Wealthy nations should stop eating beef

Whilst lab-grown meat is definitely on the horizon; just clone the beef cells so you don't need so many cows, I think deforestation is the real worry when it comes to climate change.
Save a tree, in fact plant many more trees and eat all the cows you want.
 
I wonder how many people that weren't willing to give up meat, would be willing to switch it to some different meats? It's grazing animals that are the worst for methane so birds like chicken, turkey, goose, pheasant, pigeon, duck, quail etc could become more of the staple of peoples diet. Or take it from other countries, frogs, snails, kangaroo, crocodile etc.
 
The white turkey is a finely tuned weight gain machine . They can be ready to eat in a few months ....same same for 'eating' chickens . You could time your poultry crops to mesh in with other agricultural work . For instance you might feed your turkeys with vegetable crop waste from your fields . Or use the heat from silage production to run your hatchery , Or reprocess the poultry manure for your vegetable rows .

The environmental impact of little adjustments like this should not be underestimated . The waste don't rot , less feed has to be delivered ,less fuel burnt , meat is produced cheaper and even tastier . Runner bean fed turkeys taste gooood .

As it stands UK agriculture tends to go the simplest route . We have laying chickens for eggs ...and eating chickens for meat . The economics are finely tuned in poultry production, just like the genetics . 'Mixed' systems are rare and often not viable on an industrial scale .

If we factor in climate change to the equation , it's easy to see climate 'savings' from every aspect of meat production in the UK . The only thing missing is the labour input .

It's a consumer thing too though . Many dairy bull calfs and little baby cockerels never see their first sunrise ....because customers don't want the low quality meat they produce . In the future we might have to be a bit less fussy about the meat we consume . We might also have to accept a seasonal aspect to meat production , with gluts to munch through and winter shortages .
 
The only problem with replacing beef with chicken in the US is there would need to be seven billion eight hundred million chickens slaughtered each year. And that's just for the US. Add that to the 9 billion already being slaughtered and it's even more massive number.
 
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Producing Rabbit used to be a thing in the UK . That could start up again . Personally I'd rather do without than eat rabbit 😛 .

I was watching a Youtube guy that eats out a lot in Chinatown ...and he reckoned frog was a meat for the future . I have eaten frog and didn't think much of it but not like the big juicy whole frogs he had .

I am game for all that stuff though ...everything but slugs . I liked alligator quite a bit .
 
Food for thought: excess protein consumption leads to kidney failure, which is as much a problem in the US as heart disease and cancer. Switching your type of meat isn't the issue, but the quantity of it. People do not need that much meat. Consider, if a voluntary vegetarian can live off of zero meat, then everyone else can surely reduce a bit of their own consumption for the sake of their kidneys, if not for their planet, and do so without whining too much about it.

Back in the day, my great great grandparents only ever ate meat on Sunday, and that was not only a common thing at the time, but amongst prosperous farmers with access to their own quality meat. Modern consumption is ridiculous and has no logical basis in history or science. I'll say it again. It's about greed and gluttony, traits that people used to recognize as sins. Whether you're religious or not is irrelevant; it's still a problem.
 
I certainly use very little meat . Perhaps a legs worth of beef a year , a couple of legs of pork , maybe 3-4 chickens and a turkey 😛 However I use a litre of milk everyday without fail .

Today I had 4 courgettes delivered with my shopping that came from Spain . I have a weakness for veg out of season , usually have a Spanish lettuce as well . I've always found importing fresh veg obscene , asparagus from Thailand , Blueberries from New Zealand 😱. It hasn't stopped me buying imported summer veg all winter though 🙄.


While we're on the subject , the sleeping giant for most of us in all this is our own sewage. Most of us crap in our own drinking water , then throw it away 😛 . Nations like the US and the UK are going to have to look long and hard at their toilet habits . Recycling our sewage for agricultural use is the bitter pill we don't want to swallow . Other nations do it , even we do it on a very small scale , but it's still taboo over here . I am hardcore , and not squeamish , but the thought of using my own sewage to grow food gives me the heebie-jeebies 😀 .
 
