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Rob R

Still not convinced that we eat too much meat...

I've been asked, today, about grazing some more conservation land (lowland heath) and I can't help thinking that the eat less meat message has gone much too far for UK, if not world sustainability.

East Anglia but applies across England linky

dpack

im not sure that the problem is less meat perhaps the issue is less uk grazed meat and although more meat is eaten than say 100 yrs ago it is fed on soya ,grains etc in feedlots,piggeries and broiler houses.
imported meat is also a fair chunk of the total and whether intensively raised in sheds or grazed it does not maintain the uk grazing .

maybe the direction to take for both the environment and good food is eat more locally grazed meat Wink

one problem with that is for most folk the first parameter of choice is price and botswanan roasting beef for £5 per kilo and a second joint bogof in a supermarket seems more attractive than uk grassfed even when the latter is at a very fair price.
a second problem that is partially caused by the first in that it requires investment of both cash and time to expand the national herd of grazed beef to fill the available grazing.

Mistress Rose

This applies to the Downs round here too. We are having trouble as there are fewer rabbits, and with people expecting to let their dogs run free it makes grazing difficult. Our local Down is in dire need of some TLC, and if it doesn't get it I suspect the Parish Council and everyone else who 'owns' it is going to be visited by the wrath of English Nature or whatever their name is at the time.

oldish chris

Quote:

"Red meat should be eaten in small amounts only and foods that contain fibre or resistant starches should be an important part of the diet," says John Cummings, a gastroenterologist at Dundee University, UK.

Ref

This is where I get confused, all this conflicting advice, so I'm torn between some geezer who is some sort of gastroenterologist, and what to they know about gastroenterology, or a farmer. At the moment, I'm trending towards the farmer, apparently a lot of wisdom gain be gained from interpreting cows' farts.

From the same article

Quote:

People who eat a lot of red meat have a higher risk of developing colorectal cancer.

so what, one may ask?

Quote:

Bowel cancer is the second most common cause of cancer death in the UK (2011), accounting for around 10% of all cancer deaths.

apparently (another bunch of idiots who've never driven a tractor).

Next time I'm in the country, I'm going to ask a farmer if smoking harms your health.

Rob R

Funnily enough one of the pieces I have been asked to graze has had sheep on it before but a neighbour's dog has caused problems, so they want Dexters to sort it out. Laughing

NorthernMonkeyGirl

Oldish Chris, the trouble is most diet studies rely on people's memories of what they ate (ha!) AND don't differentiate between the "hotdog" and "salami" on a pizza, and a nice grassfed ribeye.

Hairyloon

Also if the study is American, then "a small amount" of red meat would probably feed a family of four over this side.

Rob R

Quote:

People who eat a lot of red meat have a higher risk of developing colorectal cancer.

so what, one may ask?

Quote:

Bowel cancer is the second most common cause of cancer death in the UK (2011), accounting for around 10% of all cancer deaths.

apparently (another bunch of idiots who've never driven a tractor).

Next time I'm in the country, I'm going to ask a farmer if smoking harms your health.

This vested interest slur is getting tedious, who do you think grows the non-animal crops, soil pixies? However, this is an environmental thread, less pasture management is having a negative effect upon biodiversity, with pollinator decline being a well known issue for all food produced on this planet. What happens when the pollinator crash does finally reach a tipping point? I guess there's always grain. Nick

Quote:

People who eat a lot of red meat have a higher risk of developing colorectal cancer.

so what, one may ask?

Quote:

Bowel cancer is the second most common cause of cancer death in the UK (2011), accounting for around 10% of all cancer deaths.

apparently (another bunch of idiots who've never driven a tractor).

Next time I'm in the country, I'm going to ask a farmer if smoking harms your health.

This vested interest slur is getting tedious, who do you think grows the non-animal crops, soil pixies? However, this is an environmental thread, less pasture management is having a negative effect upon biodiversity, with pollinator decline being a well known issue for all food produced on this planet. What happens when the pollinator crash does finally reach a tipping point? I guess there's always grain.

