And so it begins: Eat less meat or we’ll make you.

[Honeyend]

Vegans want simple solutions and its not that simple. Many of us are alive due to animal testing or byproducts of animals used in treatments.
To live very simply and remain in good health you need a bit of grazing and for most of the world, a dairy animal and perhaps a few chickens. Its been a succesful method of survival for thousands of years, the modern vegan animal activist could not survive if they did not live in a first world country with access to large amounts of imported food and synthetic vitamins. Its the end of winter, and you would be lucky if apart from potatoes, carrots, swede,winter green and leeks, there would be little else to eat, oh and stored fruit. How do you stop people keeping chickens and eating eggs, how do you stop someone keeping a pig and slaughtering for home use? A new black market?
The only bright spot on the whole Brexit thing for me is if there is a food import hiccup in the system will show how dependant we are on food imports. Every time I eat an almond I think about the water its cost to produce it, lots
https://www.businessinsider.com/amo...row-one-almond-orange-tomato-2015-4?r=US&IR=T
Even the USA is getting worried.

I know how much my cows drink, but as a resource that I pay for I would rather spend it on them than a daily bath like my neighbour. To make my heavy clay land viable for any crop would probabely take four years manure laid on thick, and then a lot of crops would be lost with winter water, other farmers have tried and failed.

I like to think we are coming to the creast of a hill, the hill is made up of all the progress and choice that we have since the 1960's, which we have made a mound of paperwork( 40 years of working in the NHS makes me dispair that action has been replaced by paper, or the blasted putor) and rubbish, from having what we want when we want, thinking we can have it all with no cost. When we reach the top we top and every one will see there could be a cliff the otherside and we have to turn back, if its possible.

 

[Oldvatr]

Can you just clarify this point for me please?

Is the massive reduction in animal protein availability only the UK? If not, what other countries are also affected?

Also, given that the average age of farmers in Wales is over 60 years old, and only 3% are under 35 years old, closing farms upon retirement in the next 7 years is going to be easy for government. Most of them are tenant farmers.

The 80% cut in animal meat consumption was determined by the WHO via the IPCC and all member states are tasked with meeting this target by 2050 to meet the Paris Agreement. USA is exempt since they withdrew from that accord. What we are discussing in this thread is mainly UK.

This is where much of the environmental and diet drive is coming from since they supported Eat Lancet and Professor Willetts is also a director of Eat Lancet. He also holds a professorship at Harvard T Chan Medical school and has many vested interests and conflicts of interest.
https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/news/2018-07-meat-consumption/

Speaking of COI matters, this is on the British Nutrition Foundation (BNF) that CCC and PHE also use as consultants


Just to balance things up. this is what the WHO FAO said about livestock farming
http://www.fao.org/ag/againfo/home/en/news_archive/2017_More_Fuel_for_the_Food_Feed.html

 

[lucylocket61]

Cynic warning: as the US is exempt, could this be paving the way for importing meat and dairy products from them, as our own production decreases?

 

[Oldvatr]

Cynic warning: as the US is exempt, could this be paving the way for importing meat and dairy products from them, as our own production decreases?

From one cynic to another - The House of Lords did raise this during the Farmng Bill debate, and although not included in that bill, a formal request was made to the DEFRA Representative to include suitable protection into the Agriculture bill which has its first reading in the Commons next week. We will need to see if it gets included. However, it may go into the forthcoming Food Bill instead. Or the Land Use Bill. Or none of them, and await individual trade agreements to be sorted.

 

[Member496333]

Vegans want simple solutions and its not that simple. Many of us are alive due to animal testing or byproducts of animals used in treatments.
To live very simply and remain in good health you need a bit of grazing and for most of the world, a dairy animal and perhaps a few chickens. Its been a succesful method of survival for thousands of years, the modern vegan animal activist could not survive if they did not live in a first world country with access to large amounts of imported food and synthetic vitamins. Its the end of winter, and you would be lucky if apart from potatoes, carrots, swede,winter green and leeks, there would be little else to eat, oh and stored fruit. How do you stop people keeping chickens and eating eggs, how do you stop someone keeping a pig and slaughtering for home use? A new black market?
The only bright spot on the whole Brexit thing for me is if there is a food import hiccup in the system will show how dependant we are on food imports. Every time I eat an almond I think about the water its cost to produce it, lots
https://www.businessinsider.com/amo...row-one-almond-orange-tomato-2015-4?r=US&IR=T
Even the USA is getting worried.

