Climate Change Bill Campaign

I AGREE!!! This is such a frustrating issue! It seems that people are all too happy to blame governments and industry for climate change, but when it comes to what’s on their own dinner plate, they turn a blind eye. I am not in favour of GM or biotech-foods but if people want to continue eating meat on such a huge scale, I say let them eat meat from a petri-dish (i.e. cultured in a lab). Personally, I have been vegetarian most of my life and I believe that modern farming is a scourge on Gaia and the ecological systems that are so vital to all life.

For egg-eaters or those who can’t kick the meat habit but want to find friendlier options, “Freedom Food” is a new term I’ve heard being banded about. I think it’s being advocated by the RSPCA as a mid-way alternative that is not quite as good as free-range/organic but is more humane than intensive farming and is cheaper than free-range/organic.

Sorry, but you cannot just get rid of farm animals without a knock on effect for the planet too. If we did not have livestock producing manure to spread on the fields as fertiliser we would have to use chemicals.Is that better? If farmers did not fertilise their fields with manure from animals nothing would grow, including vegetables. All plants give off oxygen which we breathe: no plants, no oxygen this also harms the planet. People seem to forget that within our beautiful world every single living thing is dependant upon each other. Someone said to me the other day that there would be no need for farmers to breed livestock at all if everyone was vegetarian, and the sheep and cattle could live in the fields for their natural lives. I had to point out that the only reason the sheep and cattle are there in the first place is because the farmer breeds them to sell, if they disappear that means the English meadow would disappear too as it is the animals that help make England the beautiful place it is.

I have to say that I agree with Wendywend on the subject of livestock. We should also remember that the human race is designed to eat what is available at any given time, so that makes us omnivores . I wish more people could take note of that! I live in Kenmore, Perthshire, and the Scottish Crannog Centre is visible from my house. This is a reconstruction of an Iron Age loch dwelling . At that time, people ate what was available, and that meant local vegetation, as well as fish and meat if it was available. Meat is a natural part of our diet , but I believe that free range or organic produce should be all that is stocked in our shops, and at a fair price. I think it time to stop the “tunnel vision” attitude towards meat eaters, and look to history as a lesson in what we eat naturally.

hello there!

sorry to join this debate so late – just a couple of thoughts.

homo sapiens have evolved to eat a varied variety of foods, making us omnivores. this is how we were able to spread across the globe and survive the last ice age, while our primate cousins remained in hotter climes tied to vegetation. But this history has nothing to do with our current diet in the west. the intensive farming industry means that the current average diet in the west has us eating more than twice the amount of meat as those just a generation ago. its a Henry VIII diet which killed him off and is killing us at unprecedented levels too. heart disease, cancer, stroke – its all been shown to be largely caused by diet, excacerbated of course by our largely sedentary lifestyles. it is not a normal state of affairs by any means. as an alternative, homo sapiens thrive on the vegetarian diet – disease levels are greatly reduced in scientific studies as well as anecdotal evidence. I have been vegetarian for over ten years, and already am far more healthy than all of my meat eating peers.

Any objections? Well I see that someone has made the old erroneous claim: “If farmers did not fertilise their fields with manure from animals nothing would grow, including vegetables.

This is nonsense. If all humans had a vegetarian diet we could actually use human manure as a fertiliser, along with composted vegetation which in my opinion it should be mandatory to recycle. disgusting? if you feel it is have a think about why you are happy to use cow manure but not human?!!

the only other objection that i can see is that the appearance of the countryside would change. come on people is that not a small price to pay to feed the starving people of the world? grain from starving nations is currently going to our livestock. i personally think it should go to the starving.

my thoughts are that those who oppose vegetarianism do so using all sorts of excuses which can all be shown to be unsubstantiated. The actual reason for the opposition is always quite simple – that they enjoy erating steak, chicken and pork, and that they dont want to give up their favourite dinners – especially if others continue to eat this meat while they have to stop. its all about personal responsibility has nothing to do with this. its all about doing your bit.

the good news is you dont have to do it all at once. a gradual change, maybe just having a vegeatrian day once a week. You will be doing your bit. I’ll even come round and cook it – but you can do the washing up.

