Veganism, genuine questions.

My 8-year old grandson visited a Vegan food festival in his home town recently with his mother. He tried lots of what was on offer and at the end said the Vegan Food is fine, provided normal food is available also.

Jalima in the Northern Territory the fines are over $70,000 and five years jail. Seems to be illegal in Australia but with much smaller fines. Who knew, not me, though I wouldn’t have the stomach nor be brave enough to chop off a snakes head with a shovel. At least I won’t cop a fine.

SIL mentioned recently he would be docking (putting a band around the sheep’s tail until it drops off) the younger sheep’s tails. Poor sheep, they don’t have a good life. I don’t think they have humane deaths, because they know and also suffer while being transported to the abbatoirs.

We've had experience of Australian snakes, Faye - I know you're not supposed to kill them, isn't it against the law? However, one of the dogs was always very good at killing them - sadly that dog died (of old age).

Wanting to live is not a human attribute it’s a survival instinct shared by all animals including human ones. People who have worked in or visited slaughterhouses will tell you that animals sense and smell death, and they fight to live to the bitter end.

It is only by viewing animals as ‘different from us’ that we allow ourselves to treat them as we do. They are sentient beings, not really ours to use and abuse, and we would do well to remember that. Empathy should not be confined to inter-human relationships.

elegran you wouldn’t crush your old sick pet into a crate with hundreds of others, drive it hundreds of miles with no food, water or care, then prod and force it into line to have its throat cut. You can’t comparing euthanising a pet to industrial scale slaughter of healthy animals. A bolt to the head in the sight of others, having its throat cut and letting it bleed to death or throwing it live into a crusher- sorry, these methods aren’t humane.

As I live in rural Australia and often have sheep in the paddock at the back of my house I unfortunately see some of what goes on. I care enough for animal welfare to have not eaten meat for most of my life.

I had to laugh though, I was telling DD about a snake found in the infants’ class at GC’s school today. DD then told me they find about three or four snakes a year at the local nursing home. The head nurse is a vegan and said they are not allowed to use the rake and shovel to kill any snakes found as it’s cruel The staff have to use some box type contraption to catch the snake and take it outside and let it go. So if the head nurse isn’t on duty they catch the snakes with the rake and chop their heads off. They then phone the head nurse and say they caught a snake and let it go outside. ?? Bear in mind there are brown snakes and tiger snakes around here and they are in the top ten of most dangerous snakes in the world.

GD 7 nearly ran into one late last year, she was shaking and crying and said it was jumping. We were lucky it didn’t bite her. She said it was brown, apparently they jump when they are trying to turn around. We couldn’t see where it went, more than likely under the decking.

I went to a talk by a chap from the Deer Initiative. He agreed with you Phoenix. We need to eat venison if deer are to survive or else they'll all be slaughtered as they do too much damage to crops/orchards etc. Their numbers have to be kept in check.

Lynx or wolves aren't a feasible option in the Brecks of East Anglia. Too many people - and free range pigs which would be the equivalent of a fast food outlet for them - although they won't be there in a vegan world.

With you Alexa. [like]

I for one am very glad to see pink veal now available in high street supermarkets, it is something that has been on the farming agenda for quite some time.

That is what I try to strive for Alexa, when I buy food; however, I do know that many cannot do that.

And I admit that I cannot worry about the canned food that I buy to go in the food bank because it is, of necessity, processed.

Farmers have to make money or they would go out of business and, if they employ workers, would have to make them redundant.

Indeed, Alexa It is not all one homogenous industry.

Incidentally, we hear that large-scale farmers are "only in it for the money", but how about wholesale growers of carrots, couscous, wheatgrass, goji berries, beans and chickpeas, soya, and so on. Are they in it purely from the goodness of their hearts and not in the hope of making money?

Some livestock farming is worse than others.

Beyond the ethical pale are:

foie gras

white veal

low value horses e.g. transported from Poland to Italy for salami

Caged hens

factory farmed dairy cows

Long distance transport to slaughter

Farrowing crates

Better farming includes:

local small slaughter houses

Pink veal fattened where it's bred and naturally fed.

free range hens

organically farmed dairy products.

free range sows with piglets

I meant crystaltipps, not Phoenix

I am not sure whether an animal wants to live in the same way that a human does, who is aware of the possibility of death. A pet who is old and suffering and is euthanased slips out of life without knowing that life is ending, just that there is no more pain or unhappiness.

