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Bye bye MEAT! How will the post-meat future look?

How reluctant are you to give up your meat habit?


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You've made many mistakes here. First, not experiencing something first hand doesn't mean that not witnessed it - I have witnessed footage of AI for example. And even if somebody hasn't witnessed a practice, they can still read about it and form assessments about it. I've never witnessed a murder - and I hope you haven't either - but we can still make moral assessments about murder.

But your idiocy runs deeper. You seem unable to grasp the incredibly simple point that people who participate in a practice might not always be in the best position to ethically evaluate it. Clear example - do you think a serial murderer is in a better position to understand murder than you because they've committed a bunch of murders and you haven't?
The act of AI doesn't cause the cows much distress, does it? Bit of discomfort, perhaps, and maybe not even that.

There are plenty of practices to object to in livestock farming. This isn't one of them.
 
Wait where was the anal fisting??

For me lots of livestock stuff is pretty grim. But a lot of stuff with food production is pretty grim if you watch videos of it. Cant deny we need to focus less on animal farming overall in the UK tho....
 
Wait where was the anal fisting??

For me lots of livestock stuff is pretty grim. But a lot of stuff with food production is pretty grim if you watch videos of it.
He will put his hand up the cows bum to find the cervix by pressing down - he then knows where to place the AI rod (vaginally) to inseminate correctly.

I'm sure if the cow objected to him putting his hand up her bum, shed have moved (which was kind of the point of me posting the video). It'd be hard forcibly impregnating a creature weighing a ton if it didn't want to be.
 
Great, so in your (and Shiva's) pseudo-ecofeminist universe planting a crop is rape but forcibly constraining a female mammal, anally fisting her and injecting semen into her vagina so you can forcibly impregnate her, kidnap and murder her kids and subject her to lifetime of reproductive slavery is fine because some women do it. Further proof that animal ag apologists are morally bankrupt.
Just shows how clueless some people are. Your problem is you are anthropomorthising the animals. The objective of most living things is to reproduce. You must have heard that rabbits breed like er rabbits?

When a female dog is in heat it will quite happily let all other dogs shag it. Why do you think it would be different for cows, sheep, pigs or any other farm animal?

As an anus is as stretchy as a vagina why do you think that a hand up a cows arse, that is way smaller than a calf, would be any problem for a cow?

And why would an AI device that is a lot smaller still be a problem in a cows vagina?

Some people really need to learn a lot more about animals. :facepalm:
 
Just shows how clueless some people are. Your problem is you are anthropomorthising the animals. The objective of most living things is to reproduce. You must have heard that rabbits breed like er rabbits?

When a female dog is in heat it will quite happily let all other dogs shag it. Why do you think it would be different for cows, sheep, pigs or any other farm animal?

As an anus is as stretchy as a vagina why do you think that a hand up a cows arse, that is way smaller than a calf, would be any problem for a cow?

And why would an AI device that is a lot smaller still be a problem in a cows vagina?

Some people really need to learn a lot more about animals. :facepalm:

Exactly, animals that aren't in heat don't stand still to allow themselves to be mounted.
 
Just shows how clueless some people are. Your problem is you are anthropomorthising the animals. The objective of most living things is to reproduce. You must have heard that rabbits breed like er rabbits?

When a female dog is in heat it will quite happily let all other dogs shag it. Why do you think it would be different for cows, sheep, pigs or any other farm animal?

As an anus is as stretchy as a vagina why do you think that a hand up a cows arse, that is way smaller than a calf, would be any problem for a cow?

And why would an AI device that is a lot smaller still be a problem in a cows vagina?

Some people really need to learn a lot more about animals. :facepalm:
So what object smaller than a baby would you like up your stretchy anus tonight?
 
Given that it's only cows that are AI'd like that (pigs is a different technique, the catheter "locks" into the sow's cervix by twisting because the tip is corkscrew shaped like a boars penis) and sheep are not routinely AI'd, I'd say the anus doesn't stretch very much because it's reasonably easy to get your arm in there and the cow shows no sign of discomfort.
Cows are quite capable of kicking you if they want to.
 
