So can we drop meat without sc***ing the hill farmers? as it were?

[choosyfloosy]

we've dropped meat for ecological reasons, but is there any alternative for Welsh hill farmers? All the sources I read about this seem biased, does anyone have any more indepth information to point me to than GO VEGGIE NOW OR WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE or TOWNIE SCUM YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND COUNTRY LIFE?

tia

nothing to add but am marking my place

Well, I should imagine there won't ever be a situation where everyone becomes vegetarian.

I suppose a good situation might be one where meat becomes a premium, luxury product so consumers go for slow grown, ethically raised animals. Then small farmers can (hopefully) get a good price for their product and it would be the large, factory style producers who would suffer.

No more New Zealand lamb and a market wholly met by British hill farmers for example.

Actually, my previously vegetarian cousin has started eating meat occasionally from a farm local to her as she knows the source and is happy with the welfare aspect. She also eats fish her dad catches locally (very occasionally).

What are the ecological reasons you are basing your decision on?

My Dad was a farmer until recently and he used to say hill farmers get subsidy for keeping sheep on the hills in order to maintain the landscape and the hill farmers hated the sheep to actually have any lambs that needed looking after. The farmers income was the subsidy not meat production.

Not sure if that is true now but there was a trade in so called 'black sheep' where unregistered sheep were transferred from hill farm to hill farm in order to increase the amount of subsidy they could claim. Many farmers said that was the main reason Foot & Mouth spread so quickly in that last outbreak.

Truth is, without subsidy most hill farms would have no sheep regardless of whether people ate meat or not.

Call me deeply cynical on this but scratch the surface of several agriculture ministers and find vegetarians eg Hillary Benn etc. I do not have any problem with their personal food choice but I do feel it must influence the ethics of their work.

Now that we buy from a global market, the British farmer is almost seen to be an expensive side line but who sits on an even more commodity ie his land. So many farmers are being squeezed out of the equation by large agri businesses/ land agents that it prevents new entrants to farming.

I completely agree with shonaspurtle with a ban on imported meat as the British farming industry can completely meet demand.

This sort of thing. In fact, it's the 'meaningless gesture' ecological reasons, as we are staying with eggs and dairy produce for now. Plus we are keeping ds on meat. Plus we are going to stay on fish for now . One step at a time, sweet Jesus. It will just take a little time to go from our usual American-Werewolf-In-London scenes at the dinner table to a vegan future.

Interesting re subsidy. But if there is less income from meat production, presumably the subsidy would have to go up? Having said that, that is one subsidy that perhaps is slightly more likely to survive under the Tories?

My view is pretty much in line with shonaspurtle and gentleotter.

Imposing strict animal welfare standards on imported meat and encouraging people to make individual decisions to buy locally produced meat would save a lot of CO2 emissions and mean UK farmers could compete and make a living on a level playng field.

Most farmers wold love to see subsidies disappear, make a fair living and get meddling officialdom out of their lives.

choosyfloosy - maybe think about buying local meat but eating less of it, keeping some chickens in your garden for eggs, cutting out wild seafish. Might be an ecologically sounder and easier approach to implement?

I would hate to see the country side without animals, and only a few farm country parks, run as museums. I also wonder what would happen to the landscape if the hillsides in the Lake District etc were not grazed. I think the answer is to eat less meat and buy it locally, from ethically farmed animals.

ought only to eat the fish we catch, i guess

am scared stiff of killing crayfish but i think that's what it's going to have to be

hmm, killing crayfish or keeping hens? i HATE hens

but presumably switching to flown in chickpeas, monocultured tofu and soy sauce is ecologically shit on a stick

yes i only ate british meat but quite a lot of it

sorry for piecemeal musing and thanks for your input

i'd love to go crayfishing but cannot eat them, make me ill. shall we go together choosyfloosy? i'll make the funny bicycle net thing and you can eat them.

meat in wales is delicious. in london it is mainly dreadful, even poncy expensive meat. better quality = want to eat less of it.

i can catch them (sort of) and eat them (just) but have never killed one [wuss].