Vegan

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/damien-clarkson/veganism_b_8106662.html

Anya, I couldn't bring myself to look at the link - I've seen photographs etc of intensive pig farming, it's loathsome. In fact, I now regret my bacon buttie teasing of Wilma.

Meat ought not to be cheap, and it certainly shouldn't come from animals who have been treated cruelly, stuffed full of inappropriate feed and antibiotics and never had the opportunity to live as their breed should. I helped out on a pig farm when I was in my teens, loved every minute. Pigs are generally very likeable, we just had one that was kept separate because of aggressive tendencies.

intensive pig farming in UK

Hope this link works! This is the kind of disgusting farming practices we should be guarding against. Not just vegans but anyone who eats meat should be shouting from the rooftops. The suffering these animals will experience just to satisfy our lust for cheap meat is abhorant.

I certainly wouldn't want to eat meat from animals reared like this - think of the stress hormones in the meat for a start.

Not trying to lighten the tone (well I suppose I am! , but it still makes me smile that after all these years it's Bassett's Liquorice Allsorts that always springs to mind when I think about what I miss - I still check the ingredients on the bags every now and then in the hope that I can eat them! I do have a sweet tooth! Other brands don't taste the same, so it's not the gelatin that makes the taste different.

Mueller light yogurts are the same. All the lovely flavours at a great price - but contain gelatin. Not bothered about this these days though because Lidl's yogurts are simply delicious (especially the pear flavour) and I wouldn't change brands now because of the taste.

I didn't know about Bassett'e liquorice all sorts Wilma. I accept that farmer's care about animal welfare but I can't see how factory farming methods can be anything other than abusive. When I had 3 hens living happily in my garden, their hen house seemed about right. I later discovered that if they'd been battery hens, not only wouldn't they have had the fun of wrecking the garden when free ranging, there would have been 70 of them crammed into that little house.
The notion of cows who are never given the freedom to wander in a field sits very poorly with me.

I don't eat farmed fish because of my own health as well as that of the fish. I only eat free range, organic chicken and the lamb we buy is from our local butcher, who rears it himself on the moorland around our home. I have no difficulty understanding why the new shadow minister is a vegan and hope her influence will be positive.

I am64 never liked bacon, so don't miss it! But I know other veggies who miss bacon the most and I don't think there's a decent meat substitute either. Bassett's liquorice allsorts is something else I miss and it bugs me that the company still uses gelatin when vegetarian options are widely used in other food.

I don't think Gordon Brown had any relevant qualifications either.

so what about George (wallpaper) Osborne as Chancellor when he only has an O level in maths.

Not bacon butties WilmaKnickersfit? I don't eat a lot of meat and the team I worked on had a number of vegetarians - they really struggled when we treated ourselves to bacon butties on Friday mornings

I don't see why having a vegan as Shadow Minister for Agriculture is a problem.

In my top three foods I miss the most as a veggie is a steak pie bought from local butchers in Scotland where the butcher butchers the meat himself. Probably my biggest temptation.

I am still puzzled about her appointment.

No, the Minister or Shadow Minister for Agriculture etc does not need to know anything at all - if she is a quick learner she will soon get on top of her brief.
However, to appoint someone who obviously has such entrenched views about farming is an odd decision to make imo.

Was that an ironic hurray?
djen yes it was, (sarcasm is the lowest form of wit I know)

They are clean, cared for and well fed but I somehow think it's wrong that they never go outside.

We did notice when I was young and the cows were let out into the fields after the winter that the milk improved - it was more creamy and substantial somehow, not sure about the nutrition levels (no-one seemed to care in those days).
I am sure they are fed the best possible diet to give the best and most nutrient rich yield, but cows should be outside - in the summer anyway

The best British Scottish beef is reared mostly on grass, not heavily on cereal crops. Scottish and Welsh lamb are out on rough mountain or upland pastures for as much of the year as possible, sometimes all year round. They are not using land which could grow cereal/vegetable crops.

Back to the shadow DEFRA government minister being vegan and vegans not eating honey (I didn't know that) I do hope that she does encourage beekeepers, because the bee population is struggling, and the bees do a sterling job pollinating the crops on which vegans, vegetarians and omnivores all depend.

Beef farming, whether for meat or dairy is very intensive and, to my mind, inhumane in the US. I would probably have to be vegan if I went there.

In this country, and elsewhere these methods are being introduced, which is why all the meat I eat is organic, or raised to the highest welfare standards and, living in a quasi-rural area I can buy from local farmers. The meat and milk I eat comes from grass-reared cattle, who may be overwintered in barns, warmer, drier and healthier to being out in all weathers up to their hocks in mud, and destroying the pasture they use in the summer, and will be fed hay and fodder mainly grown on the farm they live on.

Some land, like high uplands and grade 5 land is not suitable for arable crops unless there is a high input of nitrogenous fertilisers. Grazing cattle and sheep is the best use of it and their droppings fertilise the flatter land so that occasional arable crops can be grown.

soon are you talking about why vegans don't eat meat because as a vegetarian my main reason for changing is simply that I don't like the idea of eating another creature. Animal welfare was below this for me. Everyone will have their own reasons.

The technology was amazing. The cows move into a milking area when they want - who knows how that happens! - but to never leave the barn? That doesn't sit well with me. And what standards of milk is a farmer producing that he can afford such technology? As dj says, it's the price farmers are paid that is the problem.

sunseeker I suspect what you describe happens on 99% of farms and this farmer is an early adopter. The article was about the technology at the forefront of agriculture as part of a series called something like Could A Robot Do Your Job?

I missed out the, I thought it was animal welfare...

I was surprised durhamjen, because it was animal welfare that was at the forefront of why they dont eat or use animal products.

I dont think there is harm done to bees ever? Hence my surprise.

Was that an ironic hurray? Milk yield is not a problem; the price farmers are paid for their milk is.
Perhaps robots can replace cows if GM is practised more. Then cows will be obsolete as well as humans.

sunseeker I think it was something we saw on the BBC news - it's robot week or something!

Cows were kept indoors all the time, fed automatically etc etc. Milk yield was up. Hurray!

Well, if robots can replace humans watch out.
The Daleks are coming

Only if they continue to eat meat, rose.

I am surprised, soon, that you needed to google that vegans do not use honey. They do not use eggs either.

I live in a farming community and can assure you the local cows are brought in from the fields twice a day for milking, they are walked along the main road through the village to the track leading to the milking parlour. Of course cows are milked by machine - do you think there is an army of milkmaids milking them by hand . I can only speak for what I have seen myself and I can assure you the cows are healthy and well cared for. At the moment there is a small amount of beef cattle grazing in the field behind my house, again they are healthy and well cared for.

Yes, I saw that too WilmaKnickersfit and I don't feel entirely comfortable with it.
However, they were well cared for - they need to be obviously.

I have seen cows leaping for joy as they are let out of their sheds after the winter, going out into the fields.

However, and it is a big however, the more the population increases (and many on the far left with very wide open arms would like it to increase more), the more food we need and the more intensive farming will have to become of necessity.
And unless people are prepared to pay more for their food, more intensive farming will increase.

So there it is - unfortunately.

Yes, it was in the UK. I've seen cows being fed and milked by machines before years ago, but they were brought in from the fields.

I think she will have their interests at heart. Again, that will be her job and you are still focussing on one part of her wide ranging job.