisation and agriculture and the population could not have increased so much as it did during the 20th century without it. Industrial fertiliser use, due to the pollution it causes and the finite resources it uses, is another environmental problem.

There is green manure en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_manure among the non-animal manure methods. (I don't know about all of them; someone who has read up on vegan permaculture would know more.) And night soil as used to be used in the past, or 'humanure' as some modern revivialists call it.

Meat production is not going to stop. I find it hard to believe that a small proportion of vegetarians or vegans is going to have any impact on the way that animals are slaughtered and treated

ahem:

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4856016/Lamb-gets-chop-sales-meat-fall-25.html

www.pig-world.co.uk/news/pork-sales-volumes-continue-to-fall-in-early-2018.html

fortune.com/2015/10/27/red-meat-consumption-decline/

I haven't eaten meat for many years. My friend runs a dairy farm and he loves all his animals, some are 20 years old. He takes time out to show local schools round the farm. The cows are milked twice a day. For those who say it's cruel, have you ever visited a farm. Have you spoken to a farmer who gets works at 4am every day (no calling in sick on this job)

Ok so I should have said vegan, not ve

Not vegetarian!
If we want to move to more organic fertilisers, then we need animal products to enrich the soil.
I remember my dad buying bags of 'blood and bone' fertiliser for his garden.
My point about the subsistence farmers was that I think they still produce a large proportion of the world's food.
I think there's an issue with using human waste, don't you get concentrations of heavy metals in human manure?
Maybe we will have to go back to crop rotation and using plants which put nitrogen back into the soil.

Crop rotation still goes on! It hasn't stopped. If you live near arable fields you can see it happening.

I've seen studies were insects are being grown in huge numbers to provide a source of protein (may get changed into a form that doesn't look like an insect as an end product) this could be the future of farming

So my geography lessons from 30 odd years ago aren't completely out of date! I live in Suffolk, so I see lots of arable fields. I must admit I hadn't looked closely enough at what they were growing.

MynameisJune I'm wondering where you have got this information?
BunsOfAnarchy I presume you are referring to the documentary about American and Australian farming practices and the affect on the environment. I was referring to welfare issues in the UK. The UK is regulated by EU legislation, very different to other continents, sadly many people watch documentarys like this or the video clips on social media without realising that.
For anyone interested you can tell if cattle are in the UK as they will have eartags with numbers starting with the letters UK. No eartags or so small you can't read them means they are outside the EU.

@cheesecakesunflowers www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/17/uk-has-nearly-800-livestock-mega-farms-investigation-reveals

It’s really not difficult to google and figure it out for yourself. You’re deluding yourself if you think we’re better than America

And this is based in the UK.

www.viva.org.uk/what-we-do/cruel-britannia-life-and-death-uk-factory-farms

Water usage for beef.