Off Topic Climate Strike

I have
Feel free to point out my mistake though

 

Oh and just to be open about it I do only eat a plant based diet

 

I was talking more about a blanket ban Worldwide of meat consumption to rapidly address Climate Change.
Doing it your way by "natural wastage" would be very slow. Male and female animals would need to segregated or sterilised.
Some people seem to think, probably not you, that there should be a moo cow / porky pig equivalents of donkey sanctuaries, where animals could retire too. Who would pay for this? Where would their food come from? They would still produce methane.
We all know you are a card-carrying herbivore Den

 

OK to answer a number of points from different people, the first problem I have with it is that it was in a school, a place of education but there appears to be no references for their statistics. The numbers are highly controversial and emotive, take the amount of water used for example. If you have a piece of land unsuitable for growing stuff so you put an animal on it, can you claim the rainfall as water used to produce the meat? the rain would be there anyway. In Europe the GHG emissions from agriculture in total not just animals are about 10% of the total, transport is more than 20%. If everyone stopped eating meat tomorrow the climate change will not stop. On the health side people are not getting obese from eating good local produced meat products. Have a google and see where almond milk, palm oil, quorn and tofu come from for example. Eat local.

 

No one had mentioned a world wide ban, and you never mentioned that, so reasonable for me to say it was an odd argument I’d say.
Anyway
It’s not natural wastage. It’s just stock control. Less people eat meat will result in meat producers making less meat. By your argument when less people started buying newspapers the printers would have kept printing the papers and we’d have had to find a way of getting rid of all the excess papers. Meat industry is an industry, it’s how industry works.
Oh and they do keep the males and females separate (particularly in the dairy industry so they can kill the bulls straight after being born because it’s three times more expensive to sell them than it is to kill them)
So I’m pretty sure they could manage to stop them breeding, because they do now, and they’re an industry.
So no moo cow sanctuaries. The manufacturers would just stop making meat, or make less meat at least, and they’d kill any they couldn’t use...just like they do now.

 

You’re spot on raising the issue of buying and local.
I’m pretty sure the school would be able to provide references, although probably others could provide contradictory references.
Regardless of that though I do think they should have told parents and maybe provided the references ahead of doing it.
We had a discussion about changing buffets at work, when we get them in, to vegan. Even though I’m vegan I completely disagreed with that approach. People should make informed decisions not have choice removed IMHO.

I do think it would make a big difference to the environment if meat production was reduced though

 

Erm, I don't think newspapers are animals. Producing less meat means not killing animals. They would continue to graze and produce methane.
Dairy cattle are an exception as only females produce milk anyway. In many parts of the World, including where I'm going soon, very little land is arable and rainfall is erratic, so growing food crops instead of animal husbandry is not viable.
Climate change cannot be reversed solely by western countries.
Burning of fossil fuels Worldwide has more of an effect on climate change that animal rearing in the UK anyway.

 

You’re making some odd arguments and comparisons.

Producing less animals means not killing animals - Huh? Animals don’t live forever. You breed less, there will be less to kill. Simple maths. Roughly they’re killed to eat about 18 months, so all you’d do is breed less and less would get to that age (bulls for eating are all castrated anyway) As I said even if everyone decided to go vegan it would be a gradual thing, and meat producers would just gradually breed less.

I’m no expert in where you’re going, but if land is ok for livestock but not crops that is unusual. Particularly if water is rare there. Meat needs far more water per kg than crops, and the livestock need crops grown so they can eat them anyway. Most places could (if they want) simply cut out the animals and eat the crops.

Climate change can’t be reversed by Western countries only - Correct. No one suggested it could.

Burning fossil fuel worldwide creates more Climate change than rearing animals in the uk. - duh...yeah...it would. It’s quite a lot bigger. Anyway saying another thing is bad doesn’t make the other thing better.

 

Do we not have vegetarian food now or has it to be referred to as Plant Based ??

 

Yes, but if it is plant based, what is the rest of the diet made from?

 

You do have vegetarian food, but that may have dairy in it
Plant based just means vegetarian, with no dairy really.

 

Reasonable question actually

It does get used to mean plant only, but I think ‘based’ refers more to the food being cooked with plants only, because if you just said you only eat plants people would assume you only ate it raw.

 

If you said you only eat meat, I don't think people would assume you eat it raw...unless you are an Inuit.

 

...and?

 

There are other ingredients which aren’t meat, or dairy, or plants of course

salt for example

 

****ing hell this getting complicated!
I will give it a good coat of looking at over a Bacon and egg sarnie in the morning

 

Well I suppose the bread counts as plant based, so you are getting there.

 

...not all bread.

 

You wait until you have to think about which alcohol is vegan!