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

[editor]

It's been discussed but industrial feed lots are not the only way to farm animals. None of the local farmers I see around here use such things. Obviously their flocks of sheep (mainly, some cattle, on grass) are smaller than the vast monoliths you see in big business. So if we have a holistiic approach that would make things better I think. However at worst, humans can live without eating one or two specific foods. If I never ate beef again it wouldn't be the end of the world

Some farmers are absolute fucking pigs

The authority investigated after receiving complaints from the public about the welfare of his animals.
Trading standards officers later visited his farm on numerous occasions and discovered he failed to follow any of the advice given and continued to keep animals in unclean conditions without sufficient access to clean bedding.
The animals were forced to wade through deep mud to access mouldy food and dirty water and were kept in inadequately fenced fields with numerous hazards to their health.

Farmer failed to care for animals for 'long period' - BBC News

Allen Hall, 53, was given a suspended sentence and banned from keeping livestock for 10 years.

www.bbc.com

A brutal business: alleged beatings and abuse on UK pig farms | Harriet Grant

A Guardian investigation has uncovered claims of violence on a Lincolnshire farm, which the owners deny. But do working conditions in this intensive industry bring a risk of mistreatment of livestock?

www.theguardian.com

Farmers beat cows with spades in disturbing BBC Panorama episode

A BBC Panorama documentary exposes the distressing cruelty animals’ are suffering on a South Wales dairy farm. The documentary, A Cows Life, which aired on BBC One yesterday (February 14) saw reporters explore the “controversial” ways of the milk industry. In the documentary, a Welsh farm was...

www.independent.co.uk

Farmer jailed over cruelty that led to ‘UK’s biggest animal rescue mission’

More than 200 animals were found being kept in vile conditions, with some having to be put down after being left underfed and diseased

www.telegraph.co.uk

 

[Karl Masks]

Some farmers are absolute fucking pigs

Farmer failed to care for animals for 'long period' - BBC News

Allen Hall, 53, was given a suspended sentence and banned from keeping livestock for 10 years.

www.bbc.com

A brutal business: alleged beatings and abuse on UK pig farms | Harriet Grant

A Guardian investigation has uncovered claims of violence on a Lincolnshire farm, which the owners deny. But do working conditions in this intensive industry bring a risk of mistreatment of livestock?

www.theguardian.com

Farmers beat cows with spades in disturbing BBC Panorama episode

A BBC Panorama documentary exposes the distressing cruelty animals’ are suffering on a South Wales dairy farm. The documentary, A Cows Life, which aired on BBC One yesterday (February 14) saw reporters explore the “controversial” ways of the milk industry. In the documentary, a Welsh farm was...

www.independent.co.uk

Farmer jailed over cruelty that led to ‘UK’s biggest animal rescue mission’

More than 200 animals were found being kept in vile conditions, with some having to be put down after being left underfed and diseased

www.telegraph.co.uk

Cruelty in farming is a reality and I don't think i've ever denied it, nor have I said it's acceptable. I would like to see that change. I'm sure we all would. But the sheep in my friend's field are not subject to conditions anything like what you have demonstrated.

 

[Funky_monks]

It's been discussed but industrial feed lots are not the only way to farm animals. None of the local farmers I see around here use such things. Obviously their flocks of sheep (mainly, some cattle, on grass) are smaller than the vast monoliths you see in big business. So if we have a holistiic approach that would make things better I think. However at worst, humans can live without eating one or two specific foods. If I never ate beef again it wouldn't be the end of the world

Most production in the UK isn't feed lot based.
Even most feed lots in the USA are used to finish animals born on a ranching system - it's only a specific part of the animals life. You can finish on grass, it just takes longer

 

[Funky_monks]

Cruelty in farming is a reality and I don't think i've ever denied it, nor have I said it's acceptable. I would like to see that change. I'm sure we all would. But the sheep in my friend's field are not subject to conditions anything like what you have demonstrated.

It's a goalpost moving that happens whenever some rational discussion starts happening.

 

[editor]

Cruelty in farming is a reality and I don't think i've ever denied it, nor have I said it's acceptable. I would like to see that change. I'm sure we all would. But the sheep in my friend's field are not subject to conditions anything like what you have demonstrated.

The more people continue to eat meat, the more the cruelty will persist, either through the cruelty of a minority of traditional farmers or through the unspeakable, foul cruelty of factory farming, where the vast majority of meat is produced.

 

[Funky_monks]

Oh ffs!

What’s ok then? Carrots? Wafer-thin ham?

Well that's sort of the point. Nobody is saying not to eat spuds, we just need better ways of producing them.

Its ridging and harvesting on sloping ground that's the problem. Perhaps cover cropping or smaller scale production in raised beds....

 

[bcuster]

Some farmers are absolute fucking pigs

Farmer failed to care for animals for 'long period' - BBC News

Allen Hall, 53, was given a suspended sentence and banned from keeping livestock for 10 years.

www.bbc.com

A brutal business: alleged beatings and abuse on UK pig farms | Harriet Grant

A Guardian investigation has uncovered claims of violence on a Lincolnshire farm, which the owners deny. But do working conditions in this intensive industry bring a risk of mistreatment of livestock?

www.theguardian.com

Farmers beat cows with spades in disturbing BBC Panorama episode

A BBC Panorama documentary exposes the distressing cruelty animals’ are suffering on a South Wales dairy farm. The documentary, A Cows Life, which aired on BBC One yesterday (February 14) saw reporters explore the “controversial” ways of the milk industry. In the documentary, a Welsh farm was...

www.independent.co.uk

Farmer jailed over cruelty that led to ‘UK’s biggest animal rescue mission’

More than 200 animals were found being kept in vile conditions, with some having to be put down after being left underfed and diseased

www.telegraph.co.uk

this is the stuff that really gets to me. i can barely stand to look... there must be a better way. this is not in keeping with the promise we made to these creatures when they were brought into the human family...

 

[Funky_monks]

Small farms produce nearly 80% of the world's food - a third of food globally is produced on farms of under 2 hectares.

Smallholders produce one-third of the world’s food, less than half of what many headlines claim

 

[editor]

this is the stuff that really gets to me. i can barely stand to look... there must be a better way. this is not in keeping with the promise we made to these creatures when they were brought into the human family...

There's no shortage of propagandists and PR liars - like those scumbags employed by the tobacco industry in the 60s to tell everyone fags were good for you - who continue to try and sell the dream of rolling fields and happy animals frolicking around in spacious meadows.

The brutal fact is that, today, over 70% of farm animals in the UK are raised on factory farms.

• Where the vast majority of chickens and pigs raised for meat spend their entire lives indoors, with no green fields to explore. Even dairy cows are increasingly kept indoors for the whole year.
• Where animals are not free to roam or even free to engage in their natural behaviours. Pigs are kept trapped together in claustrophobic pens. Mother sows are prevented from turning around in restrictive farrowing systems, used to prevent the mother pig accidentally squashing her young. Thousands of broiler chickens must constantly compete with one another for even an A4 sized area of space.
• Where there is no fresh air, only huge ventilation fans fixed to the walls, constantly spinning in an effort to disperse the heat, smell and waste gas of so many animals trapped together.
• Where chicken farmers must wear biosecurity suits to protect against the spread of diseases and waste.

Why are we not shown these truths in adverts, on packaging or food labels? Because the reality of factory farming is utterly abhorrent to most people.

The myth of UK farming

Uncover the shocking reality: Over 70% of UK farm animals suffer in factory farms. Join the movement for change and make ethical, sustainable food choices.

www.worldanimalprotection.org.uk

UK has more than 1,000 livestock mega-farms, investigation reveals

Newly published figures show for first time how US-style factory farms have spread across British countryside

www.theguardian.com

 

[8ball]

this is not in keeping with the promise we made to these creatures when they were brought into the human family...

 

[WouldBe]

Similarly enteric methane - all ruminants emit it, it's a natural process. Unless you are going to try and eliminate ruminants, you won't eliminate it.

So do humans hence being able to light your farts.

 

[WouldBe]

Some farmers are absolute fucking pigs.

Some being the important word.  Some humans are genocidal maniacs, not everyone is.

 

[WouldBe]

There's no shortage of propagandists and PR liars - like those scumbags employed by the tobacco industry in the 60s to tell everyone fags were good for you - who continue to try and sell the dream of rolling fields and happy animals frolicking around in spacious meadows.

You don't need PR for that. You just need to open your eyes in the countryside.

 

[Jeff Robinson]

Comrade Bossman Monbiot in the Guardian again outlining how precision fermentation could save the earth and smash torture farming once and for all:

Precision fermentation has the potential to do two astonishing things:

1. shrink to a remarkable degree the footprint of food production. One paper estimates that precision fermentation using methanol needs 1,700 times less land than the most efficient agricultural means of producing protein: soy grown in the US. This suggests it might use, respectively, 138,000 and 157,000 times less land than the least efficient means: beef and lamb production. Depending on the electricity source and recycling rates, it can also enable radical reductions in water use and greenhouse gas emissions. Because the process is contained, it avoids the spillover of waste and chemicals into the wider world caused by farming

2. breaking the extreme dependency of many nations on food shipped from distant places. Nations in the Middle East, north Africa, the Horn of Africa and Central America do not possess sufficient fertile land or water to grow enough food of their own. In other places, especially parts of sub-Saharan Africa, a combination of soil degradation, population growth and dietary change cancels out any gains in yield. But all the nations most vulnerable to food insecurity are rich in something else: sunlight. This is the feedstock required to sustain food production based on hydrogen and methanol.

