The ethics of where vegans buy food

KatieKnitsSocks I agree with you that the areas of land given over to cattle and feeding them is excessive and demand for it is leading tonthe rape of the Amazon rain forest.

Where I differ from you is thinking about all the vegetable foodstuffs that could be grown on it in its place.

We do not need to grow more food. There is more than enough food being grown to feed the world population and more www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-12-15/no-more-hunger-how-to-feed-everyone-on-earth-with-just-the-land-we-have.

Starvation and food shortages are not the result of inadequate food availability, but of war, politics, poor transport systems, corruption and fraud.

We have people in the UK who cannot afford to feed themselves. The cause is not a lack of sufficient foodstuffs coming on the market, but the result of government economic and social policies.

Sago I, too, do not shop in Tesco and haven't done so for over 30 years. Apart from its food and farming policy, Lady Porter, the daughter of the company's founder Jack Cohen and who still gets her income from the profits of the company.

In the 1980s she was the Chairman of Westminster Council and in the 1990swas found guilty of gerrymandering through selling off council housing to developers and a whole host of other misdemeanours and was fined over £35 million. Meanwhile she had moved to live in Israel and no legal action could be taken to get the money from her. In the end she paid just over £10 million.
Read all about it here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_Porter.

I do not want one millionth of a penny of my money going to support the lifestyle of this contemptible woman.

Good point, Sago. I suspect that part of the problem is when vegans buy processed vegan meals rather than cooking fresh fruit and vegetables from scratch. Again, it depends on lifestyle, budget, personal taste and time. The big supermarkets are so dominant now. It may be hard to find processed vegan ready-meals in smaller independent shops.

Absolutely, NotSpaghetti. We need to be as accurate as we can. I should have made it clearer that stearic acid is also derived from non-animal sources.

The issue arises of whether product packaging makes it clear whether stearic acid is animal or plant derived. If it's from palm oil, that can be controversial too. Remember a few years ago, when people were boycotting shops which sold palm oil products. I think Iceland were, at the time, the only big food retailer to ban palm oil products. There's an argument that much of the palm oil controversy was stirred up by the big American soya producers to promote their own products. It gets very political.

Over which has a higher stearic acid content:

"The fatty acid composition of beef tallow is 25% palmitic acid and 27% stearic acid, whereas for coconut and sunflower oil, for example, both figures are less than 10%. One exception is palm oil, which contains 43% palmitic acid and 4% stearic acid."

So, shea butter (already mentioned) has a higher percentage of stearic acid than animal tallow but coconut does not. That quote is from the Royal Society of Chemistry.

SD
In order for your request re the CEO of Tesco to get to the right person, your first port of call should be [email protected]

They may be able to point you in the right direction

A vegan neighbour once called round as I preparing dinner.
It was midweek, she looked at the salmon in a cous cous crumb and exclaimed “ do you eat like that every night”

She then went on to lecture me about eating meat and fish.
I asked where she bought her groceries, it was Tesco.

I explained that I used the local market,butcher,fishmonger etc.
She couldn’t grasp that using a store that had changed the shape of farming and had a dreadful animal welfare reputation was in any way hypocritical.

NotSpaghetti

Stearic Acid, as far as I'm aware, is not all of animal origin.
It's found in lots of "oil" plants too - rape and palm, coconut, sunflowers etc. Think I read that coconut and shea are richer in this than meat to be honest

I think this is true KatieKnitsSocks - in fact what you said actually seems to me to concur. What part of it do you think is only partly true?

I'm not picking a quarrel here - just feel that it's important to be accurate where we can.
I was wanting to correct your impression that stearic acid was only derived from animal products. Obviously that would make its use in vegan skincare (for example) impossible.

Our family were vegan from 1986 for many years so I'm not unsympathetic to the cause. I am very much aware this is a complex issue. However, small inaccuracies can sometimes make others not see the wider truth/picture.

Thanks Allsorts. I don't ordinarily describe myself as vegan because, as I wrote before, it's almost impossible to live in the 21C and not use things which contain animal products. I prefer plant-based. I haven't eaten meat, fish or dairy in over 50 years and can assure you that I don't have stomach or digestive problems and don't judge other people for their own dietary choices. I am aware though that some vegans criticise meat-eaters in he same way that meat-eaters are disparaging about vegetarians and vegans. It's a two way street.

