Michael Mansfield QC. Make eating meat illegal!

Cowgirl

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Ayrshire
A disturbing tweet from Frederic Leroy today - another scary EAT-Lancet connected organisation - globalcommonsalliance.org - preparing for a new assault on the human diet, he says. “A plan for the planet”, “transforming the global economy”, “a vision for 2050” - sounds like world domination to me. So much money behind this..
 

Muck Spreader

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Limousin
A disturbing tweet from Frederic Leroy today - another scary EAT-Lancet connected organisation - globalcommonsalliance.org - preparing for a new assault on the human diet, he says. “A plan for the planet”, “transforming the global economy”, “a vision for 2050” - sounds like world domination to me. So much money behind this..

Did you read this report just published? Still makes for depressing reading for the livestock sector even if only 10% came true.
https://venturebeat.com/2019/09/17/...ption-in-food-and-agriculture-in-next-decade/
 

curlietailz

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Sedgefield
Surely being a Patron of Viva should exclude him from influence
He should be chucked off the QC panel or whatever that is
I find it impossible to see how people with extremist views should be allowed public office
 

JP1

Member
Livestock Farmer
graze-again.png

Point Reyes National Seashore Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the General Management Plan Amendment

DEFENDING BEEF·TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2019·11 MINUTES
Bill and I strongly support the continuation of ranching in the Point Reyes National Seashore, completely unique IN THE WORLD for the proximity of a true farm to table foodshed, and agriculture as part of natural landscapes. A couple of environmental groups (mostly based in Arizona!) have been suing the National Park Service to try to oust the ranching families. We just submitted these comment explaining why we believe agriculture BELONGS in this Park. If you are from around here or if you are following this stuff nationally, take a look-see. ........

