Hunting Act 2004 Comes Into Force At 12am

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Ah, at least I see that irony is alive and well....

RIVAL, it means a lot to you. You said how much land was taken up by grazing animals (which would then be despatched for the meat trade), and how that affected the environment. The counterbalance to that statement is that there is at least an equal amount taken up to grow endless of miles of crops, one of which is not conducive to human health (in spite of what the cereal packets say), and which are grown in areas cleared of any other living plant, organism, animal, or bird. Oh, I forgot tobacco, of course. That's another thing grown over miles and miles of bugger-all for the sake of the addicted.

If you wish to live in a landscape filled with industrial-strength crop-growing to satisfy vegetarians, I'm very sorry for the planet. The automated crop harvesting that now takes place, especially on what are becoming prairies even in the UK, are the size of office blocks, and therefore no creature attempting to nest or live in their path can live. Maybe you're happy with a soundless, songless, tree, animal, and bird-free world, but I'm not. But once you remove the grazing animals which comprise the nub of your argument, don't imagine that that land is going to be allowed to revert to some idealistic 'natural' state. What isn't turned to being cleared for the giant crop-managing machines will be built on.

If you think there's a problem with global warming now, wait until the mass clearance comes, and see how much carbon dioxide doesn't get cleaned up by the trees that were felled for crop growing.

I hope that's a bit clearer, now?
 
hi krizon , i have provided facts which show the meat industry to be responsible for both cruelty to animals and environmental concerns.

my solution to eliviate these problems does not involve the "alternative" you seem to be suggesting.

i would suggest that if humans ate less meat (in the same way we are told to save energy) there would be less cruelty,more natural land and the resultant reduction in animal feed requirements would help feed humans starving to death.

thats the kind of balance i'm looking for.

how about you?
 
Originally posted by RIVAL@Mar 5 2005, 07:11 PM
i would suggest that if humans ate less meat (in the same way we are told to save energy) there would be less cruelty,more natural land
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Like Krizon points out, RIVAL, is that this wouldn't be the case - there would be far less land, not more. In order to replace the meat that had gone from the diet more crops & vegetables would have to be grown which would take up far more land than that which is used now for grazing & feeding the animals. It certainly wouldn't be natural land either - in growing a large crop, it is more efficient to have one large "field" rahter than lots of small ones, the result of which (as Krizon says) is to pull out hedgerows & trees to make a larger area of cultivated land.
 
As is well known, a traditional mixed farm is the best place to find a rich and varied profusion of wild fauna in this country.
 
Dom, I don't know enough about land used but here's what Rival wrote earlier

The cruelty is appalling, but no less so than the environmental effects. Meat animals are fed anywhere from five to fifteen pounds of vegetable protein for each pound of meat produced—an unconscionable practice in a world where many go hungry. Whereas one-sixth an acre of land can feed a vegetarian for a year, over three acres are required to provide the grain needed to raise a year's worth of meat for the average meat-eater.
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If that's the case it kinda nullifies what her that's no speakin to me says.
 
As Ven rightly points out, the more varied the farm, the better the habitat for all forms of life - wild or not!

As to the ethics of the amount of food need to produce meat and the ethics involved too - the real burden of conscious then lies with you the consumer. If consumers were prepared to pay a fair price for milk and meat, then farmers wouldn't be forced to cut corners.

I thoroughly agree we need to be more restrictive in the amount and quality of the meat we eat. And more selective. If you want to end cruel farming methods, then don't buy poultry or eggs that are factory farmed, don't buy imported meats of any kind, ensure that the British meat you do buy is traceable and produced by a FABBL member (Farm Assured British Beef and Lamb) - as these farms are regularly inspected and have to conform to good farming practices and standards.


Not sure if Tom's referring to me or not with his last sentence but my laptop is currently languising in a data recovery shop in London, having suddenly decided to have a catastrophic failure last Monday. I am currently awaiting the news as to whether or not they can recover my data. As I am Month 11 of Payroll and month 10 of our financial year, plus I have several year's worth of data on Word, Excel, Outlook etc etc, you can imagine that I haven't exactly had a lot of time on here.... Yes, I do have a back up to four weeks ago for Sage Financial but not the other stuff.... Too used to, when working in our head office, to dumping everything on the main servers and since working from home for past two years, have not had that luxury.... Stupid, basically!
 
Originally posted by Songsheet@Mar 7 2005, 12:52 PM
Not sure if Tom's referring to me or not with his last sentence
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I was referring to Kri Julie. She's sent me to coventry for being an evil bastard who thinks it's uncivilised to needlessly slaughter animals.
 
Tom, I'm not sure you can take that as being read - there are plenty of livestock reared for slaughter that aren't on such intensive diets - for starters I would have thought that RIVAL is referring to those that are intensely factory farmed. Not all livestock is reared in this way for slaughter - in fact, a lot of it isn't! I wouldn't know the exact amounts fed as its been some years now since I helped out on farms with the livestock but a lot of stock is fed on a mixed diet of grazing, roughage (hay, silage etc) & concentrated feed with the roughage generally fed in the highest proportions.

Welcome to the forum, jejquade - a word of advice, calling people "lower than the excrement on your shoes" because they participate in something you disagree with is ill advised!
 
Absolutely, when Shadow Leader said that about PDJ's stamp collecting Club we nearly banned her
 
C'mon the five dog!


