Unbelievable description

My DH was a herd manager , he looked after a very healthy and it seemed a happy herd.
They came into the milking parlour and seemed content to be milked.
All the chemicals that are supposed to be pumped into cows and therefore into the milk just doesn’t happen.
Unfortunately to get milk for us to drink cows have to have calves. Therefore calves are killed.
That’s the way it is, no getting round it. If you object then you are at liberty to avoid animal products.
Most of us accept this and are grateful that it is all managed for us.
We are carnivores.
It does seem a shame that because of our very strict food safety laws cattle are often subjected to a stressful journey to the abattoir but buying locally reared animals from a local butcher can reduce the stress.

We'd need even more farmers of course grannymy!

More intensive farming methods, more artificial fertilisers and pesticides. Much more use of water; crops in many countries need more irrigation than livestock.
The thought is worrying.

we are omnivores not carnivores. We certainly do not depend on meat for our health.
We vegetarians should not have to defend our choices for some vague suggestions that humans need to eat other living species to be healthy.
I could find Olympic champions who are vegetarian. Carl Lewis is famously Vegan. Martina Navratilova and so on.

Trades description act?

No one, I know is asking vegetarians or vegans to defend their choices. We just want them to stop being so patronising and considering themselves so morally superior to those who do not share their views.

Over the 10s of thousands of years man has developed widely varied eating patterns at different times in order to maximise human ability to live anywhere. I believe that that those native to the extremely cold areas of Artctic Canada, ate an almost entirely meat only diet. They ate seal all year round - and as I understand thrived on it - they needed to, it was all that was on offer. In other areas humankind became vegetarian.

I mean there is nothing special about vegan or vegetarian food. Except, possibly, for the highly processed fake meats. They eat exactly the same fruit and vegetables that we do and as omnivores most of us will have eaten vegetarian meals, or had vegetarian days without even realising it, just seeing is as part of our omnivore diet, ditto vegan meals. Anyone for a baked potato with ratatouille? It is one of my faves.

Meat production is incredibly damaging to the environment. Giving up meat is an environmentally friendly action. Apart from all the incredible amount of suffering that goes along with it. Few animals have a good life and a good death.

@MOnica it was Pamela's stating we are carnivores that got me going!

Daisymae, we have been through this already on this thread. Some industrialised methods of rearing cattle are damaging to the environment. Other organic and Pasture through Life methods increase the take-up of carbon by the pasture grazed, but read up the thread.

High-welfare farming, obviously is less cruel. There is no cruelty-free animal farming, though. How can anybody really believe that?

Try living and working on a farm and you'll soon realise that marketing is aimed at soothing the conscience of those choosing to add some totally unnecessary meat to their diet.

freefromharm.org/animal-products-and-ethics/a-comprehensive-analysis-of-the-humane-farming-myth/

www.animalaid.org.uk/the-issues/our-campaigns/animal-farming/suffering-farmed-animals-2/

www.peta.org/teachkind/lesson-plans-activities/eating-animals-ethical-debate-kit/

Hetty Have you ever visited a PFL or organic farm?

M0nica - please do wake up!

www.peacefulprairie.org/the-truth.html

Rather than only focusing on animal farming take a look at all intensive farming.
The way plants are farmed is cruel in other ways .......deforestation means wildlife is homeless and dead.
For me the plight of the orangutan is heartbreaking.

today in the Guardian is an article about Palm Oil Farming. In Liberia the local poor farmers have been tricked into handing over their land with promises of much needed aid, schools, hospitals and money.
they have been given nothing.
The promises are empty.
Palm oil is in so many products........including vegan foods.
It is intensive farming that is harmful.

I am in agreement with MOnica's post at 19.41.

Food is not simple issue anymore unless you can live off your own piece of land sadly.
we all can be more educated on the issue and there is need for more openness about what goes into food to be provided by the manufacturers.

I will never go back to being vegan or vegetarian and I do not see it as a superior way of life though I admit I did think that at that time.
I do occasionally feel over aware that I am eating a dead body and I then try to be very mindful and grateful for the food.

Actually the point I should have made is that presumably you are saying that when an animals suffers in the wild, being predated, possibly geting injured and having to live with pain and injury indefinitely, when an animal dies slowly and painfully in giving birth to young, the offspring dying as well, or lives for a prolonged period with a disease that is 'good' pain that is the price the animal must pay for not being domesticated.

