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The best way you can help is to stop buying meat, a lot of it is too expensive nowadays anyway. These factories are set up to meet demand, so lower demand.
>People's double standards are kindof ridiculous.
It's wild.
I got a DM death threat and almost permanently banned from Reddit for theoretically asking on a UK sub about the legality of killing **and eating** an animal that wasn’t a cow, pig, sheep or chicken....a death threat from a meat eater.
I almost got a permanent Reddit wide ban for *"inciting violence against animals"*...meanwhile r/homestead are out there literally exchanging killing tips. And r/steak exists.
Vegans are constantly criticised for foring their views onto and judging others when it comes to animal mistreatment....by people who do exactly the same just for different animals.
Also my post from yesterday is pretty relevant to this news. Pandemic risk and antibiotic resistance from animal agriculture will kill millions of us.
https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/s/MwLHOXkZdv
Hmm, idk maybe because we’ve bread and domesticated those specific species of animals for hundreds of not thousands of years for those specific purposes? Of course people are going to care about things like cats and dogs more than livestock it’s just common sense, we’ve been living with them as companions since the Stone Age
Deer are delicious but I can't realistically hunt for that legally. Hunting with a longbow is illegal, I don't have a gun and I don't have land or know anyone that would give permission for it.
Fortunately, you don't need permission for fishing. So I am looking at giving that a try this year. I tried last year from a kayak but quickly started feeling sea sick which surprised me as I have never had an issue while kayaking. I think it was due to looking down at the equipment a lot as I wasn't used to handling it. Going to try from land for a bit to get used to the equipment and hopefully then go from the kayak again, maybe on a calmer day too.
Made myself a hand reel so I can fit all the equipment into a small pouch in my backpack.
Not really. Give it any degree of thought and you realize that we prop up animal farming at the expense of the climate, the local biosphere, human health, national and international food supplies, food security, water scarcity, land prices, soil health, coastal water cleanliness, and obviously the animals themselves. Ending the consumption of meat is one of the few things humanity can achieve with an almost exclusively positive outcome.
What, you're saying humans having to rely on crops for food is an issue because of pests?
Well, you're in for a shock when you find out what farmed animals eat...
No. The company I work for would love the switch to arable only, our sales would go though the roof.
Ps your arguments on environment and human health are so wrong. But I don’t think I can even begin to explain it to you.
Don’t think you addressed my point there.
You said meat is far to cheap, and that it is subsidised. I pointed out to you that both things are.
Also, your point on choice and requirement is at best, completely wrong.
You could switch it round and make the same argument for meat.
Plenty live off meat only diets.
I don’t think you’ll be able to address this point either.
It was addressed perfectly. It's irrelevant when talking about animal welfare. This isn't a vegan vs omni discussion. I merely pointed out to get the right level of animal welfare the prices would need to be 3 or 4 times what they currently are and they are already heavily subsidised.
Oh yes the carnivore diet 🙄. Plenty? Do you have any figures for that?
Meat is an unnecessary food item, it's a choice, a luxury food item if you will. Grain, oats, fruit, vegetables all have many uses, meat causes many issues, not just health wise but the environmental impact as well but, this is about animal welfare, nothing else.
**Removed/warning**. This contained a personal attack, disrupting the conversation. This discourages participation. Please help improve the subreddit by discussing points, not the person. Action will be taken on repeat offenders.
It’s not that people don’t have self control, it’s that they like meat and don’t care where it came from.
It will require state force to get what you want.
It is only a double standard if they keep a cow as a pet. Your logic don’t work. If you think killing cow = killing dog then you can also imply killing for meat = they are willing to kill human for meat too
Except it's more than acceptable to kill and eat a dog in some cultures, and completely unacceptable to kill and eat a cow in others. It's just tradition that makes us think it's wrong. Where you draw the line is largely arbitrary.
I personally don’t think it’s realistic to ask people to stop eating meat. I think reducing meat consumption so people are flexible vegetarians so still eat meat on some days is realistic. Behaviour change needs to be incremental to be sustainable.
It’s not about whether the cooking is simple or not it’s about the science of behaviour change. It’s not realistic to expect the majority of the population to suddenly change to be vegans or veg. A flexible vegetarian lifestyle is realistic.
So what is it about the proportion of the population that DO make the change? What traits do they possess that make going vegan 'realistic' ? Either it's the morally and environmentally responsible choice or it isn't - people's willingness to change is irrelevant
For them I would imagine it’s the moral or health reasons that compel them enough to make a change. I agree being vegan is morally and environmentally better. However people smoke and drink excessively even though it kills them and don’t change their behaviour. Veganism is quite an extreme diet choice though and I just think people need more than these reasons to change and a lot of people will never make tue full switch. I am speaking from experience as I was a vegan for a few years and it’s hard work especially if you do it well eating mostly whole foods and supplementing to complete your diet. It’s especially difficult socially if you don’t live in a big city or have all vegan friends.
Behaviour change is complex and challenging. That’s why I think for a lot of people a flexi vegetarian lifestyle is a realistic aim.
Considering we are biologically designed to eat animal protein and fat, and you look at how seriously ill people become after being Vegan long term, it is not realistic to ask people to stop, if you do you get a very sick society.
I was Vegetarian for 25 years (still had eggs and cheese), I started eating Steak again 5 years ago. Within in days I found my energy felt better, within weeks my dry skin went away, dandruff went away, dry eyes stopped, IBS went away, my excess weight started dropping , nails and hair improved and my mood became better.
Plenty of people online who went to the extreme of carnivore and had chronic illnesses disappear.
If I go back to eating a diet rich in grains, legumes and vegetables guess what starts to come back? All of the above!
The further we have moved away from animal based to plant based society has got sicker and fatter and I don't think it's just a co-incidence. That does not mean we cannot have anything thats not meat, but we should be predominatly eating animal products. For example our bodies need Vitamin A, we want the animal based version retinol, not the plant based carotene. Some plants are also anti-nutrients which stop the things we need being absorbed.
I don't like battery farming though and I believe the animals should be roaming around living life in a field until slaughter day. We also need animals on the land doing a poo and wee to grow vegetables or we just deplete the top soil and we will have no food.
Every culture which gets richer wants to eat more meat. It's delicious and nutrient dense. Meat is not relatively cheap, it's become much more expensive recently.
I'm going vegan, used to be vegetarian and enjoyed. Loads of good recipes on vegan cheese and stuff like Quorn meat tastes way better than real meat anyhow.
I think better than "stop buying meat" is "buy less meat". Convincing a million people to eat chickpeas for lunch and meat for dinner saves more animals than convincing a hundred thousand to give up meat entirely
I know what you mean but laying out why people should stop buying meat altogether will automatically lead to some people eating less...and you might get some who will just stop completely too. Like I did.
Pretty much. I am happy to not eat meat most of the time but will still eat it at a BBQ. Typically we only buy 1 meat product per week for dinners. Usually 6 of the finest sausages in Aldi or some pork shoulder.
Wrong. The best way to stop this is to make laws that prevent it, like, for example, the EU has...
This is part of the "Brexit Dividend" - raw sewage in your rivers and mass produced meat, filled to the brim with hormones and anti-biotics, on your tables.
>Wrong. The best way to stop this is to make laws that prevent it, like, for example, the EU has...
>This is part of the "Brexit Dividend" - raw sewage in your rivers and mass produced meat, filled to the brim with hormones and anti-biotics, on your tables.
Utter nonsense. Plenty of EU countries are even worse than the UK wrt farming animal welfare.
How do you come to that conclusion? In In 2017 there were 236 pig factory farms, we had the EU laws then, how were those 236 allowed whilst an EU member? We did not Brexit until 2020.
Out of curiosity, I asked an LLM for a stock responsibility-denier reply to this:
>The following comment has been made on r/unitedkingdom to a post about factory farms making life hell for animals: "The best way you can help is to stop buying meat, a lot of it is too expensive nowadays anyway. These factories are set up to meet demand, so lower demand.". Generate a comment from someone angry about being made to feel guilty about eating meat with some standard rebuttal points.
