Brexit: will you eat bad meat or vegetarian?

To try and respond to your original question Alexa a lot of people will eat the lesser quality meat, because that’s all they will be able to afford. Not just that, the media predominately still portray meals with meat as the ‘norm’, less in recent years, but mainly. You just need to look at mainstream cookery programmes, advertising, product placement in supermarkets amongst others. So there isn’t the awareness of the origin of the meat on offer and to be honest, a lot of people don’t care, price drives their buying decisions, not quality. I’m not for or against, it’s how it is. And yes, I have seen in an abattoir, many years ago.

No butter ....
?

Sincere apologies vegansrock that was a thoughtless remark by me.

I think I meant cooking (I was flummoxed once a good few years ago when a daughter brought a friend home for the weekend and I hadn’t been told she was vegan). Cue panic from me! Beans on toast love?

Are you saying that eating dead animals is or is not an eating disorder?

vegansrock I've heard this many times from vegan friends and family.

My vegan family dont lecture others, they just go about their life doing as they see fit, but they are confronted about the decision to go vegan, by others constantly.

Notwithstanding, it can be used as a camouflage for eating disorders

Flowershop

More Brexit bullshit.

Vegans get plenty of abuse - I’ve been accused of having an eating disorder, a mental illness, now a pain in the proverbial, just for saying I’d rather not eat animal products.

Calendar girl if you would like to see inside an abattoir in the U.K. i suggest you watch
Earthlings
Knives over Forks
Cowspiracy
all on Netflix.
I challenge you to watch any of these without seriously considering veganism.
If you would rather not watch any animal cruelty don’t watch and consider why.

I agree grandmajet about vegetarianism. It’s vegan that’s the pain in the proverbial needing supplements too I think I read.

While I appreciate the consideration for 'higher' animal welfare and the wish to reduce suffering - please don't ever kid yourselves that 'cruelty-free' actually exists!

Animals suffer great pain and trauma through de-horning, de-beaking, castration, transportation, shearing, giving birth, being separated from their young etc. etc. every single day. There is no pain-free death.

All the above - to produce items totally unnecessary for our diet, their production incredibly harmful to our planet.

How you can cook, chew and actually swallow these things, without feeling guilty or sick, I can't imagine. And many of you will have pets and say you love animals too!

Vegetarian is cheaper, and there is plenty of guidance these days to make it tasty and nourishing.

I only buy free range meat and fish that is not farmed from UK and sustainable. If I couldn’t buy it I would do without.

I just think of all the families who go to Florida on holiday. No fuss made about their meals. If there was it would be Twittered to death.

Look, we all like to think we care for animal welfare. That’s the right way to think. If it was a choice between BAD meat and vegetarian I’d go vegetarian every time.

But please, let’s remember not all families in the UK can afford farmer’s markets, organic food and Waitrose. It’s smug to virtue signal.

Supply & demand. As long as consumers want cheap and edible (maybe a bit tasteless, so shove some spices in there bro) the producers will supply.

I’m with you WWM2. I only buy organic or free range meat and don’t eat meat every day. A chicken that costs £10 serves me with at least 12 meals and 10 soups. I have bought this way for 40 years when everyone thought I was mad to do so (so much so you didn’t dare admit it) and the local greengrocer said organic would never catch on!

If we import meat from the US no-one is going to know if they're buying it because the US has always said that a trade deal would include a stipulation that there would be no labelling of the meat's origin.

In that case I'd ban supermarket meat in our house (not that I buy it, but OH can't resist LIdl bargains from time to time) and buy only from our butcher, who sells locally produced meat. We could eat more fish and cheese and eggs. I don't think it would be a problem.

I'd never get OH to go vegan, or even vegetarian, and he does most of the cooking, so ?‍♂️

Vegansrock, by " good meat" I meant locally killed by artisan butcher, locally bred in top of the range welfare conditions, and fattened on free range pasture. This is very expensive food for people to buy. Food has been far too cheap and animals have paid for cheapness with their suffering.

The present government is incapable of not putting immediate profit before welfare.

I try to eat mostly vegetables, although I do cook meat for my grandchildren.

As it appears food standards will suffer, I would suggest only buying the best quality, organic meat from providers that care about animal welfare - but buying much less to avoid your food bill rocketing.

Uk animal welfare standards are higher than those required by the EU, but I agree, meat production is never going to be kind for the animals involved. Humans do not need large quantities of meat for a good diet, or, it could be argued, any meat at all, but if animal welfare is our main concern, the dairy industry and egg production are just as troubling. It is possible to buy these products from genuine free range farms, and farms where calves are kept with the cows for several months while the latter are milked just once a day. This is obviously a more expensive option however, and not available everywhere.
A vegan diet takes a lot of thought and knowledge to provide complete nutrition, but a largely vegetarian diet can be cheap, easy, tasty and nourishing.
Incidentally, on the question of using EU banned pesticides, this refers I think to the use of one in sugar beet production and the ban has been lifted short term both here and in at least 10 EU countries to control a particular problem, I can’t remember what,

I never buy any non U.K. meat anyway. We don’t eat that much any more but it’s got to be higher welfare and British.

I’m sceptical about EU animal welfare anyway - don’t anyone tell me that the colossal amounts of Danish bacon we import are produced in non-factory farmed conditions. Ditto the relatively cheap Dutch and German pork/gammon I see a lot of in Asda.
Yes, I’m aware that US standards are pretty dreadful and would never buy meat from there.

vegansrock

90% of meat eaten in U.k. is from factory farms anyway, this idea that we have high standards would be out of the window if you saw inside an abattoir.

I’ve never been inside an abattoir, have you?

What is it like?

whitewavemark2 your shopping habits are to be commended but the fact is that 90% of meat consumed in the U.K. is factory farmed. These animals live short miserable lives and are herded and squashed into transporters and taken to slaughterhouses which are now fewer and bigger, where their dispatch is rarely stress free or swift. If you buy any processed products, pies, pasties, sausages, cured meats, the meat products used will be from industrial farms not grass fed cattle who are kept with their young. The same goes for anything which contains eggs or dairy , you know their production has involved cruelty.

I buy my meat from an organic farmer. The animals are grass fed and free range. Their lives are longer as they take longer to mature. When they are killed they are taken by the farmer to a local abattoir that is close by very early in the morning -they are always the first to be killed, which is done with humanity and stress free.

The resultant meat is incomparable. Absolutely delicious and tender.

But you pay for this care of the animal and rightly so if you are going to exploit them. If necessary I would eat meat only once a week or month even if it meant that I couldn’t afford the very high welfare kind.

I eat meat only every third day. I’m vegetarian one day, Pescatarian on second day.

I buy my fish from a local fisherman, and I buy a box of fish every month. What the fish are is entirely dependent on what he has been able to catch - or of indeed he’s been able to fish because of the weather. He delivered my fish for this month yesterday and the selection was brilliant! He turns up in his yellow jacket and wellingtons?.

My vegetables I buy from various sources, including oddbox and a local organic supplier.

Today is a meat day - spag Bol ?

Over 80% of British population do NOT want - hormone fed meat, chlorine washed chicken, antibiotics regularly fed to cattle, any EU banned pesticides to be used on crops. Please do not support any lowering of our standards in order to trade with the USA.

Animal welfare is terrible everywhere. Stop pretending it’s marvellous here. Where making profit is concerned it’s way down the list.

I'm not eating bad meat - or vegetarian. I've never felt better since going vegan. I don't fret about the cruelty my poor beans and vegetables endure, either!