To think we should all eat less meat & dairy

[grumiosmum]

... because of the climate crisis (as well as our health)

Important new report out today: www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-49238749

@cryalot2 you think animals won't exist without farming? What on earth?! Also, it just means that billions of lives won't be created every year with the express intention of killing those billions of lives for human consumption.

We can do this without giving veggie or vegan. My husband is awful at serving huge portions of meat at each meal, except breakfast. Unfortunately I am no longer able to eat fat and even lean meat has enough fat to trigger an attack if I eat too much so I've reduced the amount I have. If we all did this and ate low food miles food it would be great for the planet.

Removing consumer demand is important but large scale farming is environmental vandalism.
Large scale farming is driven by consumer demand.

YANBU but people get weirdly defensive about meat and think by occasionally doing a wash at 30 degrees and getting a bus they are making a meaningful difference.

@derxa large scale farming is enabled and funded by governments.

We've been vegan for 6 months now and haven't looked back

large scale farming is enabled and funded by governments. Rubbish

If we, as a collective, really gave a shit about the environment we would stop breeding. Simple, really. We are destroying the planet and every other species through our narcissistic need to produce mini versions of ourselves.

@derxa okay.

www.npr.org/2019/01/09/683339929/nobody-is-moving-our-cheese-american-surplus-reaches-record-high American milk surplus. Enormous. Millions of gallons of milk paid for by the government and poured away or destroyed. Even more alarming because we know the carbon impact of dairy.

clarkstreetpress.com/a-brief-history-of-high-fructose-corn-syrup.html High fructose corn syrup. One of the most profitable inventions created by the government approved and encouraged (paid for by Monsanto, etc) enormous surplus of corn.

Or is it still rubbish?

We need less people . And for those people to eat locally produced food whether that be animal or plant based .
I live on a beef farm, I will continue to eat grass fed beef as I believe out of all the meat one can eat , beef is the least cruel . Chickens have a dreadful life and their food is pumped full of antibiotics. A little red meat is better for you that that .
I don’t buy imported berries, supermarkets selling strawberries at Christmas is ridiculous as is almond milk from California .

We need fewer people and those people to grow/ produce more of their own food .

And eat seasonally .

YANBU. We don't need to be full time vegetarian, even omitting meat from just one meal per week helps.

I read somewhere that rather than, say, 4 million people living a zero easte lifestyle, we'd be much better off with 40 million people just making a few smaller changes.

Yes to those PP who are aknowledging it's a population problem and not a food problem. As stated in my earlier post there are too many of us and we are abusing the planet at an alarming rate. I don't have a solution but the planet is nowhere near as big as it was. There's a lack of housing across the world, resources are becoming more expensive and limited. And more people are being born than dying as the old are living longer. Back in the 14th century you'd be lucky to make it past 34! In this day we have people living over 90.

Typo acknowledging

it's a population problem and not a food problem.

It's both, actually. I know people much younger than me (my kids are almost adults now) who are so concerned about climate change they are considering limiting their families to one child.

There's a handy guide to carbon footprints of different foods on the BBC website. It's not perfect, but gives you an idea ...
www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46459714

We need regenerative grazing, not plant monocultures.

Plant monocultures displace and kill 100% of wildlife and nature that was living there previously.

Regenerative grazing systems co-exist alongside pre-existing ecosystems (such as prairie, steppe, savannah, mixed woodland and pasture), so NO, or very minimal, nature and wildlife are displaced.

Putting cattle out on pasture is carbon negative, rather than conventional beef in feedlots, whose carbon impact is phenomenal.

Image source and article here:

blog.whiteoakpastures.com/blog/carbon-negative-grassfed-beef

Thats a really interesting link @BahHumbygge, thanks so much for posting it. I have been looking for some info on carbon-sequestration in agriculture & this is great.
I totally agree that we should be eating grass-fed beef, not intensively reared.

In Britain, pretty much all beef cows graze grass in the summer and are fed hay, silage or straw or beet pulp in winter. Sheep graze outside all year round and are fed on silage and some supplementary feed in the winter. Unless all the animals in the fields all across Scotland are a figment of my imagination.

The arguments about overpopulation are misguided and dangerous. What do people suggest we do about there being too many people? This sounds an extremely sinister line to be arguing.
Populations in developed nations are in decline. We will not have enough young healthy people to actually look after the old and unwell very soon.
The problem is not numbers per se, it is industrialisation. Developed nations produce more carbon per head than non developed nations, by a huge amount. A citizen in a developed nation taking a flight produces more carbon in that flight alone, than a citizen in a non developed nation in their entire lifetime.

derxa is right. The trouble with all these "reports" and internet searches is that they tend to be global in nature and average. UK farming is one of the most sustainable on the planet. Our farming is not intensive and has high welfare standards. "Meat" is also too broad a term. If we ate more local game, that meat would be pretty carbon neutral. If we ate more veal, there would be less need to get rid of male dairy calves. If we ate less of everything, and ate locally and seasonally, that would be a start.

The best solution to overpopulation is educating girls. Even if they have a basic middle school level of literacy, it gives them enough autonomy to elect how many children the have (generally, at a macro-demographic level). No calling out of the four horsemen required.

Industrialisation and overpopulation contribute to each other in feedback loops... look at the history of England for example... the history of early industrialisation and urbanisation go together and created a huge population boom. Invading other countries to create colonies for land, resources and labour artificially increased the carrying capacity of the numbers this country could support. They're both essential areas to focus on regarding climate change, extinction and environmental degradation.

The arguments about overpopulation are misguided and dangerous. What do people suggest we do about there being too many people

Use contraception? Don't encourage large families. Look at the outcry about restricting child benefit to 2 kids - seemed eminently sensible to me. It's not sinister at all, nobody is advocating culling the existing population.

As for educating girls, yes, although in developed countries the richer couples often have 4+ children as a status symbol so that needs to stop, too.

We will not have enough young healthy people to actually look after the old and unwell very soon we'll have robots, in fact we already do.

Exactly probs 👍🏻 nobody is saying we need to cull but we do need to think about the rate that our population is growing.

Also agree with arthursslave, cutting meat out completely is not going to save the planet.

Nope, love meat, base my whole dinner around it.
Meat, carbs, veg = balanced, yummy, satisfying meal for me.