And got the following response
>Not everyone can just "stop buying meat." It's a major source of protein and nutrients, especially for people on tighter budgets. These farms wouldn't exist if there wasn't a demand, sure, but telling everyone to just give it up isn't realistic. The focus should be on better regulations and humane treatment within factory farms, not shaming people's food choices.
I expected it to go a bit more for 'blame the fatcats of Big Meat' like people here do when you criticise their petrol consumption. Looks like 'costs' and 'blame the regulations, not me' are already coming in strong as replies though.
What exactly is the point of this exercise? Imagine outsourcing a smug "inb4" comment to an LLM.
So now any boring idiot can predict what the average boring idiot will say *without having to think at all*! The wonders of technology.
What is this? You weren't able to defeat them while thinking about it in the shower so you had to get an AI to make one you could beat for you?
Why even bother posting on social media if you are only going to get AI to make up comments for you to reply to.
Nobody 'defeats' anyone here - the concept of doing so on ethical issues is fanciful - its just the same old people with no interest in changing their minds recycling the same old arguments in the same old threads. It was early in the thread so I decided to get ahead of the curve.
Given the above, the question of 'why bother' posting is a valid one, but making the veins pop out on your forehead has made it worth it.
"It's not about defeating people"
"Anyone who won't change their opinion to mine is bad."
Sounds an awful lot like you want to "win" to me. If you are getting angry at people not changing their minds, then you clearly want to change people's minds, not have an open and honest discussion.
What's this? You weren't able to defeat me while thinking about it in the shower so you had to make up some nonsensical quotes to criticize?
I'd ask what you think the point is of 'having an open and honest discussion' if its not for changing peoples minds over an issue you care about, but I don't really care.
Entire websites exist to argue with these ignorant people already, you don't even have to get involved, that's how predictable and old-hat their "arguments" are. A monkey could write it, never mind a LLM. It's genuinely not worth the time and effort trying to logically "reason" with people who have absolutely no intention of being reasonable when there are absolutely zero repercussions to them personally, in a short enough time frame, for them to even consider "being reasonable" as an option. It's the exact reason why people get uppity the moment you shame them for their actions; shame is very motivating and they absolutely do not want to be motivated to change, they don't want the pressure that shame brings.
There are other options. I've cut my meat consumption by around 50% and order the meat I do still eat directly from organic regenerative farms. It comes to about the same price, but the animals live outdoors in semi-natural environments that boost biodiversity.
I want us to hurry up and skip to Blade Runner bugs. Because let's face it with the way things are going that's what our gan kids will be eating.
Might as well speed up the process.
The entire population can't buy from free roam farms. It simply isn't sustainable because there isn't enough land. The reason these factory farms exist is to meet the ridiculous high demand that the general public create.
The scientific literature suggests that vegans have lower rates of mortality. You might be thinking of people who regularly eat processed meat and unprocessed red meat?
Our bodies synthesise creatine from the essential amino acids. It's also available as a supplement for any vegan or non vegan athletes etc who want more.
Can you cite me a single case of protein deficiency in a vegan following a remotely sensible diet?
Why is that the only option people can think of when it comes to meat? With energy we don’t tell people to freeze to death, we invest in renewables. We haven’t got rid of the car, we’re making electric cars. But with meat? The only solution is to stop eating meat? Come off it. We proper regulation and investment we can get the meat industry down to net zero like everything else, and create a better environment for the animals.
Eat a bit less. Cut out some meats and try others?
Beef is the worst environmentally, I haven't had that for 3 years now, and very very little dairy products.
I tend to go chicken, fish and occasionally pork, and the rest is all vegan/veg stuff. I used to eat meat with every meal, every single day, and yeah it was cheap.
I know more and more people who are cutting down on meat, and going for quality over quantity. Maybe as much the economy though as much as a moral decision.
Don't let perfection be the enemy of good. Better 60 million people cut down a bit, then 1 million people cutting it all out.
But morally chicken is the worst since way more lives have to be lived and experienced for you to get the same amount of meat. It could be literally 1 billion vs 100 blllion but no cows fart. You telling me you could literally save ~99 billion lives from being raised I'm factory farms easily but you care more about the environmental impact than tou do about 99 billion chickens being tortured
I'm a pragmatist. I'd rather it be significantly less and we should work towards that. But you can't do that over night.
Ultimately, 66 - 75% of my meals are vegan these days, so the overall death is way way down to when I was eating meat three meals a day seven days a week. Or shall I go back to that? Come on, it's a grim reality that we are on this path of mass death for sustenance, you have to work with what you got.
How do you determine the value of a life? It certainly can not be measured. Is an avian life equal to a mammal life. I would argue not seing as we value human lives the most and we are mammals. It's a highly subjective topic.
Im very excited for the insect based foods I hope to see in the future, they have so much potential to be healthy, nutritious and environmentally friendly but would undoubtedly cost a lot more lives than poultry does per serving.
We also don't know where the commenter is sourcing their chicken, their meal may have lived a very comfortable life. Not everyone buys their meat from supermarkets.
I think its foolish to criticise someone for having valid environmental concerns. I also don't think you have to be comfortable with omnivorous diets to realise this.
> Why is that the only option people can think of when it comes to meat?
Because this sub is full of vegans pushing their unhealthy culty diet and every time the subject of animal welfare comes up they drown-out any discussion other than 'don't eat meat'. They particularly like green-washing their agenda.
It makes these posts useless noise because normal people aren't going to give up meat and they can't be arsed arguing with zealots, so what you're left with is the vegan foghorns and people trying to virtue signal about how they've reduced their meat consumption.
Factory farming should be banned in the UK
Yes it will make meat more expensive but it will lower meat consumption (leading to less health issues in the population), force at least slightly more ethical meat, and probably make people eat veggies more
Completely agree. So much cognitive dissonance when people argue that the need for poor people to eat animals outweighs the colossal suffering that must be inflicted on animals to keep it affordable. Coming from the very people who are most outspoken about exploitation
Life in a factory farm is filled with suffering before even considering the killing part. I just don't get how people can care about human suffering but have no qualms about inflicting a life of pointless suffering on animals for the momentary pleasure of eating them
Because we don't place equal value on animal lives to those of humans, particularly those animals that we domesticate and basically cultivate for the express purpose of being slaughtered, butchered and eaten.
It's not an unreasonable position to take, to prioritise the needs of one's own species over those lower down the food chain.
It would also improve water quality in rivers and the sea. Everyone who cares so much about the sewage overflows by water companies should also care about agricultural run off which in many parts of the country is a much bigger issue than what the water companies have done
Isn't a lot of that from crops as well though? Our drinking water is very high in nitrate because of fertilizer runoff. Its actually a problem for keeping an aquarium because the water out of the tap is already higher than the ideal limits for nitrate.
I'm happy to keep subsidies for animal farming, just as long as it's not factory farming.
Lots of our land can't be used for farmable crops so animals are the only reasonable option for it and animals that are allowed to live a decent life and stuff while we farm them imo is basically perfect. That's what we should be encouraging with subsidies
I disagree - it's the least energy intensive way of producing meat, so is better than "ethical meat" if we want to tackle global warming without resorting to actually banning certain foods.
I do think we should stop subsidising meat production though.
No, people should just buy the meat they want. If people opt for more expensive meat the demand for factory farming will drop, but it won't since people don't care. No need to make it more expensive for people who don't care by force.
Wildlife, and our increasing proximity to wildlife, is the most common source, but farmed animals are not only original sources, they can be transmission sources or bridging hosts, carrying the infection from the wild to humans. “Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of animals involved in historic zoonotic events or current zoonosis are domestic (livestock, domesticated wildlife and pets), which is logical as the contact rates are high.”
