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?

Eating meat also reduces the amount of "soul" in the world as the animal didn't die naturally so it's soul could go to Heaven x

Thanks MynameisJune I see you are referring to poultry units, I do try to always pick free range poultry for this reason. It is sad that pigs are largely farmed indoors now, I would prefer to buy outdoor reared pork. Its all the mis-information about cattle and sheep which annoys me most where people are led to believe video footage taken from countries with poor standards reflects what is happening in the UK.

It's the people who sit around and say "one extra vegetarian/vegan won't make a difference" that make the real difference - a negative one. It's like not voting for the opposite party when somebody awful is going up, in a way. If you believe in the message and you believe that the world is going to shit and eating meat is cruel, don't continue to eat it.

There are beef farms too

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/29/revealed-industrial-scale-beef-farming-comes-to-the-uk

There are lots of tangible examples of how public pressure/behaviour has improved animal welfare or human rights e.g. how easy it is to get hold of free range eggs or organic milk and how difficult it is to by NON fair trade bananas or coffee in British supermarkets these days.

For me eating fewer animal products (it absolutely does not have to be all or nothing, but kudos to those who are able to be fully vegan) is about reducing the size of your footprint - both in terms of animal welfare but also environmental impact.

What am I trying to achieve?

1. Less personal culpability for animal cruelty.
2. Smaller environmental footprint.
3. Adding my behaviour to that of many others, which makes it more desirable for producers to change theirs. I work in food and drink marketing, I see all the time how supermarkets/restaurants/shops respond to customer behaviour and how some things fall out of favour if enough people get behind it

I am Vegan. Ask me anything you want and I will answer truthfully. I was vegetarian for 25 years but when I discovered how awful the dairy industry is (its worse than the meat industry) I went Vegan on the spot and never looked back. Veganism is a movement. Thousands more people are vegan compared to a few years ago. The more people that change to a vegan lifestyle the less slaughtering of animals there is, and the environment will benefit greatly. Eating and paying for the slaughter of innocent animals is wrong. Pigs are more intelligent than dogs and in fact are as intelligent as a 3 year old. We don't need meat or dairy to survive. If you ever seen inside a dairy farm or an abattoir I'm pretty sure you would agree!!

And free range is a myth! Yes that was news to me too!! At the end of the day they all end up in the same slaughterhouse. They might have an extra few inches to live in but most of them never see the light of day until they are on the transport truck to be killed

I was vegetarian for longer than I haven't been. Then I got ill and started to eat meat again, and I absolutely love it. Nothing like a juicy steak. I also realised that my impact on slaughter was negligible and meat will always be produced. I wasn't going to have an impact on that.

I do make sure I buy my meat from local farmers, where I know the animals have had good lives. I'm also careful to do the same with my eggs and dairy products. Luckily I'm in rural Wales so am able to do this.

I have questions if anyone can help

A pp mentioned humane dairy farms

Does that mean the farmer isn't getting cows inseminated and taking away calves?

Also, do any small farms rear, kill and sell meat on site? Or does every farm send it to a slaughterhouse?

@LighthouseSouth there are no humane dairy farms. Humane means kindness and compassion. Nothing about dairy farming is compassionate. The mother cow has their baby taken away at birth because if they don't then the baby cow will drink the mild that's for us. The baby boy calf's are still taken from their mother to be slaughtered for veal. Once mothers stop producing milk they are artificially inseminated again and it starts over. This is the only life the mother cow knows until she is too old to be pregnant l, then she is sent to slaughter. The only "humane"'thing about it is that they MAY be allowed outside to eat grass for a few hours a day. But everything else is the same. Mommy cows produce milk for their babies, not for humans. And every farm sends their animals to slaughterhouses, they're not allowed to do it themselves nowadays.

@ProfessorMoody the fact that these animals are given a "good" life makes it worse when you are paying for their life to be taken from them when they do not want to die!

Meh, not to me. I'd rather know where my meat comes from.

It also makes for a better quality steak. Yummy.

Just looking up about dairy, interesting

I toy with going from veggie to vegan and then wonder if I should forget it all. Then I think what about fish, I know some people who say it makes more sense to give up dairy than fish.

I had a weird experience with a friend the other day. She was veggie and returned to eating meat. We walked past a butchers shop which looked like....well, a butchers shop. And she said "ooh that's a bit shocking isn't it?" I found that odd but I don't get into those sorts of conversations!

@LighthouseSouth there is a 5 min documentary on YouTube called Dairy is Scary, and another 5 min one called Watch 1000 eyes. Both of them will give you a great insight. Cholesterol can only be found in meat and it's the highest cause of the number one killer heart disease. You should try it, I feel fabulous lol. Re your friend... how odd!!!

