Why do you farmers believe that the argument of the meat and dairy industry having a negative impact on the environment is false?

[Longlowdog]

Yo Vegan, I've got a few questions for ya.
If an Oak tree sets a seed in a wheat field is it okay to kill it? If it sets a thousand seeds in the field is it okay to kill them all or do they have a right to exist purely because of their existence? Comes the day when there will be no field. So, is it okay to kill magnificent oak trees (or what might one day be one) just so you can eat or is it only okay if it fits with your nano view of the world of climate, ecology, humanity? If an oak tree has no right to a thousand years of life why does a cow or a sheep have a right. Don't tell me trees are insensitive, they react to predators, inform others of threats, capture carbon just like cow sh!t, harbour flora and fauna large and small, I could go on. Is it okay to kill Oak trees?
Do you weed your veg' garden, do you kill aphids, mice, rats in your home, bluebottles, wasps? Do you take antibiotics and kill bacteria (pre-tested on animals of course)? Do you take a flu vaccine or vaccinate your kids (all tested on animals)? Use an asthma inhaler? Will you die rather than have a pig valve when you're gasping your last? How about your kid with a heart condition?
Is it okay to use a computer when the chemicals in them are mined in third world hell holes by indentured slaves, where life is cheap, health and safety is unheard of and raw pollution runs from hill to ocean?
I've dozens of questions like these, do you have answers?

 

[Farmer Roy]

Are you trapping and shooting @Farmer Roy or 1080?
Is Sparganosis and brucellosis still a thing in Ferals in terms of human consumption?

trapping & then shooting
circular "funnel" or "spear" trap
feed them for a while to attract them & get them used to it, then close the gate & let them push their way in . . .

yeah, diseases are a big issue with feral pigs ( I wear rubber gloves to handle them )

Diseases of Feral Pigs in Australia

• Acariasis. This is a condition caused by biting lice, which are known to be carried by feral pigs. ...
• Brucellosis. Brucellosis can occur in wild boar. ...
• Fascioliasis. ...
• Gastro-intestinal helminthiasis. ...
• Hydatidosis. ...
• Leptospirosis. ...
• Sparganosis. ...
• Q fever.

 

[Farmer Roy]

 

[Red Fred]

Having seen how mum continued to be kept alive because we consider that all humans must be kept alive as long as possible at all costs, I can see no harm in giving an animal a happy healthy life and ending it humanely. These people should look at the way our old folks (and many of us one day) will spend our final chapter before worrying about animals.

 

[DrWazzock]

Lets imagine there are no livestock. So we have no animal manure so we need to manufacture more nitrogen fertiliser to grow the crops. To manufacture that fertiliser we use vast quantities of natural gas or methane, an irreplaceable fossil fuel.

That's hardly environmentally friendly is it?

I look across the fields of grass here, which are grazed by livestock. They are nice and green, protecting the delicate soils and hardly needing any chemicals or nitrogen fertiliser at all as they contain clover which fixes the nitrogen naturally from the air.

I look across the arable fields (those are the ones that grow plants for human consumption) and see a sodden mess of wet bare soils and mud with water eroding the soil into the watercourses choking them up. They are cultivated intensively using diesel and sprayed with pesticides year on year in much greater quantities than goes on the grass and they use vast quantities of manufactured nitrogen fertiliser (up to 750 kg of ammoniun nitrate per hectare) all to feed those fudging vegans who think they are saving the planet.

Humans who eat meat do far less damage to our environment at a basic practical level, but the scientists and know it alls won't know that because they never come out and have a look at the reality.

Veganism is a disaster for ecosystems, for soil erosion, for loss of habitat. It results in rain forest clearance to grow soya and other monoculture cropping on a vast scale using huge quantities of damaging pesticides. These products are then transported thousands of miles.

Vegans saving the planet? Biggest load of nonsense ever. You find a more ecofriendly way to produce food than mixed farming. Its as close to natural and truly sustainable as you can get. Nobody wants to know that though, because it doesn't fit the dogma.