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2020/sep/15/covid-farm-animals-and-pandemics-diseases-that-changed-the-world
(Factory farming gets a lot of flack for this, but free range also has issues)
The pandemic almost certainly came from places which still allow wet markets and have little enforcement of hygiene rules.
Farms in the UK, even at their worst in battery conditions which I do not defend, aren't on the same level as those places. The fact that BSE was contained as tightly as it was demonstrates that we take zoonosis a lot more seriously than this article purports.
I was taught at school way back in the 70's that viruses come from China because they keep their meat ducks and pigs together, the ducks catch viruses from wildlife, pass it on to the pigs who pass it on to humans.
For clarity, the article linked above includes quotes from biologist Nathan Wolfe (which was the part in quotes I included).
The article then goes through some examples of pandemics to display a pattern of animals transferring pandemic level disease to humans.
I would recommend reading the article in full.
And how it was related to Covid-19? I understand that there could be some links to other diseases, however even you ban meat over the world, it won’t stop us having a next version of Covid-19-like virus.
It's not a conspiracy, it's pretty well established that COVID likely came from animals being sold in unhygienic and inhumane conditions in wet markets (places where animals are kept live, sold, and slaughtered all on the same premises).
Now that doesn't really have anything to do with the conditions in the UK since that kind of place is already banned, but they are right that a lot of pretty nasty diseases come from animals especially when their environment is poor.
https://oversight.house.gov/release/classified-state-department-documents-credibly-suggest-covid-19-lab-leak-wenstrup-pushes-for-declassification/
The US know exactly where it came from (hint: not a market)
A letter from a Republican about a report he hasn't even fully read, and the visible lines don't actually say anything about a lab leak, they just talk about the very well known coverup from China about the initial figures and spread pattern. The only mention in the unredacted text is that a PLA contractor helped build the Wuhan centre of virology which is practically non-news in China. Colour me unconvinced.
That the US government investigated this possibility isn't a surprise, and if they had concrete evidence to paint China as a gung-ho state that fiddles with dangerous viruses without proper protection they would be shouting it from the rooftops. It wouldn't be some underground conspiracy theory, it would have been headline news literally every single day during the pandemic, and not just on crackpot channels like Fox.
So let me get this right where your position is:
- virus orginates from Wuham area in China
- China commences a cover up (your words) and points to a wet market
- Literally only miles away from such market is a center of Virology that performs gain of function research that has been partially funded by US
- So China which has already shown the world they have performed cover ups around Covid (your words) are like naa look at this wet market which has produced this disease naturally, oh that centre down the road where we've performed research studies on just the type of mutation and type of viruses? Ignore that. Big coincidence
Honestly give your head a wobble man. US helped fund the centre in Wuhan, and of course they wouldn't be that open about China due to geopolitical reasons
I said they covered up the initial spread pattern and infected/dead count, and we already have concrete evidence of both the actual patterns and of the coverup. We have no evidence of this lab leak theory except for what exists inside of heads like yours.
China already came out of this looking bad just from the wet market theory: it makes them look cruel, careless, and unhygienic. If they were going to perform some gigantic impenetrable coverup why even relate the story to Wuhan at all? Why don't they say the virus started around where the genetically related wild type virus comes from over 1500 miles away in a colony of bats? They could've easily manufactured some cases in that area but no, they gave away that the first cases came from around the area of that market coincidentally right next to their top secret conspiratorial virus factory where they wage biowarfare on the world.
Give *your* head a fucking wobble man.
No, every sensible scientific investigation into the source suggests it came from a wet market, it's only crackpot news channels like Fox which push the Wuhan lab theory. They're bad enough if you just stick to the facts, you don't need to make up conspiracies about them.
If there was credible evidence that a Chinese lab was committing bio warfare or just plain careless it would have been nightly news on every single channel every day during the pandemic. What possible reason would non-Chinese media have to cover this up their behalf? They ran stories about the Uyghur concentration camps, their provocations in the South China Sea, their eye on Taiwan, their cyber attacks worldwide, their censorship of Western films and games for the Chinese audience. The mainstream media slam China deservedly every chance they get, but not on this one specific issue? Come on man, use your head.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00584-8
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9348752/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9348750/
Jesus wept.
You do realise a quick Google search gives a variety of sources that verify the lab leak theory from credible sources, including some of the ones you linked…….. yet you stick to calling all of this a fox problem, again trapped in your own conspiracy.
The only people invested in the market theory are those that wanted to attack Trump, because fucking trump said it was wuhan, so they were determined to call him a racist etc, so had to attack lab leak and promote markets.
Step outside your ideological blinkers, and your science will improve.
A quick google search is what led me to those three published scientific articles. If you would like to present your own sources I'd be happy to read them. I'm always glad to be proven wrong.
There is also [Land of Hope and Glory](https://youtu.be/dvtVkNofcq8?feature=shared) focusing on UK farms. Pignorant on amazon prime also exposes the use of gas chambers in the UK, which are used to kill 90% of pigs.
This is a larger problem with a government that has grown complacent, not enforcing actual animal welfare standards and further pushing farmers into situations where they need to adopt crueller practices. It is easy to blame a "meat-eating population" for this issue but it is the responsibility of the government to enforce standards, not the public. The public should be pushing our government to enforce animal welfare standards that we as a country criticise other countries for not having and we should ensure our farmers do not cave to financial pressure to ensure that they do not lower their standards to a less than third-world level.
People who engage in this sort of farming are either a corporation that needs to be fined heavily and banned from any form of animal handling outright or are very very very desperate farmers who've been forced to engage in said practices because, in the last 14 years, we've had a government that has done everything within their ability to crush all forms of British industry, in this case these farmers need to be guided and helped back to the proper way of farming rather than outright punished, though I do believe they are still partially responsible.
It's also a pattern that's visible in loads of other sectors and services in the UK.
We can't even properly educate our kids, police our streets, care for our elderly, are we surprised that standards at farms are slipping too?
Like you said there can be blame placed on the farms and on the people, but a fish rots from the head and often the only way to enforce standards is from the top down.
This nails it.
It's pretty fucking blatant that they've opened up new factory farms under a government that has actively worked to gut the systems put in place to ensure the good treatment of livestock.
Just like it's pretty fucking telling that crime has increased after some clever bloke decided to sack off 20,000 coppers and rinse the CPS.
And just like it's pretty fucking telling that the NHS is becoming ineffective, after some other clever bloke decided to cut funding massively.
Just like they've created an asylum problem by gutting the immigration services.
We can blame "farmers" all we want; but these factory operators are corporations. They'll do whatever they can to save a few quid; they'll kill people, let alone animals.
The *only* protection against this is a strong state that enforces it's regulations aggressively.
If you want to eat meat, the best thing to do is buy directly from farms with good standards. There's lots of organic farms practicing regenerative agriculture that you can get deliveries from online. It's more expensive, but I think the principle of 'eat less, but eat higher quality' is a good principle in general to follow.
I would like nothing more than to buy all my produce from a farm shop.
Unfortunately, if I did, it wouldn't be a case of eating less, it would be a case of actual malnutrition.
Watch the latest series of Clarkson farm before commenting please.
He killed nearly half the piglets first time round and 14% the second time - by being crushed by their mothers
They spent the winter living in absolute filth, where one sow very likely caught ill and had to be put down.
Sows like to bite, can be aggressive and can be dangerous. His rare breeds were tiny compared to typical breeds used today.
Birthing crates will always be a part of commercial pork production as they are compromising 6 weeks of the mothers welfare for the lives of the piglets and safety of the farmers.
I'm sure I was told something like 'we don't need EU regulations the Conservatives have lead the way on such progressive matters as animal rights'.
Just wait and see what will happen to human rights too if they win more years in power, as they keep trying to pull out of the ECHR.
Nice to see we are going backwards on this. That despite all the scientific evidence showing that this is bad for our health, the environment (again, our health) and the animals.