Don't feed the troll. he gets bored and goes after people with Windows computers after a while Wink

Rob R

I can't feed him... Green Rosie

maybe the direction to take for both the environment and good food is eat more locally grazed meat Wink

This Hairyloon

maybe the direction to take for both the environment and good food is eat more locally grazed meat Wink

This
Except for the maybe. dpack

thankyou

if folk want diverse "grasslands"(and they do seem important for many reasons)the way to maintain them is by grazing and some cutting for winter fodder ,to be sustainable that requires at least some folk to eat good food at a sustainable price. Hairyloon

This is perhaps a point that people need to be pushing harder. Rob R

This is perhaps a point that people need to be pushing harder.

I agree, I try but 'then I would say that...' Mistress Rose

All grain is grown by farmers, but many of them aren't in the UK. Interesting about putting Dexters in rather than sheep Rob. Hope you don't have trouble with them and the dog. With any luck they will scare it off rather than kill it. Soay rams have been put into places with dog problems, but they do tend to try to kill the dogs.

I don't think most people, least of all the politicians responsible for grants and policy have any idea how much the countryside depends on farming and forestry for amenity and conservation. Not only is the best way to keep some places like your heath, wet meadows and downland in good condition to graze it, but hedges, woodland and moorland are all affected by the care taken of them by us in the landscape. Rob R

We had to warn villagers not to let their dogs run with the cows & calves last year. The animals have to be quick on their feet not to get themselves killed.

I think the government are just representative of the people. Rob R

Regarding meat consumtpion and grazed meat

UK meat consumption

In 1980 we were eating 336g of beef & lamb v 158g in 2010, a decline of 47%

As a proportion of the total, beef & lamb was 42.6% in 1980, dropping to 23.4% in 2010.

And comparing total meat consumption between 1980 and 2010 sees a reduction of 15% NorthernMonkeyGirl

What was the percentage of horse? Laughing

Sorry.

I bet a lot of the change is due to everything being chickenified. Because flavour will kill you! Rob R

I bet a lot of the change is due to everything being chickenified. Because flavour will kill you!

Yes, and if Chris was right & I was doing this for the money, rather than what's healthiest for us and the environment, you'd have thought I'd have been going with the flow and just producing chicken rather than trying to sell little beef in a declining market...

Speaking of little beef, the average size of cattle has crept up over that same time period too, which is part of the reason 'commercial' cattle are less well suited to grazing the ings & the lowland heath than Dexters, and why they are more suited to being kept indoors and fed grain. His cyncicism couldn't be much more misplaced. dpack

mutton chop for tea tonight,i think it must be at least ten years since i ate broiler chicken(nasty business and a horrible product),yesterday i had a lot of vegan watercress soup.

i eat quite a bit of local (salad bar) grazed red meat and (mostly local) salad and veg.each of those does have a positive impact on some rare and sustainable environments and on food security.

ps i i was doing it for the money i would have bought gold and arms shares rather than cows . madcat

To be honest re dogs if the livestock kill the dog then it's the owners fault not the farmer.

I didn't know any sheep would be capable of offing a determined dog but its an interesting idea.

I still haven't got over a dog fanatic telling me that OH's second cousin should keep his sheep under control.

Drug dealers and other low life don't have attack Rams for protection. Nasty dangerous dogs are a significant problem in the West Midlands. OtleyLad

TV tonight: Should we eat meat?

Should we eat meat?

Might be interesting.

Horizon BBC2 9pm tonight. Rob R

To be honest re dogs if the livestock kill the dog then it's the owners fault not the farmer.

But it's the farmer who pays for it, hopefully the dog will think twice after encountering a few Dexter cows and calves. Rob R

Re: TV tonight: Should we eat meat?

Should we eat meat?

Might be interesting.

Horizon BBC2 9pm tonight.

