Do vegan farmers use manure as fertiliser?
I don't like being made to feel like some kinda monster for eating delicious animals so I don't make fun of carrot munchers.
A long time ago, I would poke fun at vegetarians and vegans. One of them, unfortunately much later, told me how much it hurt them. I don't really do that kind of thing anymore.
Bow before the mighty Javoo!
I don't really give a damn what people eat, as long as they don't hassle me about what I'm eating.
I appreciate that there is a lot wrong with the meat industry, etc, but dammit I love that food and horror stories do nothing to sway me. xD
I know of one militant vegan who says things like "I look forward to the revolution and all you meat-eaters getting what's coming to you" and it's just like... what? It's probably an exaggerated response to people being overly negative about veganism, but damn, it's not a great image to project - especially since that is about 90% of the exposure I get to veganism since nobody else I know cares enough to let me know their dietary preferences on a semi-frequent basis.
Dear vegetarians and vegans. Thank you for trying to reduce your consumption of meat and use of animal products. Eating meat is inefficient compared to eating vegetables directly, so you vegans and vegetarians are freeing up agricultural resources that could in some cases be used to produce more food for humans.
Even though I won't be cutting back on my own meat consumption, I think you're probably doing a good thing. Instead of doing what you do, I try to help out humankind by spreading some of my excess resources to less fortunate areas of the world, through for example donating to charities.
The only real problem I have is when some vegans or vegetarians (most commonly vegans, and I do know most of them don't do this anyway) attempt to use poorly put together arguments about health and stuff to make me change my mind. Maybe it is detrimental to my health to eat a lot of animal products, but I don't really care. I haven't been shown a significant amount of evidence of it, and even if I was shown some, I would care exactly as much as I care when a teetotaler tells me I shouldn't drink alcohol.
Last edited by Mirage; 11-06-2012 at 03:34 PM.
everything is wrapped in gray
i'm focusing on your image
can you hear me in the void?
I know a few pescetarians, vegans and vegetarians, and they are all lovely people. I'm very wary of this fear and awkwardness around vegans, from a purely practical standpoint there's more meat for everyone else! And besides, no one is perfect, you can't be the perfect vegan. As stated previously, many products uses animal products anyway. It's just being the best vegan you can be.
My experience as someone who was a vegetarian for nearly 5 years and as someone who loves to eat meat now is that it's funny. I was never vegetarian because of the humanitarian or whatever they want to say that it is side of things. I was vegetarian because the girl I was engaged to was and frankly I wanted to be able to eat around her and not have her feel ill about the prospect of kissing me afterwards. Seriously though, more vegetarians and vegans make a stink about how I stopped eating meat and went back to doing so than anyone who eats meat does.
Though this argument is redundant a bit like the plastic bag and recycling argument is: The animal is going to be slaughtered and farmed regardless, therefore is it not more wasteful/cruel to the animal to leave that meat sitting on the store shelf to go off than it is to eat it? I would say yes because if you do that then essentially you say it is ok for the animal to live and die in vain. You're also making a mockery of humans elsewhere in the world who cannot eat and are starving as a result. I would rather eat the meat and know that it had not gone to waste then waste it by leaving it to go off.
By that same measure I argue that it's essentially irrelevant if you take your own shopping bags or use plastic bags from the supermarket, the bags will still be made in as high a volume tomorrow as they were today. Just because you took your hemp/canvas jute bags in to carry your groceries home doesn't mean that will change. The best you can do is take the plastic bags and see that they get recycled. Unless you introduce legal changes on a global scale about the production and use of plastic bags you'll never change the world.
The folly of that argument which has been made to me too in the past is simple: They're assuming that the food industry is going to respond to this, unfortunately I can guarantee otherwise, the scale and size of the industry literally does mean almost any product be it steak or potatoes is as interchangeable for something like computer chips or plastic bags that their point is moot. I mean the farmers are still going to raise the same amount of animals for slaughter, the slaughter houses will still cull them just as effectively and the supermarkets will still stock the food. Or failing that governments will buy the meat produce to donate to charitable causes meaning a whole lot of starving people are suddenly going to get given a meat rich diet.
On the flip-side lets say that supply and demand does take effect, fruit and veg are in higher demand and the meat market shrinks by say 33% what happens then?
Well 33% meat market drop will require a 33% growth in the fruit and veg market people will still need to eat the same amount of food/calories/meals. This will require at least a 66% growth in arable farming land suitable for crops. The reason why I settle on 66%? Well really I'm being generous you're meant to farm a field for like 4 years then leave it going fallow for 4 years so that the soil builds up some nutrients again, I'm suggesting 1 year farm, 1 year fallow with nutrient rich fertilizers.
Ideally we're talking about 132% growth on the land needed. Where does this land come from? Most of our regular meats such as; lamb, pork, chicken can be farmed and raised on land unsuited to crop growing looking at lamb in particular Wales and New Zealand being the two biggest exporters of the stuff in the globe, most of the land mass in both countries being mountainous and poor in terms of soil quality. We create a bigger global problem than we already have with starvation, we also cause problems with dust bowl effects as America should well understand by now considering the experience it has with this. With the reduced meat market the source of powerfully rich manure/fertilizer goes down too making the issue with dust bowls worse too don't forget.
Then we look at the human problem for the farmers of meat such as lamb, pork or chicken their income is dropping dramatically we force thousands of farmers who are already poor further below the poverty line. And for what? A group of people to be happy that we aren't eating meat? We are omnivores simple really we are designed to eat both meat and veg and as our population on this earth grows we're unlikely to be able to change that any time soon unless of course we find a way of terra-forming and colonizing Mars then simply use the planet purely to farm crops and force population to live out there working the soil. But then we'd need to work out a way of continuously shipping crops between the two planets.
You know what's even worse than a militantly vocal vegan/vegetarian or a militantly vocal anti-vegan/vegetarian?
The new trend of people being militantly vocal against MSG and PRESERVATIVES and CARBS and SUGAR and SODIUM and CORN SYRUP and GLUTEN and PEANUTS and RUFFAGE and DRINKING ANY BEVERAGE THAT ISN'T WATER and YOU REALLY NEED TO BE EATING ROMAINE NOT ICEBURG BECAUSE THERE'S NOT ENOUGH NUTRITION THERE and DON'T EAT ANYTHING BECAUSE EVERYTHING IS GOING TO KILL YOU!
I'm not doubting the legitimacy of arguments for or against meat, no meat, or any of the aforementioned ingredients, but must you start your preachy bulltrout the minute I sit down to eat? I mean every time I go out to eat anymore I have to have my meal-buzz killed because there's that ONE PERSON who has to start in how no one should be eating what we're eating because it's going to kill us.
Seriously, just worry about your own diet, eat what you want, and leave the rest of us alone, pretty please?
I like Kung-Fu.
My father in law went on a huge vegan craze for a few months. I tried, I just couldn't handle the lack of cheese