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judith
Joined: 16 Dec 2004
Posts: 22789
Location: Montgomeryshire
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cab
Joined: 01 Nov 2004
Posts: 32429
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 Posted: Wed May 18, 05 10:35 am Post subject: |
 
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| Milo wrote: |
Hell's teeth, I can't be making my point(s) very well if anyone thought that that was what I was getting at - I was talking about producing timber between the arable zones and up to 2000', not lettuce! |
That's all fine, but we need a lot more land with food than we do with timber; we've got a hell of a lot of uplands on which we produce meat that we don't need to use for producing timber.
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And as for the 6.5 billion turning veggie, I had hoped it was clear that I wasn't really aiming to include, for example, the Esqimaux, the Massai, nor the Tibetan yak-herder in the "grand scheme".
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You're including who, then? The small scale farmer who shoots and eats rabbits that are eating his crops? The smallholder who keeps a few chickens? The farmer who ethically raises cattle on grass for most of the year?
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Here's something I prepared earlier:
* Nature dictates that we should eat meat,
I am most reluctant to risk winding up a bunch of nice peeps on this forum, but where (on earth) does nature dictate that?
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It's a stupid claim. Nature is not a moral set of guidelines; whether it's 'natural' that we eat meat or not is irrelevent.
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Some state convincingly that man's early eating of meat was almost entirely incidental and a very, very minor part of his diet. The massive population of India has never until recently eaten hardly any meat.
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No one has stated such a thing convincingly to my knowledge. And the population of India, in evolutionary terms, hasn't been mostly veggie for long. Be that as it may, your argument here is just as foolish as insisting that it IS natural to eat meat. What the heck is 'natural' anyway?
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I’ll repeat that I’m most reluctant to risk winding up a bunch of nice peeps, but I’m not confining my thinking to folks who simply give their animals a high degree of care until such time as they have them killed.
And show me an animal that’s happy to volunteer to be killed and I’ll show you one very sick animal.
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Show me an a well reared animal with a good grasp of the metaphysics of death and I'll happily not eat it.
Agriculture deprives animals of life, in one way or another, whether it's arable or pastoral. Live with it.
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If there were no mutton in Britain would anyone come to any harm? Take sheep out of the equation, (And why not? You’ll reduce methane production and be able to turn most of the upland back into forest). |
So you want to reduce the net land used for food production at a time when we're near a global crisis for feeding people? You want to remove one of the best, nearly organic means we have of producing protein on land unsuitable to other agriculture in the UK? For what gain?
There's no moral imperative not to eat meat. So there's no moral imperative not to farm it.
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And what's impracticable about us growing food for people on those parts of the arable lowland which are currently used to produce fodder for animals, animals which we don't need to eat and which themselves produce very little food when eaten?
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You mean, why should we have intensive agriculture which moves a lot of feed from one place to another, with net environmental damage? Why not have more extensive production of meat instead? I agree. Nothing wrong with that. Lets have more of that and less intensive meat production.
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Put it like this, admittedly very hypothetically, and see if it in any way can be translated to something approaching a global situation:
I'll give you 10 acres of reasonably good farmland on which you have to be self-sufficient in beef only. Why? Because if you choose to "grow" meat on this much land, then you can't produce anything other than that meat and the crops which that meat eats.
You grow those crops to feed your cattle and over a two year period you produce two cows, (nothing else, you don't have enough space).
You and your immediate family eat the two cows, (some parts of which you have perhaps managed to freeze in order to stop them going rotten).
Me, on my adjoining 10 acres I have the mother and father of all allotments and produce relatively vast quantities of every vegetable that will grow in the open in the UK’s current climate.
If the climate changes significantly, you, who have probably arrived at (something close to) a mono-culture of animal fodder, will probably be far worse affected that I with my wide range of different produce.
And I've so much land to spare that, with an eye to the future, I plant fruit trees and nut trees and grow soft fruits, plant trees for timber and still end up with such an excess of food (certain types of which can be clamped, etc., to sustain us throught the winter), that, even after I've fed my family and some of my neighbours, I'm still able to offer you and your carnivorous family, (remember that you can't be omnivorous - you just don't have enough space), some of my produce for sale.
