Meat: Causing more climate problems than transport and getting away with it.

[WouldBe]

Or we could do something reaaaaly crazy and just live without speciality food flown in from the other side of the world or use other means to transport food around. Seeing as we're rail connected to Europe, I'd imagine we could find enough alternatives from that vast continent to sustain a varied diet.

And, of course, encourage more local food consumption.

Quite right but even a lot of vegetarians wouldn't be happy if they can't get their speciality foods. And where would you get tofu from?

I just don't like it when some vegetarians have a go at the meat eaters without having a look at how much environmental impact they themselves are having.

 

[Crispy]

everything we do has an environmental effect, we just have to minimise things. So given a choice between oranges from north africa, and apples from france, I'll choose the apples.

 

[WouldBe]

All these things are valid, but the fact remains, whichever way you look at it, meat requires more energy/land/water to bring an equivalent amount of food to your plate than vegetables do.

It doesn't have to in some circumstances.

How many million tons of 'food'* waste are landfilled each year in the UK?
Food that could be used to feed pigs.

*By food I mean carrot tops, brussel leaves, outer leaves of cabbages and cauliflowers etc as well as food that could be eaten if supermarkets bothered to sell it instead of rejecting it for stupid reasons.

 

[Crispy]

Many millions. About 1.3rd of all food IIRC. However, remember the correct order:

Reduce, Re-use, Recycle.

The correct solution to the problem of food waste, is to reduce consumption.


PS: Has anyone mentioned methane yet?

 

[WouldBe]

everything we do has an environmental effect, we just have to minimise things. So given a choice between oranges from north africa, and apples from france, I'll choose the apples.

And so would I But how many vegetarians would insist on Brazillian (or other far off place) grown soya for their tofu?

How much energy is used to process tofu or quorn?

 

[WouldBe]

Many millions. About 1.3rd of all food IIRC. However, remember the correct order:

Reduce, Re-use, Recycle.

The correct solution to the problem of food waste, is to reduce consumption.


PS: Has anyone mentioned methane yet?

How do you reduce the amount of carrot tops, cauliflower leaves and sprout stalks if you want people to eat more veg and less meat?

Feeding these food waste products to pigs is recycling / re-using.

 

[onemonkey]

cows fart a lot too

*there you go crispy*

 

[WouldBe]

cows fart a lot too

*there you go crispy*

Decomposing veg produces an equal amount of methane.

 

[editor]

Quite right but even a lot of vegetarians wouldn't be happy if they can't get their speciality foods. And where would you get tofu from?

I just don't like it when some vegetarians have a go at the meat eaters without having a look at how much environmental impact they themselves are having.

When I grew up in the 70s there was nowhere near as much choice of food available.

And you know what? We got by, just fine.

 

[WouldBe]

When I grew up in the 70s there was nowhere near as much choice of food available.

And you know what? We got by, just fine.

So did I.

My dad always had an allotment so we couldn't get fresher and more locally sourced food.

 

[editor]

And so would I But how many vegetarians would insist on Brazillian (or other far off place) grown soya for their tofu?

Does tofu have to be flown around the world then?

Soya also comes from Asia, so there's no reason why it couldn't be transported by rail.

 

[_angel_]

When I grew up in the 70s there was nowhere near as much choice of food available.

And you know what? We got by, just fine.

Dont want to go back to the seventies concept of cuisine. *shudders*
Things have always been flown in / traded from abroad, tea, coffee, chocolate, spices, wine. The q is what things are being imported that we could make ourselves. Think the meat v vegan argument is a bit of a non starter.

 

[fredfelt]

And so would I But how many vegetarians would insist on Brazillian (or other far off place) grown soya for their tofu?

How much energy is used to process tofu or quorn?

Interesting you should ask as Soya's main use in the UK is for live stock and its use is essential in feeding intensively rared animals.

I did a bit of research on this as I wondered how much of an impact drinking of soya milk has in relation to drinking milk. Again it seems that using animals to process the soya is always a far more energny intensive method of getting proteen than eating it directly, or eating a derivate such as Tofu.

 

[durruti02]

Wild boar feed and grow quite happily in woods. Why can't domesticated pigs?
Why can't they be fed on all the trimmings from veg production?
Amount of feed taken off peoples tables = 0

Cows eat grass. If it's from land that can't be used for other crop production then feed taken from peoples tables =0

Water can't be destroyed so how does that make a difference?

You don't need fertiliser if animals are living off the land infact animal excrement is a good fertiliser.

What extra energy burned?

having meat as part of a mixed economy is one thing .. the factory, industrial, meat industry in this country is entirely differrent .. it is extremely high energy input and the animals eat significant amountsof animal/fish protein ..

and as for someone suggestting we can only grow swedes and kale here .. LOL check any allotment and see teh large number of high protein peas and beans grwoing

actually taff it is more than what you suggest .. as the russians found out and is obvious comparing allotment productivity to farm productivity ( allotments far outproduce farms for protein per acre) it is small scale high human energy inout that is teh solution for us .. it is more democratic it is more healthyy iot is more ecological etc etc

and yes ALF have not a clue on this ( or did not use to ) . i remember one of them on tele saying that when we get rid of farm animals the country would be quiet! .. no this is wrong .. it should instead be full of people .. producing ecologically and working ecologically and unlike in days of yorn .. connected to peoplel globally etc

 

[editor]

Things have always been flown in / traded from abroad, tea, coffee, chocolate, spices, wine.