TO: National Park Service
From: Nicolette Hahn Niman and Bill Niman
Re: Point Reyes National Seashore Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the General Management Plan Amendment
September 23, 2019
Introduction
A grossly over-simplified narrative runs through much of the environmental advocacy surrounding the Point Reyes Seashore National Park (“Seashore”), and specifically the management plan currently under consideration. It goes something like this: A unique, vibrant ecology is threatened by farming and ranching and can be restored only by agriculture’s removal. This idea, which has permeated much of the litigation and activism about the Seashore for years, is not only false it is dangerous. If accepted, it would lead to a far less beautiful, less ecologically vibrant park and region.
Much has been said and written by others about the history of the Seashore, so we will not restate it here. Simply put, agriculture has existed since long before the creation of this park and was always meant to continue as part of it. Largely because of the farms and ranches, as well as its geographic location, the Seashore is especially positioned to connect people not just with nature but also with working landscapes, farming, and their food. In fact, the Seashore may be the only park in the United States that makes up such an essential piece of a functioning and cherished local “foodshed.” No other park has both plentiful agriculture and a close proximity to a major metropolitan area world famous for “farm to table” cuisine. Just in this small geographic area, at least four nationally known brands of high quality foods – Niman Ranch, Straus Dairy, Marin Sun Farms, and Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese -- all had their origins and continue to operate. These facts alone make a strong case for keeping agriculture as part of the Seashore. But there is a lot more to consider.
Who We Are
We are a husband and wife ranching team who, together with our two sons, raise grassfed cattle and heritage breed turkeys on a ranch in the Seashore. We sell our meat locally throughout the Bay Area, and advocate nationally and internationally for regenerative farming practices, especially for well-managed grazing, and for the importance of animal-derived foods in the human diet. Bill is the founder of the sustainable meat company Niman Ranch, and co-founder of BN Ranch, a grassfed meat company. He is co-author of The Niman Ranch Cookbook. Nicolette worked previously as the Senior Attorney for the environmental organization Waterkeeper Alliance, where she led the group’s campaign to reform the livestock industry. She is co-founder of BN Ranch and author of two books about sustainable meat production, Righteous Porkchop: Finding a Life and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms, and Defending Beef: The Case for Sustainable Meat Production, as well as numerous articles and op-eds about ecological food production in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Times, The Earth Island Journal, and many other publications.
Regenerative Agriculture is the Future
Much of the criticism launched at the National Park Service for allowing ranching to continue in the Seashore has suggested that agriculture, especially of animals, is inherently destructive and extractive, often also suggesting that “we all know” we should be “eating less dairy and meat.” Implicitly these people argue that the world, in general, as well as the Seashore, specifically, would be a better place if there were fewer people raising livestock. We vigorously refute every aspect of these claims. They vastly oversimplify complex questions of diet, health, and the environment and ignore the vital role local farm people play in communities. In truth, farmers and ranchers can and must be essential allies in the burgeoning movement to re-make our food system into one that produces healthy, nutrient rich food and is ecologically regenerative. And while there are people whose health might benefit from reducing their meat consumption there are others whose health would improve if they ate more meat.
These critics dismiss regenerative agriculture as impractical, unfeasible, or even impossible. Animal rights activists, and conventional agriculture and its allies -- fossil fuel and chemical companies, big food companies, and the pharmaceutical industry -- all want people to believe this. But ranchers in the Seashore and elsewhere are demonstrating that regenerative agriculture is not only real it is also the most financially viable and ecologically sound option for the food system. Successful real world examples of regenerative agriculture with livestock have been set forth in great detail by Gabe Brown in Dirt to Soil (2018), David Montgomery in Growing a Revolution (2017), Charles Massy in Call of the Reed Warbler (2018), among many others, which powerfully demonstrate the potential for widespread adoption of regenerative practices.
The best regenerative agriculture models, including many of the ranches in the Seashore, have strong connections to surrounding communities. In her several books and her film, The Economics of Happiness, Helena Norberg-Hodge urges that the most important thing people can do to protect the earth is to re-localize our economies, including with respect to food and farming. It is our very disconnectedness from our surrounding landscapes, our alienation from the people around us, and from the sources of our food and fiber that causes so many modern ills, Norberg-Hodge contends. Vibrant health – both mental and physical – is closely related to our connectedness to the people, community, and nature surrounding us. Keeping agriculture in the Seashore maintains a longstanding intricately woven community fabric in West Marin between humans, animals, nature, and our food. The people who live and work on these ranches not only generate our food they are members of our churches and civic clubs, have children at our schools and on our soccer teams, and frequent our local businesses. They are vital to our community cohesion.
Ranches are equally important to this region’s environment; animal impact is essential to ecosystem function. According to an ecology textbook used at UC Berkeley, California Grasslands: Ecology and Management, 6,000 years ago California was home to some 19 species of browsing and grazing creatures. They, together with other large beasts who preyed on them, created and maintained California’s vast open areas and diverse, biologically active soils. Without the once-abundant large predators, (which included grizzlies, wolves, lions, and tigers), it is no longer feasible for this urban-fringe area to maintain significant populations of large wild grazing animals. Domesticated grazing animals, however, can serve as the proxies for those disappeared wild grazers and browsers. Indeed, for this ecosystem to function at its best, large populations of grazing animals are necessary.
A large body of scientific evidence shows that grazing, including by cattle, enhances biodiversity, from soil micro-organisms to megafauna. Grazing animals’ hooves help press seeds into the soil, their mouths clip vegetation, stimulating plant growth and helping later-sprouting species of plants to germinate, and their manure and urine provide nutrients, moisture, and organic matter that help soil biology. For example, a long-term study by University of Nebraska researchers published in 2004 found more plant diversity in areas with grazing than in areas where grazing had been excluded. The 2016 textbook by Stanford biology professor Harold Mooney, Ecosystems of California states: “A growing body of research shows that livestock grazing can enhance biodiversity. To a surprising degree, this research comes from cases in which, as part of conservation efforts, livestock grazing was removed, and subsequently, species or habitats of interest disappeared.”
Grassland birds are among the most rapidly disappearing of all types of wildlife, largely because of losses of farming and ranching land and conversation of grazing areas to croplands. Work by Audubon Society, Point Blue and others have shown that well-managed ranches are essential partners is stemming the decline of bird populations. For example, recent analyses show how grazing benefits bird populations. See, e.g. “What’s good for the herd is good for the bird,” Beef Magazine in 2019.