But you can't afford it because you've eaten your cows and you've got to borrow money to buy two more before you starve. |
You're doomed; you're taking too much organic matter out of your soil, and with no net inputs of trace nutrients or clear evidence of nutrient recycling your organic matter content in your soil has declined to critical levels. Your net output from your land is increased by the wild animals grazing there; your attempts to keep rabbits and pigeons out, as well as the increasing deer population, have of course failed, as they almost invariably do, and you're struggling to make ends meet.
I, on the other hand, have sold my cattle and bought a gun and a pair of goats. I am happily feasting on the rabbits and pigeons that blight your land. I'm not stupid enough to have cattle and nothing else. I'll be generous and swap you some cheese for shooting rights, though. |
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cab
Joined: 01 Nov 2004
Posts: 32429
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Milo
Joined: 16 May 2005
Posts: 342
Location: Oop North-ish.
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judith
Joined: 16 Dec 2004
Posts: 22789
Location: Montgomeryshire
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joanne
Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 7100
Location: Morecambe, Lancashire
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Milo
Joined: 16 May 2005
Posts: 342
Location: Oop North-ish.
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cab
Joined: 01 Nov 2004
Posts: 32429
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Milo
Joined: 16 May 2005
Posts: 342
Location: Oop North-ish.
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| Posted: Wed May 18, 05 11:00 am Post subject: |
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You still haven't answered what is to be done about pest control - Do we have pest control or are all animals to be treated as sacrosanct ? If so how long would it be before the rabbit or pigeon population has grown out of control and we are forced to take action - What do we do with the carcasses - leave them to rot or eat them - If we leave them to rot is that not a waste of a protein source ?
Also what do we do with the millions of cattle and other farm animals currently in the agricultural system - do we cull them all or let them go wild or what ? |
Let me make it clear that I haven't stated I'm an authority on anything and that includes pest control, which I agree is not irrelevant, but neither is it a convincing argument for not following a particular line of thought.
If we all went vegetarian, we’d be overrun with animals?
Farmed animals are not allowed to reproduce naturally and farmers only breed animals when they can make a profit out of doing so. As demand for meat goes down over time, so fewer and fewer animals will be bred. That means that we will not be overrun by millions of farmed animals, as some people seem to imagine. Eventually, the few that are left can be allowed to go free: pigs can root around in woodlands as it is natural for them to do, sheep will graze the hillsides like deer and so on. Their populations will find their own natural levels, just like every other animal.
If we all went vegetarian – all the animals would die out.
The converse of the above question – we veggies hear ‘em all! It's true that the number of animals will fall as farmers breed fewer and fewer animals as the years go by. Farmed animals live a controlled, distorted life, often filled with pain and fear. The vast majority of farmed animals are kept in indoor units where they never see the light of day. Those that are kept outside are only kept alive for a fraction of their natural lifespans before being slaughtered for meat - often in the most barbaric manner imaginable. All farmed animals are born to die at our command - a disgusting idea. Also some breeds have been so changed from their natural ancestor that it would be kinder to let them die out. For example, broiler chickens and turkeys bred for meat are often so obese that they can barely walk and suffer from crippling leg disorders. However we could set up large nature reserves for the more traditional (now rare) breeds that haven't been so changed.
There would be much more land available for reserves because most of it is used to grow crops for fattening animals at present. Also, there would be more space for forests and woods and other wildlife reservations where genuinely wild British species of animal and plants could flourish. In other countries we could encourage the breeding of our farm animal's wild ancestors - the wild pig, turkeys and jungle fowl (the forerunner of the battery hen) by stopping the destruction of their homes.
Many people forget that all farmed animals have been bred from wild animals – and that their natural ancestors need preserving.
In a vegetarian world animals would not be kept for profit and greed but would be allowed to exist in their natural state and live their life in freedom. |
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Treacodactyl
Downsizer Moderator
Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 25795
Location: Jumping on the bandwagon of opportunism
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cab
Joined: 01 Nov 2004
Posts: 32429
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| Posted: Wed May 18, 05 11:16 am Post subject: |
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| Milo wrote: |
Let me make it clear that I haven't stated I'm an authority on anything and that includes pest control, which I agree is not irrelevant, but neither is it a convincing argument for not following a particular line of thought.
If we all went vegetarian, we’d be overrun with animals?
Farmed animals are not allowed to reproduce naturally and farmers only breed animals when they can make a profit out of doing so. As demand for meat goes down over time, so fewer and fewer animals will be bred. That means that we will not be overrun by millions of farmed animals, as some people seem to imagine. Eventually, the few that are left can be allowed to go free: pigs can root around in woodlands as it is natural for them to do, sheep will graze the hillsides like deer and so on. Their populations will find their own natural levels, just like every other animal.