Thanks for that, I also found this news item about it -

Quote:

The researchers found that eating moderate amounts of red meat had no effect on mortality. The lowest overall mortality rates were in those eating up to 80g a day.
Bacon and egg Scientists agree that too much processed meat, such as bacon, ham and salami, is not good for health

Although there was a small increase in overall risk for those eating more than 160g, there was also a higher all-cause death rate amongst the non-meat eaters.

and

Quote:

Professor Sir David Speigelhalter of Cambridge University says another way of looking at this is, if the studies are right, that you would expect someone who eats a bacon sandwich every day to live, on average, two years less than someone who does not.

Beware of bread. Wink

Hairyloon

To be honest re dogs if the livestock kill the dog then it's the owners fault not the farmer.

But it's the farmer who pays for it...
On what basis?
As I understand the law, a farmer is lawfully entitled to kill a dog which is worrying his livestock. Does it specify that the tool used to do so may not be the livestock itself?

Most damage caused by domestic pets is usually done when the owner of the livestock is not present and owners who don't clean up after their pets is a more costly issue than those that kill outright, as all dogs are capable of doing it and most owners are unaware of the dangers. Nick

True, but 'it' was the killing of the dog by the livestock. Rob R

True, but 'it' was the killing of the dog by the livestock.

Ah yes, my bad. Sorry. Mistress Rose

Most dog owners think that their dear little doggie won't hurt anything. We used to tell people at the Ancient Farm to put their dogs on leads and when they said that we pointed out that if the dog got in among the Soays the sheep would kill the dog. That made them get the lead out.

We had a case round here of someone complaining to the Country Park when their dog went of chasing the sheep. They claimed the sheep shouldn't have been allowed to wander where their dog could chase them. Not sure how long it took them to catch the stupid thing, but know they caused the Park staff a lot of hassle. Hopefully one of them took the car number so the farmer could claim for any damage, but it was a few years ago and I can't remember the outcome. Probably got banned from the Park. Rob R

Re: TV tonight: Should we eat meat?

Should we eat meat?

Might be interesting.

Horizon BBC2 9pm tonight.

Was it interesting? From what I can gather from Twitter it was a case of processed meat has a small deterimental effect on life expectancy, and red meat as part of a balanced diet is beneficial. No mention of physical activity in that equation, though. Confused

crofter

I didn't see the programme but heard on the radio this morning that the "safe" amount of red meat is 70g per day. No distinction between processed or not, just 70g total. Ty Gwyn

70grams ,That`s barely a sandwich for a working man,lol. Hairyloon

70grams ,That`s barely a sandwich for a working man,lol.
Probably best eat jerky. Pilsbury

70grams ,That`s barely a sandwich for a working man,lol.
Probably best eat jerky. that would be about 300g of prime beef then, sounds like a plan to me.....
(if we can squeeze it to 75g i wont have t leave any in the 3rd bag....) Rob R

70grams ,That`s barely a sandwich for a working man,lol.
Probably best eat jerky.

thumbright

That is a good point - why do these health studies provide data in fresh weight and never in dry matter (as we do in cow nutrition)? Some of the least healthy meat is the over processed, watery chicken - maybe it's water that is the real enemy. Rolling Eyes

bagpuss

70grams ,That`s barely a sandwich for a working man,lol.
Probably best eat jerky.

thumbright

Be very afraid of dihyrogen monoxide http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html Wink

Nick

Because virtually everyone works in fresh weight, almost all the time. Dry matter is the path for specialists. Rob R

Cooked weight or raw? Pilsbury

want to donate some meat to make into jerky and i will use chicken to exactly tue same recipe and then ship it off for analysis, down side is last tike i looked they wanted 200g of the product to analyise bagpuss

Cooked weight or raw?

