Meat eater, vegetarian or vegan?

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 Dean wrote:

 Finnforest wrote:

 akamaisondufromage wrote:

I eat meat. I eat good quality meat and free range stuff if I can. We pay far too little for our meat and put animals through disgusting lives to do that.  If I want to eat meat I should pay for it.
I agree with you although some would argue that causing prices to go up would hurt lower income people....sort of making meat a luxury for the well off....more than it already is.  Same with veggies....the prices are artificially low because of the very low wages paid to farm workers.  If we insist on more environmental standard for meat and veggies, have more regulation of labor, min wages, etc, you and I are willing to pay more the good things this brings about.  But do we price poor people out of quality food choices? 

The poor are already priced out of quality food choices. Unethical intensive factory farming is not to feed the poor, it is not a welfare system - it is to feed all of us and make a fat profit for the retailers, we all reap the benefits of lower prices but it is time to realise the cost of low value is too high.
High volume farming does not have to be intensive factory farming, it does not have to be unethical and inhumane, it does not have to be stressful and unpleasant for the animals, similarly it does not have to be chemically enhanced with pesticides, herbicides and inorganic fertilisers for vegetable production. Deep sea fishing also fails - fish deemed unsaleable are discarded at sea, fishing quotas exacerbate this so even saleable fish are discarded -  all these fish are dead when they are returned to the sea. There is little that is ethical in mass production of food. Food production is currently dictated by the retailers, not the consumers - we never asked for chickens to be sold at five bucks each having spent the 6 miserable weeks of their lives in cramped broiler sheds choking on ammonia fumes. Moreover, ethical food does not have to be expensive - currently it is sold at artificially higher prices because those who "care" are prepared to pay for it and the retailers exploit that.
In the west we are incredibly wasteful of the food we buy, whether we buy a chicken for 5 bucks or 10 we waste most of that animal. We are even more wasteful of the food that retailers buy and do not sell. This is where we should start the solution to the problem - it is apolitical, it bypasses the economists and the regulators and will ultimately force the retailers to re-think their purchasing strategies - eat everything you buy. It is that simple - buy whole chickens and portion them yourselves to create three or four meals instead of one - each chicken yields two breasts, two wings, two drumsticks, two thighs and a bones and trimmings for making a stock that can form the base for a soup or stew - augment that with more vegetables and producing three substantial meals of a family is a doddle. Reducing the portion size that gets put on each plate reduces waste, makes the food go further, it is cheaper and it will reduce obesity - just taking one slice of meat off your plate and saving it for a sandwich the next day's lunch saves you money and improves your health. That is how I can afford to buy ethically produced free-range organic chicken - each meal costs me far less than the one meal made from a $5 battery broiler. 

And again, this is also true of vegetables - we buy more than we need because we buy it pre-packed, and we waste more than we should because it spoils before we can consume it all. Spending a few more pennies on quality veg in the quantity I need means I throw less away, the net result is a gain - it's cheaper.

These are skills that our parents knew but we've never learnt so we are failing to pass them on to our children. My mother would be mortified by the food we waste, her mother would have been outraged.

Agree with every word of this.  I would add that retailers should stop the BOGOF and similar offers on meat or veg that will go off and get wasted. Just put the price down if you want to put stuff on offer.  Also eat less meat (you do say smaller portions though) but a meal doesn't have to include meat every time. Variety is the spice...  

Then we can save money eat better and stop animals being treated like sh*t.

Poll Question: Which are you?
Poll Choice	Votes	Poll Statistics
Meat eater	34	[77.27%]
Vegetarian	9	[20.45%]
Vegen	1	[2.27%]
This topic is closed, no new votes accepted