 

[neilo]

I can’t believe you guys are giving this ignorant troll enough oxygen to make this thread stretch to 18 pages in a day!

He/she/it (I’m PC me?) clearly has no intention of listening to anyone’s viewpoint but their own, so I suggest we just let it crawl back into it’s hole.

 

[DrWazzock]

Having seen how mum continued to be kept alive because we consider that all humans must be kept alive as long as possible at all costs, I can see no harm in giving an animal a happy healthy life and ending it humanely. These people should look at the way our old folks (and many of us one day) will spend our final chapter before worrying about animals.

That's the biggest anomaly in the vegan argument. Do they want all animals wiped out so that no animal ever suffers? All animals die eventually. They don't die painlessly in the wild. They die more humanely in abbatoirs. The whole vegan cause is based on very flawed logic, a denial of the inescapable inevitability of death which comes to every living thing one way or another. Farming offers livestock as better death than life in the wild, and also can offer them a better life too. It should do anyway.

 

[DrWazzock]

I can’t believe you guys are giving this ignorant troll enough oxygen to make this thread stretch to 18 pages in a day!

He/she/it (I’m PC me?) clearly has no intention of listening to anyone’s viewpoint but their own, so I suggest we just let it crawl back into it’s hole.

I like to make to a couple of points then leave it at that. I know it won't make any difference but just want to show that there are still some of us who can see through this nonsense.

 

[steveR]

Jesus! what an offensive little vegan!

Haven't had such a good troll for a long time...

But maybe enough...

 

[Raider112]

In the UK?

What about the world as a whole?

Europe is very similar to the UK and of that 9 or 10% around half is due to cropping, so 4 to 5% is due to all livestock, not just cattle. What is interesting is that US figures are quite similar with beef coming out at around 2% in spite of it being seen as more intensive.
Hope that goes some way to answering the title of the thread.

 

[Man_in_black]

 

[Clive]

oh dear ...... that's all a bit ........ er ......... inconvenient !

 

[JP1]

If you want to save the world, veganism isn’t the answer | Isabella Tree

Intensively farmed meat and dairy are a blight, but so are fields of soya and maize. There is another way, says the farmer Isabella Tree

www.theguardian.com

 

[Thick Farmer]

It's all about the money for your slave owners. Don't act like you have no choice.

Sorry for the late response - I had to go to work. Judging from your input on this today, you’ve been quite busy too...

 

[Servac]

Lets say I have a hypothetical farm in wales (where I live). On the farm i have fields of permanent pasture, some of which has never been cultivated in my living memory. On my farm i rear cows and sheep for beef, lamb and wool. So if i was to convert to arable tomorrow.

1. I would cultivate the land every year, leading to carbon dioxide being released from the soil. The soil would also be subject to more erosion.
2. I would have to buy in more artificial fertiliser to make up for the organic fertilizer that my livestock once produced. Artificial fertilizer = fossil fuels
3. My farm would likely not be economically sustainable due to the nature if the land and climate.

Methane exerted by livestock is part of a natural cycle, it does not stay in the atmosphere like CO2 from burning fossil fuels. Unfortianately this isnt taken into account .

Beef and lamb, is nutrient ritch. So per Kg of whatever nutrient they have much lower that other foods.

What people fail to undertand is that sustainability is about balance, and farming animals is a part of that.

 

[som farmer]

I worry for people like you. I kick myself for it, but I do.

why worry ? if he hates people, he won't breed, sorry, a bit slow, the penny has dropped, I now understand why he loves sheep, in a few years time, it will be legal !!!!!