Given that it's only cows that are AI'd like that (pigs is a different technique, the catheter "locks" into the sow's cervix by twisting because the tip is corkscrew shaped like a boars penis) and sheep are not routinely AI'd, I'd say the anus doesn't stretch very much because it's reasonably easy to get your arm in there and the cow shows no sign of discomfort.
Cows are quite capable of kicking you if they want to.

I guess that corkscrew business means a lot of gyration.
 
Yet more evidence stacks up of the damage caused to the environment by the meat and dairy industry:

The combined methane emissions of 15 of the world’s largest meat and dairy companies are higher than those of several of the world’s largest countries, including Russia, Canada and Australia, according to a new study.

The analysis from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy and Changing Markets Foundation found that emissions by the companies – five meat and 10 dairy corporations – equate to more than 80% of the European Union’s entire methane footprint and account for 11.1% of the world’s livestock-related methane emissions.

Methane, expelled by cows and their manure, is far more potent than carbon dioxide, trapping heat 80 times more effectively and emissions are accelerating rapidly, according to the UN.

 
Methane emitting animals in "emitting methane" shocker.

If we stopped farming cattle and sheep tomorrow, ruminants would still exist.

Indeed, rewilding projects are starting to bring in bison to balance ecosystems - guess what? These are also ruminants.
Wherever you have grasslands and woodlands you are going to have ruminants.
Some ruminants:
Cows
Sheep
Goats
Deer
Bison
Moose
Elk
Buffalo
Giraffes
Camelids are pseudo ruminants, so will still emit methane.

The methane issue is far more complex than that.
Here's an article that talks about the complexities of methane - Methane facts and information

Those articles are very interestingly worded - yes, the cattle companies emit more methane, but almost worded to suggest they emit more overall - enteric methane makes up a small amount of overall GHG emissions.
 
The key measure is the change from before, isn't it? So the problem with burning fossil fuels is that you're releasing new CO2 into the atmosphere, carbon that's been locked away for millions of years, rather than just cycling current carbon as you do when, eg, growing then burning trees.

It is clearly significant that methane levels have gone up so much in the last couple of hundred years, and there's little doubt that we're responsible for most if not all of that increase. But the various contributors may not all be equal in terms of new emissions.

One figure I'd want to know is what proportion of the 40% of human-activity-related methane emission that is attributed to livestock is actually new emission rather than replacing the ruminants that came before. Similarly, how much of the paddy field emission is 'new'? And finally, of course, emissions from oil and gas drilling may only make up 20% of the human-related budget but presumably all of that is 'new'.

What level of emission reduction by humans would take us back to where we were at different points in the past? And which bits of current emissions are easiest to mitigate? Clearly mitigating the effects of rice and meat is hard without changing the demand for rice and meat, but mitigating that 20% from fossil fuel drilling should be the easy bit - it's something we need to stop doing anyway.
 
To add to the above, there also needs to be a sensible discussion about which bits of ruminant farming it is realistic to demand to be changed. US-style intensive feedlot farming is an easy target, while at the other extreme would be the Maasai in East Africa - I would hope nobody would be so crass as to suggest that they are part of the problem.

In between those two extremes would be somewhere like India, which is the world's biggest producer and consumer of dairy. In the case of India, one of the reasons so much dairy is consumed is that hundreds of millions of people there are lacto-vegetarians. Again, considered against a broader background, it's not obvious that the lacto-vegetarians of India should be held responsible for global warming and ordered to change their ways, ways that in many cases are rooted in thousands of years of tradition. (In many parts of India, as in East Africa and Europe, there is a very high incidence of the gene for lifelong lactose-tolerance - it's been selected independently wherever dairy consumption has become a part of the culture.)

This is the weakest point of the the simplistic solutions of the likes of Monbiot. They fail to consider the world as it actually is and the cultures and ways of life of the people in it. People like Monbiot must sound like voices from an alien planet to a Maasai cow herder or an Indian dairy farmer.
 
