There’s no point being a moral vegetarian unless you’re prepared to be vegan

[aveline161]

If you care about animal welfare/ dislike the idea of animals dying for food, you should acknowledge the horrors of the dairy industry and go vegan

I think it is a fair statement. If you are vegetarian for ethical reasons then why would you still willingly pay for products that cause animal suffering and death? Dairy isn't natural to humans, it is another species breast milk and it isn't even good for our health. Your only reasons for not giving it up are because; 1) you enjoy the taste, 2) you lack the will power and 3) have weak morals.

You have a point but it’s very difficult to go all vegan I think. I am a very occasionally meat eater. I probably eat meat twice a month and I try to eat vegan 2 days a week. I would love to go 100% vegan one day.

I agree with you, ethical meat (unfarmed) will always be preferable to the dairy industry.

Fuck off. I'm doing my best and at the minute that's by being a vegetarian. You judgy prick.

Oh fuck off! People like you are the reason some people don't bother trying!

I’m vegetarian.

Tried being vegan for a couple of years but it was too restrictive for me, this was before veganism was trendy so there weren’t as many options in shops and restaurants as there are now. My vit d and iron were deficient by the end of it. I still have vegan days though.

I don’t act self righteous about being vegetarian. I also don’t go out of my way to eat dairy/eggs either, I still use almond milk and other plant based alternatives. I just like having the additional freedom, eg buying something as mundane as crisps

True. But reducing consumption is better than the opposite isnt it? I've tried going vegan for a month. I'm not gonna lie, it was hard. Especially for my husband and children. Everyone hated meal times and the snacks. We ended up just halving our meat and dairy consumption instead.

My belief is that it isn’t the consumption of animal products that is inherently wrong or cruel, it is the ridiculous volume at which we (as a human population) expect to consume these products. There is such a strong demand for cheap, processed and basically crap meat that is not nutritional at all and this is what leads to animals living in shit cramped conditions and suffering their whole lives until they are cruelly killed. There is a food chain and animals eating other animals is perfectly natural, but the farming practices we use and treating animals like commodities rather than sentient beings is so fucking unnatural. We need to take it back to basics.

The meat industry needs to scale back MASSIVELY and concentrate on producing far less meat with far higher welfare standards. It would mean the meat that we do eat would cost more and be a luxury not an everyday thing, but why should the environment and animals pay the price and not us as consumers?

People on here have said they would rather eat a locally produced free range steak than an avocado imported from Central America and this is an important consideration. I know a vegan takeaway that used to have its customers drive hours to get to it - in their polluting cars, hypocritical much?

It literally isn’t possible to live a completely ethical life, it’s just not the way society works at the moment. We need to campaign for change, obviously but getting arsey at people for driving to do their little bit isn’t the way to do it. The sort of changes that are needed have to be top down, and there are all sorts of considerations including poverty in meat producing counties that need to be taken into account. The problem literally isn’t that Linda in Hull is a vegetarian that still drinks milk. The world needs more Linda’s doing their little bit and spreading the word and thinking critically about their footprint.

My New Years Resolution last year was to reduce my meat and dairy intake. I think I’ve done pretty well but I don’t want to fully give up either yet because of the reasons above.

I’d say I’m now 99% Vegetarian - I mainly eat meat when I’m being cooked for as I don’t like to cause people inconvenience and on special occasions. I’m worse with dairy and eggs, probably about 50/50. I don’t buy cows milk at all anymore and have almond milk in my tea and on my cereal. But if someone offers me a cup of tea at their house I will accept cows milk.

But I’m chuffed with how much we’ve reduced this year and I think everyone whose reduced their animal products this year should be bloody proud and don’t let anyone tell you you’re not doing enough!

YABU. Animal welfare isn’t the only reason to reduce consumption of animal products - climate change is another. If everyone just did what they could, rather than doing nothing because they cannot manage 100% commitment to veganism, fewer animals would still be killed and the climate change impact would be lower.

I know I should be vegan but I also love milk in my tea and tea is one of my greatest pleasures. There is also a bit of a circular argument in that if we didn’t consume animal products, they wouldn’t exist to begin with as farmers don’t keep them as pets. And not all vegan food is automatically guaranteed not to have brought harm to animals - need to also e.g. avoid palm oil as animal habitats would have been destroyed.

Basically, it is never black and white and we all always need to be receptive to a whole array of factors.

Depends on your reasoning. If it’s for the environment then eating meat and dairy is actually better. The UK used grassland and rainwater to produce meat and dairy and farms for our natural environment, we have far more grassland that isn’t suitable for growing crops, we use animal manure the fertilise. If you move to vegan here you will destroy biodiversity, decrease carbon sequestration and increase food miles.

If it’s simply the thought of animals being slaughtered then vegetarianism only doesn’t help as the dairy industry has to slaughter. At the moment over 90+ of Male calves don’t “die young” they go into a sustainable beef chain and so going vegetarian but not vegan gives them no where to go.

