People who live near farms does it upset you when the animals disapear to become burgers and I am townie that needs to toughen up,

[twinsetandpearls]

We have a field of cows that live at the end of the garden. Thet come to see us every day, we chat to them , dd dances for them and we feed them. The cats run around in their field and the dog has done an elaborate escape act to hang out with them.

They are now gone, dp said they were herded up and taken away, I imagine to be slaughtered. I miss them, dd has given me a good talking too about how they were meant for meat and new ones will be coming

How long does it take to get used to seeing animals as food? ,

lol @ sheep coughing.

Cows mooing for their calves isn't right, you know. That is not the sign of a good farm. That means their calves are away being fed chemical shite in a tiny space for the first twelve months of their lives.

On a good farm, the calves are kept with their mothers until they are old enough to graze themselves.

They all end up dead, of course, but I'd rather the animals weren't treated miserably beforehand.

I'm not a vegetarian and grew up in the country so accept the cycle of animals being reared for food. But i absolutely detest the HUGE wagons that go through our village absolutely packed with chickens and then later see them empty, so as far as my budget allows do have properly farmed meat products.

pointy - on the dairy farm here the calves are taken from their mothers, the females are kept in little barns and the males are disposed of

god, megha, that is so depressing.

Bring on the farming revolution!

I am going to start buying organic milk. It's easy to pretned this sort of stoopid farming doesn't happen but I'm going to have to face up to it and act.

megha, I thought the males were taken away and fattened up on chemical crap in sheds for a few months before being slaughtered for beef?

Ooh I'm hard I won't eat ducks, but cows I have no issue with, and I am oddly enthusiastic about NappiesGalore eating one of her chickens at some point

I sympathise with the OP. Grew up in a small market town in the countryside and there was a smallholding at the end of our garden. The owner used to raise one cow and calf every year as a kind of sideline, I guess. The cows used to come and rub its chin on our garden wall and enjoy having their noses stroked... then every year came the day when it disappeared.

There was a cattle market and an abbatoir in our town, so no chance of not thinking about what happened to farm animals.

I used to visit a friend whose family were farmers up the road from us. I was surprised once to find her Dad in tears - one of the calves had been crushed when the herd rushed over to the feeding troughs. I couldn't understand how this tough Yorkshire farmer was so upset over one calf who would have been slaughtered eventually anyway.

Think I must be callous as I have no problem with it as long as the animals are treated well. I only started to struggle when our meat males started to crow as it gave them personalities.

I would love to become veggie and am seriously considering it. That kill it cook it eat it program was awful and made me think. It's just so easy to be in denial when buying pretty packaged food in Tesco but if it actually looked like a dead pig etc would less people buy it? But then I also think maybe we have ben domesticated by cute animal cartoons etc and people have had to eat animals to survive and other species eat each other etc so I am not 100% sure of my thoughts. I couldn't kill an animal I don't think but then again I have had the luxury of not being starved enough to have to do it.

If we didn't eat meat you wouldn't see many of these animals at all. No sheep (we don't really have a wool industry now), so no lambs. No bullocks. No pigs, etc.

None of them would be around except as pets very occasionally. They only exist because we eat them.

Which isn't to say that I don't WHOLEHEARTEDLY agree that they should be as humanely reared and slaughtered as possible--we owe them a lot.

It is quite normal to me. I stayed on my uncle's farm a lot when I was a child and loved it. All the cows had names. I was just brought up with it. If we were going to have roast chicken my aunt went out and killed one.
If we all became vegetarians the whole nature of the countryside would change and most of the animals would disappear. A farmer isn't going to keep geriatric cows for the love of it!

So what is they didn't exist? Really, so what? I've never understood that argument.

Of course they only exist because we eat them. We need to start insisting on better farming, not stop eating meat necessarily.

My BIL is a dairy farmer - he admits that there is a lot of cruelty in farming, but the only thing he feels he can do is to make sure that his Jersey cows get a 'better' life

We need to be a lot more aware of what goes on in different farms and compare the good ones with the bad ones.

I agree, nag. It's up to individuals (especially farmers) to decide they want animals treated well during their lifetime and then killed well.

I would hate it if they didn't exist!

If they didn't exist we would have a lot less farming and most of our natinal parks and beautiful countryside would lose their appeal.

Why would they lose their appeal? (This is off track, though)

Because you need the animals to produce the landscape. For instance, in the Peak National Park, cattle are used to crop the grass. Where I live, sheep maintain the chalk downlands. I believe sheep are also integral to the preservation of the Lake District.

How would they keep the grass down without the sheep?

I see we cross posted Bridie-I was thinking specifically of the Lake District. It would change the whole nature of the place.

Do you mean grass in fields? You'd grow a crop. You wouldn't have so many fields of grass unless it was fallow.

I mean grass on the fells.Only the sheep can get to it. Nature has a delicate balance.

Grass on fells isn't that lush and abundant, is it? Even without sheep. What happened before sheep? There were hardly an essential part of the eco system if man created them and then bred them like billio. Get a few mountain goats up there. They'll eat any old shrubland.

Before we came along and stuck sheep everywhere there were forests. Pretty much the whole country was covered in them. The countryside as we know it is completely man made.