 

[Farmer Roy]

a very calm, rational viewpoint


Going meat free will not prevent animal suffering, says Matthew Evans

• Matthew Evans
  
  Grass-fed beef is better for the environment than the grain-fed option. Photo: Dirty Deeds Produce Marketing

The industrial farming industry has a long way to go to clean up its act, but it may not be as simple as not eating meat, writes Matthew Evans, chef and food critic turned farmer, restaurateur, TV star and author.
"I choose to be kind," the woman is saying after she's just told me she's vegan. "Why can't you choose kindness?"
I'm at WOMAD in Adelaide, after talking at a panel session on the environmental impacts of animal production, and I've just explained that I eat meat. That I have looked into the soft brown eyes of a steer on my farm and still ended up choosing to take the steer's life. In her eyes, I'm a monster. A murderer, because all life is sacred, and I have failed as a human because I've chosen to take a life just so I can eat meat.
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Having a sensible discussion about meat eating these days is fraught. Vegans are invading farms. Protesting with footage of animal cruelty outside the pavilion at Hobart's Dark MOFO Winter Feast. Closing down the traffic in Melbourne's CBD because they want us to stop killing animals for food. Preachy, loud and antagonistic, the activists are the ones who are right. The rest of us are cruel, barbaric, Neanderthals.
If you believe the headlines, we're all about to go vegan. Or at least vegetarian. Meat is supposedly on the nose as much as smoking, and only the ignorant would consider feeding meat to their friends, let alone their kids. Meat, they say, is single-handedly causing irreversible climate change, heart disease, incredible suffering, and the only people who will eat it in 50 years' time will be totally self-centred gluttons and the heartlessly cruel. It's on the way out because it's unsustainable, unnecessary, compassionless and can be readily replaced.
The problem is, most humans love meat. We eat a lot of it. In Australia, we eat as much, on average, as any nation on earth. More than 110 kilograms a year. It doesn't look like we'll give up meat any time soon. Developing nations, as they become wealthier, eat more meat, not less. Yes, the world's appetite for meat is putting pressure on our ecosystems. But is all meat, as some would have you believe, unsustainable and inherently cruel?

A 'true' free-range model is best for chicken welfare, and flavour. Photo: Max Mason-Hubers
As a chef and farmer and one-time vegetarian, I've long been conflicted about the meat I eat. I read these stories about methane emissions from cattle and animal welfare violations. Stories about the true cost of meat and the rise and rise of the meat-free diet, and wonder what is going on.
From our little corner of the world, a 70-acre (30-hectare) family farm tucked in a gully in Tasmania's Huon Valley, not eating meat doesn't seem to make much ecological sense. The open areas around us have grazing animals – sheep, goats, cattle – munching happily away on grass, turning something humans can't digest into meat and milk and fibre. We use animal waste in our compost for our market garden. We feed ourselves almost entirely from our farm, and I wonder, could we do that so efficiently if we didn't use the animals that help shape the land and grace our table?
For more than a decade I've been growing meat for our kitchen, knowing the direct consequence of my actions on the animals in my care. A few years ago I set out to discover how animals are raised in the more industrial system; a journey documented on SBS's For the Love of Meat. And since then, I've been trying to work out the conflict that is apparent between animal rights campaigners and the livestock industry. The result is On Eating Meat, my personal meat manifesto. In it, I unpick the industrialisation of our animal industry, and try to shine light where there was little. I also try to find the single source of most animal suffering in this nation (the short answer is cats).
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Many of us have witnessed footage or photos of battery hens living in misery. You may have seen the bar-biting behaviour of a mother pig trapped in a sow stall, something resembling a pig jail that is so small that she can't turn around or take a full step forward. Does anyone really think putting live day-old chicks through a mulcher because they're boys and the egg industry needs girls is a good use of our resources, our brains and truly shows our compassion? We can do better at farming animals in so many ways.
Films like Dominion show the worst cases, or bad practice. But there are other stories out there, some condoned – albeit in secrecy – by the animal industry. Take minimal disease pigs for instance. These are pigs that are bred in a way that tries to ensure virtually no disease can be transmitted from other pigs, including their mother. The way the industry does this, however, probably wouldn't pass the pub test. On the day the pregnant mothers are due to give birth, they're taken close to the piggery, slaughtered, the piglets cut out alive and plonked into a wheelbarrow or "washing basket" as the Queensland Government website advised, and taken into the piggery. (Since I researched this, the website has been updated, with a vague reference to this procedure called "hysterectomy". Remember, a sow with no uterus is no use to these farmers, so they are still killed, but hysterectomy sounds less brutal.)

