Support your local Dulwich butcher day

[Thomas Micklewright]

nb. peterstorm1985 you dont need to eat flesh for a 'balanced diet'.

[James]

Ah bless Dave R, my irony is obviously lost on you!

Also amused at the suggestion that if you choose to eat less/no meat but still eat eggs and cheese you are a hypocrite (why?) whereas having one animal as a beloved pet while eating another makes perfect sense (think about it!)

I do love the bizarre contortions you meat-eaters will twist yourselves into to justify your diet. They are fascinating.

To be honest I have much more respect for people who say "Yeah the meat industry does make me feel a bit uncomfortable but I just really like the taste of it."

[DaveR]

"To be honest I have much more respect for people who say "Yeah the meat industry does make me feel a bit uncomfortable but I just really like the taste of it."

How about I'm not that fussed about the meat industry and I like the taste of it?

What bit of your post was ironic? It just seemed fatuous to me.

Also, you misunderstand me. I'm not accusing anybody of being a hypocrite - you were, but seemed to have got the wrong target. And I didn't really understand your use of sanctimonious about vegetarians who eat dairy, as opposed to vegetarians generally. And I don't have any pets, so that bit is kind of lost on me, although as I said, your accusation of hypocrisy seemed pretty lame. Any dog owners who also like sausages feel free to chip in. And finally, I really don't have to justify what I eat to anybody - that was my point. The fact that you like to make rules about what you are willing to eat makes bugger all difference to me.

[James]

Shame you're not fussed about the meat industry Dave. But that's your right. Just as it's anyone's right to choose what they do and don't eat.

You did say : The hypocritical ones (possibly) are the vegetarians who eat dairy products

I don't understand this. I think it's possible to eat any combination of foods you like, meat or vegetarian, without being hypocritical! Unless you are making a very specific claim for your diet. I don't expect meat-eaters to constantly justify themselves, so why should I be expected to do that as a veggie?

My point is I find it strange that so many meat eaters get twitchy and angry & start spitting bile and misinformation when a veggie is about... seems to me they feel just a tiny bit defensive and guilty!

[peterstorm1985]

James Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

>

>

> Also amused at the suggestion that if you choose

> to eat less/no meat but still eat eggs and cheese

> you are a hypocrite (why?)

Cheese and egg production require male/female selection of the fatal kind. As long as you don't claim that your vegetarianism means that no animals die in order for you to fill your belly then you're not being hypocritical. Unfortunately, there are some vegetarians who don't quite understand how their food is produced.

I don't see what's hypocritical about having a pet and eating meat; both indicate a use of animals for pleasure, just a different sort (any other 'pleasure' should be discussed in the lounge)

[DJKillaQueen]

Thanks DC for the link. Yes it is some of the abbatoir practises that upset me. I'll stop short of saying how but no animal should be dieing from a heart attack because of it's treatment before it even gets to the 'killing floor'. The processes are one thing but the extra cruelty heaped on some animals by abbatoir workers is heinous. I've always tried to buy ethically reared meat/ fish and dairy products although I don't eat that much meat anyway tbh.

[Thomas Micklewright]

http://www.animalaid.org.uk/h/n/NEWS/news_veggie//2563// eat your dog for dinner

http://www.animalaid.org.uk/h/n/NEWS/news_slaughter//2537// slaughterhouse and DEFRA

[Horsebox]

Thomas Micklewright Wrote:

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> http://www.animalaid.org.uk/h/n/NEWS/news_veggie//

> 2563// eat your dog for dinner

>

>

> http://www.animalaid.org.uk/h/n/NEWS/news_slaughte

> r//2537// slaughterhouse and DEFRA

I'm not opposed to eating dog.

If it tastes good and is reared well then why not?

[James]

Would you eat human flesh Horsebox?

Full of protein. Tastes like beef (apparently). You could give them a 'decent life' first. Yummmy ;-)

[Jeremy]

James Wrote:

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> Would you eat human flesh Horsebox?

>

> Full of protein. Tastes like beef (apparently).

> You could give them a 'decent life' first. Yummmy

> ;-)

This is just about the weakest argument possible.

You're not going to convince anyone with nonsense like that!

[James]

And your point is....?

[peterstorm1985]

DJKQ - why not just stick to wild game? Anything that's been shot in the field has had a natural life and as quick a death as possible. William Rose stocks a wide range of game including wild venison. (Even farmed venison is worth considering - some of the farms have their own abbatoirs on site to reduce stress)

James: I thought human flesh tasted like pork. Considering how long we are all living, the likely strain on the NHS and the benefits system in the years to come and, as you mention it, the waste of valuable protein when we're buried/cremated, it may be discussed in more detail soon. A 90yr old may take a few hours of slow roasting though so perhaps we should set the time of death a little earlier.

[Horsebox]

I too have heard human tastes like pork, not beef. It's known as 'long pig' in some cultures but 'hairless goat' in others, so a slight contradiction, perhaps?

[James]

Excuse my mistake, it's a long time since I've tasted it...