Raw I would imagine but you would have to check the methods for a particular study Nick

There is that joke, I'll give you the abridged version...
Old couple get to heaven and find it nice.
Husband says to wife "if it hadn't been for your damn fool diet, we could've been here years ago." Rob R

Rob R

But the study doesn't have the dry weight. They only know the weight reported by the study participants, there is no easy way to go from that to accurate dry weights

Accuracy is impossible. Agreed. They don't openly admit their inaccuracies because it makes their work less credible.

If you go to the peer reviewer paper this may well be an issue which is raised

but when that gets filtered through first a press release and then a journalist or copy editor such details get removed because most people don't care

If you want to know if the scientists did a good job, don't judge their work based on what the press says, find the paper and have a look

Inaccurate or bad at communicating their findings - either way it's a waste. The problems, and important information are being hidden in the small print. If it has to be dumbed down to make it understandable then it's all the more important that the people who know what it means are the ones doing the dumbing.

I know this is a big problem in the scientific community, as it is in farming one, there are a lot of paralells between the two. dpack

Because virtually everyone works in fresh weight, almost all the time. Dry matter is the path for specialists.

Yes, but as it's virtually meaningless as a guide, these are clever people, surely they can help educate people by giving the DM figures and converting them for various meats from jerky to the watery chicken (although that might flag up the inaccuracies in the studies and make people think a bit more, we can't be having that).

I suspect in human studies the mass they track are just the mass of the product being eaten.

They won't have the resources to measure the dry weight of the meat their participants are using so they couldn't make accurate statements about the dry weight

These studies are really only useful if they give people useful information. Everyone can weigh a steak in their kitchen. Almost no-one can weigh a dry bit of steak.

Yep

Nope, it's not useful information if it's not accurate information. I'm not saying *don't* mention the fresh weight. Just show your workings out.

The conclusions tend to be that highly processed meat is less healthy than lean meat. Gram for gram the meat content % doesn't tend to go up in highly processed 'meats', so it is the non-meat content (be that fat or other additives) that is the real problem.

Aside from the weight issue being not massively helpful, the term 'processed' is also useless. What? Cut up? Pumped full of phosphates? Cured in salt? Smoked? Confit'd? Some of these will impact the nutritional value, some will not. It's a nonsense term, and I shall continue to eat what I like, be happy and die slightly younger than I could have done, regardless.

I agree, they're all non-jobs at the end of the day, so many variables. I used to think that the more I learned about (animal) nutrition, that it becomes more inaccurate due to all the variables that you're not looking at. Like 'efficiency' in the dairy cow - you can make her produce 10,000 litres on a highly efficient diet, but that isn't much good if it means she falls over in a strong wind.

is this a ds nesting record?
Not yet.

well while we try ,there is a huge difference in the chemistry of meat cured with salt ,air and time compared to that cured with salt ,nitrates and a little time.the nitrosoamine levels in nitrate cures are quite scarey .
since the broadish ban on human experiments looking at the effects of diet on health is a rather inexact business even when one differentiates between the exact foods consumed.

to examine the exact chemistry of foods and then doing animal studies based on that still misses the point as much as the generalised studies of meat eaters vs vegans etc etc

We don't have an actual peer reviewed reference here so we can't be certain what this is based on

Knowing how these large studies are done though I would imagine the participants filled out a food diary those whose diet was vastly different from everyone elses in terms of balance raw meat to cured meat will likely be excluded from such studies.

I think making assertions about what the scientists did wrong when writing up these correlations without actually reading the literature is a bit much Mistress Rose

Writing up a scientific paper and writing for the general public are two rather different things. I find it helps if scientific papers are written clearly, so a non-specialist can understand them easily and not full of jargon, abbreviations without translation and unnecessary long words. However they do need to have quite a lot of scientific content that most people wouldn't want to read, even if they understood it. I agree though that it would help if the general interest article was written by someone who understood what the paper was about in the first place. bagpuss

This programme was more interesting: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04fhbrt/horizon-20142015-2-should-i-eat-meat-how-to-feed-the-planet

Basic summary: we should eat less meat, grass fed cattle are the least environmentally friendly meat producers and factory farmed chicken the best (traditional meat producers). The hole in a live cow was a little disturbing and a few sweeping generalisations but worth a watch. Rob R

So, basically we're screwed whatever we eat, then. Neutral

NorthernMonkeyGirl

On that note Rob, is bank holiday monday going to be a normal free meat monday? Laughing

If I'm doomed, I'm gonna enjoy the ride. sean

Article summarizing Treac's programme.*
Mussels are best apparently. Nick's not going to be happy when they're made compulsory.

