To wonder if you know that the meat you buy could have been raised in a factory farm...

[MsWonderful]

And that the animals could also have been subjected to horrific cruelty even if the farm is Red Tractor approved?
www.daventry.radio/daventry-farm-suspended-from-red-tractor-scheme-amid-animal-welfare-concerns/

I wouldn't say sheep were stupid but they show a remarkable enthusiasm for dying and putting themselves in death inducing situations.I still don't think they deserve cruelty or poor treatment though. Absolutely. Re shearing. Shearers can be a bit odd. We have a very good man who comes here but he's not a stocksman. We haven't seen cruelty and would never condone it.

But anyway, I don’t think people should be shut down because they don’t have a few sheep or whatever. Everyone is entitled to speak out about the farm industry. I agree people must speak out about animal cruelty. I have hundreds of sheep if that is what you call 'a few'.

People really don't give a fuck about animal abuse. There was a thread on here not long ago about a farmer wanting to put their dog down at home instead of going to the vets. The thread was pulled due to disgust of posters about the cruelty. Yet we happily eat animals that would have no such dignity forwarded to them. Just because Derxa pats her sheep on the head it does not distract from the fact that 2.7 trillion animals are killed every year. Most live in horrific conditions and die in abysmal circumstances. Derxa, you are no better because you own a farm. You profit of the back of their misery. Slaughter house are fucking awful places. (I've been in several) Stop being so sanctimonious.

No no @GrumpyMiddleAgedWoman Stop it! You'll only get ignored, as was I earlier!

That kind of logic, pointing out the obvious, does not get well received on MN... or hasn't on the many food based threads I've been on over the years!

Derxa, you are no better because you own a farm. You profit of the back of their misery. Slaughter house are fucking awful places. (I've been in several) Stop being so sanctimonious. Erm... no never mind! It isn't worthe the hassle!

Just because Derxa pats her sheep on the head I do actually.
I've said I'm glad that abuse is uncovered. I think farming needs to take a step back. These mega farms are wrong because the people working in them don't care about the animals.

When your truly skint I don’t think buying meat is an essential.
You can live without it.
I can remember eating beans on toast, pasta, rice.

There as no meat because there was no money.

@ Suzi888

*@TheHappyHerbivore

If you can’t tell the difference between someone intruding on your house in the middle of the night to harangue you and YOU deciding to open, read and engage with a thread which has a title that clearly states the subject matter of the post, then you might actually be a lunatic and I would suggest that an OPEN FORUM where people can post about whatever the fuck they like is not an ideal environment for you.

ALL OF THIS- well said.*

Fortunately, the MN moderators disagreed and deleted the abusive post.

Unfortunately, some posters think that kind of abuse has a place on MN, it doesn't, it simply shows you for what you are i.e someone who resorts to abuse when someone doesn't agree with you. (and there's a lot that don't share your narrow viewpoint, but have a more measured approach to the subject, hence the 63% say YABU )

I don’t know if it’s because people have that association that sheep are ‘stupid I know that they are not but that's from experience. But I'm guessing you know nothing about them.

Was it not clear from my post that I don’t agree that they’re stupid? I was just pointing out that this is a common stereotype about sheep, and maybe that’s why abuse of sheep seems especially prevalent.

In case it also needs spelled out, I wouldn’t condone the abuse of sheep even if they were stupid.

Meh........................enough time wasted on this, bye.

@Suzi888 let me rephrase my post in PG way for you.

If you can’t tell the difference between someone intruding on your house in the middle of the night to harangue you and YOU deciding to open, read and engage with a thread which has a title that clearly states the subject matter of the post, then I wonder if a forum which encourages people to post about a range of issues and express their opinions on any subject that is of interest to them is ever going to be a space in which you feel safe? If reading posts on a forum feels like a personal and aggressive intrusion of the kind you mentioned, it must make you very uncomfortable to be on this website.

Sorry, that should have been directed at @updownroundandround not @Suzi888

I was just going to say ... I was agreeing with you @TheHappyHerbivore then saw the last post.

@updownroundandround literally no idea what your point is. I don’t think happy herbivore was being abusive.

@Suzi888

When your truly skint I don’t think buying meat is an essential. You can live without it. I can remember eating beans on toast, pasta, rice.

There as no meat because there was no money.

As I said. Meat was a once a week treat maybe twice.

My kids eat mostly veggie and I still do.

@Suzi888 just more of my abusive nature slipping out

At the end of the day, he’s you can live without meat, but many people don’t. I doNt. I didn’t. And there is nothing “wrong with me” for doing that, as has been suggested.

My kids like meat. We eat a lot of veggie but we eat animal products like milk. What do you think happens to the boy cows?