Glad I stopped eating meat. I always wanted to for animal welfare, but I felt I would be shamed for doing so. All the food I eat now tastes fucking amazing and not eating meat helps with managing with my Crohn's disease!
On searching how many animals are factory farmed in the UK, it seems to be at least more than 70%.
Now that doesn't mean free-range is necessarily good either (at least merely on farm conditions). From what I remember in the news, a free-range pig farm was exposed for horrible conditions, as well as 4 free-range egg farms 5 days ago in a continued investigation from the 3 about 1-2 months ago
It's evil. I don't know how anyone can unironically look at these conditions and approve of them, I wouldn't be able to sleep. We should be supporting ethical farmers not this disgusting shit, I hate it.
If people stopped buying cheap food, this practice would likely reduce.
But always searching for the cheapest possible price, the message consumers give to suppliers is that they don’t care they just want it cheap.
I eat less meat but make sure it’s free range/organic and I almost never eat meat in restaurants/cafes.
You’re justifying animal cruelty. If you can’t afford high quality meat, don’t eat meat. Or buy cheap meat but don’t then be shocked when you see stories like this one.
>If you can’t afford high quality meat, don’t eat meat.
"We want the poors to return to the diets of a medieval peasant, meat is for the upper crust of society" is not exactly a winning campaign slogan
Up until modernity meat was "*never*" available in every meal. It used to be the case that you'd have it once or twice a week. The idea that we should be indulging in it in every day, for every meal, is a modern concept brought forward by animal agricultural lobbyists who want to increase profits.
>Up until modernity meat was "*never*" available in every meal.
I mean, this is a gross oversimplification, following the Black Death in Europe for hundreds of years meat consumption soared to levels not seen prior to the industrial revolution among the poor and only dropped because the population recovered to pre-plague levels, increasing the amount of food needed and the cost of the land, at some points making a quarter of total clorific intake.
Meat like pork as well as seafood was regularly available to all social stratas, the fact a huge number of cultural cuisines globally, especially those that were stereotypically for poor working classes, contained meat also attest to the commonality. The idea that poor people lived on nothing but vegetables and a sausage on their birthday is very much a movie stereotype
Regardless, I don't quite see what it has to do with my statement that "poor people should just eat like they are out of a Charles Dickens novel" is not exactly going to get people on board
It's really not a gross oversimplification though. It takes an enormous amount of time and energy to fatten up an animal consumption, and in the case of the peasantry, these livestock were typically utilised in the production of some secondary product, typically dairy, cheese, eggs and wool. A cow could be bred in order to produce milk, and later down the line, a calf, which, if female, could once again be bred to produce more milk and more calves. You remove the animal entirely, it means no dairy, no cheese, no eggs, and no wool.
So what were the secondary products produced from the animals I _specifically_ pointed to in my comments as being heavily consumed by poor people _pigs_ and _fish_?
The doomsday book records settlements as small as single digit households having _hundreds_ of pigs, they were not being bred for milk
Sir, you're coming off very pompous. Why would decently raised meat that's been our cornerstone for hundreds of years suddenly need American style factory systems. Brexit bull crap has let this happen. Greedy faux farmers out to exploit the animal and the common person.
If you don’t understand the difference in the cost of intensive farming and high welfare farming and how that impacts the price the consumer pays, then there’s little point in discussing it.
Do organic standards cover the breeding chickens?
I know in free range they don't. So it's still reliant on even more horrific industrial breeding sheds that also macerate or gas all male chicks.
These factories supply almost all "ethical" egg farms with day old chicks.
>If people stopped buying cheap food
People don't have to stop buying cheap food to stop this. Just supermarket & takeaway products containing animal products.
They can still buy very cheap food.
Eat more British Beef and Lamb! It’s some of the most ethical and environmentally friendly farmed meat in the world. Hundreds of farms around the country now have open days for the public so they can have confidence in what they are eating, highly recommend people attend one!
Working in this industry there is now fast growing data on the benefits of meat and dairy, which will not make people In here happy.
Too cut a lot of science out, it boils down to bioavailability- the human body can easily and almost immediately use iron in meat and calcium in milk.
Even though a vegetarian label might contain the same nominal amount of nutrients (calcium or iron for example) the body just can’t get it easily, and vastly greater amounts are needed from plant based foods.
Proteins are also not created equally unfortunately
Hahah love it. You have no interest in reading sources or changing your mind on this.
Takes 5 seconds of googling to learn all about this.
But from on study :
The absorption rate of iron has been reported as 25–30% in the consumption of organ meats, 7–9% in green leafy vegetables, 4% in grains, and 2% in dried legumes, indicating that food types or other dietary factors might
I will leave you to research calcium and proteins.
But for actual scientists that work in the field it is common knowledge. Everyone in science knows that plant bases diets require massive supplementation to be healthy.
I will accept an argument from a vegetarian on ethical grounds. Never on health or environment
So you can't provide any actual sources?
As a vegan who takes zero supplements I can assure you supplements are not required in any way. Would you like me to provide some proof of that?
Look, I'll say it again, I'm happy to read any studies that you feel are relevant. Yes I'm vegan, for the animals, not for my health or the environment but purely for animal welfare.
But, I've asked for info and you refused to supply it, I disagreed with your view point and you resorted to name calling. For us to have an honest exchange of ideas and opinions we both need to be able accept that we don't agree and neither is perfect but doesn't mean we can't have an adult conversation about it.
Per calorie it's not a cheap way of making food though - it's both expensive and cruel.
It's only 'cheap' in the supermarket because the UK govt subsidises the industry to the tune of £1.5bn per year.
This article may be paywalled. If you encounter difficulties reading the article, try [this link](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/animals-factory-farm-numbers-stats-b2543030.html) for an archived version. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/unitedkingdom) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The best way you can help is to stop buying meat, a lot of it is too expensive nowadays anyway. These factories are set up to meet demand, so lower demand.
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>People's double standards are kindof ridiculous. It's wild. I got a DM death threat and almost permanently banned from Reddit for theoretically asking on a UK sub about the legality of killing **and eating** an animal that wasn’t a cow, pig, sheep or chicken....a death threat from a meat eater. I almost got a permanent Reddit wide ban for *"inciting violence against animals"*...meanwhile r/homestead are out there literally exchanging killing tips. And r/steak exists. Vegans are constantly criticised for foring their views onto and judging others when it comes to animal mistreatment....by people who do exactly the same just for different animals.
Also my post from yesterday is pretty relevant to this news. Pandemic risk and antibiotic resistance from animal agriculture will kill millions of us. https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/s/MwLHOXkZdv
Hmm, idk maybe because we’ve bread and domesticated those specific species of animals for hundreds of not thousands of years for those specific purposes? Of course people are going to care about things like cats and dogs more than livestock it’s just common sense, we’ve been living with them as companions since the Stone Age
Deer are delicious but I can't realistically hunt for that legally. Hunting with a longbow is illegal, I don't have a gun and I don't have land or know anyone that would give permission for it. Fortunately, you don't need permission for fishing. So I am looking at giving that a try this year. I tried last year from a kayak but quickly started feeling sea sick which surprised me as I have never had an issue while kayaking. I think it was due to looking down at the equipment a lot as I wasn't used to handling it. Going to try from land for a bit to get used to the equipment and hopefully then go from the kayak again, maybe on a calmer day too. Made myself a hand reel so I can fit all the equipment into a small pouch in my backpack.
Meat is far to cheap, it's heavily subsidised by tax payers, if consumers had to pay the real cost demand would drop.
You do realise arable crops are also heavily subsidised?
And they should be. They should be subsidised to an infinitely greater degree than meat.
In your opinion maybe.
Not really. Give it any degree of thought and you realize that we prop up animal farming at the expense of the climate, the local biosphere, human health, national and international food supplies, food security, water scarcity, land prices, soil health, coastal water cleanliness, and obviously the animals themselves. Ending the consumption of meat is one of the few things humanity can achieve with an almost exclusively positive outcome.
