And here's one you stroked last year........

Amber, the farmers could grow crops instead and we would all be healthier for it and the environment would benefit - it takes gallons of water to produce just one steak . The sad truth is that nowadays most meat is factory farmed and the animals rarely, if ever, see the light of day. They have horrible lives and even more horrible deaths. This includes dairy cattle whose male calves are killed at a few days old or stuck in a crate for veal.

A piece of meat bears no resemblance to the animal it came from. Some animals wouldn't be around without farming.

There is no solid scientific evidence that not eating meat is 'healthier' than eating it. If people have emotional or political or any other kind of reason for restricting their diets, that's fine by me, but I don't like constantly being told that this or that is healthier. All that is bullshit. Food is food from elephant meat to grashoppers and grass. Choose what you eat and leave everyone else to choose what they eat too is my philosophy.

And be glad you have a choice. Millions of people have no choice.

Amber our canine teeth are not sufficiently developed to allow us to tear our prey apart, nor do we tend to eat raw flesh. If we were natural carnivores we would not have to cook our meat before we eat it. Herbivores also have canine teeth but what they share with us is large molars to grind their food. Chimps have enormous canine teeth but their diet is 95% vegan, an addition to which they eat mostly termites.

harrigran I would be glad if some animals were not around to be tortured for our pleasure.

The moral argument has been stated by those far better than me:

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
"To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being." (Mahatma Gandhi)

Hi NewGranLin, I agree Farmers could grow crops, but with our climate changes the crops they grow are usually the ones that need the less water, ie biomass, or oilseed rape, if they rely on anything else a bad year could mean bankruptcy take for instance the daffodil growers this year, we had warm weather too early for the scottish growers, their crops flowered too soon and they lost the whole lot. The 'Factory' farmers cater for the big super markets, who drive the prices down so low the only way the farmer can make a living is to Factory farm. so perhaps the answer is to buy from a local farmer who will let you see the way his/her animals are treated, there are more and more of these around now adays, also a lot of the small butchers only buy from local farmers so they can sell their meat knowing that the animal it came from did have a good life first.

I saw a programme about chimps, and they activelly enjoy hunting and killing [other than bonobos who are much more peace loving]. It was probably starting to eat meat that gave us more time to develop our brains, create works of art, write books etc, otherwise we would probably have spent all of our waking hours searching for berries and nuts etc. I'm not advocating the eating of meat, and eat very little of it myself. I do think however, that it should be a much tineir part of our diet than it, in a lot of cases, actually is. I certainly couldn't eat veal or very young lambs. We do seem to have lost our hunter/gatherer ancestors respect for the animals we kill and eat, and I find that very wrong.

Buy meat from your local butcher who can tell you how old it is and where it came from.

If we did more shopping locally our high streets might consist of more than Charity shops!!!!

Everyone has a choice whether to eat meat or not.

But I dont believe anyone from one camp or the other should dictate what the other should do!

I agree Glass.

But I wish the lambs had a little bit longer in the sunshine though! (Some of them must do or you wouldn't get any more baby lambs)

I do avoid getting close to baby livestock at this time of year,especially cute little piglets! Not that there are a lot of them in central London,so my life as a carnivore is safe!

The statistic about the amount of water needed to produce a steak is based on grain-fed meat animals where the cereal crops need a lot of artificial watering. If the same beasts are pastured on grass in naturally wetter areas the amount of water lavished on them is far less.

Ok chimps were a bad example. Substitute gorillas who also have large canines but do not hunt. My point was that the existence of canine teeth (in our case very under-developed) does not prove that humans are natural carnivores. Our dentition and digestive tract is more like that of herbivores. I agree that meat probably formed a much smaller part of our diet in prehistoric times and the amount we in the Western world eat today is, in my opinion, unhealthy.

I am going to bow out of this discussion now. I hate people trying to convert others to any alternative belief; it's boring, it doesn't work, and I usually try not fall into that trap.

People will always do what they want to do and adjust their beliefs accordingly

Humans are not carnivores. nightowl is quite correct. But we are omnivores, which, of course, includes eating animals from insects that happen to be hiding in the lettuce upwards (where upwards refers to the size of the animal).

As we evolved (and yes I know some of you are into creation not evolution), we were 'hunter gatherers'... as a species we have always been omnivores!!

Having said that, I do not always have meat or fish as part on my daily diet...but that is my choice. However ...if I had to do the slaughtering of the animal, to put meat on my table, I would become a vegetarian over night!

I do not eat veal or any factory produced meat (or eggs for that matter) ...and am prepared to pay the extra to ensure the animal has been able to roam outside if they have chosen to. But again, that is my choice ...everyone has the right to make their own decisions on moral, health and cost grounds.