Some have urged that the greenhouse impact of livestock alone warrants getting rid of the Seashore’s ranches. But livestock’s connection to climate change has been wildly mis-stated by various interest groups who are using climate change to advance their own agendas. Animal rights groups and some environmental groups have claimed that changing your diet (by reducing or eliminating beef) is the single “most important thing you can do to help the climate.” In the particularly ridiculous film Cowspiracy, the utterly specious claim was even made that more than half of greenhouse gases come from cattle. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, however, the real number is around 2 - 3% for all grazing animals (including cattle, sheep, goats, bison, and yaks).
While it is both admirable and valuable for Americans to make wise personal daily choices, those decisions have far less impact on the climate than does US policy. This point has been made repeatedly by climate leaders like Bill McKibben, and is explained by David Wallace-Wells in his recent book, The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming (2019). Wallace-Wells calls personal dietary choices a “drop in the bucket.” (See interview with William Branghan, PBS, March 1, 2019).
The true impact of beef related to climate is much more accurately understood when compared with other foods. The work of Dr. Michael Lee (Head of Sustainable Agriculture Sciences, Rothamsted Research, UK) shows that when the nutritional value of food is considered, beef has a comparatively small climate impact.
Most important, recent peer-reviewed research strongly supports the case made in Defending Beef that well-managed grazing provides myriad ecosystem services, even including a net benefit to the climate by sequestering large amounts of atmospheric carbon. This research includes the following:
*Journal of Soil and Water Conservation, April 2016: A collection of well-known rangeland experts, sustainable agriculture experts, and soil scientists assemble to argue that good grazing builds soil carbon, removes substantial carbon from the atmosphere, and is better for the climate than crop production. They estimate 1.2 tons of carbon per acre per year (1.2 tC/ac/yr) drawdown via properly-managed grazing, and that the drawdown potential of North American rangelands and pasturelands is 800 million tons (megatonnes) of carbon per year (800 MtC/yr). Most interestingly, the authors show that if crop production were replaced with well-managed grazing the greenhouse gas emissions of agriculture would actually decline. Teague, W. R., Apfelbaum, S., Lal, R., Kreuter, U. P., Rowntree, J., Davies, C. A., R. Conser, M. Rasmussen, J. Hatfield, T. Wang, F. Wang, Byck, P. (2016). The role of ruminants in reducing agriculture's carbon footprint in North America. Journal of Soil and Water Conservation, 71(2), 156-164. doi:10.2489/jswc.71.2.156 http://www.jswconline.org/content/71/2/156.full.pdf+html

*University of Georgia study, May 2015: Finds 3.6 tons of carbon per acre per year (3.6 tC/ac/yr) drawdown following a conversion from row cropping to regenerative grazing.
https://news.uga.edu/farmland-management-changes-boost-carbon-sequestration-rates-0515/?fbclid=IwAR086onDGdgtdUL7_jEbjWS7OLfNXQspLp2p-fNIj-rPXrwPwgnsu5G7FUo

*May 2019, study of Georgia farm (White Oak Pastures in Blufton, GA) shows well-managed beef operation having negative carbon footprint: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/study-white-oak-pastures-beef-reduces-atmospheric-carbon-300841416.html?fbclid=IwAR2Jn3-HYBq-LcK7CUvUk7Dt_NDDdyPn_bfg1_IOKXrojjiInfJbwACMljs

* Nature article, April 2015, summarizing studies showing carbon sequestration in ag soils from good management, including management-intensive grazing. Machmuller, M. B., Kramer, M. G., Cyle, T. K., Hill, N., Hancock, D., & Thompson, A. (2015). Emerging land use practices rapidly increase soil organic matter. Nature Communications, 6, 6995. doi:10.1038/ncomms7995 https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms7995

* 2018 study by Michigan State University finds that well-managed grassfed cattle sequester enough carbon in soils to offset all of their GHG emissions (including methane), i.e. 1.5 tons of carbon per acre per year (1.5 tC/ac/yr) drawdown. Stanley, P. L., Rowntree, J. E., Beede, D. K., DeLonge, M. S., & Hamm, M. W. (2018). Impacts of soil carbon sequestration on life cycle greenhouse gas emissions in Midwestern USA beef finishing systems. Agricultural Systems, 162, 249-258. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2018.02.003
Finally, while we recognize it’s not central to the National Park Service’s decision-making process, it should be noted that Seashore ranches are providing exceptionally wholesome, nutrient rich foods at a moment in history when they are desperately needed. Our nation’s healthcare system is literally collapsing under the strain of a population that is plagued with diet-related diseases. Meat, milk, yogurt, cheese and eggs are among the most nutritionally valuable foods. Almost a century ago, in his seminal work, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration (originally published in 1939, 23d printing, 2009), Dr. Weston Price, meticulously documented how humanity’s adoption of processed foods and abandonment of traditional foods – especially those from animals – was leading to widespread declines in human health. Modern Americans increasingly depend on pills, powders and potions for their nutrients. In contrast, beef, (especially organ meats), butter, milk, yogurt, and cheese are exceptionally nutrient rich foods that support vibrant health.