You are someone who shops responsibly and has a healthy respect for animals. Thanks for avoiding Tesco. Do you mean the Tesco heiress Shirley Porter "homes for votes" scandal?

I have just reported my post that I made very early this morning, at 7 minutes 55 seconds after midnight to GNHQ.

Not as spam, but for "other reasons".

Readers are invited to do the same please in the hope that it might lead to a good result.

The more reports they get the better.

I am neither vegan or vegetarian. I make sure all the meat and dairy I do buy comes from companies that support animal welfare. I have used organic milk for donkeys years, I buy my meat from a local farm shop, Waitrose, C Op or M and S. I eat very little meat though., The people I know who are Vegan all suffer from stomache or digestive problems and are very judgemental to these who are not Vegans. It's a nightmare eating with them. I don't but anything with unstatainable palm oil in it. Would never shop at Tesco, there was all that gerrymandering, then I heard horrific reports of where they got their chickens from and the conditions they were kept in. If animals have free and natural lives and are humainly killed I don't have a probkem. I wouldn't buy pork intensively reared inside, and the American system with huge penned cattle is cruel, animals should live as close a life to what they deserve and the people that rear them are just as committed. As for saying people shouldn't have pets, I would never have a caged bird, but a cat or dog that are not put into handbags etc and treated as a baby are lovely companions and friends and very happy.

No KatieKnitsSocks Meat is NOT raised!

Living creatures are raised.

Again, I agree M0nica. Some meat is raised in a way that gives the animals a good life where they form part of environmental enrichment and biodiversity but far too many do not have a good life in order to produce quick meat cheaply.

These's a lack of consistency in the numbers for the amount of land given over to grazing animals and the amount of land given over to growing crops to feel animals. Those I quoted were not from vegan sources. The 80% was from Our World in Data and the 65% was from a variety of countryside sources including the NFU. The point I was trying to make was that we use too much land to feed animals either directly (grazed) or indirectly (crops) when at least some of that land could be used to grow crops to feed humans directly.

The destruction of Amazon rainforest is a prime example of this. Despite the soya moratorium negotiated by Greenpeace in 2006, huge swathes of land are still being cleared for cattle and to grow maize and soya to feed them.

www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/10/loophole-allowing-for-deforestation-on-soya-farms-in-brazils-amazon

Intensive animal rearing is cruel, no question. There was a TV series about life in the world's busiest cities presented by Dan Snow, Anita Rani and Ade Adepitan. One featured a piece about cattle farms in upstate New York which feed the people of New York City. Cattle are kept in tight pens, never seeing the light of day and fed a diet of bread, cakes, pastry, biscuits, pasta, chocolate, sweets, and breakfast cereals to fatten them quickly for market and, as you said, pumped full of antibiotics to counteract the effects of poor diet and lack of exercise.

Interesting article here about antibiotics in animal husbandry, why they have to be used and the potential risks to both animals and humans:

www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/323639#Antibiotics-and-the-animal-microbiome

The general conclusion:

"Current evidence indicates that there is no direct impact of antibiotic residues in meat on human health, but the risk of generating antibiotic-resistant bacteria in animals poses a potential risk to humans. However, human antibiotic use is far more damaging in both respects."

www.almostzerowaste.com/reducing-meat-environmental-benefits/

This article compares a plant based diet with a meat based one in terms of environmental impact.

No, Meat isn't raised.

Living creatures are raised.

Poor souls.

I buy my meat online and from several local farmer/producer shops where I know all the meat is reared to Pasture for Life standards, or very close to that. It is expensive but I eat less and serve smaller portions.

KatieKnitsSocks The cattle rearing figures you give are more nuanced than you state.

There are considerable areas of land that is not suitable for growing crops and some land depends on animal dung for fertility.

The problem lies with industrialised cattle rearing systems that do not graze animals but feed them maize, soya and similar crops that cattle cannot digest properly, and means they have permananent diarrhea. This means they need to be kept permananetly on antibiotics, which also act as growth promoter, and such cattle rearing methods are cruel to animals and damaging to the planet.