Embrace what may be the most important green technology ever. It could save us all | George Monbiot

Never mind the yuck factor: precision fermentation could produce new staple foods, and end our reliance on farming, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

www.theguardian.com

What do we want? Precision fermentation!

When do we want it? Yesterday!

 

[bcuster]

We promised humane treatment and freedom from cruel predators, disease and unnaturally short lives in return for utility and domesticity. We have broken our end of the bargain

 

[editor]

You don't need PR for that. You just need to open your eyes in the countryside.

Do I really have to post up photos of huge windowless sheds and factory farms to show you the reality of where the majority of meat is produced in the UK?

 

[editor]

Some being the important word.  Some humans are genocidal maniacs, not everyone is.

Oh, that's OK then

 

[8ball]

We promised humane treatment and freedom from cruel predators, disease and unnaturally short lives in return for utility and domesticity. We have broken our end of the bargain

When was this again?

I expect there was some dissension between signatories and those species assigned to the “pest” category.

 

[Funky_monks]

Posting up articles about occasional cases of abuse in farming and then concluding from these that we shouldn't eat meat is the equivalent of posting up articles about abuse in the care/hospital system and concluding that we should eschew these things.

We need to eat.

 

[8ball]

Posting up articles about occasional cases of abuse in farming and then concluding from these that we shouldn't eat meat is the equivalent of posting up articles about abuse in the care/hospital system and concluding that we should eschew these things.

We need to eat.

Yeah, but if people didn’t eat meat farmers would have to be cruel to pest animals instead…

(am just filling in til ed and Jeff get back)

 

[ddraig]

Posting up articles about occasional cases of abuse in farming and then concluding from these that we shouldn't eat meat is the equivalent of posting up articles about abuse in the care/hospital system and concluding that we should eschew these things.

We need to eat.

We have to eat, but don't need to eat meat

 

[8ball]

We have to eat, but don't need to eat meat

I just did this bit.

 

[WouldBe]

Do I really have to post up photos of huge windowless sheds and factory farms to show you the reality of where the majority of meat is produced in the UK?

Do we really need to post up hundreds of photos of sheep and cows roaming free again?

 

[editor]

Do we really need to post up hundreds of photos of sheep and cows roaming free again?

Oh dear. Looks like you're trying to sidestep the chicken industry with that sudden shift in focus.

But let's talk about chickens. What percentage of those produced fore their flesh do you think roam free in spacious fields? When percentage live natural lives and lifespans?

Go on. Hazard a guess.

 

[WouldBe]

When percentage live natural lives and lifespans?

If they lived a natural lifespan they wouldn't be fit to eat.

You do realise that some veg don't live a natural lifespan don't you? Carrots have a 2 year life cycle. A lot of other veg would be woody if you left them to the end of their lifespan.

 

[editor]

You do realise that some veg don't live a natural lifespan don't you?

Oh dear, oh dear.

 

[DaphneM]

If they lived a natural lifespan they wouldn't be fit to eat.

You do realise that some veg don't live a natural lifespan don't you? Carrots have a 2 year life cycle. A lot of other veg would be woody if you left them to the end of their lifespan.

Plants 'scream' when being cut - Energy Live News

Researchers from Tel Aviv University, Israel, have suggested plants stressed by drought or physical damage may emit high-frequency distress noises

www.energylivenews.com

No one wants to talk about screaming vegetables

 

[platinumsage]

Cruelty to pets would be eliminated if we eliminated pets.

Also, I'm pretty sure very few pets live "natural lives" in this country.

 

[Karl Masks]

The more people continue to eat meat, the more the cruelty will persist, either through the cruelty of a minority of traditional farmers or through the unspeakable, foul cruelty of factory farming, where the vast majority of meat is produced.

I don't believe cruelty is integral or unavoidable. It's a choice made by farmers/business owners largely inspired by the drive for profit. Meat production doesn't necessitate cruelty

 

[ddraig]

Plants 'scream' when being cut - Energy Live News

Researchers from Tel Aviv University, Israel, have suggested plants stressed by drought or physical damage may emit high-frequency distress noises

www.energylivenews.com

No one wants to talk about screaming vegetables

Do they look scared and bleed too? like the animals that were slaughtered for your plate?