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I've been an environmentalist since around 1970 and I still eat some meat. I garden organically and I try to get meat that's not full or hormones, antibiotics, nitrates and whatever else they might do to it.
I was a vegetarian for about a year and, like some others here, I got weak and sick that way. I need protein and I wasn't getting enough. Now I eat some meat or eggs almost every day. Not a big deal--you can eat some meat and still be very environmentally conscious.
The connection between pollution and factory farming is well known. Yet many environmentally conscious people continue to eat meat.
If you have stopped, why? If not, what's your excuse?
i love meat. but i'm trying to change our way of eating to be local meat only, and less meat overall. for health reasons alone, i simply need to reduce the amount of meat i'm eating. the key for us is for the meat portion of your dinner dish look more like a "side" with the veggies being your "main dish". maybe i'll fully give up meat some day, for now i'm doing what i can.
I consider myself "environmentally responsible" and I still eat meat and animal products... and always will.
What I have stopped is eating grain-fedhigh-densityfactory-farmed meat, and have switched to raising my own, purchasing local pasture-raised meat, and increased sustainably harvested fish and game.
Agriculture - PERIOD - has a huge environmental impact. Clear-cutting a forest and plowing for a cultivated & irrigated grain field has more detrimental impact than letting livestock forage in amarginally improved forest or glade. Raising meat is not inherently bad for the environment, the current way meat is raised COMMERCIALLY is what's bad.
There is nothing environmentally conscious about not eating meat. Meat comes from sustainable resources and the life cycle of animals contributes in a positive way to the environment, even when they used as a food source.
The fact is that maintaining a quality food source using animals actually benefits the environment far more than not doing do if we consider the environment more than just the trees. By maintaining a quality food source using animals, those animals which aren't particularly well suited as food sources see lesser pressures from food demand driven killing.
One of the problems with eliminating meat from the diet is that is drives down endurance. This is because a large amount of other food sources must be eaten to provide energy past the point of low energy level existence. There is a reason why no large population society or a race of people exists where meat is not part of the diet. The amount of energy needed, retained and used by the body and brain simply can't be provided through pure vegetable diet or the vegan diet because there isn't enough labor that could be mustered to grow, gather and make available the huge amounts of vegetable matter to sustain the workforce. While automation can now compensate for the labor requirements, that is only possible now, after the energy needed was obtained from meat eaters.
The pure vegetarian and vegan diets are an effort to go around the fact of evolutionary change time tables in a very short period of time, it can't and won't work.
Throughout time, the strongest animals have always been those that consumer meat and the weaker those that consume only vegetable and non-meat matter. One can point to dinosaurs but don't forget, mass doesn't equal strength. In those comparisons though, notice that the enormous bulk and whatever strength the non-meat eaters had was devoted exclusively to moving, eating and reproducing and nothing else. It follows that the predators are more intelligent than the prey and it isn't by accident.
Of course there are valid reason for not eating meat, to each their own but environmentalism and not eating meat have nothing to do with each other.
I put forth that if one doesn't eat meat because of environmental concerns, they have bought into a philosophy that is manufactured, has not basis in the real effects of meat consumption and that because of that belief system, deny themselves the benefits of the natural design of their bodies.
Yep, vegan, BTDT, ruined my teeth, hair graying/falling out, no thanks. I read the Naive Vegetarian by Dr. Barry Groves and that was the end of that. Show me the meat.
I consider myself "environmentally responsible" and I still eat meat and animal products... and always will.
What I have stopped is eating grain-fedhigh-densityfactory-farmed meat, and have switched to raising my own, purchasing local pasture-raised meat, and increased sustainably harvested fish and game.
Agriculture - PERIOD - has a huge environmental impact. Clear-cutting a forest and plowing for a cultivated & irrigated grain field has more detrimental impact than letting livestock forage in amarginally improved forest or glade. Raising meat is not inherently bad for the environment, the current way meat is raised COMMERCIALLY is what's bad.
I tend to agree with this...I buy beef at the store but raise my own pork and poultry. It is amazing to me the hue and cry is focused on the end product not the production means...Same thing happens for ethanol....Great stuff gets us of petroleum but no ones looks at the adverse affect it has on the land......
I've been a vegetarian since 1993, initially for moral reasons, but there's so many benefits to not eating meat and (most) animal products, the debate pretty much settles itself.
no, I still eat meat... the lowest priced meat I can find. Last week hyvee had 93% lean ground turkey for $2.50 per pound with 2 cents per pound fuel saver discount... cheap protein source there being so lean... mix it with black beans and make a meal out of it.
I admit to not liking to kill things 'up close and personal' and gut them, and think factory farming is bad... I look forward to the day we can simply replicate food from energy like in Star Trek.. I do think it will be possible within 50-75 years. That will effectively end farming and free up a lot of land.
Combine that with free energy and I like what kind of society we might have by then.. though big corporations might resist having so many people not 'slaving away' to fuel a fractional reserve banking system so the top 1% can continue to amass their riches... who knows.
Every body is different and a diet that works for one may not work for another, so I don't buy arguments that meat eating should be 'banned' or anything like that. Some people are diabetic and for them eating nothing but protein and fat is the ideal diet.. eating carbs will only result in them having to inject insulin so it can be handled. Hopefully the technology is developed to reverse diabetes here within 20 years by letting the body regrow it's beta cells... likewise it would be nice to be able to restore hearing in a similar manner.. some species have this function.
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gets us of petroleum
but no ones looks at the adverse affect it has on the land.....
.