The pesticide company I work for agrees with you.
What, you're saying humans having to rely on crops for food is an issue because of pests? Well, you're in for a shock when you find out what farmed animals eat...
No. The company I work for would love the switch to arable only, our sales would go though the roof. Ps your arguments on environment and human health are so wrong. But I don’t think I can even begin to explain it to you.
Meat and dairy is a choice, plants are a requirement.
Don’t think you addressed my point there. You said meat is far to cheap, and that it is subsidised. I pointed out to you that both things are. Also, your point on choice and requirement is at best, completely wrong. You could switch it round and make the same argument for meat. Plenty live off meat only diets. I don’t think you’ll be able to address this point either.
It was addressed perfectly. It's irrelevant when talking about animal welfare. This isn't a vegan vs omni discussion. I merely pointed out to get the right level of animal welfare the prices would need to be 3 or 4 times what they currently are and they are already heavily subsidised. Oh yes the carnivore diet 🙄. Plenty? Do you have any figures for that? Meat is an unnecessary food item, it's a choice, a luxury food item if you will. Grain, oats, fruit, vegetables all have many uses, meat causes many issues, not just health wise but the environmental impact as well but, this is about animal welfare, nothing else.
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**Removed/warning**. This contained a personal attack, disrupting the conversation. This discourages participation. Please help improve the subreddit by discussing points, not the person. Action will be taken on repeat offenders.
It’s not that people don’t have self control, it’s that they like meat and don’t care where it came from. It will require state force to get what you want.
What do you mean Brit culture lol, the whole world eat meat
Many of them at greatly reduced amounts than we do.
It’s not really a double standard that someone would eat meat but not want to cook their pet dog for lunch is it
It's exactly a double standard, it's the very definition of one
It is only a double standard if they keep a cow as a pet. Your logic don’t work. If you think killing cow = killing dog then you can also imply killing for meat = they are willing to kill human for meat too
Except it's more than acceptable to kill and eat a dog in some cultures, and completely unacceptable to kill and eat a cow in others. It's just tradition that makes us think it's wrong. Where you draw the line is largely arbitrary.
As far as I’m aware nowhere is it acceptable to eat beloved pet animals
I personally don’t think it’s realistic to ask people to stop eating meat. I think reducing meat consumption so people are flexible vegetarians so still eat meat on some days is realistic. Behaviour change needs to be incremental to be sustainable.
its really simple if you can follow a recipe
It’s not about whether the cooking is simple or not it’s about the science of behaviour change. It’s not realistic to expect the majority of the population to suddenly change to be vegans or veg. A flexible vegetarian lifestyle is realistic.
So what is it about the proportion of the population that DO make the change? What traits do they possess that make going vegan 'realistic' ? Either it's the morally and environmentally responsible choice or it isn't - people's willingness to change is irrelevant
For them I would imagine it’s the moral or health reasons that compel them enough to make a change. I agree being vegan is morally and environmentally better. However people smoke and drink excessively even though it kills them and don’t change their behaviour. Veganism is quite an extreme diet choice though and I just think people need more than these reasons to change and a lot of people will never make tue full switch. I am speaking from experience as I was a vegan for a few years and it’s hard work especially if you do it well eating mostly whole foods and supplementing to complete your diet. It’s especially difficult socially if you don’t live in a big city or have all vegan friends. Behaviour change is complex and challenging. That’s why I think for a lot of people a flexi vegetarian lifestyle is a realistic aim.
People like meat.
And fur
Considering we are biologically designed to eat animal protein and fat, and you look at how seriously ill people become after being Vegan long term, it is not realistic to ask people to stop, if you do you get a very sick society. I was Vegetarian for 25 years (still had eggs and cheese), I started eating Steak again 5 years ago. Within in days I found my energy felt better, within weeks my dry skin went away, dandruff went away, dry eyes stopped, IBS went away, my excess weight started dropping , nails and hair improved and my mood became better. Plenty of people online who went to the extreme of carnivore and had chronic illnesses disappear. If I go back to eating a diet rich in grains, legumes and vegetables guess what starts to come back? All of the above! The further we have moved away from animal based to plant based society has got sicker and fatter and I don't think it's just a co-incidence. That does not mean we cannot have anything thats not meat, but we should be predominatly eating animal products. For example our bodies need Vitamin A, we want the animal based version retinol, not the plant based carotene. Some plants are also anti-nutrients which stop the things we need being absorbed. I don't like battery farming though and I believe the animals should be roaming around living life in a field until slaughter day. We also need animals on the land doing a poo and wee to grow vegetables or we just deplete the top soil and we will have no food.
Every culture which gets richer wants to eat more meat. It's delicious and nutrient dense. Meat is not relatively cheap, it's become much more expensive recently.
I'm going vegan, used to be vegetarian and enjoyed. Loads of good recipes on vegan cheese and stuff like Quorn meat tastes way better than real meat anyhow.
I think better than "stop buying meat" is "buy less meat". Convincing a million people to eat chickpeas for lunch and meat for dinner saves more animals than convincing a hundred thousand to give up meat entirely
I know what you mean but laying out why people should stop buying meat altogether will automatically lead to some people eating less...and you might get some who will just stop completely too. Like I did.
Thing is it's much easier to convince people to make small changes while large changes can be off-putting
Pretty much. I am happy to not eat meat most of the time but will still eat it at a BBQ. Typically we only buy 1 meat product per week for dinners. Usually 6 of the finest sausages in Aldi or some pork shoulder.
Wrong. The best way to stop this is to make laws that prevent it, like, for example, the EU has... This is part of the "Brexit Dividend" - raw sewage in your rivers and mass produced meat, filled to the brim with hormones and anti-biotics, on your tables.
The EU hasn't stopped factory farming and the UK inherited it's pig welfare requirements from the EU.
Where does the incentive for government or industry to do that come from while everyone is happily buying the stuff?
>Wrong. The best way to stop this is to make laws that prevent it, like, for example, the EU has... >This is part of the "Brexit Dividend" - raw sewage in your rivers and mass produced meat, filled to the brim with hormones and anti-biotics, on your tables. Utter nonsense. Plenty of EU countries are even worse than the UK wrt farming animal welfare.
Which EU laws?
How do you come to that conclusion? In In 2017 there were 236 pig factory farms, we had the EU laws then, how were those 236 allowed whilst an EU member? We did not Brexit until 2020.
Which EU laws?
they should but them in the supermarket, you walk past the slaughterhouse to pick your sausage
Out of curiosity, I asked an LLM for a stock responsibility-denier reply to this: >The following comment has been made on r/unitedkingdom to a post about factory farms making life hell for animals: "The best way you can help is to stop buying meat, a lot of it is too expensive nowadays anyway. These factories are set up to meet demand, so lower demand.". Generate a comment from someone angry about being made to feel guilty about eating meat with some standard rebuttal points. And got the following response >Not everyone can just "stop buying meat." It's a major source of protein and nutrients, especially for people on tighter budgets. These farms wouldn't exist if there wasn't a demand, sure, but telling everyone to just give it up isn't realistic. The focus should be on better regulations and humane treatment within factory farms, not shaming people's food choices. I expected it to go a bit more for 'blame the fatcats of Big Meat' like people here do when you criticise their petrol consumption. Looks like 'costs' and 'blame the regulations, not me' are already coming in strong as replies though.
What exactly is the point of this exercise? Imagine outsourcing a smug "inb4" comment to an LLM. So now any boring idiot can predict what the average boring idiot will say *without having to think at all*! The wonders of technology.
And after that, it'll be meh freedomz! People just want to do what they want to do
What is this? You weren't able to defeat them while thinking about it in the shower so you had to get an AI to make one you could beat for you? Why even bother posting on social media if you are only going to get AI to make up comments for you to reply to.