One figure I'd want to know is what proportion of the 40% of human-activity-related methane emission that is attributed to livestock is actually new emission rather than replacing the ruminants that came before. Similarly, how much of the paddy field emission is 'new'? And finally, of course, emissions from oil and gas drilling may only make up 20% of the human-related budget but presumably all of that is 'new'.

Well, quite - they estimate that 40 million bison in the USA alone were killed in the 19th century, so much so that it caused a mini ice age.
Add to that the decline of the European bison, buffaloes Giraffes etc on the African savannah.

Ruminants, grasslands and rumination have been on the earth for millions of years.
Farming less ruminants would only be significant if they were not then replaced by wild ruminants, and we have no idea what the impact on grassland ecosystems would be.

It's a good way to distract ourselves from fossil fuels though I guess.
 
This is the weakest point of the the simplistic solutions of the likes of Monbiot. They fail to consider the world as it actually is and the cultures and ways of life of the people in it. People like Monbiot must sound like voices from an alien planet to a Maasai cow herder or an Indian dairy farmer
It's colonialism - imagined wildernesses by urban, wealthy northern Europeans/North Americans, completely ignoring rural populations, rendering them "unnatural" in their native landscape.

The intellectual groundwork is being laid here too, for a new Highland clearances for massive "carbon offset" tree planting excercises.
Once a year I lose myself in the Hebrides to walk and think – before going back to the life I love

Look at the language here - how many times the author only considers himself and how the inhabitants of the Western Isles are completely airbrushed from the landscape. Reading it, you'd think nobody lived there.
 
Yet more evidence stacks up of the damage caused to the environment by the meat and dairy industry:





The problem with this is that it doesn't really tell us anything.

It sounds shocking: some corporate titans emit more than some countries. But what does that actually mean in real terms?
 
It's a good way to distract ourselves from fossil fuels though I guess.
This is my concern. The extraction and burning of fossil fuels is the major issue here. It is more important than everything else put together, but you wouldn't guess that sometimes. Fundamentally, this is the 'new' greenhouse gas contribution that has driven the changes in the planet's climate.

Using the US as the exemplar of how the rich world needs to change its ways, their own government's figures make it crystal clear what the problem is.

Where greenhouse gases come from - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

Without wishing to sound like I'm in denial about methane, it is clear that there is an additional agenda among many who are currently jumping on it as a major problem. Overwhelmingly, these are people who want to see livestock farming ended for other reasons. I'd rather they were honest about that and stuck to the real reason they want it ended, which has nothing to do with greenhouse gases.
 
The problem with this is that it doesn't really tell us anything.

It sounds shocking: some corporate titans emit more than some countries. But what does that actually mean in real terms?
It means people should eat fewer meat and dairy products and factory farming should be ended.

You did read the article, yes?
 
It's colonialism - imagined wildernesses by urban, wealthy northern Europeans/North Americans, completely ignoring rural populations, rendering them "unnatural" in their native landscape.

The intellectual groundwork is being laid here too, for a new Highland clearances for massive "carbon offset" tree planting excercises.
Once a year I lose myself in the Hebrides to walk and think – before going back to the life I love

Look at the language here - how many times the author only considers himself and how the inhabitants of the Western Isles are completely airbrushed from the landscape. Reading it, you'd think nobody lived there.
tbf I don't have such a problem with city-types talking like that. Living in a city, I also appreciate the idea of 'getting away'. When I was a kid, I used to take myself away to places where I couldn't see any person or building. Of course I was still inside a landscape shaped by human activity, but I had a need to feel that I was away from it somehow.

But yes, in doing that we need to acknowledge what we're doing, that it's a romantic and largely false idea, and that we city-types are not the whole world.
 
As many people as practically possible.
Indian lacto-vegetarians not so much, then. Dairy is a very important part of their diet, not to mention their culture.

I agree strongly with Funky Monks on this particular point - any one-size-fits-all pronouncement is going to sound an awful lot like neocolonialism. Cos that's what it is. And worse than that, it is a list of demands on those who are not the problem from those who are the problem. Why the fuck should poor Indians change their diets because the rich world has failed to address its addiction to fossil fuels?
 
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