Responsible meat-eating

I cut out Chicken and Eggs about six months ago unless I was happy they were high welfare but have pretty much dropped chicken. I came at it from a slightly different angle after listening to a Will MacAskill (effective altruism, recommend checking it out) and him talking about the concept of net suffering and you could argue that if you have to eat meat, eating larger animals would lead to a reduction in net suffering in the world which made sense, if I eat mainly beef or sheep, a couple of animals can sustain me for a year, if I eat a lot of chicken, that is fifty plus animals I need to eat a year. This assumes I eat only happy animals and not one sad cow versus fifty happy chickens.

If I had the room, I would definatly breed rabbits for consumption, hopefully will in the future when not in a flat.

At a guess, far more soy per cup of coffee would be used per cow-cup-of-milk (an actual SI unit, if I recall) that per cup-of-soy-milk.

Cows aren't eating that much soy in the UK (around 10% of diet), its mainly Chickens with a high soy impact, pork is also far worse than beef. Soy is rubbish though, as they cut down millions of hectares annualy of forest in south america to plant it

I've gone pretty much vegetarian at home and only eat meat in restaurants, not sure how ethical this may be.

I can resist buying bresaola when it's sliced and in plastic at the supermarket, not when its hanging in a restaurant. Likewise with steak tartare, i'm not sure how advisable making it yourself is, but when someone else is doing it, sign me up.

Surely he can keep being smug?

Most people associate soy with tofu and soy milk. However, only a small portion of soy is consumed directly by humans. In fact, most of the world’s soy crop ends up in feed for poultry, pork, cattle and even farmed fish.

These were transported half a mile by foot :) ...

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Only half a decent sized steak.

Luckily I only drink beer and not this 'water' stuff.

It's like carbon offsetting for steak...

Might get some chickens for eggs but our area is heaving with cats and foxes... Anyone in London doing this?

If I had the room, I would definatly breed rabbits for consumption, hopefully will in the future when not in a flat.

https://www.pets4homes.co.uk/pet-advice/care-of-the-house-rabbit.html

Got to wonder where the hell cat food comes from... Ugh.

@lemonade I occasionally go to Better Foods - i'll do a specific meat-finding trip there next week I reckon. I admit i've kind of just fired out this question and not really done my own research, which is a little lazy, but it does seem to have sparked some interesting discussion and i already now have some tips for places to get better meat from, which was my goal.

I think we probably all agree that vegan is (arguably? definitely?) the 'best' way to eat, but there's a good vegan thread already. Looks like there are plenty of us who aren't willing to give up meat but want to be better at it, so if making the first post a resource list is a good idea (as @Batt suggested), I'll whack some links on it (or feel free to do so if anyone has admin access or whatever). Maybe a glossary of terms like 'free-range', 'organic' etc would be useful too.

I don't agree that vegan is the "best" way to eat.
I'm following this - currently interesting - thread because I enjoy eating meat but would like to eat stuff that's been cared for because it nearly always tastes better too.

I guess what you can say about being vegan, though, is that it's most compatible with a completely ethical and sustainable way of consuming food. Kind of like electric cars. In a way.

Regarding the sustainability of eating meat. It's worth remembering that not all land that is currently used for animal rearing and grazing is feasible arable land. For example hillside that can be grazed by sheep might be completely unsuitable for growing anything that humans can eat. It doesn't therefore have to cost any land to grass-feed an animal. Likewise, if you feed your own pig only on scraps that you can't eat yourself, you're generating food (the pig) at no cost to the environment.

There's obviously other issues like water consumption but using the above approach more rigorously might balance our diets a bit better by rearing only such livestock as can be fed on human-inedible vegetable matter.

But those hillsides used to be wooded, and the felling of those trees to provide pasture contributes to soil erosion, reduction in biodiversity, and isn't terribly sustainable etc etc. There are problems however you look at it, but then that's why we're talking about a wholesale reduction in meat consumption.

Maybe we're the problem. Deep eh?

I assume methane emissions are also an issue with the amount of animals needed to provide meat for the large number of humans knocking around these days.

Yes, hill pastures cause erosion etc.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/09/lake-district-world-heritage-site-george-monbiot

Stand back from the fells and valleys, and try to judge this vista as you would a landscape in any other part of the world. What you will see is the great damage farming has inflicted: wet deserts grazed down to turf and rock; erosion gullies from which piles of stones spill; woods in which no new trees have grown for 80 years, as every seedling has been nibbled out by sheep; dredged and canalised rivers, empty of wildlife and dangerous to the people living downstream; tracts of bare mountainside on which every spring is a silent one.

...

I can see the value and beauty of the traditional shepherding culture in the Lake District. I can also see that the farming there, reliant on subsidies, quad bikes and steel barns, now bears little relationship to traditional practice. As the size of landholdings has increased, it looks ever more like ranching and ever less like the old system the bid describes. The bid’s claim that farming there is “wholly authentic in terms of … its traditions, techniques and management systems” is neither intelligible nor true. Remnants of old shepherding culture tend to be represented ceremonially, as its customs are mostly disconnected from the farm economy.

Are you suggesting cannibalism?!

(If so, I'm in)

One thing to consider is separating the environmental impact with animal welfare when considering your diet. Eating less meat may contribute positively to both yes. Beyond that simple formula however, if you start drilling down to specific foods the single, salient issues is that our environmental impact as Developed World consumers is insane - runnerbeans from Israel, broccoli from Morocco, quinoa fucking people's shit up in SA etc al. I guess unless you are cycling to Thamesmead to pick up your Quorn in person things there's no getting around your negative impact. Pick and choose a few battles and move on.

On another note as @amey rightly pointed out most of our "choices" are really just another extension of our privilege. Try making £17k a year with three kids and see how easy it is to go local, seasonal, vegetarian and organic. Me and my wife work full time so our kid is in nursery, that my son doesn't eat Walkers crisps three meals a day is some kind of miracle.

why doesent your son work full time? then you can afford quinoa and avocado and seitan.

If my son worked full-time he'd eat the same shit I'd just roll on ENVE

Fair points. I was noting that if we need to produce X amount of food to feed a population (and that's a discussion in itself) and we remove meat from their diet, it's not always the case that land previously used for meat production can be arable farmed to fill the resulting calorie/protein deficit. We'd then have to find new arable land, which might itself require clearing woodland. Even arable farming is not without impact for biodiversity and habitat loss.

Try making £17k a year with three kids and see how easy it is to go local, seasonal, vegetarian and organic.

Can be/is done - we did local, seasonal, vegetarian and organic out of financial necessity with 3 kids on what my ex wife called a "school leavers wage".

Allotment + imagination + resourcefulness + wanting to do it in the first place.

Well done!