To say that being a vegan is no better for the environment than being a meat eater?

[OnlyInYourDreams]

Unless you eat only home grown, locally sourced products?

Obviously some people are vegan because they don’t like the idea of using any kind of animal products. But all too often people say that they’re vegan because “it’s better for the environment when this is categorically not the case.

Lots of fruit/veg have to be imported which is actually worse for the environment because it involves pumping man-made substances into the environment.

Products like almond milk are terrible for the environment because e.g. it takes 1600l of water to produce 1l of almond milk. Coca-Cola is practically a green product in comparison…

If people want to be vegan, why not just say you want to be vegan. Coming up with reasons such as “it’s better for the environment” which are just rubbish and laughable is only going to increase the amount of people who don’t take vegans seriously.

OK it's not a competition you've convinced me.
Now go and tell the vegans to stop their crimes, I'm sure they'll listen.

Again, some chip you’ve got there. But I will, if I see a vegan acting unlawfully (not sure how I’d know they were vegan but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it) I’ll stop them. I promise.

I don’t know any vegans who do it for the environment, they do it because they don’t want to eat dead animals and support the meat/dairy industry. Why do you even care OP?

@Pumperthepumper
Yes it’s stupid. Because extremes aside, it will always be true a vegan is going to eat more plant based foods than a omnivore will eat. Because calories. Yes? Every human needs a certain amount of food to survive each day. If your diet is 100% plant based, you will always eat more plant based food than another human whose diet is 80/20 plant to animal or even 95/05 plant to animal. Always.
Unless vegans happen to all be tiny hobbit sized humans...

[quote PlanDeRaccordement]@Pumperthepumper
Yes it’s stupid. Because extremes aside, it will always be true a vegan is going to eat more plant based foods than a omnivore will eat. Because calories. Yes? Every human needs a certain amount of food to survive each day. If your diet is 100% plant based, you will always eat more plant based food than another human whose diet is 80/20 plant to animal or even 95/05 plant to animal. Always.
Unless vegans happen to all be tiny hobbit sized humans...[/quote]
Except it’s not stupid - Unless you’re suggesting all meat eaters don’t eat a balanced diet, I’m not sure we can blame the vegans for all the planet’s ills regarding fruit and veg.

[quote 21Flora]@PlanDeRaccordement if people really wanted to make a difference to the environment as a whole, not just carbon emissions, but the environment they’d eat locally sourced, organic, seasonal produce.[/quote]
Yes, I agree. But sadly that is not possible in the UK because there are too many people for it to be self-sufficient for food. So there will always have to be some food imported in. In which case it’s better to try and buy food from say, France or Holland instead of the United States or New Zealand. Consciously try and buy close to home.

@Pumperthepumper
You are not making sense. How Is 80/20 plant to animal not a balanced diet? And no one is blaming vegans for “all” the ills of plant and fruit industries, just pointing out that if you consume more you are more responsible. Yes? Just like the more meat someone’s consumes, the more responsible they are for the ills of factory farming. It works both ways. If you consume more plant based foods, then you are more responsible for the the deforestation and extinction events caused by various plantations and moncropping farming practices.

Well, yes.

All the attempts to model different diets show veganism coming pretty far down the list in terms of sustainability. About the only think it's better than is the standard American diet (or standard western, I guess.)

A diet based on sustainable eating would not be identical everywhere, but generally speaking it would mean eating a lot less meat and animals products than most of us do, but it wouldn't be vegetarian or vegan.

Which should be no surprise, if it was really most efficient you'd see marginal cultures adopting it in order to get the most out of what the land, but none do. You only see certain groups within societies adopting vegetarian diets - not the farmers, and not the poor - generally it's the rich.

[quote PlanDeRaccordement]@Pumperthepumper
You are not making sense. How Is 80/20 plant to animal not a balanced diet? And no one is blaming vegans for “all” the ills of plant and fruit industries, just pointing out that if you consume more you are more responsible. Yes? Just like the more meat someone’s consumes, the more responsible they are for the ills of factory farming. It works both ways. If you consume more plant based foods, then you are more responsible for the the deforestation and extinction events caused by various plantations and moncropping farming practices.[/quote]
Except the flaw in the argument is that it assumes vegans are eating more of things like avocados, almonds and quinoa than meat eaters and I don’t see how you can know that’s true.

I hope that anyone who is vegan doesn't touch anything containing palm oil. Demand for the stuff is driving orangutans to extinction

@DdraigGoch

I hope that anyone who is vegan doesn't touch anything containing palm oil. Demand for the stuff is driving orangutans to extinction

Do you eat or use palm oil?

@BrittanyKAMA

You’re wrong actually. Just imagine how much land, food and water it takes to grow a pig to full-size. Then imagine the size of the pig and how little food that pig provides.

Pigs don't need much space and can eat the by-products from human food production. Even better, if you go to the right places you can buy wild boar sausages which have no land use change footprint. One pig could feed me for an entire year if I ate pork every single day.

Another vegan bashing thread that goes around and around with the same tired old arguments.

It’s not “vegan bashing” to state that being vegan is “no better for the environment than being a meat eater” and to point out the holes in their sketchy “science”.

It's vegan bashing to call vegans criminals and say that they are sickly and ill looking and that they hate each other, all of which I've seen on this thread.

I can't bloody believe I'm standing up for the vegans, I'm not even one, but some of you are pretty overinvested in what other people eat. Can't you just eat what you want and let them do the same?

