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.

[quote GrumpyMiddleAgedWoman]@Pumperthepumper
what is there to feel guilty about?
Well, some intensive meat operations (broilers, many pig units) are poor for welfare and probably not great environmentally - there you are feeding feed crops, not just using up leftovers from the human food chain or dual-purpose crops like stubble turnips.

But when it comes to outdoor sheep and cattle, provided they are well cared for from birth to slaughter, I have no issues. Pastureland is great for wildlife, and grazing ruminants have been part of the ecosystem since they first evolved.

I have more issues over the ethics of flying somewhere for a weekend than I do over eating lamb from the Welsh uplands.[/quote]
The UK imports around a third of the lamb Britons eat though. Some of it from New Zealand.

Same for beef. Much more than we export btw, for the pp claiming that a vegan diet is bad because we don't have enough arable land here so have to import veg

We import around 400 million chickens annually too. Again around a third.

Yes that's right, between less than 70 million of us we eat more than a billion whole chickens a year.

But that's all ok because some sheep graze on land we can't go crops on, right?

Cognitive dissonance at its best

@UnFringed

Eating in a more considered away, reducing wastage and stopping overconsumption is the way forward, not plant Vs animal unless on an ethical ground not environmental.

This is what our family is trying to do.

I've been readig arguments and articles from both sides for years, and I've comdvto the conclusion that a low meat diet is the way forwards. We eat meat once or twice a week.

@OrangeRug

I honestly cannot believe the comments on this thread. You cannot seriously believe that bringing an animal into existence simply to torture and eat it is MORE ethical than it never existing? Christ almighty. So yes, I am in favour of farm animals becoming extinct since they are only born to suffer, Most of these animals are genetic mutants at this point anyway - for example a broiler chicken has been selectively bred to gain weight more quickly than its legs can tale and layer hens have been bred to produce an unnatural and unhealthy amount of eggs.

Have you even been to a farm? Farm animals don’t suffer on EU and U.K. farms. They have a high quality of life.

Same for beef. Much more than we export btw, for the pp claiming that a vegan diet is bad because we don't have enough arable land here so have to import veg.

And of course we use a significant amount of that arable land to grow feed crops for the cattle and sheep (as well as importing them).

On a calorie for calorie basis it is more resource-efficient to use that arable land for crops for humans rather than crops for livestock.

Farm animals don’t suffer on EU and U.K. farms. They have a high quality of life.

Is this a joke?

@nanbread
Yes U.K. imports meat as well as veg. But per pound of meat, you get far more nutritional value from it than from a pound of veg. So as far as carbon footprint goes, you’d have to import 5lb veg for every 1lb meat to get same nutritional content. So importing veg is has a much higher carbon footprint. Especially if you are thinking U.K. should stop all local meat production and just import more veg to make up the difference!

@JassyRadlett
You are forgetting the fact that arable land doesn’t mean it can grow any crop. The arable land producing feed crops like hay is often land that cannot produce crops for humans such as wheat and corn.

@TheKeatingFive

Farm animals don’t suffer on EU and U.K. farms. They have a high quality of life.

Is this a joke?

Not a joke.

[quote PlanDeRaccordement]@nanbread
Yes U.K. imports meat as well as veg. But per pound of meat, you get far more nutritional value from it than from a pound of veg. So as far as carbon footprint goes, you’d have to import 5lb veg for every 1lb meat to get same nutritional content. So importing veg is has a much higher carbon footprint. Especially if you are thinking U.K. should stop all local meat production and just import more veg to make up the difference![/quote]
That is true - but only for the carbon footprint of the transport itself.

The bulk of the carbon footprint comes from production - where meat has a much higher carbon footprint.

Much of the reason for this is that you have to feed the livestock. They're fed on things like grain, soya and vegetables. Most of the calories they consume don't end up in the meat that's later consumed - it's used in activities like moving, breathing, and maintaining a constant body temperature - and are therefore lost to the food chain.

Other things to be accounted for are the use of acreage, water, bedding, farm building maintenance, etc etc etc. all of which have a carbon footprint.

On the other hand, if humans ate the grain, soya and vegetables that the livestock would otherwise have eaten, we'd have a much lower carbon footprint per 100 calories.

Now, there's some land that can't be used for arable (eg Welsh mountains) and the only way of farming it is livestock - often sheep - but this is irrelevant to the vast majority of livestock production, and there's also an argument for rewilding some of those areas.