More specifically, all of the dairies in the Seashore are organic and grass-based; many of the meat and egg operations are grassfed. Grass-based meat, dairy, and eggs, such as those produced in the Seashore, are rich in vitamin K2, a nutrient found only in animal-based foods where animals are raised on grass. Today, K2 is extremely scarce in foods due to our nation moving animals off pastures into confinement systems. The absence of K2 in our diets has contributed to high levels of many serious health problems in our population, including heart disease and osteoporosis. (For more on this topic, see: Dr. Kate Rheaume-Bleue’s groundbreaking book Vitamin K2 and the Calcium Paradox (2013), and Dr. Cate Shanahan’s Deep Nutrition (2016)).

Conclusion

For these and many other reasons, we urge that the General Management Plan Amendment reflect a National Park Service commitment to the long-term continuation and support of the Seashore’s ranches. Remember, “It’s not the COW, it’s the HOW.”
 

Danllan

Member
Location
Sir Gar / Carms
A legal shock jock now getting in on the farmer bashing lobby. @Danllan Do you know the fella?
No, saw him a few times in the Courts and he once lead a fellow I know in a case, but I've no experience of him personally. He is a bit of star, for reasons of his being a self-publicist, a good Barrister and having impressive hair, the sort of fellow that - when one is very junior - the appearance of whom leads to nudging and whisperings...

However, by reputation... he is nauseatingly P.C. and a very self righteous lefty-liberal, but has a very, very sharp mind and has demonstrated some outstanding advocacy. Although he comes across publicly as I have described and as a bit of a prig, it seems that he has a good sense of humour and - outside of Court - doesn't take himself too seriously.

But, if the article quoted is accurate, he is clearly a git.
 

Cowabunga

Member
Location
Ceredigion,Wales
Did you read this report just published? Still makes for depressing reading for the livestock sector even if only 10% came true.
https://venturebeat.com/2019/09/17/...ption-in-food-and-agriculture-in-next-decade/

The writing is indeed on the wall as far as certainly ruminant production on a commercial scale is concerned. I have expressed this opinion for several years now and there is more and more indication that this will come to pass.

It is going to be the next big 'agricultural' revolution, although in this case it will concern the industrialisation on a massive factory scale of animal-like protein food.

This will fundamentally change the appearance and use of massive tracts of land currently only suitable for animal production. Make no mistake, there will be massive knock-on effects on the arable sector as well where massive tonnage of particularly grain, not fit for human consumption, will have no market.

It will also mean the elimination of farming as a means of providing a living in rural areas to be replaced by, what? Basically wilderness over vast areas of currently productive land, with few viable commercial farms left.

It is, I'm afraid, almost inevitable within the next forty to fifty years. Possibly even within the next decade or two. Those of you that are here today and live that long will see immense changes that dwarf anything seen in all of history, certainly in terms of the time period for the change. How this disruption can be managed is anyone's guess, but I suspect it will be rather more serious on a large area social basis than, for instance, the collapse of Thomas Cook, albeit more of a stretched out and painful transition over a short number of years as individual small and medium size businesses, both farmers and ancillary suppliers to the industry either somehow diversify or collapse.
 
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Danllan

Member
Location
Sir Gar / Carms
The writing is indeed on the wall as far as certainly ruminant production on a commercial scale is concerned. I have expressed this opinion for several years now and there is more and more indication that this will come to pass.

It is going to be the next big 'agricultural' revolution, although in this case it will concern the industrialisation on a massive factory scale of animal-like protein food.

This will fundamentally change the appearance and use of massive tracts of land currently only suitable for animal production. It will also mean the elimination of farming as a means of providing a living in rural areas to be replaced by, what? Basically wilderness over vast areas of currently productive land, with few viable commercial farms left.

It is, I'm afraid, almost inevitable within the next forty to fifty years. Possibly even within the next decade or two. Those of you that are here today and live that long will see immense changes that dwarf anything seen in all of history, certainly in terms of the time period for the change. How this disruption can be managed is anyone's guess, but I suspect it will be rather more serious on a large area social basis than, for instance, the collapse of Thomas Cook, albeit more of a stretched out and painful transition over a short number of years as individual small and medium size businesses, both farmers and ancillary suppliers to the industry either somehow diversify or collapse.
:meh:

Well, the TFF swear-bender says that he is actually a QP

They should make being a loudmouth QP illegal while they're at it
What's a QP? :scratchhead:
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 79 42.0%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 66 35.1%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 16.0%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 7 3.7%

Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

  • 1,292
  • 1
As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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