However, domesticated and in humane and careful care - and I am talking about high welfare methods, any illness or disease is treated or the animal is saved prolonged suffering by slaughter. Slaughter is a last resort. In giving birth there is aid and assistance when needed.

I do not believe high welfare animals suffer anymore than their undomesticated counterparts.

I would point out that one of your references refers entirely to US agriculture, not British, and there is no argument that US standards are much lower than ours and aimed at human safety not animal welfare.

I am one with you in condemming industrial animal husbandry, but consider good welfare methods give animals, a short life but almost a cossetted one, compared with the sufferings of their wild counterparts.

Try living and working on a farm

Are you a farmer Hetty?
Is that what gives you your unique insight?

pinkquartz You should read up on agro forestry. www.adas.uk/News/the-potential-of-agroforestry-in-uk-agriculture. A way of supporting forest, wildlife and food.

I am absolutely with you on the large scale clearance of land, usually illegally and often corrupt as exploiters pay off or threaten those who should stop them.

Most of the rainforest clearance is to grow soy for animal feed. Raising cows for beef uses a huge amount of water.
As for descriptions, it always surprises me. What about hot dogs? Not dogs!! Fish fingers - fish don't have fingers!! What about chicken drumsticks or nuggets? And peanut butter is not butter! Shepherds are not in pies, there's no ploughman in a lunch and buffalo definitely don't have wings....
As for welfare, I don't think a cow would choose to be artificially inseminated every year, have a calf, which then goes off to be killed if its male, or might live a year or two, then be killed. Just so the cow can produce milk for another species to drink. We are the only mammals that drink another animal's milk I think? And I personally wouldn't want to live half my life out on pasture and half my life in a shed, then be killed before I even reach middle age. Do you actually know how long a cow naturally lives? No matter how humane, I wouldn't want to be taken off to have my throat slit when I was 20 or 30!! Words like "welfare" and "humane" are bandied about like it is a good thing to die early!

Descriptions such as vegan food having 'meat' descriptions.
Or a 'vegan leather' handbag!!

How shall we rid the world of plastic then?

M0nica, I see no logic in your arguments re 'wild counterparts'. Yes, nature is very cruel, but farm animals are only here to be eaten or provide milk and eggs. They just wouldn't exist without demand. I'm just amazed that pet owners and (so called) animal lovers can bear to cause the suffering.

Callistemon, I've stayed on a farm, witnessed de-horning and castration (without pain relief) and heard the pathetic cries of separated cows and calves. Despite a friendly, concerned farming family and beautiful scenery I felt that it was just like a concentration camp for slave animals. How can people be so blind to it, I wonder?

Razzy the pie is made by shepherds, not of shepherds, hence, usually, an apostrophe after the 'd'. Ditto ploughman's and butter is a texture not specifically dairy. Fingers, wings, nuggets and drumsticks, describe shape, not the part of the animal.

As for hot dogs late 19th century: originally US college slang, probably influenced by a popular belief that the sausages contained dog meat

But fake meat is just that, fake meat,

Razzy, 20 or 30? Beef cattle are slaughtered at two or three, dairy cows at four years old. Their lifespan is about twenty years, so they have a tenth to fifth of that. The equivalent would be about 8 to 16 years old.

Most people think of cattle in fields as fully grown, mature animals. Few have seen an adult:

www.thedodo.com/on-the-farm/knickers-giant-steer-cow-australia

Hetty58

Not all farms are the same. Support the good farms is important. Very important.
Please stop saying all farming they can be different and are different

pinkquartz, yes, farms are very different. ALL meat production involves some cruelty to animals, though. There is no entirely kind or painless way to do it.

The only way to stop that cruelty is to stop demand by not eating meat. It's that simple.

Read the links and stop kidding yourselves that you do no harm. Be honest and admit that clever marketing has led you to believe the lies!

I have an issue with vegans re their attitude to eggs and wool. I have chickens. Happy chickens. They lay me eggs and it doesn’t hurt them that I eat the eggs.

I’d prefer wool (and cotton, linen, etc.) to artificial fibres which are chemically based, often containing plastics and using fossil fuels. Shearing a sheep should not hurt it and in truth they need to get rid of their coats for several reasons.

These are two reasons I find ardent vegans illogical.

Marketing - the 'power of willful ignorance':

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKTORFmMycQ