Do vegans wear wool?

The idea is that if you do not keep sheep for wool, the land the sheep would normally graze on can be used for growing crops to feed more people.

Whoever said this needs to visit the mountainous areas of Britain where sheep are bred for wool and meat. The land they graze is not suitable for growing crops. As @herdyshepherd1 said to someone who asked why he didn't grow carrots instead, "Carrots don't grow here".

The long view is that people have been farming for thousands of years so where crops grow there are generally crops growing and where crops don't grow cattle, sheep or goats are raised. It's only recently that there have been widespread alternatives to meat that are even nearly as power and vitamin packed as meat is. You can't really expect thousands of years of custom to vanish in a generation.

M0nica you asked
How do vegans ensure that the food they eat has not been produced using animal products?

The simple answer is they cook from scratch. If they buy processed food, they will have done research to find out if they can eat it.

Just as an aside, most shoe leather comes from animals bred for the leather. Your leather shoes are not made from hides of the cows you see in the fields. Shoe leather is not a bi-product of animals produced for beef.

Animal manure to fertilise fields?

Actually, you can't grow any crop without killing thousands of animals. Ploughing to plant crops kills thousands if not millions of tiny animals. One simply cannot eat without killing animals.

It is hypocritical to pretend that those thousands/millions of tiny animals aren't as important or as deserving of sympathy as cows or sheep.

So my view is that if animals are farmed and killed humanely we are doing the best we can and still getting incredibly good food (meat), which is good for us, into the bargain.

please don't worry gillybob! Any diet can be good or bad, and a healthy vegetarian diet is perfectly achievable. Here's some information that might help: www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/balanced-diet-vegetarian

Sorry, I should qualify my last post by saying if your leather shoes were made in the UK, they may be made from UK cow hide.

Vegans don't have pets apparently, I'm sure my three rescue cats would be relieved to know that they could have carried on living in the streets. Sadly two of them have now died, but all three have been loved, fed, received veterinary as needed, and actually rather spoiled.

There's a field near me where the sheep shed their wool naturally. The birds take it for their nests.
A builder wanted to build a hundred houses in the field, but was denied planning. In the summer the field is like a wild meadow.

Jane, I think there was only one person who asked for a vegetarian pizza. It wasn't the whole party changing their minds.
If she'd just kept her thoughts to herself instead of putting it on facebook,she could have smirked to herself as long as she wanted.

After I took over a guest house and turned it vegetarian, I wrote to all the people who had bookings and explained, and told them I would book them in somewhere else if they wanted their bacon, only one party of four said they'd go somewhere else. The rest said that was fine, and it would be interesting.
We had group of four from America, and one of them gave a bad review on tripadviser.
I was able to give dates for when we had changed, when we told them we had changed, and the fact that they agreed to come even though they knew.
Most of the menu was suitable for vegans, although they could have dairy if they wanted.
The next group from America were from California and had fruit farms. They had nothing but praise, and returned a few years later.

Thank you for that downdale I have downloaded your link and will read it properly later.

My main concern is the substituting meat for non-meat. Which will be fairly easy for me as i only cook her main meal 2-3 times a week. My son does almost all of the cooking at home (after a hard physical days work) and there are 5 of them to cook for (DDiL is very picky too) so I can't imagine he will find it easy to cook seperate dishes. What I would like is to help him with a kind of substitute list.

ah i see - sounds like he has his work cut out for him, but very good of him to take his daughter's wishes seriously, especiallyy after a hard day! In that case, this web page might help - if you scroll to the bottom, there's a part entitled 'best protein sources for vegetarians' www.nomeatathlete.com/vegetarian-protein/

The only true vegan I know has a pet, makes the most delicious cakes without animal products and doesn’t force her views on anyone-even her husband, who is not vegan or even vegetarian, so sometimes he eats her food and sometimes she prepares what he likes (or he prepares their food). I’ve never looked at her shoes though.

Thought provoking thread.
Most vegans/vegetarians I know are animal lovers and keep pets although I can see that keeping pets is unnatural and can be seen as exploitative. Humans have co-existed with animals for thousands of years so it seems natural to us. I can't imagine a world without animals in the fields.
Where do vegans stand on the culling of deer, boar etc to prevent them becoming a nuisance (and devastating crops)?

My DGD says one of the reasons she has decided to become a vegetarian is because she loves her pets.

Announcing during the Christmas holiday that if you feel uncomfortable with the idea of eating a dog or a cat then why do you feel happy about eating a cow or a pig?

I'm not pretending to be an expert, but I think the problem with some of these 'nuisance' animals is that their natural predators have been hunted to extinction - wolves for example. Then again, wolves were not found in all parts of the country I don't think (again, I'm no expert!). Something to read up on perhaps!

I don't think my diet or lifestyle is perfect, don't know everything there is to know, but do try and read up on things I'm not sure about. For me, it's not about being perfect, it's about doing the best I can according to my beliefs

gillybob the Vegetarian Society has a website for young vegetarians and there's a resource section for parents you can read here

Young Veggie - Resources for Parents

I would also recommend you get a veggie cookbook for students to help you with simple and quick veggie meals. She can also produce a meal herself. There's a lot on the market these days. I would recommend the one I have that I bought in the last millennium, but I lent it to someone who didn't give it back!

Meant to add that where my DGD lives they look out over a farmers field and she can see the cows in the field. She broke her heart telling me that the mummy cows were crying for their babies when they were took away.

I try not to eat much meat because I love all animals but human teeth show us that our diet should be carnivore. Treating animals with respect is a different matter. What about all the carrots etc. which you can't hear screaming as you bite their heads off!!!!

I used to get lots of people who would say they could be vegetarian or vegan but their husbands liked their meat too much.
I would say cook for you, then add a bit of meat or fish for him.
He would soon realise that the meat or fish wasn't necessary.
It worked sometimes.

So stupid, quizqueen. How many times do you think vegans have heard that before?

maddyone only the most strict vegans are against having pets. I've never met one yet.

downdale you're right, the natural predators of our livestock are extinct, mainly because they were hunted into extinction.

People are forgetting it's taken thousands of years to get to where we are now with farming. Originally there was no such thing as 'nuisance' animals. They're only a nuisance now because of how we use the land they live on or we introduced them ourselves at some point but now they've become a problem.

Yes, Wilma, and look at the problems created. We are now reintroducing the beaver because their place in the ecology of the cuntryside has been recognised.

I've never heard any vegan suggesting that the wild cattle of Chillingham should be set free to roam where they want.

chillinghamwildcattle.com/

Sorry about that.
Countryside, of course!

Wilma I din't make myself clear. I meant how do vegans know that their food has not been grown using animal manures or treated with other animal based products in the growing process.. I was not talking about processed foods.