Edit: Treac's programme in the sense of 'the programme that he linked to', NOT 'his sinister plans to alter our diets.' Hairyloon

So, basically we're screwed whatever we eat, then. Neutral

Rat onna stick? dpack

pre seasoned with chilli"sauce" Laughing

Rob R

Another good link worth reading Rob R

On that note Rob, is bank holiday monday going to be a normal free meat monday? Laughing

If I'm doomed, I'm gonna enjoy the ride.

Yep, every monday is free meat time. Smile

Ty Gwyn

Thanks for the highlight Trec,
Interesting programme,but with a lot of But`s

I was waiting for the Doc to get kicked by the cow down in Dorset,lol. Rob R

According to the article, livestock are responsible for 14.5% of emissions, meaning 85.5% are from other sources. I have also read elsewhere that we could produce twice as much human food as we currently do if we went vegan and got rid of the animals but this article gives a figure of 30%, so we'll work on that.

So, 30% more food means 30% more people would grow to fill the vegan capability of our planet. On that basis we would eliminate 14.5% of all our current greenhouse gas emissions, but with 30% more people on the planet we would have a total of 111% (1.3 x 85.5%) of the current emissions to contend with.

The vegan argument only stands up if you also have some check on the population and just feed the current population or drastically reduce non-animal emissions. If we choose to reduce the population then we need less food and we can start eating animals again, as they reach nearer historical levels equivalent to wild grazing herbivore populations of the past. Ty Gwyn

Perish the thought,
Can you imagine being around an increased Vegan population eating all them bean`s,lol. Rob R

Well, I had a mountain of cabbage, potatoes, peas and beans with my measly 172g of haggis tonight, so that should make them a bit happier. Rob R

Of course, what my simplistic calculation above does not take into account is the extra emissions that would occur if the animals weren't grazing the grasslands and the fertility that animals add into agriculture across the world, or the extra emissions needed to replace that fertility and soil carbon. LynneA

I managed about ten minutes of the Horizon programme last night before turning to Dave to calm my rage.

It struck me as simplistic pro-industrial food production propaganda masquerading as fact.

Oh yes - factory style food raising is great - because then you don't need all the land, and our developer friends can build on it or turn it into golf courses.

If all that matters is reducing methane production, they why are we allowed to eat Baked Beans? Confused

Mistress Rose

I didn't watch the programme because I thought it might be like that. I know some places have increased the fertility by the method of grazing, and that seems to make a lot of sense. The important thing is to get the grazing regime right as overgrazing is a bad thing and can lead to desertification and other ills. I don't agree with Montbiot that all uplands should be forested, even though my main interest is woodland. As with all things there is no general prescription, and it should depend upon individual circumstances. OtleyLad

Interesting as a general intro to some production methods but then it was very weak on the alternatives.
The meat industry might well produce all those billions of tons of CO2/methane/slurry etc. But if we all stopped eating meat tomorrow what would we replace the protein with and what sort of emissions would that generate?
Don't say mussels either - molluscs just don't do it for me.
In its favour it suggested that 100gm of meat a day should be an individual's max. At least its an achievable aim (but I bet most people on earth only dream of such luxury). Mistress Rose

I also think most people forget the effect removing animals would have; no manure, no tidy fields, no by products such as wool and leather. Nick

Just a view, but I'd rather Comrade Rob promoted his meat on the basis of its environmental credentials, which appear exemplary, rather than on an assertion that flies in the face of current medical evidence.