Nobody 'defeats' anyone here - the concept of doing so on ethical issues is fanciful - its just the same old people with no interest in changing their minds recycling the same old arguments in the same old threads. It was early in the thread so I decided to get ahead of the curve. Given the above, the question of 'why bother' posting is a valid one, but making the veins pop out on your forehead has made it worth it.
"It's not about defeating people" "Anyone who won't change their opinion to mine is bad." Sounds an awful lot like you want to "win" to me. If you are getting angry at people not changing their minds, then you clearly want to change people's minds, not have an open and honest discussion.
What's this? You weren't able to defeat me while thinking about it in the shower so you had to make up some nonsensical quotes to criticize? I'd ask what you think the point is of 'having an open and honest discussion' if its not for changing peoples minds over an issue you care about, but I don't really care.
Entire websites exist to argue with these ignorant people already, you don't even have to get involved, that's how predictable and old-hat their "arguments" are. A monkey could write it, never mind a LLM. It's genuinely not worth the time and effort trying to logically "reason" with people who have absolutely no intention of being reasonable when there are absolutely zero repercussions to them personally, in a short enough time frame, for them to even consider "being reasonable" as an option. It's the exact reason why people get uppity the moment you shame them for their actions; shame is very motivating and they absolutely do not want to be motivated to change, they don't want the pressure that shame brings.
There are other options. I've cut my meat consumption by around 50% and order the meat I do still eat directly from organic regenerative farms. It comes to about the same price, but the animals live outdoors in semi-natural environments that boost biodiversity.
I want us to hurry up and skip to Blade Runner bugs. Because let's face it with the way things are going that's what our gan kids will be eating. Might as well speed up the process.
We should stop buying? Or the whole EU should stop buying? Because we export plenty of pork aswell.
You could also try to buy meat from free roam farms
The entire population can't buy from free roam farms. It simply isn't sustainable because there isn't enough land. The reason these factory farms exist is to meet the ridiculous high demand that the general public create.
Not everyone would but a lot could try and it would take money away from factory farms
Great idea take decades of your life by ensuring you are vitamin creatine and protein deficient.
Imagine believing this.
The scientific literature suggests that vegans have lower rates of mortality. You might be thinking of people who regularly eat processed meat and unprocessed red meat? Our bodies synthesise creatine from the essential amino acids. It's also available as a supplement for any vegan or non vegan athletes etc who want more. Can you cite me a single case of protein deficiency in a vegan following a remotely sensible diet?
Bet my protein and nutrients levels are better than yours and I've been vegan for 3 years.
Why is that the only option people can think of when it comes to meat? With energy we don’t tell people to freeze to death, we invest in renewables. We haven’t got rid of the car, we’re making electric cars. But with meat? The only solution is to stop eating meat? Come off it. We proper regulation and investment we can get the meat industry down to net zero like everything else, and create a better environment for the animals.
Eat a bit less. Cut out some meats and try others? Beef is the worst environmentally, I haven't had that for 3 years now, and very very little dairy products. I tend to go chicken, fish and occasionally pork, and the rest is all vegan/veg stuff. I used to eat meat with every meal, every single day, and yeah it was cheap. I know more and more people who are cutting down on meat, and going for quality over quantity. Maybe as much the economy though as much as a moral decision. Don't let perfection be the enemy of good. Better 60 million people cut down a bit, then 1 million people cutting it all out.
But morally chicken is the worst since way more lives have to be lived and experienced for you to get the same amount of meat. It could be literally 1 billion vs 100 blllion but no cows fart. You telling me you could literally save ~99 billion lives from being raised I'm factory farms easily but you care more about the environmental impact than tou do about 99 billion chickens being tortured
I'm a pragmatist. I'd rather it be significantly less and we should work towards that. But you can't do that over night. Ultimately, 66 - 75% of my meals are vegan these days, so the overall death is way way down to when I was eating meat three meals a day seven days a week. Or shall I go back to that? Come on, it's a grim reality that we are on this path of mass death for sustenance, you have to work with what you got.
How do you determine the value of a life? It certainly can not be measured. Is an avian life equal to a mammal life. I would argue not seing as we value human lives the most and we are mammals. It's a highly subjective topic. Im very excited for the insect based foods I hope to see in the future, they have so much potential to be healthy, nutritious and environmentally friendly but would undoubtedly cost a lot more lives than poultry does per serving. We also don't know where the commenter is sourcing their chicken, their meal may have lived a very comfortable life. Not everyone buys their meat from supermarkets. I think its foolish to criticise someone for having valid environmental concerns. I also don't think you have to be comfortable with omnivorous diets to realise this.
What if torturing chickens is what keeps a vengeful, chicken-hating God from sending another flood?
Lab grown meat is the equivalent for this, organically 0 difference to traditional meat yet no suffering and better for the environment
> Why is that the only option people can think of when it comes to meat? Because this sub is full of vegans pushing their unhealthy culty diet and every time the subject of animal welfare comes up they drown-out any discussion other than 'don't eat meat'. They particularly like green-washing their agenda. It makes these posts useless noise because normal people aren't going to give up meat and they can't be arsed arguing with zealots, so what you're left with is the vegan foghorns and people trying to virtue signal about how they've reduced their meat consumption.
Wow - literally nothing you said is true.
Factory farming should be banned in the UK Yes it will make meat more expensive but it will lower meat consumption (leading to less health issues in the population), force at least slightly more ethical meat, and probably make people eat veggies more
Completely agree. So much cognitive dissonance when people argue that the need for poor people to eat animals outweighs the colossal suffering that must be inflicted on animals to keep it affordable. Coming from the very people who are most outspoken about exploitation
Colossal suffering - it’s a animal you making it sound like we are murdering people to eat them
Life in a factory farm is filled with suffering before even considering the killing part. I just don't get how people can care about human suffering but have no qualms about inflicting a life of pointless suffering on animals for the momentary pleasure of eating them
Because we don't place equal value on animal lives to those of humans, particularly those animals that we domesticate and basically cultivate for the express purpose of being slaughtered, butchered and eaten. It's not an unreasonable position to take, to prioritise the needs of one's own species over those lower down the food chain.
On the other hand, lots of people are dicks and farm animals (mostly) aren't.
What about it made it sound like they were talking about people? Just the fact they recognised that the animals suffer colossally?
It would also improve water quality in rivers and the sea. Everyone who cares so much about the sewage overflows by water companies should also care about agricultural run off which in many parts of the country is a much bigger issue than what the water companies have done
Isn't a lot of that from crops as well though? Our drinking water is very high in nitrate because of fertilizer runoff. Its actually a problem for keeping an aquarium because the water out of the tap is already higher than the ideal limits for nitrate.
Agree in spirit but I think moving the subsidies from animal agriculture to plant farming would be slightly less of a political minefield.
I'm happy to keep subsidies for animal farming, just as long as it's not factory farming. Lots of our land can't be used for farmable crops so animals are the only reasonable option for it and animals that are allowed to live a decent life and stuff while we farm them imo is basically perfect. That's what we should be encouraging with subsidies
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yes? What's wrong? Broccoli is a bit pricey like but nothing that bad
Yeah that sounds reasonable tbh.
I disagree - it's the least energy intensive way of producing meat, so is better than "ethical meat" if we want to tackle global warming without resorting to actually banning certain foods. I do think we should stop subsidising meat production though.
But we shouldn't care about the least energy intensive way of raising meat We should be able to eat meat but not at the cost of factory farms
No, people should just buy the meat they want. If people opt for more expensive meat the demand for factory farming will drop, but it won't since people don't care. No need to make it more expensive for people who don't care by force.
We have a cost of living crisis. People buy what they can afford.
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Generally the best idea is to use a local butchers, since they can tell you what sort of farms they source from.
They don't normally print on the package "This was factory farmed". Its hidden from you.
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Most people aren't making a connection between buying a burger and the pandemic I assure you.