We have to be careful that in our concern for the welfare of animals, we don't attribute human attitudes and thoughts to them.

Or if you meant me - yes I said I do see a difference in ways of hen keeping, There may be a humane ways of keeping livestock, but at the end of the day when they are slaughtered ( and they all are) there’s no humane way of doing it to an animal that wants to live.

Elegran if you meant me, when you said "you yourself" et c in your post of 14.11, then of course I do! There is no comparison at all!

But they DO so base their judgment, or a large proportion do. There are some posts on this thread which illustrate that, and you yourself don't see any gradation between a few hens in the back garden and an enormous factory full of battery hens. There are many shades of hen in between and genuine free-range hens live as good a life as the semi-retired rescue ones.

There are humane ways of keeping livestock. Generations of famers have done it.

On uncultivated land, the nutrients from dead vegetation fall back into the soil and provide nourishment for the next cycle of growth. Food crops are removed before they rot and return their nutrients, so unless the equivalent is added the yield gradually drops. The traditional way to do that is to add animal or human manure. The "modern" way (which is not all that modern) is to add man-made fertilizer. Human waste products are neatly flushed down the sewers and sent out to sea.

If factory-made chemical additives and animal fertilizer are rejected, and human waste is not considered sterile enough (and not an aesthetic option) what exactly is going to restore enough fertility to feed everyone? In cultures where hardly anyone eats meat how is that achieved? Do they follow sacred cows around and collect their manure? Do they spread human night soil? Collect seaweed? - that is only available near the sea.

Not many of those here in North Devon, Elegran but plenty of deer. I often see them from the rear bedroom windows, and (sadly) dead by the side of the road.

But vegans / vegetarians do not base their view of animal husbandry on the behaviour of a few. Where has that ever been said? At the end of the day there is no humane way of keeping livestock which you intend to exploit in one way or another, whether it is killing them straightaway or at the end of its perceived productivity . Keeping a few rescue hens in your back garden is one thing, keeping thousands shut in cages and slaughtered on an industrial scale after a few months is another. Throwing day old male chicks live into a macerator because they are of no use is but one reason why vegans shun the egg industry. Anyway, that’s a whole new argument. I understand why people believe it’s ok to kill animals in order to eat them, some of my best friends do, but the scale it has developed into is not sustainable ( imho).

The natural predator on deer is the lynx.

Probably going to get a lot of flack for this, but I think meat eaters should be encouraged to eat more venison.

Deer have no natural predators in the UK, they halt replacement of native trees by eating the young saplings, their meat is low cholesterol, and they are usually "farmed" in a way that replicates their natural environment.

Tim helmet time, methinks.

Do you really believe there are no alternatives to mulesing Elegran? Of course there are, that’s why New Zealand banned it ages ago. Do you really think that it’s not just cheaper to use mulesing and that’s why they carry on doing it? And that John Lewis and the Italian clothing industry, amongst others, would really boycott or threaten to boycott the products, and pay a premium for non-mulesed wool if it were not a seriously cruel practice?

There’s reducing cognitive dissonance and then there’s closing your eyes, sticking your fingers in your ears, and singing la la la as loud as you possibly can. Oh and blaming vegans for getting emotional about cruelty to animals to boot.

In Oz these animals are dispersed over a wide area.

Some stations are 6,000 to 9,000 square miles.
We have friends with a cattle station, when they go off to check the cattle they are gone for 3 days.

I read the article chrystal. I don’t think it would work. Just ploughing back in green stuff and compost isn’t sufficient to provide a good harvest. The soil needs more if it’s to be productive otherwise, like taking honey from bees, you’re taking out more than gets returned.

There are problems with deer around here and I believe wild boar in some places , so there’s talk of bringing back lynx and wolves but this gets shelved as impractical in a country as crowded as ours. How would these be managed if no one eats them? Or would they be used for cat and dog feed. Is that ok with vegans or is cat pet keeping not acceptable?

Also, rain forests aren’t cut down mainly for grazing land. Not anymore. Think coconut plantations, palm oil plantations, etc.

Like GA I was brought up to wear things until they fall to pieces and not keep buy, buy, buying. And only eat small amounts of good quality meat. Not gorge on it with 16 ounce steaks as are served in our local pub. We used to have our own hens and grow our own veg, but there’s so many small produces around here we no longer have to. We’re very fortunate.