Im not being ignorant. I know what is involved. I’ve wrung a chickens neck for the pot before now (grew around a farm) and I have seen a disabled cow grown on for food (three legs and yes I ate him).

and maybe that’s why abuse of sheep seems especially prevalent. But it's not. They really do spend most of their time grazing in the fields here. Any abuse is unacceptable but then again it makes no sense for a farmer to abuse a sheep.

[quote Lockheart]@MitziK they're not basic products though are they? They're pre-prepared and cooked for you already. That's a fancy ready meal, not raw meat.

I can't say I've seen those in the Waitrose near me unfortunately, since they do look quite nice![/quote]
They've taken a cheap cut and turned it into a fancy meal. Which was my point. Chefs have wittered on about how wonderful and cheap things like beef cheeks are, with the inevitable result that they're now not cheap, they're something fancy to have.

Well, if sticking the things in the equivalent of a slow cooker and then adding the equivalent of onion/, a bayleaf, pinch of dried Thyme, a splash of red wine and a half jug of Bisto, together with a spoonful of sugar counts as fancy. The markup on it is phenomenal. Thanks to the bloody aspirational chef fans.

I watched Land of Hope and Glory on YouTube and can't eat meat or dairy at all now. I'm with you OP, people are either ignorant or they just don't care.

It feels to me profoundly unhelpful to group small to medium traditional farmers with large agri businesses and say they are all the same.
The animals may all die in the end but for the huge majority of their lives they have very different life experiences.

We don't say that all humans die so it doesn't matter if some live their whole lives in abusive or poverty stricken situations.

It matters to us what our living conditions are like so why wouldn't it make a difference to animals?

@derxa I don’t mean it’s prevalent on all farms - I’m sure you aren’t cruel to your sheep! It just seems to me that you hear lots of stories of sheep in particular being abused.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/sheep-shearing-wool-peta-farms-rspca-action-punched-beaten-killed-a8508221.html%3famp

When that story came out many sheep farmers reacted with horror and anger, so I appreciate that it’s not welcome behaviour across the whole industry. But the fact that it happened on so many farms suggests that it is quite prevalent, and that there maybe need to be better checks to prevent it.

I must admit to having been shocked at seeing a sheep shearing competition at the Royal Highland Show a few years ago. Nobody was actively ‘cruel’ to the sheep, but they were handled so roughly (dragged into place, thrown back down a chute into a pen when done, tossed around and aggressively pinned down etc.). A person who handled their dog that way would, I think, be considered cruel. It does make you think that if that’s considered the acceptable way to treat a sheep in front of an audience of hundreds, it’s not hard to imagine some (absolutely not all) sheep handlers taking it a couple of steps further into real abuse when they’re not being watched.

Human beings are omnivores, the very fact that a vegan diet also needs to include supplements is proof of that fact.

The reality is that organic free range meat is out of the realms of affordability to most people, and hence these farms exist.

I looked at chickens on sainsburys yesterday, a standard chicken is £1.65. A Free range chicken is £9.24, and an organic free range chicken is £13. Given the price difference it’s not exactly surprising that people buy the cheaper cuts.

And no, not everyone can live on a vegetarian/vegan diet, doing so is a choice, just as eating an omnivorous diet is a choice albeit this is what we have evolved to eat, so vegetarian/vegan is not actually a natural diet, although if people want to be then crack on.

But if we want meat to be better raised then the prices need to move in order to make that happen. I would buy free range if I could, but I simply cannot afford to.

I watched Land of Hope and Glory on YouTube and can't eat meat or dairy at all now

I only got ten minutes into this. Being vegan I suppose I should try to watch it but I nearly threw up.

Totally agree Suzi888. Its SUCH an old fashioned/outdated and simple way of thinking that all meals need to removed around meat and 2 veg to be delicious/fulfilling/nutritious.
I've been veggie for 25 years- and in the last year we've never had more of an influx in vegetarian products in supermarkets - both quantity and quality wise. So much so the amazing veggie bacon I now cook always gets DH out of his study sniffing around and literally salivating at the mouth! I'll make him some and he's declared its far better than real bacon and for the first time, given this and the amazing Richmond veggie sausages- would seriously consider becoming pescatraian.
Even if you are strapped for cash- there is never an excuse for buying dirt cheap meat- even if you really don't care at all about animals suffering before it was killed to be eaten by you- think about the appalling conditions and the result on the standard/quality of the meat you are eating. No way is cheap meat better for your kids than no meat at all.

@AlternativePerspective
I think the historical reality is that all meat should be at the price of the organic meat, not the other way round.
Meat in the UK is historically very cheap and food in general takes up a much smaller percentage of income than it has done.
With Brexit I would expect food in general to become more expensive as time goes on although perhaps more of a slow creep than a sudden jump.
I would also expect food quality to drop if prices remain the same.