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Hunga Munga said:
Today I had 4 courgettes delivered with my shopping that came from Spain . I have a weakness for veg out of season , usually have a Spanish lettuce as well . I've always found importing fresh veg obscene , asparagus from Thailand , Blueberries from New Zealand 😱. It hasn't stopped me buying imported summer veg all winter though 🙄.
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My courgettes might have come from Spain too, but I am enjoying the stir fry from them. I am trying to eat more seasonal and avoid food that has travelled too far, but UK to Spain is less than from one coast of America to the other, so I don't think European food is too bad.
 
I do this vegeburger/grilled courgette combination (having it tonight 🙂 ) that is every bit as tasty and juicy as a quality meat burger . Shame you've got no garden space 'Shade . A pot courgette produces a crazy amount of summer dinners . 😛

I'm not doing much veg this year but I'll do courgette/marrow and spaghetti squash , maybe some other table squash , an acorn or something . Not really a huge fan of the pumpkins or butternuts that we can get from the UK shops .

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If you can find them at a farmers market , I reckon these are the most awesome veg on the planet 😀 With these on tap , I'd happily give up beef forever 🙂 .
 
Unripe it has a 'crispiness' that I really like ...If you get a ripe one they go a bit nutty for my tastes . My friends liked baking them but I prefer boiled . I love the damn things , but the season is short and they don't store well either .
 
I recently saw a programme on NETFLIX on the dangers of a lot of meats, and I would love to go vegan, however I have a Greek family and i would more than likely be disowned if I stopped eating meat haha! It was terrifying though (the programme I mean!), all these Cancer, diabetes and heart condition charities had on their websites what foods to eat to prevent these illnesses, however they were all sponsored by the biggest brands in the meat industry, so of course they were biging up meat, although they are the worst foods you could eat (this was in America so it may vary). Meat is extremely bad for the environment and if you think about it, the strongest/biggest animals on the planet are herbivores, like gorillas, elephants, giraffes. Apparently, and this shocked me, even in Britain where I am they allow a certain amount of cow pus in milk! EW! But yeah, this was shocking, its definitely worth a watch and will scare the bejesus out of you!
 
@LemonBanana there's a new one called Seaspiracy about the fishing industry, however do remember that like the meat industry being biased, the makers being vegan themselves also does give it a bias.
 
LemonBanana
LemonBanana
Aah yes Seaspiracy is on my watch list! Yeah, its an interesting point, bias is such a hard think to avoid it seems
Spanky said:
While people are busy talking about the taste and how to get it to taste like meat, no one is saying that those foods are really expensive. Even the cheap dirtburgers like Boca Burger or Morningstar I think are more than a lot of people would pay. They need to look at how to drive down the cost of the fauxfoods if they want more people to eat it.
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I was thinking this reading through the posted article, and then you said it. While I agree wholeheartedly with the climate concerns, it always comes off as elitist and tone-deaf to me when wealthy people such as Bill Gates make these airy pronouncements. It is more expensive to eat vegetarian (or just healthier in general), drive electric cars, and a lot of other things that are good for both us and the environment, and there is very little acknowledgement of this. So, start with subsidies instead of scolding.

Secondly, there needs to be some plan for areas dependent on ranching. Vast tracts of Montana and Wyoming, for instance, are good only for raising cattle. (Coal mining is also big in those states.) We can't just say "sucks for you," we need to help them develop other industries. Is Bill Gates willing to devote some of his wealth to that?
 
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It's only more expensive to be veggie if you buy the processed foods, pasta, rice, vegetables are all cheap foods. You might pay a little more for lentils and legumes, but still cheaper than the processed foods.
 
Stake fodder said:
It is more expensive to eat vegetarian (or just healthier in general)
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Not in the UK. I did a comparison with Spanky on another thread (might be earlier in this thread). A meat substitute (chicken, minced beef) is cheaper than than the real thing here. In the US it's three times more expensive than meat.
 
I'm a vegetarian and fruit and veg in the UK is amazingly cheap. Now I'm not sure how good that is for the farmers who are growing the stuff, but it's great for the consumer.

All the major supermarkets here have their own vegetarian and/or vegan brands, which are cheaper than named brands like Linda McCartney or Quorn etc., but not by a great amount.
 
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