The alternative is pasture-only reared cattle and this is promoted by the Pasture for Life organisation www.pastureforlife.org/. Here cattle are reared on pasture only, supplemented with hay from the farm - and nothing else.

This form of cattle rearing reduces the environmental impact of the animals and, as James Rebank, and others have argued, this type of farming, where cattle deposit dung on the ground and then tread it in makes this form of cattle rearing environmnetally neutral unherd.com/2021/10/boris-johnson-is-no-green-superhero/ .

As I said the situation with cattle rearing is much more nuanced than the figures quoted by Vegan sources. Meat can and is raise in a environmentally way that, apart from being better for us and the cattle can also be a way of restoring habitats and increasing biodiversity.

Partly, NotSpaghetti. There is stearic acid in vegetable fats but it is far more abundant in animal fat (up to 30%) than in vegetable fat (typically <5%). The important exceptions are cocoa butter (34%) and shea butter (28–45%). The latter are most commonly found in cosmetics.

Agreed vegansrock. It's a very inefficent use of land too. There's plenty of statistical information. For example, livestock takes up nearly 80% of global agricultural land, yet produces less than 20% of the world’s supply of calories. Around 65% of arable land is used to produce animal feed instead of food for human consumption. We need a significant culture shift in what we eat if we are to have food security for everybody in the coming years.

vegansrock wrote Eating less meat and dairy is the most significant thing an individual can do to help combat the climate emergency.

Is eating none of either even better?

Are there any figures that relate quantitatively how much a vegan diet for a day helps as compared with, say, not driving a car for ten miles please? Or other things.

Eating less meat and dairy is the most significant thing an individual can do to help combat the climate emergency. Governments won’t try to include this in any recommendations because they have to kowtow to the agricultural industry. Because it is an industry and animals are just treated as products for human exploitation and profit making , welfare is just given lip service . I wouldn’t shop at Tesco, but I acknowledge that anywhere that sells animal products will . at some point in the chain , be associated with animal exploitation. We should all strive as individuals, to do the least harm possible, whilst acknowledging it is impossible to have zero impact . I don’t know of any vegans who would refuse to eat with non vegans btw.

Stearic Acid, as far as I'm aware, is not all of animal origin.
It's found in lots of "oil" plants too - rape and palm, coconut, sunflowers etc. Think I read that coconut and shea are richer in this than meat to be honest

If the Gransnet Chief Executive can get an interview with Mr Ken Murphy then maybe progress can be made.

If you (and I mean everybody reading this) support that idea, please Report this post to GNHQ, not as spam but as for other reasons and write something of your choice in the comments that you make about the post.

It could be just supporting the idea of the interview and video.

If you so choose, take the opportunity to suggest a question that you would like asked at the interview, put it forward, just in case the interview happens.

I know that nothing might happen, but in my experience (more generally over many years, not Gransnet-related), if one puts forward some text then if something happens and your text is there, ready to go, it might well get used, simply because it is what is there and available, ready to use.

For example, send an article to the editor of a magazine. If perchance there is a shortage of copy for that issue and your article is there on the desk ... then it is in the right place at the right time.

The GNHQ team might pass it to the Chief Executive and maybe the interview might happen and a video be published.

That is worth knowing, thank you.
I've not used Tesco , and I'll make sure I don't now.

I applaud your pragmatic approach choughdancer and share many of your views. Thank you too M0nica for highlighting the concerns about animal welfare. That was my only reason for raising the issue over Tesco and their cruel farming practices.

It’s impossible to live in the 21C and not use things which contain animal products. Stearic acid from processed animal fat is in many of the everyday items we use. It’s used in plastic products as a slip agent, for example, plastic bottles and bags and containers are not vegan. It’s used as a cooling agent in our phones, computers, TV sets and other devices. It’s in car tyres to enhance flexibility, strength and grip in the rubber. It’s in hundreds of personal care products, moisturiser, sunscreen, makeup, soap, and baby lotion.[ It’s in adhesives, lubricants, laundry products and paper products. None of these things are vegan in the strictest sense so we do what we can to buy vegan alternatives where possible and reduce our use of plastics.