This system, which is mostly used in new or restocked piggeries, means possibly less initial disease, but no antibody-rich colostrum, and hence far reduced immunity; immunity which is naturally conveyed by both the colostrum and a normal vaginal birth. We've come up with a "solution" to disease based on badly designed and managed farming systems. As is so often the case, the domesticated animals suffer the consequences of human failings.

It's time for meat eaters to step up and take responsibility for livestock.

While farming has its problems, and some things the intensive animal industry does in secret may not meet community expectations, the ugly truth is that not farming animals won't do away with human-induced death and suffering. Concrete is bad for animals. Growing vegetables and spraying them with pesticides is bad for animals. Driving is bad for marsupials (in Tasmania, an average of 32 native animals are killed by cars every hour), but I don't see activists out trying to stop people driving. Flying in planes is bad for birds. I didn't see Voiceless at the airport last time I flew. Perhaps it's because they'd have to drive there.
Food, for some reason, is considered the big baddy. Perhaps it's because it's the low hanging fruit. The easy thing to consider, where everyone can make a personal change. Or perhaps it's just the easy one to nag people about. The idea seems to have been simplified to "don't eat meat and nothing will suffer".
It's a nice idea, that growing food, any food, can be free of harm to animals. It fits with our storybook vision of farms, the one we carry in our heads from childhood. The only things that die are those we choose to eat.

Lamb is a great choice when eating out ... most are pasture-raised and able to express their natural behaviours. Photo: Justin McManus
But let me tell you what else dies. About 40,000 ducks die each year to grow rice in Australia. Ducks die to grow strawberries. I've met the farmers and shooters who tell me it is so. It's not just the birds and bees and slugs and moths that are killed for your vegetables and grains. Mammals die, too. One pea grower I know kills 1500 animals a year – a lot of possums, deer, wallabies and some birds. Yes, for frozen peas. On our farm, we kill more animals in our two-acre market garden than pigs and cattle on the other 68 acres combined: rats, mice, moths, aphids, slugs and snails. We compete with them for food. We're not the only ones killing to produce vegan food. Is it kinder to eat apples that have come from a farm where they shoot possums to protect the crop, than eat meat from a sheep? Sure, some farming systems are better than others, but is growing anything really "kind"?
Nothing we do is without consequence. There's a price to pay every time we use transport, or build a house, or clothe ourselves. A billion birds die every year in the US (where these numbers are collated better than here) just from flying into windows. But we don't ban windows. I haven't found any news reports, either, of animals rights groups working to make windows less dangerous to birds. Does it make you more "'kind" just because you don't know the animal that dies, because you can't pinpoint which animal, at which time, is the victim of your lifestyle or your diet? Take it from a grower – everybody, regardless of what they eat, has blood on their hands.
I think what surprises me most is the passive aggressiveness of people like the vegan at WOMAD. Because I'm actually on their side half the time. I reckon a lot of stuff that happens in farms around Australia isn't kind to animals; things that could be considered cruel. And some of the footage in the movie Dominion, promoted by those who stopped traffic in Melbourne, is a sad indictment on the farming community. I actually agree with those that say unnecessary suffering happens at human hands and that we should do our best to stop it.

Matthew Evans: 'Every time you buy food, you have the chance to move the momentum.' Photo: SBS
But, in the same way that a personal attack puts me offside, the evidence shows that antagonism from activists more broadly hasn't solved anything. Fifty years of animal cruelty videos have resulted in governments (including the current one) and farmers becoming more clandestine. We have worse animal welfare outcomes now than we did before the activists started. That strategy has failed.
Farmers only do things in our name. The only way things will improve is if the general population, not the intensive chicken farm, and not those who have chosen to abstain from meat, are part of the debate. Every time you buy food, you have the chance to move the momentum. It's time for meat eaters to step up and take responsibility for livestock.
Omnivores, those of us who have made a conscious choice to eat meat as part of their diet, hold the power in our wallets and purses. It's our economic clout, and our voice as a community, that holds the key to improving the lives of animals in human care. As thinking eaters, we should expect those who rear those animals to do better where possible. To show kindness. And the only way that will happen is if the ethical omnivores become part of the conversation and not leave it to the radicals on both sides.

