Never thought - going vegetarian

[jmill]

I feel upset about recent abattoir stories in the news recently regarding their horrific treatment of animals. It put me off eating meat in an instant, those men are bullying monsters, and I bet it goes on in loads of other places. I feel shameful having ever eaten meat.

If there was an end to the meat, dairy and poultry industry, where would all the animals go?

I have wondered that myself dishwasherdogs - you're right in that the countryside would change dramatically, and not necessarily for the better. I think a middle ground of reduced herd sizes (and reduced availability) with a higher standard of care would be a good compromise.

Why is the burger dirty?

DNA from over 100 cows. But so what? Why does that matter? It sounds scary and shocking but as a meat eater I don't particularly care if my burger comes from 1 cow or 100 cows.

Plumping, if everyone thought more about the welfare of the meat they were eating, I think that's what would happen.
Sadly farming has become more industrialised because demand is there, and excellent welfare doesn't usually go hand in hand with industrialised farming systems.

We buy our meat from a butcher who buys animals from local farms, and produced on their own family farm, so we know the animals have a good life. They also use breeds that are more traditional and slow growing, like Aberdeen Angus and Charolais, rather than the more modern breeds selectively bred to grow quickly with less fat on them, although those breeds are still unrecognisable from their counterparts from decades ago.

Pantone363 it's not the DNA per se, but the implied extent of activity and processing that must have occurred to get to that point. If I must eat beef at all then I'd rather keep it extremely simple - kill cow, slice off some muscle, mince it, form a burger, fry off, serve.

I imagine that it's rather more complicated to try and get 100 cows into one batch - for a start, it implies a bloody big vat of meat. Now, did all the meat from those 100 cows get there at one time, or are there leftover bits from the previous batch? How clean is it all? Did they all come from the same place, or different ones? Were there varying standards of care? How far was the meat transported in order to reach this hypothetical giant vat? How many opportunities were there for corner-cutting people to say 'I know, we'll sub in horse meat instead'? And how far was the meat transported for distribution after being minced? Europe-wide? Who knows?
And how much meat is actually in it anyway? How much is it bulked out with the less palatable bits of the cow in order to maximise efficiency?

That's why I call it a dirty burger.

Same principles apply to veg burgers but without the same potential for animal suffering.

dishwasherdogs My DH is your sort of carnivore - he'd like to have the option of better meat. In reality he does, but he's lazy and doesn't exert himself to go buy it. I'm even lazier and just avoid the problem altogether

I don't think abattoirs "attract" abusive people any more than waitressing "attracts" rude people or retail "attracts" stupid people. People need work to pay their bills. A properly run abattoir has a culture of preserving welfare, if for no other reason than to maintain the quality of the meat. If that culture isn't present that's the fault of the management.

A dirty veg burger may not involve animal suffering but it could result in human suffering. All our food should be produced to a high standard and if it isn't it's usually because costs are being cut. With the current fashion for eating 'cheap' we could be storing up problems

One cannot consume entirely ethically, it is just not possible without a massive revolution in the infrastructure of capitalism as it currently stands. One could be the vegannest vegan ever and there would still be blood on ones hands.

Consider how many children are involved in the farming of produce that ends up on our shelves (and many are denied education, are badly hurt, cut off from their parents, and die - and this happens across the EU, in the US it's estimated 25% of the pickers are children as young as 6 which would include quite a bit of UK orange juice, and many corporations have moved to make use of exploitative labour worldwide), how many vegan trends have pushed up food commodity prices worldwide so that the poorer populations who relied on those for millenia end up priced out and starving to death (pretty much ever food that's become trendy has had massive ethical problems and caused death and widescale poverty in producing for those with bigger wallets), we could discuss the World Bank kicking people off their own land to make accessible to big farming business which has resulted in people dying, or how about the sky rocketing prices for northern indigenous populations ($30-40 for a head of lettuce as a real example) after bloody Greenpeace got involved and got legislation to deny indigenous nations the food they've been living sustainable on for centuries without anything to replace it, we could discuss indigenous people of Brazil being moved off their land by force, with many deaths, to make room for more soya planting (and how the repeated moves are putting no contact nations at risk as well). And that's just food system issues off the top of my head.

We can all only do the best we can in a system built on exploitation and blood. Making people feel guilty for eating meat/dairy/working in those industries when Western veganism has mountains of blood of the less fortunate around the world on its hands is just ridiculous, shortsighted, and makes it quite uncomfortable that some remember the pain of animals but neither remember nor respect other people who die to make ones lifestyle choices possible. We can only do our best and sometimes that includes meat consumption. We have to weigh up many variables to see it, not just one, and realize our own limitations are acceptable in a system built and maintained for exploitation, including of us.

TheSpork, everything that you've said is correct and I agree that it is impossible to be entirely 'clean'. However.... I don't want to eat animals, or products that animals have been encouraged to produce/be part of. I agree that I shouldn't guilt people over that, as it's my choice; in fact my DH and DC are omnivores and we all continue to happily co-exist. However, I can and do bang the drum for improved welfare standards in farming and improved reliance upon fairtrade and non-intensively-farmed crops. Keep it as local as possible and as fresh as you can, and if that's not feasible then at the very least choose a fairtrade option and/or buy from companies with a less-than-shit human rights record. That's basically my modus operandi.

Oh, and don't buy plastic tat. This is a dreadful thing for me as I used to LOVE tat, but now I can't go near it without thinking of the sweatshops