I agree that globally we need to cut back on meat consumption.

My overriding concern is that if animals must die to feed us and to provide us with the goods we want and need then we owe it to them to give them the best possible life before they are killed. Tesco do not do this on their farms. Other major retailers do better. That was the point I was trying to make here, just to ask people to consider using alternative retailers if possible.

On the suggestion of a dialogue. Dave Lewis, Tesco’s former CEO was paid 30 million pounds for his six year stint at the company. He’s a friend of the Prime Minister, employed as a government supply chain adviser by him and and knighted at his request. Lewis was instrumental in concealing the company’s cruel animals practices and refusing to act when they were exposed by Open Cages.

I doubt a public discussion between two men who are both calculated liars would produce an honest answer to what goes on. It’s why we must have external animal welfare campaigners to expose the the truth.

A May 2022 report by The Grocer said that Tesco executive pay had trebled in 2021 to 12 million pounds. That was shared by just three men: the current CEO Ken Murphy, current CFO Imran Nawaz and his predecessor Alan Stewart. Animal welfare campaigners have argued for Tesco executives to pay themselves less and put the money into improving welfare practices at their farms. Sadly, the personal greed of Tesco executives is more important than the welfare of chickens which lead their short lives in appalling conditions often in great pain at Tesco farms.

Being a vegan, I know is an ethical stance, but it is not the only one around food. Many people have real ethical issues around animal welfare, I am one of them. I do not eat chicken or pork unless I know the exact provenance and at home all our beef and lamb is from Pasture for Life farms. When out I eat vegetarian or vegan dishes unless I am very sure about the provenance of any meat I am eating..

Others, again including me, have concerns about the sustainability of many farming practices, and eat organic whenever we can. We believe strongly in the need for a balance between the environment and farming.

Nevertheless the issue does concern me. But what can one do when, as far as I know, all supermarkets sell non-vegan food and many companies who produce vegan food also produce non-vegan food too?

Widening the discussion, I have read of vegans who will not sit down to eat at the same table where anybody is eating non-vegan food. So the widespread concept of going to, say, a dinner of a society and choosing the 'vegetarian' (sic) option and being seated at the same table as the m-word eaters does not work.

We have to accept that we live in a pluralistic society, where we have to meet and mix with people who do not share our principles, whether religious, around food or any other moral/ethical issue.

In the end, the art of living is knowing how to make compromises and each person has to decide where the compromise lies. If someone wants a purist vegan life, then they must accept that they must make compromises in their own lives to live up to their own standards. And while it is quite reasonable to expect that every restaurant will have a vegan option, it is unreasonable to demand that every restaurant has a special area for vegans, with a seperate kitchen that meets the strictest standards and that all ingredients are bought from vegan only suppliers.

The problem is that the stricter any group is about anything, the more fascist they are in demanding that their every whim should be catered for and that society as a whole should be shaped to their requirements.

To me this is nub of the matter.

My DiL is a vegan and it is totally against my principles to buy products based on soya and palm oil to feed her, yet I am expected to ditch my principles for her needs.

A companion is a lovely term.
I love parrots, and watch a lot of youtube videos about them, and the statistics are awful.
Something like 80percent are unwanted a year after being acquired.
They are hard work, hormonal, live very long lives, and of course, often don't perform tricks and speak.

They just scream for hours.

Their adopted owners remind everyone that they are not a pet - they often post videos of parrot tantrums just to reinforce that.

MissAdventure

That includes keeping animals as pets, for some vegans.
Fetishising them for our own pleasure, training them to behave how so that they fit neatly into our homes... Breeding exaggerated deformities of their natural features.

It's a fairly extreme view, but logical.

I am against the breeding of animals to exaggerate deformities.

And there are issues over what happens to those that are bred but do not match the people-made rules.

However, if someone takes in an animal that is already alive and in need, I regard that as good. Although the law regards a pet animal as property and that is good to the extent that it gives the animal's protector legal rights to protect the animal, a person does not need to think of the relationship between person and animal as one of owner and property, but can have it as protector and companion.

Sorry.
Sentences are going awry.