I have to say that if someone wants to be a veggie thats up to them... But its not for everyone! my youngest is what i now call a recovering vegetarian!! she decided to stp eating meat in a huff one day! and it lasted for 4 years! she is now back to as she was before - eating bacon/ham/white meats (she never ate red meat before as just didnt like it)
She was in a huff with me on hols one day and said she didnt want to eat meat anymore - fine i said... and she loved on crappy quorn stuff for the 4 years before giving in and saying she missed chicken and bacon! turns out that she hadnt wanted to lose face! I do have to say that i am very glad to not have to faff around cooking her separate meals!
Little does she know that she has had meat based gravy, proper lard cooked roasties, yorkies etc for the whole time (innocent face grinning )

I don't eat much meat but have friends and family who are vegan. I am a bit skeptical though because at the end of the day everyone does things that harm animals. One friend kills slugs in a horrid way yet they are living creatures?

How far do you take it..do you kill nits for example. Just because they are small and not cute or featured in nursery rhymes etc. What about using antibiotics etc. I know I am using extreme ends of the argument here but I always wonder.

Also people have the luxury to choose this but would they soon eat meat if they needed to? What about if people weren't brought up having soft toy cuddley farm animals, nursery ryhmes and Peppa pig etc. Where and how much does a social constructionist angle fit in?

I also find that some talk about calves being taken from mother which is very sad but they have pet dogs which were taken from mother also to serve a purpose.

Why does it have to achieve anything? DCs don't eat meat. I used to eat poultry but now find I'm less and less interested in it so I've given it up. So I guess I'm vegetarian too now. I guess you're asking as you think the aim is, or should be, that less animals are killed for food? Doubtful, as there will always be far more meat eaters than not. I don't particularly like animals being killed for food unless humanely. But 'if you can't beat them join them' doesn't work in terms of eating meat or not really does it.

Interesting reading, thank you.

missy - you say the number of vegans is on the up. Is that just in the UK or worldwide? Someone said upthread that MORE meat is being consumed in some countries.

Why does it have to achieve anything?

Because, and this is just my view, if I was horrified and appalled at the way animals are treated and killed for meat, my first thought would be to do something to stop that happening and my not eating meat would not have any impact.

If everyone took that line of thinking – that small individual actions don’t lead to change – we’d never get anywhere!

Watch cowspiracy and other documentaries. The meat industry is the single greatest contributor to environmental damage globally.

I enjoyed meat but like others, found it hard to reconcile my love of animals and want of a healthy environment with eating meat. I don’t miss it; there are so many great alternatives and I pack way more veg into my diet now.

Saying that, if the scientists working on producing meat from the cellular level manage to commercialise it, I’d definitely return to eating meat. Cruelty free and no terrible environmental effects, win win.

Op, small changes are always worth making. If 50% of the population cut down their meat consumption by half, it would be as though half the population had turned vegetarian. And the impact would be huge.

Turning veggie doesn’t stop animal suffering directly, but it dies make a huge difference to your impact on the environment. That’s a good thing for all animals.

And many vegans and veggies also work to improve things for animals in other ways. It doesn’t have to be one or t’other.

I'm a vegan. Meat production in the UK has generally stayed stable over the past 20 years (with a fall in red meat production and a rise in chicken production due to healthy eating trends). However, if it wasn't for people going veggie/vegan/meat reducing, then production and consumption of meat would have been likely to have RISEN over that time rather than stayed stable.

Also, the rise in people going veggie/vegan has led to far more manufacturers, restaurants etc catering for veggies, and innovative and delicious substitutes for meat and dairy, vegan cakes etc. This then persuades even more people to give up animal products, or at least to cut down on them.

“
If you are a non meat eater - what would you like to see happen ideally? Obviously an end to animal cruelty. But would you like to live in a world where we don't eat meat at all?”

I’ve only read to page 2 (sorry ) but here is my answer.

NB I am not vegetarian or vegan. But I eat very little meat and very little dairy. This is my effort to cut down on animal cruelty: I consider this “as good as” being vegetarian, as like others in this thread I find the dairy industry problematic and although I would like to be vegan, I know I won’t ever be able to.

So: what I would like to see is a dramatically reduced meat and dairy industry. I want supply to go down so much that huge industrial factory farms and fairies cease to exist. I want happier animals on small farms where they live longer, dairy cows are kept with their young and are happy to be milked, meat is more expensive to reflect the cost of this more ethical style of farming.

I live near a few farms of this type. Yes the produce is expensive but it should be. Meat, once upon a time, was a rare treat. It should be like that again.

So to answer your question OP, I want supply to go down so much that we return to the old-fashioned small holding type of farm.