In the far distant past, one of the key issues that enabled us to increase brain size and become more intelligent, was eating meat.
When those of us who are not bound by society`s rules about standing in queues at supermarkets with their prepackaged often unidentifiable lumps of flesh actually source our meat as much as we can, we not only support local and rural small farmers but often a more natural way of living, since at least in my part of the world, there are many meat producers that produce on a very small scale compared to, say, the USA or Canada, which is where, imo, the problem of animal welfare concerns often spring from.
I see the beasts bound for meat in the fields around me. I see how free range they are, how the farmers and crofters treat them (often very well indeed because if for no other reason, a livestock animal is very expensive!) and thanks to my work, see first hand a slaughterhouse at work.
No vegan has been able to answer decently, what would happen to the world`s livestock animals should we go vegan overnight. Man has always had, since he began domesticating animals and rough farming, a symbiotic relationship that involves the care and protection, and breeding, of meat animals, coupled with a care of the land needed to do so. It`s only in modern times this balance has gotten out of hand and there are those aware of this that strive to redress that. It can be mended, not by going vegan or vegetarian overnight, but by judicious small farming practices and a changing of, in these countries (the British Isles) ridiculous EU laws that fail to take into account our very landscape and heritage of producing some of the world`s best meat for the table.
The sheer number of meat eaters that also strive to eat meat with ethics and common sense grows every day largely due to the availability of information on the drawbacks of large farming practices and their resultant health hazards and the growing realisation that compared to our ancestors, our sedentary lifestyles do not allow us to eat meat in the same quantities they did, so we adapt accordingly.
It`s about time that vegans and vegetarians stopped preaching at omnivores, always using the ethical argument to try blatant emotional blackmail.
If I, as a meat eater, came online and harangued vegans or vegetarians to begin to eat meat in order to support small local farmers and healthy farming practices, do you think I`d be allowed to go on with it?
I`d be castigated for trying to force my ways onto other folks.But vegetarians and vegans do exactly that, yet by believing they have the moral high ground, folks are too scared or too worried about pc-ness to tell them so!
In reality, since this is a prepping site and not a health food forum, arguments about which is right and which is wrong (since neither has the upper hand imo) shouldn`t be allowed on the boards.
I understand there`s a food section, but in truth, in a SHTF situation, all food, meat or otherwise, becomes crucial and important, and veganism becomes untenable in a world where shops are not stocking imported grains, nuts or other foods needed to keep a vegan healthy. (think about where your soya, tofu or other foods actually come from please) and where the British Isles are not capable of growing enough of these crops to support a sizeable vegan population and the rest of the omnivore population as well.
In the end, I`ve got no problem with anyone being vegan or vegetarian so long as they don`t try to preach to me about my morals as a meat eater. I don`t do that to them and would expect the same courtesy back.
So can I please request that ethical subjects about meat are either not allowed on the boards, or that if they are, we meat eaters can give equally ethical arguments about the problems of feeding a vegan population in an overpopulated world?
There are more omnivores in the British Isles that DO care about, and try their damndest, to source ethical meat, than vegans and vegetarians seem to be aware of. We constantly put pressure on the meat industry to change rearing practices and provide well reared, `happy` meat. We eat less meat and eat more discerningly with each passing year.
In a growing economically disastrous climate, where choices are dwindling and politics ensures there is less and less in our pockets in order to be picky about our food, even the lessening supplies of good quality, ethically grown, reasonably priced meat does not tend to shove us in the direction of vegetarianism or veganism because that itself brings problems, of the expense and carbon footprint of the food supply needed to keep healthy. Here in Britain we simply cannot support a vegan population without importing, and to many of us, that is wrong.
So here`s to omnivores with a conscience. And yes, many vegans use the argument, "Well, I only meant it to be aimed at the ones without a conscience," then please bear in mind that the links you post, and the points you make, are read by us all. It might profit you better to frequent a forum specific to, say, meat recipes or a pro hunting forum.
I am big and ugly enough to take it.