RIVAL, you say that you have provided "facts" about the effects of meat eating on the the environment. You have not. I did ask you for some evidence but you haven't come up with anything as yet. As I've already stated your 1/6 acre "fact" is wrong.
 
Originally posted by simmo@Mar 9 2005, 12:39 PM



RIVAL, you say that you have provided "facts" about the effects of meat eating on the the environment. You have not. I did ask you for some evidence but you haven't come up with anything as yet. As I've already stated your 1/6 acre "fact" is wrong.
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yes i have and here are some more :-


billions of farm animals worldwide (36 kg annual per capita meat consumption)
many animals are intensively reared in 'factory farms'
intensive livestock production responsible for 43% of the world's meat in 1996
global demand for meat is predicted to rise by up to 50% over the next 20 years
more than 200 million farm animals in the UK at any one time
about 900 million animals are slaughtered for food in the UK every year
most of the UK's 165 million poultry are reared intensively (76% of laying hens are reared in units of >20,000 birds, 61% of broiler chickens in units of >100,000 birds)
120 million pigs in the EU (concentrations may be >1000 pigs per hectare in parts of Belgium and the Netherlands); the UK has 8 million pigs
12 million cattle in the UK including 3 million dairy cattle (selective breeding and high-protein feeds have increased milk yields to 35-50 litres per day)
44 million sheep in the UK (subsidies have encouraged overstocking)
requiring huge quantities of feed
one third of the world's cereal harvest is fed to farm animals
95% of US soya production (nearly 100 million tonnes per year) is used as feed
worldwide, 73% of maize, 95% of oilmeals and 93% of fishmeal is fed to animals
the EU imports 70% of the high quality protein used in animal feed, some from countries such as Brazil, Indonesia and Senegal where there is widespread poverty
the UK imports feed from the equivalent of 1.75 million hectares of land outside the EU each year ('ghost acres'), an area equivalent to 28% of the UK's arable land
an intensively-reared dairy cow may eat 4700 kg of grass and silage and nearly 1650 kg of concentrated protein feed (eg. soya, fishmeal, rapemeal) per year
each kg of beef produced in Europe requires 5 kg of high-protein feedstuffs (FoE)
only a fraction (typically 30-40%) of the plant protein fed to animals is returned as animal protein; for beef cattle the protein conversion ratio is only 8%
grown on vast areas of land
two thirds of the world's agricultural land is used for maintaining livestock
>75% of UK agricultural land is devoted to livestock (67% grass plus 10% feed crops, including 39% of wheat and 51% of barley)
using massive inputs of water, energy, fertilisers and pesticides
87% of fresh water consumed worldwide is used for agriculture - the UN predicts that 40 countries will face severe water shortages in the next 20 years
to produce 1 kg of grain-fed beef requires 100,000 litres of water (100 times and 50 times the amount required to produce 1 kg of wheat and 1 kg of rice respectively)
feed production accounts for 70% of total fossil fuel use in animal farming
the UK uses 1.3 million tonnes of nitrogen fertiliser and 400,000 tonnes of phosphate per year, much of it used on grassland and crops grown for feed
450 active chemical ingredients are approved for pesticide use in the UK, a 30-fold increase since 1950 (winter wheat receives an average of 8 chemical sprays)
produce enormous amounts of waste
1.4 billion tonnes of solid manure is produced by US farm animals per year - 130 times the amount produced by the human population
200 dairy cows produce as much nitrogen in their manure as 10,000 people
farm animals are major sources of the greenhouse gases methane and nitrous oxide
ammonia released from manure and slurry is a major contributor to acid rain
intensive farms are major sources of airborne pollution and generate excess traffic, unpleasant smells and noise locally
causing serious pollution and environmental degradation
farm slurry and silage has many times the pollution potential of domestic sewage - silage effluent caused over 200 water pollution incidents in the UK in 1996
excess nitrogen from intensive farms may cause groundwater pollution, increasing nitrate levels in drinking water
eutrophication (nutrient enrichment) of water systems can cause algal blooms killing fish and other aquatic life and "has become a major problem in north-west Europe" according to the European Environment Agency
fertilisers and pesticides decrease biodiversity; 20 species of British birds have suffered population declines of >50% over the past 25 years - the RSPB blame agricultural practices associated with intensive animal farming
animal feeds crops such as soya, maize and rapeseed are among the first to be genetically modified (40% of the maize and 30-50% of the soyabeans grown in the US are genetically modified) posing an unknown threat to the environment

Source (may be a bit dated now circa 2000)

Dr Jacky Turner. Compassion in World Farming Trust .
Geoff Tansey & Joyce D’Silva . The Meat Industry .


if 1/6th acre of land cant feed a veggie for a year how much land do you believe could?
 
So should we kill all of these farm animals then?

With regard to the last question, my experience leads me to believe that you would require 4/5 acre.
 
Originally posted by simmo@Mar 11 2005, 04:08 PM
So should we kill all of these farm animals then?

With regard to the last question, my experience leads me to believe that you would require 4/5 acre.
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if you have to ask that question you haven't read my earlier posts properly.

your experience therefore differs from others , nothing wrong with that of course.
 
Of course in that 4/5, I was only thinking of eating one main meal a day, and I'm quite a light eater. You and these "others" must have sparrow like appetites.
 
Originally posted by simmo@Mar 11 2005, 05:15 PM
You and these "others" must have sparrow like appetites.
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have you actually read any of my postings?

i've finished with this now.i dont understand you , unless of course for some reason you have made false assumptions about me?
 
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