I know how much my cows drink, but as a resource that I pay for I would rather spend it on them than a daily bath like my neighbour. To make my heavy clay land viable for any crop would probabely take four years manure laid on thick, and then a lot of crops would be lost with winter water, other farmers have tried and failed.

I like to think we are coming to the creast of a hill, the hill is made up of all the progress and choice that we have since the 1960's, which we have made a mound of paperwork( 40 years of working in the NHS makes me dispair that action has been replaced by paper, or the blasted putor) and rubbish, from having what we want when we want, thinking we can have it all with no cost. When we reach the top we top and every one will see there could be a cliff the otherside and we have to turn back, if its possible.

I don't disagree with you but could we please be mindful that this topic isn't supposed to be about vegans per se. You make many valid points and I appreciate that it's a natural fork in the road of discussions of this nature, but whenever we go down that path the threads tend to attract cluster-spamming that leads to the topics being closed and the conversation shut-down. Then future updates are impossible, leading contributors to open new threads that then attract yet more complaints. Rinse & repeat.

 

[Dr Snoddy]

Seitan was only invented in 1961and is a wheat gluten byproduct. It is an allrgenic food source. It is considered to be a macrobiotic diet component, but has recently been adopted by vegans as a bacon substitute. It is not considered to be an effective source of protein since it is wheat based.

Quorn we know and marmite over. it does not replace the animal amino acids, and is vitamin deficient too.

Tofu is classed as a complete protein, but that is not the same as being a complete food. It has the 9 essential B vitamins, but not much else. The source is soy, which contains cyanobacteria and phytols that many find difficult to eat. The Tofu is fermented that does alleviate some of this adverse effect, so it is more acceptable and safer than pure soya. Originally used in asian communities it forms part of their diet, but is not usually the prime source for protein.and in China and Japan the usual source of protein is Pork or fish. The same is apparently true of Okinawians, who also used a pork heavy diet, but who are currently being lauded as beingvegan only, which is incorrect. Similarly hindu monks are claimed to be vegans, but in fact have been demonstrated to being onmivores in a recent BBC documentary.

Seitan has been part of the diet in South East Asia for centuries but only went into commercial production in 1962. Similarly tofu and tempeh are also sources of amino acids that have been traditionally available in SE Asia. I fully understand the process and production costs of other new foods such as Quorn and have no intention of insulting anyone when I suggest that we may have to embrace eating less meat and related animal products in the future.

 

[Honeyend]

I don't disagree with you but could we please be mindful that this topic isn't supposed to be about vegans per se. You make many valid points and I appreciate that it's a natural fork in the road of discussions of this nature, but whenever we go down that path the threads tend to attract cluster-spamming that leads to the topics being closed and the conversation shut-down. Then future updates are impossible, leading contributors to open new threads that then attract yet more complaints. Rinse & repeat.

Like I said people want a simple solution but its multifaceted, as a gobal community we have a nutrition deficit, which can not be solved with totally plant based products. As someone who didn't eat meat for 30 plus years my opinions are not based on this being about veganism but a lack of understanding of how changing something which may at first seem an obvious solution may not be. One of the best studies that looks at all sides of eating less meat protein is this one.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31395893

I live one of the intensively cropped parts of the UK, one field I drive past has at at least 3 sometimes 4 crops in it a year. They are expensive niche market salad crops. Other large areas are farmed for bulk crops you see in the supermarket are farmed effectively at sea and under sea level, in 1947 floods, some it was 6 feet under water, and was flooded for two months. As I have lived on the edge of a flood plain for over 30 years with livestock, the practicalities of what you do to save to save food crops have been on my doorstep, and just about the only crop that will stand flooding for weeks is grass. Its also one of the driest areas of the UK, so you get poor growing weather most of the time.
Farmers are very good at doing what the goverment asks and I am sure they will be happy to plant trees if there is money to be made from it, but you as yet not eat trees.
https://www.earth.com/news/trees-grass-carbon-sink/

 

[HSSS]

Is anyone out there drawing all this information together in one place? That we can stick under the noses of the politicians and press?

 

[Diakat]

Seitan was only invented in 1961and is a wheat gluten byproduct. It is an allrgenic food source. It is considered to be a macrobiotic diet component, but has recently been adopted by vegans as a bacon substitute. It is not considered to be an effective source of protein since it is wheat based.