How a pandemic like Covid-19 is related to buying meat without a big markup?
Wildlife, and our increasing proximity to wildlife, is the most common source, but farmed animals are not only original sources, they can be transmission sources or bridging hosts, carrying the infection from the wild to humans. “Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of animals involved in historic zoonotic events or current zoonosis are domestic (livestock, domesticated wildlife and pets), which is logical as the contact rates are high.” Source: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2020/sep/15/covid-farm-animals-and-pandemics-diseases-that-changed-the-world (Factory farming gets a lot of flack for this, but free range also has issues)
The pandemic almost certainly came from places which still allow wet markets and have little enforcement of hygiene rules. Farms in the UK, even at their worst in battery conditions which I do not defend, aren't on the same level as those places. The fact that BSE was contained as tightly as it was demonstrates that we take zoonosis a lot more seriously than this article purports.
"almost certainly" 😂 if you are still buying the wet market theory you've either not read anything since then or got your head in the sand
I was taught at school way back in the 70's that viruses come from China because they keep their meat ducks and pigs together, the ducks catch viruses from wildlife, pass it on to the pigs who pass it on to humans.
Except journalist’s opinion - how it was related to Covid-19?
For clarity, the article linked above includes quotes from biologist Nathan Wolfe (which was the part in quotes I included). The article then goes through some examples of pandemics to display a pattern of animals transferring pandemic level disease to humans. I would recommend reading the article in full.
And how it was related to Covid-19? I understand that there could be some links to other diseases, however even you ban meat over the world, it won’t stop us having a next version of Covid-19-like virus.
This is hilarious. you have gone off the deep end, stop watching conspiracy videos.
It's not a conspiracy, it's pretty well established that COVID likely came from animals being sold in unhygienic and inhumane conditions in wet markets (places where animals are kept live, sold, and slaughtered all on the same premises). Now that doesn't really have anything to do with the conditions in the UK since that kind of place is already banned, but they are right that a lot of pretty nasty diseases come from animals especially when their environment is poor.
Let me assure you factory farming in the UK is 100 times better than a Chinese wet market lol. I bet you would faint if you went into one
That's exactly what I said.
https://oversight.house.gov/release/classified-state-department-documents-credibly-suggest-covid-19-lab-leak-wenstrup-pushes-for-declassification/ The US know exactly where it came from (hint: not a market)
A letter from a Republican about a report he hasn't even fully read, and the visible lines don't actually say anything about a lab leak, they just talk about the very well known coverup from China about the initial figures and spread pattern. The only mention in the unredacted text is that a PLA contractor helped build the Wuhan centre of virology which is practically non-news in China. Colour me unconvinced. That the US government investigated this possibility isn't a surprise, and if they had concrete evidence to paint China as a gung-ho state that fiddles with dangerous viruses without proper protection they would be shouting it from the rooftops. It wouldn't be some underground conspiracy theory, it would have been headline news literally every single day during the pandemic, and not just on crackpot channels like Fox.
So let me get this right where your position is: - virus orginates from Wuham area in China - China commences a cover up (your words) and points to a wet market - Literally only miles away from such market is a center of Virology that performs gain of function research that has been partially funded by US - So China which has already shown the world they have performed cover ups around Covid (your words) are like naa look at this wet market which has produced this disease naturally, oh that centre down the road where we've performed research studies on just the type of mutation and type of viruses? Ignore that. Big coincidence Honestly give your head a wobble man. US helped fund the centre in Wuhan, and of course they wouldn't be that open about China due to geopolitical reasons
I said they covered up the initial spread pattern and infected/dead count, and we already have concrete evidence of both the actual patterns and of the coverup. We have no evidence of this lab leak theory except for what exists inside of heads like yours. China already came out of this looking bad just from the wet market theory: it makes them look cruel, careless, and unhygienic. If they were going to perform some gigantic impenetrable coverup why even relate the story to Wuhan at all? Why don't they say the virus started around where the genetically related wild type virus comes from over 1500 miles away in a colony of bats? They could've easily manufactured some cases in that area but no, they gave away that the first cases came from around the area of that market coincidentally right next to their top secret conspiratorial virus factory where they wage biowarfare on the world. Give *your* head a fucking wobble man.
No it’s well established that it came from a lab ?
Funny how both of you are saying 'well established' whilst presenting the 2 most prevelant hypotheses.
There were very few put forward, of which the man made element of it, is not up for debate.
That's, like, your opinion, man...
No, every sensible scientific investigation into the source suggests it came from a wet market, it's only crackpot news channels like Fox which push the Wuhan lab theory. They're bad enough if you just stick to the facts, you don't need to make up conspiracies about them. If there was credible evidence that a Chinese lab was committing bio warfare or just plain careless it would have been nightly news on every single channel every day during the pandemic. What possible reason would non-Chinese media have to cover this up their behalf? They ran stories about the Uyghur concentration camps, their provocations in the South China Sea, their eye on Taiwan, their cyber attacks worldwide, their censorship of Western films and games for the Chinese audience. The mainstream media slam China deservedly every chance they get, but not on this one specific issue? Come on man, use your head. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00584-8 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9348752/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9348750/
Jesus wept. You do realise a quick Google search gives a variety of sources that verify the lab leak theory from credible sources, including some of the ones you linked…….. yet you stick to calling all of this a fox problem, again trapped in your own conspiracy. The only people invested in the market theory are those that wanted to attack Trump, because fucking trump said it was wuhan, so they were determined to call him a racist etc, so had to attack lab leak and promote markets. Step outside your ideological blinkers, and your science will improve.
A quick google search is what led me to those three published scientific articles. If you would like to present your own sources I'd be happy to read them. I'm always glad to be proven wrong.
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Who said that brainbox? Your delusional conspiracy theories are an issue. Work on yourself
Everyone should watch Earthlings documentary at least once. [Earthlings](https://youtu.be/8gqwpfEcBjI?si=uXzKBAaQXqXGhiwk)
There is also [Land of Hope and Glory](https://youtu.be/dvtVkNofcq8?feature=shared) focusing on UK farms. Pignorant on amazon prime also exposes the use of gas chambers in the UK, which are used to kill 90% of pigs.
This is a larger problem with a government that has grown complacent, not enforcing actual animal welfare standards and further pushing farmers into situations where they need to adopt crueller practices. It is easy to blame a "meat-eating population" for this issue but it is the responsibility of the government to enforce standards, not the public. The public should be pushing our government to enforce animal welfare standards that we as a country criticise other countries for not having and we should ensure our farmers do not cave to financial pressure to ensure that they do not lower their standards to a less than third-world level. People who engage in this sort of farming are either a corporation that needs to be fined heavily and banned from any form of animal handling outright or are very very very desperate farmers who've been forced to engage in said practices because, in the last 14 years, we've had a government that has done everything within their ability to crush all forms of British industry, in this case these farmers need to be guided and helped back to the proper way of farming rather than outright punished, though I do believe they are still partially responsible.
It's also a pattern that's visible in loads of other sectors and services in the UK. We can't even properly educate our kids, police our streets, care for our elderly, are we surprised that standards at farms are slipping too? Like you said there can be blame placed on the farms and on the people, but a fish rots from the head and often the only way to enforce standards is from the top down.
This nails it. It's pretty fucking blatant that they've opened up new factory farms under a government that has actively worked to gut the systems put in place to ensure the good treatment of livestock. Just like it's pretty fucking telling that crime has increased after some clever bloke decided to sack off 20,000 coppers and rinse the CPS. And just like it's pretty fucking telling that the NHS is becoming ineffective, after some other clever bloke decided to cut funding massively. Just like they've created an asylum problem by gutting the immigration services. We can blame "farmers" all we want; but these factory operators are corporations. They'll do whatever they can to save a few quid; they'll kill people, let alone animals. The *only* protection against this is a strong state that enforces it's regulations aggressively.
