Tuesday October 27, 2009, 4:04 am
Ok, let's not eat meat, not so difficult.

Tuesday October 27, 2009, 4:41 am
OK...I do a little grazing!!! Actually better for you anyway!

Tuesday October 27, 2009, 7:45 am
Yes but I don't think it will happen anytime soon. They could at least cut back on meat consumption !
Thanks Simone

Tuesday October 27, 2009, 10:18 am
Typical that the livestock farmers are whinging that they will lose out if people go vegetarian. If a fur farmer can switch to growing strawberries and make more of a profit then i'm sure they can easily utilize their land for growing vege, fruit, other crops. They are just 2% of our work force in the UK yet they get around 75% of the subsidies...i dont think the rest of the work force would miss them :)

Tuesday October 27, 2009, 12:59 pm
Oh please give me a break!! No I'm not giving up meat & what climate control??

Tuesday October 27, 2009, 1:19 pm
thanks simone

Tuesday October 27, 2009, 4:09 pm
Thanks, Simone. After learning more and more about factory farming methods, I gave up meat last Christmas. I have never felt better physically and pleased not to be contributing to the waste involved in meat production.

Tuesday October 27, 2009, 4:17 pm
Meat should be given up for the simple fact that it is unhealthy, given all the factory farming , diseases and wasted antibiotics used to treat these poor animals, it's no wonder people are getting sick and the antibiotics used to treat them do not work for them either. It's one thing to blame animals for excess methane and bad climate, but it's "in our face" now...for over breeding them for food to eat in the first place. What about the s++t we put out of our own back ends... You are what you eat. We should be taking care of our selves by going easy on our planet and by eating things that are grown from the land,... and fertilizing it accordingly, then the planet will look after us.

Tuesday October 27, 2009, 4:17 pm
"Every sixty seconds, thirty acres of rain forest are destroyed in order to raise beef for fast food restaurants that sell it to people, giving them strokes and heart attacks, which raise medical costs and insurance rates, providing insurance companies with more money to invest in large corporations that branch out further into the Third World so they can destroy more rain forests." - George Carlin, comedian

Catherine, I think we are at a point in time when we need to realise that we cannot continue with our destructive, wasteful and excessive ways and expect the status quo to remain the same. You don't have to be fanatical about it - one meat-free day a week can make a huge difference.

Tuesday October 27, 2009, 4:25 pm
Thank you Nora J.

Tuesday October 27, 2009, 5:02 pm
Nora, I have been flexitarian since May, 1992. Something happened at that same time - someone named Bill Clinton ate at McDonald's, and the media and the public loved him for it - one reporter even said "That made him a 'regular guy'".

What can we do? I support hunting. First, animal are native, so they do not destroy the land as farm animals do, and obviously consume less water. Second, they live natural lives, not fed antibiotics and kept in small cages their entire lives.

What else can we do? I support ending the madness of destroying the planet from growth and development by family planning - I have no children, and plan on one child and adoption.

"One meat-free day a week"? I eat more like meat one day a week.

At the same time, we have to be careful. I eat fish oil pills for the essential omega-3 fatty acids.

Tuesday October 27, 2009, 6:02 pm
Thanks, Daniel. I also do not have children and at my age, do not plan on any. "What can we do?" - I believe we can only do our best.

As for the 'One meat-free day a week', I was referring to those who want to continue eating meat in general, but could manage one meatless day every seven days, as propsed by PETA and some environmental organisations.

Tuesday October 27, 2009, 6:04 pm
I wonder what Daniel means by supporting hunting? We do not live in an age where we have to resort to killing our own deer in order to survive. Most of the hunting seems to be of animals that maybe Daniel would not wish to eat... such as wolves and wild cats? Also the hunting almost always takes place in order to protect the incomes of those who make big bucks from the farming of animals, which Daniel says, quite rightly, destroy the land. RE. the fish oils -- apart from the fact that fishing is cruel, and causes death to thousands of marine mammals as "bycatch", fish is so full of toxins such as mercury that the W.H.O. has released a memo telling pregnant women not to eat tuna! Better to get your 3-6-9 oil from veggie sources. I recommend Vertese (www.vertese.com) Daniel is so right about the population issue though -- too many humans is the root cause of all the other problems.

Tuesday October 27, 2009, 8:35 pm
All hail the word of Lord Stern, who has a Doctor of Philosophy in Economics, a BA in Mathematics and an Honorary Doctor of Science from the University of Warwick, he was Chief Economist and a Senior Vice-President of the World Bank. The World Bank is a political organization always headed by an American, and works as an arm of the US government and the US Treasury Department, using leveraged loans to promote deregulation and privatization of markets most notably critisized for increasing poverty and being detrimental to the environment,public health and cultural diversity in third world countries. Stern was recruited in to the British government by Gordon Brown, his 'Stern Report'(Oct,2006) for HM Treasury describes "climate change as an economic externality (fancy for spillover the cost of which can be passed on to the consumer).Regulation, carbon taxes, and carbon trading are recomended to reduce greenhouse gas emissins." Stern is an incompetent, who is already saying that he might have underestimated several factors in his 2006 report, who can not and should not be trusted, his do'nt eat meat and save the planet is more likely to be an argument to save the profits of the coal, oil and gas corporations as anything else; he does come from a corporate family with major ties to Xerox and multiple long term ties tio the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.He is neither a credible source nor one to be trusted on face value.