The word was coined in the 60s (ready for export to other countries) but the product had been consumed for centuries prior in Japan and China.

 

[Rustytypin]

Related to the future availability of meat products, in an article in this week’s Autocar referring to leather seats, under pressure from PETA, Tesla do not sell cars with animal products in them. PETA apparently have shares in Tesla. Other manufacturers are following suit. Mercedes are looking for alternatives to leather (their star F1 driver is Lewis Hamilton, an outspoken Vegan). As indeed are other car manufacturers.
If this outlet for a byproduct of meat consumption is not taken up, then meat will be more expensive, there will be more waste, or farmers will be no longer afford to raise cattle.
And our choice to eat meat will disappear by default.

 

[Oldvatr]

Related to the future availability of meat products, in an article in this week’s Autocar referring to leather seats, under pressure from PETA, Tesla do not sell cars with animal products in them. PETA apparently have shares in Tesla. Other manufacturers are following suit. Mercedes are looking for alternatives to leather (their star F1 driver is Lewis Hamilton, an outspoken Vegan). As indeed are other car manufacturers.
If this outlet for a byproduct of meat consumption is not taken up, then meat will be more expensive, there will be more waste, or farmers will be no longer afford to raise cattle.
And our choice to eat meat will disappear by default.

If Tesla were selling 100 cars a month then it might be significant. Remember it is only the diet that we are expecting to change, PETA have their own agenda. Most cars have synthetic covers such as leatherette.

 

[Oldvatr]

The word was coined in the 60s (ready for export to other countries) but the product had been consumed for centuries prior in Japan and China.

I supect the quality of seitan nowadays is inferior to what it used to be, especially now that modern wheat grains have replaced the traditional ones. I see seitan is actually quite low in protein in terms of RDI, and does not offer a complete protein solution, I cannot find how it fares on vitamins, but so far it is more akin to Playdoh than meat. Has quite a high copper content which may be worrisome to some, as is the selenium content. Often it is highly processed for modern sales outlets, and has high salt content. Because it is wheat gluten, it should not be eaten by anyone with a gluten intolerance, or anyone who may be suffering from leaky gut symdrome. Trials have shown it can trigger leaky gut syndrome in persons not previously prone to it.

 

[Rustytypin]

If Tesla were selling 100 cars a month then it might be significant. Remember it is only the diet that we are expecting to change, PETA have their own agenda. Most cars have synthetic covers such as leatherette.

I think that Tesla Model 3 is one of the best selling cars currently, so it is quite significant. That and the other premium car makers also looking for alternatives to leather. I think it shows the many fronts in which the militant anti meat eaters are attacking our way of eating.
I would like to add that I am not anti vegetarian or vegan per se, but I do believe in freedom of choice, for all humans.

 

[Barb McD]

Great perspectives, I’m going to read up from these I’m fascinated.

Thank you.

 

[Mike d]

If Musk makes it, I'll walk thanks

 

[Mr_Pot]

If Tesla were selling 100 cars a month then it might be significant

In 2019 Tesla sold 367,500 vehicles but I doubt the use of leather in car seats has significant effect on the total number of cattle.

 

[Oldvatr]

Angela Merkel is today meeting all the Supermarket bosses in Germany to raise the price of meat products. Greenpeace is demonstrating outside the venue. Geman Gov says meat is too cheap and prices must go up. Merkel has delayed the legislation for the short term for further discussions with the farmers who fear reduced demand will cause many to go to the wall.

Edit: Seems like this may just be an industrial relations spat. Not sure why Merkel is holding the meeting though. May not be connected to this thread, but keeping an eye on it.

 

[Barb McD]

Let’s hope Angela keeps her cool

 

[Oldvatr]

But this one seems to be relevant
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-meat-tax-on-the-table-to-protect-the-climate/a-49924795

I always understood that the EU had harmonised VAT across all their block countries. That was why the tampon tax could not be revoked in the UK. Not sure Germany can do this.

 

[Thomas the Tank]

Really? Whilst there may be some truth in what you say, what if you are wrong and man is a significant factor. Can we afford to take the chance? That said let’s focus on the real issues (Industry, overpopulation to name but two) not the fashionable ones (veganism)

We have plenty of room to live in, if you are tough enough to live in the bush.

Australia exports a lot of live cattle, sheep from country that is basically desert, similar to the pix below of cattle on a muster.

If I could get past your visa system I would join you in a shot, bush fires included for a plentiful supply of beef and lamb.