I think you'll find that Britain managed to be well stocked with tea, coffee, chocolate, spices, wine etc before air planes started flying them in.

 

[fredfelt]

And so would I But how many vegetarians would insist on Brazillian (or other far off place) grown soya for their tofu?

How much energy is used to process tofu or quorn?

As you are interested here's a report on how soya consumption (which 80% of the production of is used in the livestock industry) is destroying virgin rain forests.

http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/international/press/reports/eating-up-the-amazon.pdf

It makes for quite shocking reading.

 

[kyser_soze]

When I grew up in the 70s there was nowhere near as much choice of food available.

And you know what? We got by, just fine.

Innit? I blame advocado/guacamole and prawn cocktails, the two great culinary innovations of the 1970s for starting this whole overseas food malarky.

Besides, we could go back to growing saffron as a major product and bankrupt India - most expensive commodity in the world per kilo and grown near where I growed up.

 

[_angel_]

Innit? I blame advocado/guacamole and prawn cocktails, the two great culinary innovations of the 1970s for starting this whole overseas food malarky.

.

Putting pineapple chunks on spam fritters was the beginning of the end.

 

[fredfelt]

Putting pineapple chunks on spam fritters was the beginning of the end.

Where as pineapple chunks and cheese on a coctail sticks, inserted into a potato covered with foil then placed on a doiley is the ulitmate in good taste

 

[kyser_soze]

This thread just became Abigail's Party...

 

[Taxamo Welf]

Or we could do something reaaaaly crazy and just live without speciality food flown in from the other side of the world or use other means to transport food around. Seeing as we're rail connected to Europe, I'd imagine we could find enough alternatives from that vast continent to sustain a varied diet.

And, of course, encourage more local food consumption.

yes, ffs people don't even know half of the amazing ffod from these islands alone innit.


Plus, you can grow pretty much anything here, whoever ed was repsonding to is wrong.

 

[_angel_]

yes, ffs people don't even know half of the amazing ffod from these islands alone innit.


Plus, you can grow pretty much anything here, whoever ed was repsonding to is wrong.

We'd starve if we didn't import food. That's after we died of boredom of course.

 

[durruti02]

yes, ffs people don't even know half of the amazing ffod from these islands alone innit.


Plus, you can grow pretty much anything here, whoever ed was repsonding to is wrong.

too right bob flowerdew grows pretty much everything ..

p.s. check out plants for the future

http://www.pfaf.org/

.. full of plants we do not use but could .. amazing

 

[durruti02]

We'd starve if we didn't import food. That's after we died of boredom of course.

that is utter rubbish .. if we did not have so many animals and spent money on food production here instead of importing we would have a far better diet ..


p.s. i suspect most people would be grow food on a small scale for employment if they had an option rather than the job they do now.

 

[untethered]

Transporting and storing food has high energy costs whether you're taking it by air, road or rail.

The answer is to have local production and local consumption, not just assume that we can bring in food by rail from far off (even other parts of Britain) and that's all fine.

So we need British food on British plates at the very least, but even better, local food for local people. If something is out of season, you eat something else. How about that?

And down with the EU.

 

[Taxamo Welf]

We'd starve if we didn't import food. That's after we died of boredom of course.

jog on

Albion, a colony established by the victorians after their trade routes to the continent had been well secured!

I think not.

 

[Taxamo Welf]

We'd starve if we didn't import food. That's after we died of boredom of course.

actually even if this were the case, using modern agricutural methods, whatever we needed could be grown here eventually.

Its all a case of what we need rather than what we currently need to sell.

 

[WouldBe]

Interesting you should ask as Soya's main use in the UK is for live stock and its use is essential in feeding intensively rared animals.

That's my point you don't need to feed live stock on soya.

Back in the 70's I used to help out occasionally on the dairy farm just up the road from where I lived. During the day the cows ate grass in the fields. They ate grass pellets while being milked and in winter ate dried grass and silage (grass). All of which can be produced with very little energy input.

 

[WouldBe]

Transporting and storing food has high energy costs whether you're taking it by air, road or rail.

The answer is to have local production and local consumption, not just assume that we can bring in food by rail from far off (even other parts of Britain) and that's all fine.

The answer is to have more common sense. A bit of co-operation wouldn't go amiss either.

There was a prog on TV around this time last year looking at where our christmas dinners come from. All of Sainsbury's sprouts come from 1 farm in Scotland. The sprouts are loaded on a lorry driven (past the local Sainsbury's 2 miles down the road) all the way to the south east where they are then loaded on other lorries and driven all the way back to the stores in Scotland.

 

[WouldBe]

Regarding water consumption most fields of crop I've seen use sprinkler systems to water them.
http://pubs.caes.uga.edu/caespubs/pubcd/B882.htm shows a sprinkler system that sprays 680 gallons of water per minute. (That's the type of sprinkler system I've seen used round here).

680gpm is enough water (in 1 hour) to provide 62,500 people with the recommended 2 litres of water per day.

Now if an environmentalist tells you growing meat uses more water (and therefore robbing people of fresh water) than growing veg then they are talking out of their arse.