[maxxi]

peterstorm1985 Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> DJKQ - why not just stick to wild game? Anything

> that's been shot in the field has had a natural

> life and as quick a death as possible. William

> Rose stocks a wide range of game including wild

> venison. (Even farmed venison is worth considering

> - some of the farms have their own abbatoirs on

> site to reduce stress)

>

You might also consider wild boar. As well as being a leaner meat than pork, the animals are allowed to roam over a wide area and are nearly always despatched with a rifle 'in the field' because - being wild, unpredictable and dangerous animals - trying to capture them and send them to an abbatoir is usually considered too difficult/dangerous.

Cannot guarantee this is always the case so suggest you try boar from sillfield farm at borough market. They do a very tasty wild boar salami and pancetta too.

[DJKillaQueen]

That's a really good idea Peter, and may well be the best option for me. Thanks for the butcher heads up too. I did see that some farms have on sight abbatoir facilities and some of them open air too which makes far more sense to me than shipping animals for miles in lorries, to what is an industrial production line that has to be kept moving at any cost. The stories from America are just truly horrific. I don't know if similar things happen in the UK but I don't want to risk buying meat produced like that any more than I would ever buy eggs produced by battery hens.

The human meat conversation above gives me a good analogy for promoting ethical meat production.

Imagine if we farmed humans in sheds with no daylight, crammed in to capacity, rolling in their own excrement, some of them dying along the way as a result (so that farm workers daily had to check for and remove the dead ones) - before transporting them crushed in lorries to an industrialised killing factory. Some no doubt would have died on the journey, some would be so cold that their skin would freeze to the sides of the truck (there would be no time given to defrost by the factory workers, use your imagination there). Any that were too frightened to run down the funnels to the production line would be beaten until they did so........I think we get the picture......and it's not so removed from something that did happen once. Yet we think it's ok to do that to animals.

Something that was also pointed out in this documentary is that cows that are grass fed don't run risk of carrying e-coli. And that the risks of disease/ contamination in food are increased by the factory farming and killing processes used by the big meat producers. Those processes of course are what give us cheap fast food and chicken. But you have to ask yourself, if people really knew what goes on to produce that food, would they eat it?

Edited to add a thank you to maxxi too! Lot's of great ideas there for my Christmas feast :)

[Jeremy]

IMO animal life should never be considered to be of equal importance to human life, so I don't think the comparison is at all valid.

[DJKillaQueen]

Equality wasn't really my point. Just because an animal is going to die (for food) doesn't mean it's ok to unduly cause it pain/discomfort before killing it surely?

And I'd even question the need for it. Farmers have for centuries managed perfectly well without factory farms. What factory farming has done is to give power to (I think) five multinationals who actively work to force farmers out of business unless they adopt factory farming methods (even seeds are being patented now!). That is certainly true in America. And the fast food market facilitates it. We all know how unhealthy fast food is and the consequences for those, living on a diet of it.

[Penguin68]

Would you eat human flesh Horsebox

As Flanders and Swan noted - 'if the great JuBJub in the sky had not wanted people to eat people, why did he make them of meat?

[Jeremy]

DJKillaQueen Wrote:

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> Just because an

> animal is going to die (for food) doesn't mean

> it's ok to unduly cause it pain/discomfort before

> killing it surely?

I totally agree with that, but I don't think the analogy with human suffering is valid.

[DaveR]

What factory farming has done is to feed a very large number of people more cheaply than was ever thought possible. Most people buy cheap food because that's what they can afford. That doesn't mean that everything is OK, or that practices do not need to be properly regulated both from the perspective of public health and good practice regarding the care and slaughter of animals, but it's nonsense to think you can just turn the clock back to some golden agricultural age.

[DJKillaQueen]

That's actually a worthy point to debate Jeremy. How do we measure suffering? If we take a human that has never been nurtured by other humans, educated etc.....would the suffering of that human be on a par with you and I? I don't tend to agree that human suffering is somehow more valid than the suffering of an animal. That's why we have rules on animal treatment, cruelty.

[maria]

However because of subsidies we don't actually pay the correct cost of our food. We also proportionally spend less on food. At one point it was well over 35% of income and now sits about 15%. Sometimes affordability is taken out of ccontext. After all many people think nothing of spending monmobile mobile phone contact but complain about rising food prices. It is all about choice.

[DJKillaQueen]

I don't think there ever was a golden age Dave. The poor just ate cheaper cuts of meat, or ate less meat. And they were healthier for it too. When I was a child, we would have a Sunday roast once a week and chicken was the luxury. Otherwise it was fish or cheaper cuts of meat. Liver too. And everything was bought from the butcher, where everything was available.

Vegetables and fruit were bought from a market, where it was relatively cheap as well.

What we have now is alarming rares of obesity, increasing rates of diabetes in younger people and whole generations of people who don't know how to cook, or won't eat fruit or vegetables.

And the multi-nationals are not thinking about the health of any nation - just how to dominate the food production and retails markets and make as much profit as they can.

[maria]

Well said.