» Hypocrisy

On the subject of vegetarians....
Now vegetarians do piss me off a little bit. If you're veggie because you don't like the taste of meat then fair enough, it's your choice what you put in your mouth. However, if you're veggie because of any slight animal welfare or environmental inclination and you continue to eat eggs and dairy products then you are being monumentally hypocritical.

In order to get eggs, even happy chicken free range ones, you only need lady hens. The male hens, even in the happy chicken free range farms, are all slaughtered at a few days old.

In order to get milk, you need a cow that has just had a calf. Now, if the cow keeps the calf, well, there won't be much milk left for the farmer to sell. So bye bye calf, off you go for veal.

Any sort of animal product is going to lead to exploitation and death and massive environmental impact in some way, so all these vegetarians who claim to be doing their bit for animals and who think they are so much holier than the meat eaters, are either knowingly or otherwise deluding themselves.

For a bit of perspective on my opinions, I am a vegan.
And not because I don't think that animal flesh doesn't taste delicious, because it does (especially bacon....).
And not because I think that we aren't 'designed' to eat animals, because we are.
And also not because I think it is a crime against nature for a human to kill another animal to eat. I mean ffs in that case get rid of all predators! I think it is easy to forget we are part of the food chain, and animals in our own right.

No, my issue with eating animals and animal products lies in how far removed modern livestock farming methods are from nature; a farmed animal will suffer so much distress throughout its life from being bred to exaggerate a particular feature (fancy carrying round 25kg of milk in your udders all day?) and having their natural instincts stifled (fancy being a pig in a cage unable to even turn round?). Also, what do you think happens to all the waste? There are lakes of slurry from livestock farms which have the potential to sterilize the water courses around them, with an enormous impact on the ecosystem.

And even if you had no interest in animals or their welfare, the human cost of intensive livestock farming is ridiculous. The majority of farms are owned by multinational corporations providing cheap produce for supermarkets and excluding independent farmers, particularly in developing countries. And it's so inefficient! Grow acres and acres of grain and soya to feed to cattle at a 10% conversion ratio, that's 10kg of grain to make 1kg of beef. I mean, you could solve world hunger if you just ate the bloody grain!

Anyway, to near the end of my ramble, massive kudos to those who go out and hunt wild animals. I believe the answer lies in rabbits, pheasants and deer. In order to have these animals you need good quality woodland and grassland, so the environment is preserved, every organism has their place in the food chain, the animals reproduce rapidly enough so that everyone can have them, and problem solved. However this will only be successful if the population is halved. Or if we get over our ridiculous meat addiction and start treating it like a rare treat to have once a week and seriously enjoy, rather than cramming down tasteless mass produced chicken and ham at every meal.

So, meat eaters, at least you're not pretending to be anything else, but hypocritical vegetarians really do my nut in.
(Fri 20th Feb 2009, 0:18, More)