Pigs don't need much space and can eat the by-products from human food production. Even better, if you go to the right places you can buy wild boar sausages which have no land use change footprint. One pig could feed me for an entire year if I ate pork every single day

Yes, a pig is a great animal in terms of using up waste, especially if you have a good sized garden. They will eat all the things that go over, windfalls, plus they will turn over whatever part you put to grass and that saved either digging or plowing. And manure at the same time and eat the grubs and things.

There is no way in that scenario it's more environmentally friendly to not have the pig.

I spend a great deal of time on farms. Some arable some livestock and a few mixed.

There tends to be deals between farmers. Straw in return for the muck. All kept fairly local. The muck puts back what is taken during the growing process.

Farms are also turning to bio fuels to power themselves. Collecting waste to ferment and provide electricity. The surplus of which goes into the grid.

Pig units don't tend to stay in one place for multiple years. You'll see outdoor units for a couple of years where the pig poo is putting back nutrients to enable the soil to be better prepared for growing the next crop.

Farms will tend to look at getting the most for the least. Animals which are fast growing on the minimum input. This would be why soecific breeds of pigs and cattle have been developed.

There is a place for an amount of meat in a diet but it's about making good choices ethically and environmentally. Pay a little more to have locally produced meat which will have higher welfare standards but have fewer meat based meals.

I'm not vegan but I disagree. Stop trying to make yourself feel better

@21Flora

Threads like this are a clear demonstration of why agriculture needs to be taught in schools. Talking about emissions isn’t telling the whole story. One example is droughts caused by avacado production for example where whole towns have to have water delivered by tanker because farmers have blocked off their supplies for avacados.

Cows and sheep don’t really eat grain in the U.K. and graze land unsuitable for food production. Biodiversity in the sward is increased by grazing. Grazing is a wonderful way to increase nutrients in the soil as part of a crop rotation, it reduces the need for pesticides significantly. Slurry is used as a main organic fertiliser.

It’s a complex matter that won’t be helped by people refusing to educate themselves.

If as you say cows and sheep graze land that is unsuitable for food production, how come grazing is part of crop rotation?

You should compare almond milk with normal milk. I would be almost certain that the normal milk requires more water

The problem imv is that the stats are produced on US huge cattle sheds and S American cattle ranches on land once forest. The meat probably being eaten by those in the US who rate meat highly and increasingly in China as Asia becomes richer - the Uk doesn't stack up the same.

But here where I live there is adequate water in the form of rain for normal milk to cost nothing to the environment (in terms of water) whereas almonds are grown in massive acreages in not sunny California where the water comes out of rivers running from the Rockies - leaving no water for farmers down stream.

hot, sunny

Vegans don't have to have almond milk. Oat milk is much nicer anyway. If I were vegan I would quite easily not be bothered to have any milk at all, I only have a bit in scrambled eggs and that's it. (It's not having eggs, cheese or fish I find too hard at the moment). Other than that I love black coffee and herbal tea and don't have bowls of cereal.

There’s a reason why most vegans are urban dwellers. They have no idea how land and ecosystems actually work.

I agree. Also someone on one of these types of threads once tried to tell me that if everyone in the world became vegan then all the people involved in agriculture in my country could be found some other type of work. Honestly, not a clue!!!

I agree in a way, OP. It's not as simple as people make out. I live abroad and am not vegan. I eat chicken occasionally, and would eat other meats at a dinner party if served but don't buy or cook it for myself. Also eat fish on the odd occasion DH goes fishing, eggs from chickens we keep on our land. Fruit and veg wise we get everything locally or grow ourselves. I have friends in the UK who brag about their vegan lifestyles veing environmentally friendly while consuming a diet filled with avocados, asparagus, tropical fruits, quinoa etc - all notoriously un-environmentally-friendly foods with huge carbon footprints. As a non-vegan, I'm causing less damage to the planet than they are and if anyone bothers to read up on it, it's actually well documented thag it's not as simple as vegan = good, not vegan = bad. It's about choice of foods.

@snacksizeraisin yes I suppose to a degree we all need to compartmentalise or we will drive ourselves mad. There are some things out of our control. But most of us have the privilege of being able to control our diet, most of us can choose to eat less meat and dairy.

I personally do not own a car and haven't been on an aeroplane since 2006, I don't shop to excess and only buy what I need. But the new clothes that I do buy are produced in a factory overseas, welfare of workers unknown.

@1Morewineplease

Im just a bit concerned at the amount of land, in particular rainforests in South America, that's been given over to soya production.

The meat industry, though, needs a massive rethink.

Do you realise that around 80% of that soy is produced to fed to livestock?

It takes over 30x's the land to produce a steak then to produce the equivalent amount of protein in soy.

I'm not even vegan, I like meat too much and allergic to soy. But I'm realistic about how reducing my meat and milk consumption can help the environment.

@jgw1cows and sheep graze grade 4 and 5 land which cannot be used for food production such as the fells in the Lake District.

In arable farming you have to rotate crops every year or so otherwise the nutrients are leeched from the soil, soil erosion occurs and pests/diseased build up in the soil. The majority of farmers (U.K. based) will have a grass or clover lay in the rotation to allow the soil to recover or plant a forage crop such as sugar beet. The cattle or sheep will graze this. It improves nutrients, soil structure, reduces diseases and pests. It reduces the need for chemical pesticides and fertilisers.

I think people are nasty towards vegans because they secretly feel bad about the animal cruelty and environmental devastation their food choices are causing.