Tuesday October 27, 2009, 10:24 pm
We can not force people to not eat meat. At least cut back of meat consumption for the reason that farmers will stop mass production. Meat eaters should see the conditions of farm animals and poultry to satify the demand for meat. That is not right for any animal to live like this so that people can eat them eventually. Goodness, if you want to eat them, at least give them a good and free life.

Wednesday October 28, 2009, 3:02 am
I would just like to say apart for the cruelty to animals if eating meat is so healthy why is the hospitals so full and the Health Centre's never empty, try and get an appointment with the doctor and you have to wait about 3-4 weeks, the farmers inject there animals with all this hormone's to get them to grow bigger faster don't you think that eating meat from these animals the human is bound to get some kind of illness, look at the number of illness like swine flue, where did that come from, in America they force feed ducks to get there livers bigger, they inject pigs and cows with drugs to get them to grow faster the poor animals don't know what is going on there legs can't hold them up, yea you meat eaters keep eating your meat but think what the animals are going through to give you what you want and keep your swine flue etc to yourself's us vegetarians don't want your desease.

Wednesday October 28, 2009, 4:30 am
I've said it on here before, those of you who don't want to eat meat, don't. But accept you are in the absolute minority and that will never change. And stop trying to sow your evil seeds of vegetable murder on others.
My beef, (pun intended) is with the cruel pursuit of helpless vegetables, rooted in the ground and powerless to escape the cutting knife and then while still living they are put into boiling water or in the microwave and cooked alive. Now we don't do that with animals. You cruel bastards. What a disgraceful practice.
That's not to mention the various types of fruit and vegetables that are actually eaten alive. You sick, sick people. You think because you can't hear their screams it doesn't happen.
It has been recorded by scientists that plants do suffer distress and produce sounds of this distress when being cut by a knife.
How can you live with yourselves.
These poor things are forced to live in a harsh environment, subject to burning sun, driving rain and biting winds and when they reach YOUR desired size (NO they don't get to enjoy old age) they get cut down by the money making farmer, sent into the wholesale market and sold again for profit and end up in the fruit & veg shop or supermarket just so you can pay again (more profit into the food chain) for this poor miserable suffering thing.
Don't get me started about practices of raping the earth to accommodate these unfotunates, then there's the toxic chemicals. (pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers that end up in your body)
Only a small proportion of the water that is pumped over these plants is absorbed by the plant roots. The rest of it dissipates down through the soil or is dried out by the sun.
Overall a very wasteful and polluting practice.
I have to go , you vegie murderers make me so angry!!

Wednesday October 28, 2009, 4:47 am
Very good article . Thankyou

Wednesday October 28, 2009, 8:32 am
Hey Merv you have got to be kidding right? Such sensitive people these meat eaters.

Wednesday October 28, 2009, 11:33 am
i don't think the animals are guilty of causing global warming at all , but stop eating meat will be good ethics & have good climate results only if ALL the animals are reborn nevertheless , as other animals or humans - there will still be many beings breathing.

Wednesday October 28, 2009, 3:40 pm
I don't blame the animals. I think it is because they are bred en masse and fed absolute rubbish by the greedy profiteers in big agri-business, so they can glean as much profit as possible. Unfortunately, this has led to the fact that this industry generates a third of all the world's greenhouse emissions.

Wednesday October 28, 2009, 11:42 pm
Nora J.
The article states "UN figures suggest that meat production is responsible for about 18 per cent of global carbon emissions" where exactly did the increase to a third as you stated come from??

Wednesday October 28, 2009, 11:49 pm
Tierney G.
Of course we are sensitive, we love plants, we don't eat them, yuck.

Thursday October 29, 2009, 12:35 am
Merv, it was on an Australian website and it included factors such as energy spent on farms, energy spent packaging, processing and refrigeration, transportation and distribution and also the land clearing involved.

Thursday October 29, 2009, 1:49 am
Nora J, Thank you for that.
I think it is going a little far though and somewhat distorts the figures.
The equation for all foodstuffs including vegetables require exactly the same "factors such as energy spent on farms, energy spent packaging, processing and refrigeration, transportation and distribution and also the land clearing involved."
Oh, and Nora it is not quite right to say cattle or cows are fed absolute rubbish, you know the old saying you are what you eat? That holds true for livestock as well. Prime livestock demands prime feed.
I was involved in the automatic livestock feeding system industry and I can tell you that every farmer I ever met was greatly concerned about the nutritional value of all feed.