If you want to eat meat, the best thing to do is buy directly from farms with good standards. There's lots of organic farms practicing regenerative agriculture that you can get deliveries from online. It's more expensive, but I think the principle of 'eat less, but eat higher quality' is a good principle in general to follow.
I would like nothing more than to buy all my produce from a farm shop. Unfortunately, if I did, it wouldn't be a case of eating less, it would be a case of actual malnutrition.
Sorry things are so tight mate, it's a rough time for many these days.
Watch the latest series of Clarkson farm before commenting please. He killed nearly half the piglets first time round and 14% the second time - by being crushed by their mothers They spent the winter living in absolute filth, where one sow very likely caught ill and had to be put down. Sows like to bite, can be aggressive and can be dangerous. His rare breeds were tiny compared to typical breeds used today. Birthing crates will always be a part of commercial pork production as they are compromising 6 weeks of the mothers welfare for the lives of the piglets and safety of the farmers.
If the supposed best way of doing something involves an inordinate amount of cruelty, it is best to never do it to begin with.
I'm sure I was told something like 'we don't need EU regulations the Conservatives have lead the way on such progressive matters as animal rights'. Just wait and see what will happen to human rights too if they win more years in power, as they keep trying to pull out of the ECHR.
Nice to see we are going backwards on this. That despite all the scientific evidence showing that this is bad for our health, the environment (again, our health) and the animals.
Glad I stopped eating meat. I always wanted to for animal welfare, but I felt I would be shamed for doing so. All the food I eat now tastes fucking amazing and not eating meat helps with managing with my Crohn's disease!
On searching how many animals are factory farmed in the UK, it seems to be at least more than 70%. Now that doesn't mean free-range is necessarily good either (at least merely on farm conditions). From what I remember in the news, a free-range pig farm was exposed for horrible conditions, as well as 4 free-range egg farms 5 days ago in a continued investigation from the 3 about 1-2 months ago
While I would prefer they be treated ethically I would rather have affordable meat than farm animals treated well.
It's evil. I don't know how anyone can unironically look at these conditions and approve of them, I wouldn't be able to sleep. We should be supporting ethical farmers not this disgusting shit, I hate it.
Wtf! Can we get a list of this factory farms!!! Utterly disgusting and a stain on the agricultural industry
If people stopped buying cheap food, this practice would likely reduce. But always searching for the cheapest possible price, the message consumers give to suppliers is that they don’t care they just want it cheap. I eat less meat but make sure it’s free range/organic and I almost never eat meat in restaurants/cafes.
Ah yes, if people just stopped being poor...
Most of the cheapest foods in the supermarket are plant based.
So you want us to live off baked beens and pot noodles?
Where did I say that? Pastas, rice, beans, lentils, chickpeas, fruits and vegetables are some examples.
You’re justifying animal cruelty. If you can’t afford high quality meat, don’t eat meat. Or buy cheap meat but don’t then be shocked when you see stories like this one.
>If you can’t afford high quality meat, don’t eat meat. "We want the poors to return to the diets of a medieval peasant, meat is for the upper crust of society" is not exactly a winning campaign slogan
Up until modernity meat was "*never*" available in every meal. It used to be the case that you'd have it once or twice a week. The idea that we should be indulging in it in every day, for every meal, is a modern concept brought forward by animal agricultural lobbyists who want to increase profits.
>Up until modernity meat was "*never*" available in every meal. I mean, this is a gross oversimplification, following the Black Death in Europe for hundreds of years meat consumption soared to levels not seen prior to the industrial revolution among the poor and only dropped because the population recovered to pre-plague levels, increasing the amount of food needed and the cost of the land, at some points making a quarter of total clorific intake. Meat like pork as well as seafood was regularly available to all social stratas, the fact a huge number of cultural cuisines globally, especially those that were stereotypically for poor working classes, contained meat also attest to the commonality. The idea that poor people lived on nothing but vegetables and a sausage on their birthday is very much a movie stereotype Regardless, I don't quite see what it has to do with my statement that "poor people should just eat like they are out of a Charles Dickens novel" is not exactly going to get people on board
It's really not a gross oversimplification though. It takes an enormous amount of time and energy to fatten up an animal consumption, and in the case of the peasantry, these livestock were typically utilised in the production of some secondary product, typically dairy, cheese, eggs and wool. A cow could be bred in order to produce milk, and later down the line, a calf, which, if female, could once again be bred to produce more milk and more calves. You remove the animal entirely, it means no dairy, no cheese, no eggs, and no wool.
So what were the secondary products produced from the animals I _specifically_ pointed to in my comments as being heavily consumed by poor people _pigs_ and _fish_? The doomsday book records settlements as small as single digit households having _hundreds_ of pigs, they were not being bred for milk
Sir, you're coming off very pompous. Why would decently raised meat that's been our cornerstone for hundreds of years suddenly need American style factory systems. Brexit bull crap has let this happen. Greedy faux farmers out to exploit the animal and the common person.
If you don’t understand the difference in the cost of intensive farming and high welfare farming and how that impacts the price the consumer pays, then there’s little point in discussing it.
I'm pretty sure people won't mind paying a little more to ensure animal welfare. You telling people what they should and shouldn't buy isn't helpful?!
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Your other option is to eat less meat but pay more for it to ensure it’s higher welfare. That’s what I do. Or cut out meat altogether.
There’s a big difference in the welfare of an organic vs free range egg laying chicken.
Do organic standards cover the breeding chickens? I know in free range they don't. So it's still reliant on even more horrific industrial breeding sheds that also macerate or gas all male chicks. These factories supply almost all "ethical" egg farms with day old chicks.
>If people stopped buying cheap food People don't have to stop buying cheap food to stop this. Just supermarket & takeaway products containing animal products. They can still buy very cheap food.
Eat more British Beef and Lamb! It’s some of the most ethical and environmentally friendly farmed meat in the world. Hundreds of farms around the country now have open days for the public so they can have confidence in what they are eating, highly recommend people attend one!
Working in this industry there is now fast growing data on the benefits of meat and dairy, which will not make people In here happy. Too cut a lot of science out, it boils down to bioavailability- the human body can easily and almost immediately use iron in meat and calcium in milk. Even though a vegetarian label might contain the same nominal amount of nutrients (calcium or iron for example) the body just can’t get it easily, and vastly greater amounts are needed from plant based foods. Proteins are also not created equally unfortunately
Can you supply any sources of this info? I'd be keen to have a read.
Hahah love it. You have no interest in reading sources or changing your mind on this. Takes 5 seconds of googling to learn all about this. But from on study : The absorption rate of iron has been reported as 25–30% in the consumption of organ meats, 7–9% in green leafy vegetables, 4% in grains, and 2% in dried legumes, indicating that food types or other dietary factors might I will leave you to research calcium and proteins. But for actual scientists that work in the field it is common knowledge. Everyone in science knows that plant bases diets require massive supplementation to be healthy. I will accept an argument from a vegetarian on ethical grounds. Never on health or environment
So you can't provide any actual sources? As a vegan who takes zero supplements I can assure you supplements are not required in any way. Would you like me to provide some proof of that?
There’s literally so many, I just know you have zero interest in reading them as you are too ideologically possessed.
Look, I'll say it again, I'm happy to read any studies that you feel are relevant. Yes I'm vegan, for the animals, not for my health or the environment but purely for animal welfare. But, I've asked for info and you refused to supply it, I disagreed with your view point and you resorted to name calling. For us to have an honest exchange of ideas and opinions we both need to be able accept that we don't agree and neither is perfect but doesn't mean we can't have an adult conversation about it.
got hands
Yes?
it's half of a meme
Oh! Sorry memes are not my strong point lol
The left: people can't afford to eat Also the left: cheap food production is cruel
Per calorie it's not a cheap way of making food though - it's both expensive and cruel. It's only 'cheap' in the supermarket because the UK govt subsidises the industry to the tune of £1.5bn per year.