But - in terms of carbon footprint - plants are always more efficient at producing calories than meat.

You are forgetting the fact that arable land doesn’t mean it can grow any crop. The arable land producing feed crops like hay is often land that cannot produce crops for humans such as wheat and corn.

I’m not - but it isn’t a universal issue and is decreasing as an issue as new crap varieties are developed that can deal better with a wider range of conditions. And it certainly isn’t the case that we only grow silage crops on land that isn’t suitable for crops that feed humans directly. Silage is relatively high input and takes a lot out of the soil so needs a lot put back in anyway - which increases the resource inputs.

And there are some crops that we currently feed to animals (eg through earlier harvest of wholecrops) that can also be eaten by humans.

[quote PlanDeRaccordement]@nanbread
Yes U.K. imports meat as well as veg. But per pound of meat, you get far more nutritional value from it than from a pound of veg. So as far as carbon footprint goes, you’d have to import 5lb veg for every 1lb meat to get same nutritional content. So importing veg is has a much higher carbon footprint. Especially if you are thinking U.K. should stop all local meat production and just import more veg to make up the difference![/quote]
You are ignoring the carbon footprint of meat Vs veg production in your carbon footprint calculations.

And no, I don't think that.

@LadyWhistledownsQuill
Yes, but you can’t add up all the things a cow needs to live its life the same way you would with a plant. Because these are living animals we are talking about. And this push for efficiency in eating, it results in making domesticated livestock go extinct or close to it.

What right do we have to eliminate millions of cows, sheep, pigs? To deny them life because it’s “less efficient”.

You are ignoring the carbon footprint of meat Vs veg production in your carbon footprint calculations.

I’m ignoring it because I think animals have a greater right to life than plants do. So it is wildly inappropriate to just erase them from existence in favour of plants due to “efficiency”.

What do you think of this @PlanDeRaccordement

In 2017:

2.3 million tonnes of veg was imported to the UK

6 million tonnes of animal feed was imported to the UK.

[quote PlanDeRaccordement]@LadyWhistledownsQuill
Yes, but you can’t add up all the things a cow needs to live its life the same way you would with a plant. Because these are living animals we are talking about. And this push for efficiency in eating, it results in making domesticated livestock go extinct or close to it.

What right do we have to eliminate millions of cows, sheep, pigs? To deny them life because it’s “less efficient”.[/quote]
If we're talking about grams of carbon produced per 100 calories, then we absolutely can add it up that way.

The sheer quantity of livestock on the planet is completely artificial, and a result of human intervention. For instance, 50 Billion meat chickens are slaughtered per year worldwide (World Economic Forum stats). Egg layers are in addition to this.

We could reduce the amount of livestock very substantially - through simply not breeding more - and we'd still be nowhere near extinction.

Not breeding more livestock isn't the same as denying them life any more than using a condom is denying a baby life.

I'm not a vegan btw.

What right do we have to eliminate millions of cows, sheep, pigs? To deny them life because it’s “less efficient”.

If you don't want to "deny them life", don't fucking breed and eat them!

This is such a ridiculous argument I don't even know where to start.

The fallacy of wanting to "protect" millions of animals (by mostly farming them intensively) - so people can eat them?

Let the numbers dwindle.

I'm not a vegan either, btw.

It takes more water to produce dairy than it does to produce almond milk.

This is the kind of statement that shows that people don't understand, at a very basic level, how ecosystems work and how agriculture works.

I live in a valley with a lot of dairy. The cows get their water from the rain, of which there is plenty, we aren't in an area with water problems. When they drink it, the water doesn't go away - it is in the milk (and then later in the people who drink it)it is in the excrement of the cows and in the cows bodies. Ultimately it gets back into the water cycle. Most of our milk is consumed here, little is exported.

Almond trees grown in California, or oranges grown in Israel, are in water-insecure areas. They empty rivers, or aquifers, or convert sea water at high energy cost, to export the water in the form of food. It's not lost entirely on a worldwide basis, but it is directly destroying local ecosystems and also negatively affecting many of the less fortunate people living in those places. It may make them largely uninhabitable and unable to feed their own people in a generation.

Sorry, just to add: the argument being it’s better to have never lived than to be born only to die a horrible death.

