I’m curious what you mean by that. I’m an omnivore who loves the occasional steak but I know that what it takes to bring one to market - environmentally - is a huge footprint. And while I’ll never be a vegetarian or a vegan, the ones I know who are serious about it are far healthier than I. Explain please? TIA
Like I said, no chance we are reaching agreement.
You are creating your own straw man to discuss this with, and it sounds like you do disrespect others when you characterize them as emotional, implying it has affected their ability to think, skewed their focus or unbalanced their values, or say you don’t accept that damage is being done to the planet by meat-centered diets and reject as based on “myth.”
I don’t mind outright disagreement in social media. It happens. People who completely disagree with each other are going to end up in the same space on social media. However, you are pushing some false arguments here I don’t want to let pass unremarked upon. The number of people who “need” to eat meat for health reasons is minuscule and hardly the point. If you are personally saying in this thread that you, Stone Soup, must eat meat as your doctors recommend, fine. No one can argue with that. But leave it there, because 99.9 percent of people do not have that issue, there is nothing nutritionally insufficient about a vegatarian diet and those who continue to eat meat because of the taste pleasure it gives them are not being unfairly characterized as people who don’t much care about animals. Care a little? Maybe, but not a lot.
I have not constructed a straw man, nor was my suggestion that this is an emotionally loaded argument based on anything other than your professed love of animals as a rationale for dietary choices. I understand it, I don’t disrespect it, but I do dispute any foundation in nutrition/metabolic and environmental health.
We’ll never agree on any of this, so I won’t waste our time disputing your assertions. We are working from very different perspectives and source material. I’m sure there will be topics on which we agree in the future, and I look forward to those.
Hi, Stone Soup: I made a mistake hitting the withdrawn button when I wanted to edit and add a sentence – and now the post makes it look like I said something nasty that I regretted, which really wan’t the case. Here’s what I didn’t mean to delete:
Just to be clear for the sake of this thread about farming, I speculated that others would be eating less meat in the future for reasons of climate change (and unstated personal reasons) – not that vegetarianism was my dietary choice as an animal lover. That’s why I said you had set up a straw man. But even when disputing with those who think that animals raised for butchery are ever going to be anythlng less than miserable, I will stop calling myself an animal lover – which was thoughtless of me – and switch to animal advocate instead.
I don’t see what difference it makes, but whatever makes you comfortable is fine with me.
We have a local rancher who raises cows, sheep and pigs for slaughter. Every day of their lives is glorious except the last one.
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Hi, I thought I would wade into this thread. I live in rural area of the USA and ag and agribusiness is the main wage support for families. There are only a couple of factory farms(dairy) in my area and most of the farms are still family run operations. The animals are treated well as it is in the best interests of the farmers to have healthy livestock.
On another topic, I just purchased a 1/2 of beef from a farmer(charolais) and had it processed in my local butcher shop. The total bill for the beef and butchering was $1135. and I brought home almost 300 lbs of prime meat for a less than $4.00 per pound price tag. The hamburger is very lean and probably 1/2 hamburger and the other 1/2 is steaks and roasts. The only downside is the money upfront and I need to have the freezer space.
My mom’s dad was a sheep farmer in Ireland. When she wasn’t at school, my mom, born in the 1920’s, helped farm the land. Her older siblings did the same until they all (11 of them) went off to London to find work.
I have a cousin who still farms down the lane from my mom’s land. He has equipment, unlike my mom’s family back in the day,
A young London-born second cousin recently married a farmer in Ireland. Now she’s a farmer too.
I have family in northern Maine who are not farmers, but during the potato harvest, would work on the potato farms.
My uncle and two cousins down in Georgia owned a horse farm.
A friend from my nightclubbing days married a fisherman, who was the son of a fisherman. Her son is now, also a commercial fisherman.
I used to date a man who loved to fish. Eventually he gave up his job and went to work as a commercial swordfish fisherman out of Montauk. I just Google-stalked him and he’s still in the biz.
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google stalk, I like that term:)
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