Matthew Evans on the farm. Photo: Tim Thatcher
On Eating Meat, by Matthew Evans, Murdoch Books, $33.
Choosing better meat
Better meat, meat that more closely suits your personal moral standpoint, may cost more. The simplest way to better impact the animals, the land, the farmer, is to perhaps eat meat less often, but spend more on it. Eat it fewer days a week, perhaps. The nice thing is that virtually without fail, animals that have been better allowed to express natural behaviours tend to taste better and more intense, meaning you probably will want to eat less. Below is a simple guide to better meat buying.
Pork

Matthew Evans's book. Photo: Supplied
Australian pork is better than imported in ethical terms and chemical use, most of the time, but only 30 per cent of our pork is local. Look on the label or buy pork on the bone because that is always local.
Some pork, labelled "born outdoors, raised indoor on straw", is a mangled, muddled way of saying the parent pigs are generally able to express their instincts by nesting, and the piglets are then fattened in eco-shelters. It's my personal minimal standard, a system that would probably pass the average Australian's pub test.
Certified free range pork, or pork bought direct from a producer or butcher that can show you they're free-range, means a system that will allow the parents and the young to wallow, dig and express their pigness. It's a very good option. Better still is "pastured pork", where the animals are moved to fresh ground regularly. And the top is certified organic, where the grain and other feed meet organic standards, and the pigs are guaranteed free of antibiotic use and similar.
Chicken
Most chickens in Australia now meet RSPCA approved standards. These are far from gold standards, but do allow the birds complete rest and periods of full light, they give the birds something to do, and a perch to stand on. This is absolute minimum standard from my perspective.
The next level up are free-range birds, which most supermarkets now stock. Above that are certified organic birds, which can range freely and are free from antibiotic use and the feed is grown without the use of pesticides and herbicides. And above that in terms of land use and regenerative farming are pastured chooks, some of which are more flavoursome (ie, having some flavour), which cost a fair bit more, but have far higher potential welfare and environmental outcomes.
Beef
Not all beef is born equal. Grass fed beef is better environmentally (grass is a renewable resource), and is best consumed close to where it was reared and processed. Grain fed beef has higher environmental costs, the fat profile isn't as good for human health, and compromises animal behaviour in the process.
Lamb
This is the safe option 99 per cent of the time, because most sheep in Australia eat grass, like they are evolved to eat, and aren't kept in sheds and fed grain. The animals live a life more closely aligned to their original wild selves, able to express instinctual behaviour. When in doubt when eating out, I choose lamb. Or the vegetarian option.

 

[Lazy Eric]

Why is everyone giving this bell end the time of day?? Waste of time.
There is none as blind as those who will not see...

 

[Farmer Roy]

more from the same author

Let’s start with peas. Collydean (not its real name, but a real farm) is a 2700ha mixed farm in northern Tasmania. They grow beef cattle, some sheep, do agroforestry, have barley and some years grow peas. A lot of peas: about 400 tonnes a season. And to protect the peas, they have some wildlife fences, but also have to shoot a lot of animals. When I was there, they had a licence to kill about 150 deer. They routinely kill about 800-1000 possums and 500 wallabies every year, along with a few ducks. (To its credit, Collydean only invites hunters onto its farm who will use the animals they kill — for human food, or for pet food — and not leave them in the paddock, as most animals killed for crop protection are.) So, more than 1500 animals die each year to grow about 75ha of peas for our freezers. That’s not 1500 rodents, which also die, and which some may see as collateral damage. That’s mostly warm-blooded animals of the cute kind, with a few birds thrown in.