For animal welfare (but not slaughter) then in the UK our standards are actually very high and any malpractice should be reported and can end up as bans, fines or prison for the perpetrators.

The only way not to impact the planet and cause animals not to suffer In any way (orangutangs, insects, bees, rabbits for crops?!) is to die yourself.

Tequila I was right there with your debate until you said almond milk. That’s an awful choice. Grown in California where it is increasing drought, destroying the local wildlife, killing 80% of bees used to pollinate. Then shipped to China to be shelled by a totally unethical system (think child labour), then shipped back to the US for processing (the milk contains 2 almonds and a load of chemical nutrients added plus more water), then shipped to the UK. How on gods green earth is that better for the environment than a pint of milk from the dairy farm in the next rural community to you??

Bollocks OP

Going vegan is more challenging, hence fewer people do it. So by your argument you would prefer all those to are vegetarian but don't want to be vegan to just go back to eating meat.

So basically you're trying to argue that people should eat more meat.

I'm an immoral vegetarian 🙂.

Please worry about your choices, and I'll worry about mine (and I'll use scientific data when I do).

Agree. Its like acknowledging that harm is done but only being willing to reduce certain types of harm- the easy stuff.

Like suffering on some level is acceptable.

Wont eat the cow but happy for the cow to have its calf taken away and shot so they can still have milk and cream because its too inconvenient to go without or use an alternative.

RealBecca if it's so easy being vegetarian, why doesn't everyone do it?
The amount of suffering that would reduce would be colossal.

@Sleepysundown you could have made that whole post and it would have been informative and useful without haranguing the poster below. This is the same problem as the original post had - change needs to happen, but finger pointing and aggression is not the way

I didn’t mean it to come off as haranguing at all! It’s the almond milk industry I am pissed off by not the poster. She/he is among many many others sucked in by the bollocks.

@Sleepysundown sorry, I misread you then! Apologies.

On the almond milk vs dairy, I was in Sainsbury's yesterday and there was a huge range of milks, including a UK pea based one which has lots of protein in it - didn't buy it as I was after some oat milk for my coffee, but it was great to see. possibly an even better choice for milk than free range dairy would be a UK made plant milk? (I'm a cheese fiend so personally would rather 'save' my dairy for that iykwim.)

has anyone read this by George Monbiot? https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/08/save-planet-meat-dairy-livestock-food-free-range-steak It's interesting reading - essentially to capture carbon and reverse the decline in animal species, a simple way to do this is rewilding. Lots of the pasture animals are grazed on is yes not suitable for crops, but it would have been woodland, marsh and so on originally. So the problem is, having the amount of animals farmed for meat that we do currently means a lot of unnecessary emissions, a lot of farmed animals living and dying in awful conditions, lots of pollution from the meat and dairy industries and very little space for rewilding.

If we massively reduce consumption of meat (or better, don't eat it at all), then the more space for biodiversity and growth of natural carbon sinks.

He's basically saying go vegan in that article by the way, but personally I just can't, it's too impractical, so I'm doing my best with reducing both right down to the minimum.

Painted that’s ok I get a bit rants about almonds

George Is a bit biased, problem is without meat and dairy the UK can’t produce enough nutrients to feed the population. We don’t have mass overproduction here, other countries (I’m looking at you America) do, and poor welfare standards.

It’s very very hard with our food systems the way they are to reduce carbon because things cross borders so much to be processed. Fresh and local is the best way, and pressuring the supermarkets not to fill the shelves with imports we can produce ourselves, and stop commoditising fresh produce. Milk is sold below the cost of production, veg sold at a 1% margin. It’s drives poor practice.

Yeah, you've convinced me. Since I am responsible for so much suffering anyway, I'll go back to eating meat.

Thanks for that. Been wanting liver and onions for years.

I am not a vegan or a vegetarian but have read a lot about both. It's always seemed to me that the dairy industry is far crueler than the meat. I've wondered if it's possible to avoid dairy but still eat meat, and if there's a name for such a thing?

I really do see what you mean OP. I am a vegan, have been for 4 years and was vegetarian from age 7. However, I think being vegan is very difficult. It's very 'in' at the minute so lots of places have vegan menus, but when the trend passes I suspect it will go back to being difficult again. It's not for everyone and being vegetarian does still save lives. Nobody can be perfect.

I really don't agree that becoming vegan is the answer. I am an ex farmer and worked as a researcher in land sustainability for many years. Going vegan may save a few cows and sheep, but there are other consequences; there are huge environmental issues in ploughing up grassland and many small animals are killed growing crops of all kinds. The best diet would be home grown or locally foraged and include wild meat and fish. Unfortunately the planet cannot sustain the current population on this basis. Therefore there is no simple solution but we should all do what we can.