The latest from PETA ...

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I heard a representative from PETA this morning on 'Farming Today' on R4 (yes, I get up at stupid o'clock with DS3)....saying this. I can't do links, but if you Google 'PETA meat child abuse' it will show up.

Valid points about additives, hormones etc used in intensive farming. But this is outrageous scaremongering, IMO. And to link something as awful as child abuse to dietary choices is just wrong.

"Something that really shocked me recently was reading that during the big famine in Ethiopia, the country was producing animal fodder to be sold to Europe."

Yes and now in Zimbabwe with nearly a 1/3 of the population facing food shortages commercial farmers are still producing tobacco - but that's because we don't WANT 3rd world countries to be purely substinance farmers.....do we???? Countries like Ethiopia and Zimbabwe rely on their major exports to keep the economy afloat - if those exports stopped.....to grow food for the people living in the country the economy would completely collapse and they'd be in a even worse situation!

How can having enough to eat bea major problem?

I can assure you the farms where I live, in Durham are NOT factory farms and make the countryside an extremely beautiful place for us to live. I agree factory intensive farming is bad, but not all farms are like that.

But a lot of them are very bad. And you see the coes grazing in the field, but you don't see the newborn calves being shot(dairy farms). It's not always as rosy as it looks.

That should be COWS!

TooTicky. How do you feel about people eating humanely reared meat?

Whatever happens in factory farms (which I don't approve of in any way btw) it does NOT compare to the Holocaust.
In organic farms newborn calves aren't shot. They are slaughtered later, yes, to eat. I can see vegetarians would find this distasteful, but it isn't a holocaust.

Ticky, but how many of the cows do you think would be alive if we didn't farm them either for their meat or milk?

'Wild' cows would never exsist.

while I think there should be good guidance on animal welfare, thinking that farm animals would exsist if we didn't eat them (in some form) is pie in the sky.

ticky were you on the vanessa phone in show today?

If the animals are humanely reared, allowed to live in a natural way and humanely slaughtered (although i'm not sure this is possible ) then that is a million times better than the way the vast majority of meat is produced. I have every admiration for farmers who genuinely put the welfare of the animals first.

Ticky - are you going to respond to my post about exports in famine stricken countries being paramount to holding often extemely fragile economies together???

I NEVER NEVER NEVER mentioned the holocaust.
I have never been on a phone-in.
Many animals would be better off never having been born than living the lives they have. Cows will NOT become extinct if people don't eat them, but they will not be bred intensively or produce such high levels of methane.

hRHQOQ, I just think that providing food for the people should come first.

it's only that there was a woman caller who was passionate about the subject, it was quite interesting.

So, Ticky. It's not the fact that people eat meat that you object to. It's the way that meat is reared?

Fair enough.

The thing that strikes me as obvious with PETA is that they don't want anyone to eat meat. Their arguments always seem to fall flat when they're asked about milk/meat produced/raised humanely within the organic industry.

In an ideal world, I'd be happier if people didn't eat meat. Or farm it. I think the respect for life has gone, and that bothers me. Indigenous peoples tend to give thanks for what they have and use every part of animals they kill.
PETA do good work, but they also do stupid things which help nobody - not even the animals.

i suppose if anything else it has got people talking about it, which was probably their aim do you think?

but Ticky - if the economy collapses because exports are stopped in order to "provide food" - then there will be NO food......as with no economy no industry will be able to survive.....most of these countries RELY on exports to get their Forex......with no Forex they can't import things to make industry - including farming run!

With a collasped economy inflation soars - then even those that do have jobs (often very few - currently 25% of the working age population in zimbabwe are in employment) can't afford the food anyhow.......For example Mugabe's mad policies have meant that the two major importers of Forex - the Tobacco Industry and Tourism have struggled - inflation currently stands at 1200% - and is expected to rise to 1800% by the end of the year. Forex is like Gold Dust. Those that do have cars can't run them - because Forex is required to import the spares for their cars, farmers can't run their farms properly - because there's not enough Forex to buy enough fuel to run their machinery.

I'm afraid it's not as simple as "stop exporting produce to provide for your own".....

Yes, but their stupid statement about child abuse won't make them any friends. They may even lose supporters.

"The thing that strikes me as obvious with PETA is that they don't want anyone to eat meat."

So they want people to starve??? There's not much nutrition in Sadza and Okra.......all most can afford to buy in Zimbabwe. Home reared chickens (often kept in tiny cages) are where they get their protein from.....

hRH, I'm really no expert on economies (you've probably realised this) but there is something so WRONG about hungry countries not growing enough food because they are selling shit to bloody Europe.

I know it seems wrong - and I guess on the surface it appears to be terribly wrong - but it's not like that at all. They NEED people to be growing stuff to export to Europe (even sh*t ) to have any chance of the economy keeping going and people being able to get food...it's all very complicated with Forex involved........and certainly not helped by a very inbalanaced Global Trade issues...

i've been looking at their website, they seem to be talking about obesity more than anything

That's the sad thing, Ticky.

If PETA had said that intensively reared meat harms health and were pressing for the rasing of standards in livestock farming, I would support them. But, at the risk of repeating myself, it is quite clear that they want an end to all meat/milk production.

And that Heather Macca Mills puts me off of their causes even more.

Milk production is particularly emotive though. I mean, would you want to lactate for another species? When your baby had been taken from you?