Collydean’s owners assure me it wouldn’t befinancially viable for them to grow peas without killing animals. Which means that every time we eat peas, farmers have controlled the “pest” species on our behalf, and animals have died in our name.

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The number of animals that die to produce vegan food is astonishing. Consider wheat, a common crop in Australia. And let’s look at the nutrient density of the food in question, because not all foods are created equal. According to an article by Mike Archer, Professor in the Faculty of Science at the University of NSW, roughly 25 times more sentient beings die to produce a kilo of protein from wheat than a kilo of protein from beef. Thanks to monocultures, mice plagues and our modern farming systems, a hell of a lot of small animals die to produce wheat. Yes, most of them are rodents, but surely in the vegan world all warm-blooded life should be honoured equally?

On average, 1 billion mice are poisoned every year in Western Australia alone. According to a 2005 Senate report, if we didn’t kill mice the cost of food would rise drastically; even with heavy baiting programs, mice cost the Australian economy about a $36 million a year.

Let’s look at birds. Over a five-year period up to 2013, rice farmers in NSW killed nearly 200,000 native ducks to protect their fields. That’s right, to grow rice. That’s in addition to the animals indirectly affected, such as those that once thrived in the waterways drained by such a heavily irrigated crop on a dry continent. That’s how farming works. To grow something, other things are affected. Sometimes it’s an animal, sometimes it’s a helluva lot of animals. The most animals that die on Fat Pig Farm, our property in the Huon Valley south of Hobart, are the snails and slugs that would destroy our garden if left unchecked. We kill close to 5000 moths, slugs and snails each year to grow vegetables, and thousands and thousands of aphids.

Picture: Getty Images
Insects bear the brunt of all annual vegetable production. And the most exploited insect of all is the European honeybee. True vegans don’t eat honey because it’s the result of the domestication, and utilisation, of the European honeybee. They don’t eat it because eating honey is “stealing” honey from the hive, and because bees die in the process of beekeepers managing the hives and extracting the honey. And they’re right, bees do die in that process. Problem is, honeybees are very, very good pollinators, and a whole heap of crops are pretty much reliant on these bees to produce fruit — and even more crops would suffer from far lower production due to poor fertility if we didn’t have bees. About one-third of all crops globally benefit from direct interaction with pollinators, of which European honeybees are by far the most efficient. Whether we eat honey or not, we are the beneficiaries of the work of the domesticated European honeybee. In their absence, some crops would come close to failure, and others increase substantially in cost. Gobs of bees die every year doing the work of pollination for us. According to Scientific American, up to 80 billion domestic honeybees are estimated to have a hand in the Californian almond industry each year, up to half of which die during the management process and the long journeys to and from the large almond orchards. And that’s the carnage from just one crop.

What about vegan wine, you say? It doesn’t use fish bladders, or milk extracts, or egg as a fining agent (ingredients used to clarify many wines, beers and ciders). But don’t forget the harvest. Come with me to watch grapes being picked, watch as huge tubs of plump grapes are tipped into the crusher along with mice, spiders, lizards, snakes and frogs. Sadly, vegan wine is a furphy.

Picture: Getty Images
Let’s move on to peanut butter, that wonderful practical protein staple. Do you know how many parts of an insect are in each jar? According to Scientific American, each of us eats about 0.5-1kg of flies, maggots and other bugs a year, hidden in the chocolate we eat, the grains we consume, the peanut butter we spread on toast. According to US regulations (which are easier to access than Australian data), 125g of pasta (a single portion) may contain an average of 125 insect fragments or more, and a cup of raisins can have a maximum of 33 fruit fly eggs. A kilogram of flour probably has 15g of animal product in it, from rodent excreta to weevils to cockroach legs.

I don’t bring this up for the “ick” factor, but simply to show the true impact and cost of food production. When you eat, you’re never truly vegan. When humans grow and process food, any food, other things die — and often we eat them.