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That doesn't work. It has never worked. We, in the British Isles and across most of Europe, have more people than can be sustained without taking up a lot of land. That means that we've wpied out most of the predators, and we need to utilise a LOT of land for food production.
That in turn means that we're in competition for land and food with wild animals. Which, in turn means that they either die due to starvation and lack of habitat, or due to us killing them. It's inevitable; agriculture, pastoral or arable, means that animals die. Animal populations do not find natural levels in this landscape, they fluctuate massively.
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If we all went vegetarian – all the animals would die out.
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Except, of course, that they wouldn't. They'd grow sometimes, they'd decline sometimes, and unless we re-built habitats using massive amounts of land and introduced many predators, they'd fluctuate enormously and cause damage to our agriculture, to the point where we would be forced to cull. That's what happens now with rabbits and to a lesser extent deer.
Even the land you use to grow crops on deprives animals of habitat; invertebrates are ground up with wheat when we make flour, tardigrades die because we irrigate land with the water they'd like to live in. What line are you drawing by not eating meat?
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The converse of the above question – we veggies hear ‘em all! It's true that the number of animals will fall as farmers breed fewer and fewer animals as the years go by. Farmed animals live a controlled, distorted life, often filled with pain and fear. |
Go to a well kept farm. Go meet the cattle we buy the meat of. Happier, more contented cattle you'd be hard pressed to find.
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The vast majority of farmed animals are kept in indoor units where they never see the light of day. Those that are kept outside are only kept alive for a fraction of their natural lifespans before being slaughtered for meat - often in the most barbaric manner imaginable. |
Again, go to a good abbatoir, and en route talk to some people who study wild animals about how long most of them would survive in the wild; you're using natural lifespan as if it's a moral requirement that farmed animals be allowed to die of old age, whereas perhaps if you're using 'natural' as a moral construct (a mistake in itself) you ought at least see how long most wild herbivores last before something eats them.
And, again, no one here is likely to argue in favour of intensive indoor agriculture.
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All farmed animals are born to die at our command - a disgusting idea. |
It doesn't disgust me. Why should it?
The rest of your arguments rely far too much on your innate disgust at eating meat; as I don't accept that premis, the rest of your argument rather falls down.
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Also some breeds have been so changed from their natural ancestor that it would be kinder to let them die out. For example, broiler chickens and turkeys bred for meat are often so obese that they can barely walk and suffer from crippling leg disorders. However we could set up large nature reserves for the more traditional (now rare) breeds that haven't been so changed.
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Heck it's worse than that. Battery chickens have been bred such that left to their own devices they eat themselves into a state where they never reach sexual maturity; to have breeding stock you have to starve them. Horrible, ain't it? A bloody good argument for supporting ethical agriculture, but not one that instantly extends to supporting being a vegetarian.
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There would be much more land available for reserves because most of it is used to grow crops for fattening animals at present. Also, there would be more space for forests and woods and other wildlife reservations where genuinely wild British species of animal and plants could flourish. In other countries we could encourage the breeding of our farm animal's wild ancestors - the wild pig, turkeys and jungle fowl (the forerunner of the battery hen) by stopping the destruction of their homes.
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Which natural British landscape and habitats do you have in mind for these reserves?
Man followed the ice as it receded. He didn't cut the trees down straight away, but he's been clearing land in the British Isles for as long as they've been Isles. And, more importantly, why is 'natural' your goal here, who said that 'natural' is some kind of moral target?
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Many people forget that all farmed animals have been bred from wild animals – and that their natural ancestors need preserving.
In a vegetarian world animals would not be kept for profit and greed but would be allowed to exist in their natural state and live their life in freedom. |
No they wouldn't. They'd be shot and culled to stop them eating our crops, otherwise we'd all starve. The difference being that we'd waste their flesh rather than eat it.
If you want to argue in favour of people eating less meat, in favour of ethical agriculture, then I'm all ears. Arguing that vegetarianism is some sort of moral position is, I'm afraid, a losing battle. |
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Jonnyboy
Joined: 29 Oct 2004
Posts: 23956
Location: under some rain.
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tahir
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Blue Peter
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Jonnyboy
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