If people really believed this, they would be ethically bound to cull all the wild animals too.

I think it's another example of people being so alienated and removed from nature, and why vegans tend to be found in cities.

How do people think wild animals die? They just live to a nice old age and quietly lay down one night and that's it?

If they don't get picked off at birth, they die slowly of disease, they get a quick but violent death by a predator, parasites weaken them to disease, they get old and die of starvation and exposure, they have an accident and die of starvation and exposure...

So no, people don't really believe it's better to never have lived, than to die horribly. They just want to be able to distance themselves from it.

It amounts to a sort of ritual purity, in a lot of cases.

I live in a valley with a lot of dairy. The cows get their water from the rain, of which there is plenty, we aren't in an area with water problems. When they drink it, the water doesn't go away - it is in the milk (and then later in the people who drink it)it is in the excrement of the cows and in the cows bodies. Ultimately it gets back into the water cycle. Most of our milk is consumed here, little is exported.

Are they grass-fed only?

(But this does go to explain some of the issues with averages around inputs and lack of context - a consumer can’t really possibly know whether their milk is from a cow that is entirely fed on either grass or silage grown on-farm with minimal fertilisers (somehow) or from a cow fed on imported feed from a more water-stressed (but cheaper) country where they flung a lot of fertiliser on it.

And even after all of that you still have methane as an issue. It’s incredibly complex which gives absolutists on all sides of the argument a stick to beat each other with.

@JassyRadlett

I live in a valley with a lot of dairy. The cows get their water from the rain, of which there is plenty, we aren't in an area with water problems. When they drink it, the water doesn't go away - it is in the milk (and then later in the people who drink it)it is in the excrement of the cows and in the cows bodies. Ultimately it gets back into the water cycle. Most of our milk is consumed here, little is exported.

Are they grass-fed only?

Dairy cows generally aren't, no. Most dairy farms do a corn/sow/fallow rotation for their grain crops.

But I rather get the impression that the point has whooshed over your head - which is that how much water goes into a product isn't really the main point. Nor are rather primitive addings up of what calories are produced/used.

You have to look at how the whole ecosystem of the farm, and other farms around, interact with the land.

This is why it's stupid to compare a standard vegan diet to a standard western diet. They are both environmentally destructive, based on factoryy production and monocultures, and the worst ways to eat.

@SmokedDuck

Sorry, just to add: the argument being it’s better to have never lived than to be born only to die a horrible death.

If people really believed this, they would be ethically bound to cull all the wild animals too.

I think it's another example of people being so alienated and removed from nature, and why vegans tend to be found in cities.

How do people think wild animals die? They just live to a nice old age and quietly lay down one night and that's it?

If they don't get picked off at birth, they die slowly of disease, they get a quick but violent death by a predator, parasites weaken them to disease, they get old and die of starvation and exposure, they have an accident and die of starvation and exposure...

So no, people don't really believe it's better to never have lived, than to die horribly. They just want to be able to distance themselves from it.

It amounts to a sort of ritual purity, in a lot of cases.

Hang on, that answer was in response to a theory pondered by a PP.

I’d hazard a guess that most (all?) vegans believe an animal dying a natural death of any of the ways in your post is better than the extensive, hormone-pumped, overbreeding programmes cows are forced to take part in.

I’m not vegan, I’m not even vegetarian, but I can completely see the difference between a wild animal and your average farmed pig.

Farm animals (in EU and U.K.) have a much better life than wild animals. Secure from predators. Reliable and sufficient food supply. Fields to roam about in. Regular health checks and medicine if sick.

But farm animals in other countries have a worse life than a wild animal.

We can’t generalise “farm animals” because welfare standards and farming practices range from the humane to the cruel.

This is why it's stupid to compare a standard vegan diet to a standard western diet. They are both environmentally destructive, based on factoryy production and monocultures, and the worst ways to eat.

@SmokedDuck. Yes agree completely.

@PlanDeRaccordement

Farm animals (in EU and U.K.) have a much better life than wild animals. Secure from predators. Reliable and sufficient food supply. Fields to roam about in. Regular health checks and medicine if sick.

But farm animals in other countries have a worse life than a wild animal.

We can’t generalise “farm animals” because welfare standards and farming practices range from the humane to the cruel.

Except the reason farm animals are so intensively farmed is for food ie raised for slaughter. There’s no argument to mass cull every wild animal.