It does seem that food production gets unfairly singled out for killing animals, when every human activity has an effect on other living things. We kill animals when we drive. We kill animals when we fly, or transport goods by plane. We kill when we build railway tracks, when we farm grain, grow apples and mine sand. We alter ecosystems when we put up new housing developments, build bicycle factories and ship lentils. We push native animals out of their environments all the time, with the resultant pain and suffering you’d expect.

Perhaps, for those not interested in eating meat, or who choose not to eat meat, it’s about context. All the creatures killed in the raising of crops — the rodents, the insects, the birds — are just collateral damage. This line of thinking is based on the fact that meat eaters (or their agents, the farmers, slaughtermen, butchers and chefs) “choose” a victim, so this is different to an animal dying as a result of random chance. But a death is a death. Suffering is suffering, regardless of whether a human was involved, directly or not. All impacts of our actions need to be considered. And this I think goes to the heart of the matter.

What actions produce the least suffering? Some commentators believe that annual crops produce more suffering for more animals. The view is that life is life, that life begets life, and to live we must consume something that has lived, with impacts on other forms of life well beyond our circle of thinking. You eat a plant, and that affects an animal — one that was going to eat that plant (say a nut from a tree in the wild), one that dies because it was going to eat that plant (perhaps grasshoppers or caterpillars on farm crops), or one that might’ve lived in the wild if we didn’t farm that plant at all.

Killing an animal for food or fibre is a small effect. Bigger is the ecological footprint of livestock on the land. Bigger still, and more destructive, is the growing of plants for food, thanks to topsoil loss, the legions of animals killed to maintain monocultures, and the use of artificial fertilisers and chemicals available to the modern farmer. All of us, vegans and omnivores, are the beneficiaries of the fertiliser and compost that come from either animal waste or fossil fuels. Organic farmers use compost made from animal by-products, whereas conventional farmers use nitrogen fertilisers, which are produced using large amounts of fossil fuels. About 2-3 per cent of the fossil fuels burned each year is for making nitrogen fertilisers — accounting for roughly 3 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions, including emissions from nitrogen released to the atmosphere. And then there’s the global transport system, which uses fossil fuels to ship your Brazilian soy beans and Californian almonds across the world.

If you don’t use fertilisers made from fossil fuels, you need animal by-products. There’s barely an organic fruit and vegetable farmer out there who doesn’t use some kind of animal by-product (manure, blood and bone) or the compost that contains it. And there’s barely a farm that isn’t reliant on gas and oil to make the fertiliser, run the tractors and ship the goods. Most estimates put it that the amount of fossil fuel needed to grow a calorie of food and get it to the table is 10 times more than the food calorie itself. It’s a negative-sum game. Grains and monoculture crops are worst among them — whereas grass-reared animals, killed and sold locally, are among the more efficient producers of food energy for fossil fuel use.

Take away the use of animal waste in the farming system and things will swing further to one side. If you want truly vegan agriculture, you’re going to have more fossil fuel emissions and in the process end up with more expensive food, poorer pollination and reduced variety thanks to the removal of domesticated bees.

Matthew Evans on his farm in southern Tasmania. Picture: Alan Benson
I have been fortunate enough to be on all sides of this debate. I’ve experimented with vegetarianism. I’ve thought about becoming vegan. I’ve been to intensive chicken and pig farms. I’ve “smelt money” and seen despair. I’ve also raised animals, killed animals (wild and domesticated) and cooked animals. What I’ve found is that the animal world isn’t isolated from the world of plants, and the place for nuanced, sensible debate about meat consumption should sit firmly with all, including with the omnivores of this world — a debate in which condemnation, aggression and intolerance should play no part.

Vegans are welcome to voice their opinion that raising and eating meat has consequences. Indeed, some of those consequences, from the personal to the animal to the environment, are worth serious thinking about. It’s quite possible that eating less meat might mean less suffering. But don’t be fooled into thinking that being vegan hurts no animal.

 

[Farmer Roy]

Why is everyone giving this bell end the time of day?? Waste of time.
There is none as blind as those who will not see...

I'm posting for the benefit of others, but yes, you are right