Guys,

Let’s at least try to be realistic about all this!

Firstly, the world is not going ‘vegetarian’ overnight. It may be the way to feed all most everyone but it’s not going to happen in our lifetime.

Secondly, and with supply of cheap fossil-fuel energy coming to an abrupt end pretty soon, the only option we will have to continue growing ‘vegitarian stuff’ after the man-made fertilizer concoctions we currently use (via cheap and convenient energy) will be the manures from farm animals and ourselves.

Sadly this process will also require our world population to reduce by some 80% .... and very soon!

This is an interesting issue. I have looked into it as I want to reduce my footprint and going veggie is one way of doing this. I have cut the amount of meat I eat per week and research shows that an 80 gram consumption of red meat is healthy (from some cancer charity website). So not only does reducing our meat appetite help the planet but it also helps us giving us a better quality of life!

As for going totally veggie – I am not too sure. to be honest I don’t trust myself to cook a balanced diet (I need to do more research on meat alternatives – my family have tred tofu with a VERY mixed response!). From a footprint point of view there is some research out there that points to an omniverous diet as being best. See the articel on Treehugger.com, first paragraph and link below:

“If the thought of eating like a vegetarian to lower your ecological footprint makes your stomach churn, here is some good news. It turns out the diet with the smallest possible footprint * foodprint (for New York state) contains a portion of meat and dairy. That’s right, the smallest foodprint is a mix of veggies and meat.”

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/10/foodprint.php

Before I start rambling I’ll just say that I’ve been a vegetarian all my life, but I am not biased towards it.

You don’t have to go totally vegetarian to save the world, but I think that cutting down meat consumption is a great idea. Using the past as an explanation for eating meat however is invalid as we have evolved since then to work out how to have a healthy diet without meat. If eating meat was vital to our diet I would be dead by now! Although I think that if people want to eat meat thats fine, the only thing that bothers me about it is people who eat way too much of the stuff and don’t care about the quality of life that the animals they are eating have had, and that does for dairy products too.

Also about the comment earlier about not having manure to put on crops as there’d be fewer farm animals, there are ‘green manures’ which are plants which can grow in pretty poor soil conditions, these plants take nitrogen gas out of the air and fix it into the soil, they also can take water up from deep areas of the soil with long roots. These are then ploughed into the soil which add nitrates, water and organic matter to the soil, making it better =)

Thank you for reading!

http://www.ciwf.org.uk/eatlessmeat/

CIWF are doing a campaign to cut down on the problems caused by the overproduction of livestock, without having meat eaters throw a wobbler. It seems to work.

My Dad has cut down to maybe 1 or 2 (organic) meat meals a week, with more vegetarian or line caught/local fish instead. It works better as I am a veggie and my Mum and boyfriend are pescatarians.

I think people have become too dependant on meat-based meals. I work in a budget supermarket and I can count on one hand the amount of frozen ready-meals that are vegetarian out of a range of about 50-odd. They just HAVE to contain meat!

In response to Wendywend.

First let me say that in a field of 5 football pitches 2 people can be fed on meat but 50 people can be fed on vegtables.

Secondly, If we were to use a crop rotation method, there would not be any need for manure. There is also other ways to reliese carbon/energy into the soil, apart from using vegtables

am i missing the point here? dosen’t being vegetarian mean eating quantities of dairy produce therefore animals would still have to be bred and managed for dairy purposes. i realise that the animals would not be so intensively culled as they are when they are bred for their meat which would make some difference but we would still have similar populations of animals in order to support a huge population of vegetarians and those animals will still die or be slaughtered. would it not be better to be more realistic and get people to alter their eating habits by encouraging them to support organic free range and eating less meat (as encouragingly seems to be increasingly popular in this country) having lived with my husband for 6 years who would rather die than face eating broccolii for example, talking about the whole world going veggie is just never actually going to happen