I just wish a 'carbon footprint' was put on all food items ...then i could take that into consideration too.

Something that has often puzzled me is that there are two people I know who have been vegetarians for most of their life; one couldn't stand the texture of meat when she tried to eat it when she was very young and one saw some lambs playing in a field one day and decided she would never eat meat again, and hasn't. And yet, neither of them have ever had any pets or any wish to. I'm not sure why I find it puzzling, but I do.

That doesn't surprise me, crimson — the vegetarians you know never having any pets. I'm not saying I understand it, but I have a feeling about it which makes sense to me. This may be because I'm not really a pet person either, especially with regard ro pets that are kept in cages. I get on well with dogs, so much so that people often assume I have one of my own, but I never have had and have never wanted one.

I might explain my feeling about this later but I'll wait to see what others say first.

BTW, DD3 doesn't like the texture of meat, except for Parma ham and hot dog sausages!

I became a vegetarian many years ago when I was first married and tried cooking the stuff. Realised it was a bloody corpse I was going to eat.

I eat small amounts of meat every week or so, and prefer fish. Like Jacey if it was me who had to slaughter the animal I would never eat meat again. I have friends who quite like animals but would never have a pet, who are vegetarian. Others are every day meat eaters and have several pets. I have a lovely basset hound, who is at this moment licking my hand to try and stop me typing! I don't see any correlation between vegetarianism and pet owning or animal loving. So many farmers talk about how much they care about their herds of cows and sheep, and seemed genuinely heartbroken about the way their animals had to be destroyed during the foot and mouth epidemic, and it didn't always seem to be related to their monetary or pedigree value.

It is a bit of a challenge to get a full range of oil soluble vitamins if you don't eat some meat and fish. People that live in the Arctic circle are, traditionally, carnivorous. Green stuff hard/impossible to come by.
I read an interesting book about the evolution of humans and fire/cooking. The theory was that by inventing cooking we freed up time to invent other things. On a raw food veggie diet nutrients are hard to absorb and you would have to eat a heck of a lot. Like a gorilla who chomps away on salad for a huge amount of the day. Raw food diets are still advocated by some. I was talking to a chap in NZ, friend of DS. He mentioned some people he knew that "lived in a commune, were into raw food, and gave each other magic mushroom enemas"
Off to cook my morning oats now.

A chacun son gout - literally!
I agree that animals kept in cages obviously don't want to be there, although it is easy to be anthropomorphic and attribute to animals the feelings humans would have in similar situations. A rabbit is happy to live in its burrow and only surfaces to feed so it is probably quite happy in a snug hutch. Most wild animals have a limited territory and travel no further than is needed for find food, water, shelter and a mate.
Cats and dogs benefit greatly from their relationship with humans - it is symbiotic.

I have tried looking at meat before I cook it and telling myself it is a bit of a corpse - it doesn't put me off at all.

I do object to being sold halal meat without any choice, as most supermarkets appear to buy it exclusively because it is cheaper than buying non-halal meat separately. I know the arguments far and against ritual slaughter - it is the fact that I am given no choice that annoys me.

Non vegetarians can be quite aggressive to vegetarians I have found. Don't know why. Perhaps they think we are trying to take the high moral ground. I try to explain by saying I just feel squeamish about meat, like they would if they were asked to eat a worm or a slug.

Having said that though I still feel pleased when I'm out for a walk in the country, going past beautiful young cattle and lambs, that I don't want to eat them.

Glastonbury 2000, a Fast-food stall selling Dimbleburgers (Jonathan D into farming at the time, wonder if he still is). Also wonder what was in them.

I do find, as I have got older, that I actually eat less meat choosing fish and vegetarian dishes instead. Good to have a choice as has already been stated.

Can't bear to see animals in captivity of any sort. O.K. I know about the conservation argument, but I'm still not happy!

Supernana has the best idea, Bloshy cat is free to come and go as he chooses! Not that I'm advocating all 'pets' should be treated this way!

This is starting to ramble.... time to put on the porridge pot!

I don't eat meat because almost 30 years ago, I found that I was becoming bloated after eating it. I felt so much better when I gave it up. I still eat fish which doesn't have that effect on me. My younger son, who decided to give up meat as a teenager when we watched a documentary about what goes into sausages and burgers, is much more purist than I am and suggests (politely!) that I am a hypocrite, but his partner and children do eat meat.
By the way, what do veggies most miss when they give up meat? For me the smell of bacon cooking set the juices flowing - and sometimes it still does.

I would only think I was eating a corpse if I was cooking the whole animal. I don't like the pig roasts on spits you see at shows. Couldn't eat a slice off of one of those.

Makes no sense!

They put spinach leaves in the lamb-burger I had. That was very nice.