Just watched bits of a recording of Michael Mosely's TV prog. The bit about "factory farming" didn't convince me. Just hoping that I'm not displaying "biased assimilation" what? which in my less kinder periods (the other 99% of the time) I'd accuse Rob of.

Mosely's conclusion seems to be that people who eat too much meat end up over-weight, with high blood pressure and cancer, kind of sums me up really. (But at least I don't have the same shitty OS as Nick Wink

) Rob R

Just a view, but I'd rather Comrade Rob promoted his meat on the basis of its environmental credentials, which appear exemplary, rather than on an assertion that flies in the face of current medical evidence.)

It depends which evidence you take notice of though, some would argue that I am not at all environmentally friendly either.

Where is the evidence that meat *makes* us fat? Is it because cats are so fat? Or populations that eat a lot of meat? The most highly processed 'meats' are said to be least healthy yet contain less meat. As a diabetic of 27 years I recognise how difficult it is for us to avoid carbs & meat fills me up better so I eat less overall. If you'd eaten a high grassfed meat/low carb diet I'd be wrong. However I don't promote my meat as a wonder cure, it is what it is, grassfed. Nick

Don't worry about my choice of OS; I have several, and am fine, thanks. oldish chris

Don't worry about my choice of OS; I have several, and am fine, thanks. you don't half take the fun out of trolling! Rob R

BTW, I didn't do the whole Paleo thing, but my wife did & managed to not only shift her baby weight but also got her 18 yr old figure back, so my experience is skewed by that. While this was happening I naturally ate more paleo meals & we were both congratulated on our bloods/health by medical professionals. My doctor was discussing with me today how little correlation he sees between diet & cholesterol. (unprompted he said he has vegans with massively high levels) oldish chris

It depends which evidence you take notice of though, I suspect that therein lies the problem. Which is why I thought that "bias assimilation" or "cognitive bias" may be at work. Briefly, if a person is almost overloaded with information, no matter how balanced that information, they will sub-consciously pick out the bits that agree with existing beliefs and status. I like to think that I'm above this sort of thing..... Rob R

I can see that, and that's why I don't always believe that the peer reviewed papers are necessarily correct, they may just be aligned to the current line of thought & not very holistic.

We've drained colossal areas of wetlands and wildflower meadows to produce grain over the last 400 years and I just want to preserve what's left & restore a little. When the existing areas are still being lost I can't help thinking that more people need to eat more grassfed meat. I can't imagine that they drained the land for health reasons. Ty Gwyn

If meat is supposed to make us fat,there is something wrong with me,

I`ve turned 60yrs,have a blood pressure of 120 over 60,weigh 12 1/2 stone at 5ft 7in,eat on average about 1kg of bacon and 2kg of pork or beef a week,and potatoes are with most meals,as potato or chips,8lts of milk and 4 loaves of bread and 1/2 lb of cheese.

But i`m active. Mistress Rose

Rob, they did drain them partly for health reasons, but not the way you mean. Some of them were a breeding ground for mosquitos that carried malaria, known then as ague. I agree with you about keeping the ones that are left by giving them an economic reason for remaining like grazing. There is a saying in our industry 'A wood that pays is a wood that stays'. Hence the old coppice woods of Sussex, Hampshire and Dorset tend to remain while a lot of others have disappeared.

Ty Gwyn, the important thing about you is that you are active. That helps a lot.

In the 1950s and 60s it was thought that starch was the reason for people being fat. We tended to be a bit more active because we walked more and used buses rather than cars, although they were coming along. oldish chris

It depends which evidence you take notice of though, some would argue that I am not at all environmentally friendly either. Rob, are you referring to the Moseley TV prog where grass fed beef was slated 'cos of the methane, whereas factory farmed beef was way better for the environment?

I've just wasted half an hour of my life trying to get to some basic data. At the back of my mind is Prof. Pimentel's work on US grain-fed beef production (the 100,000 litres of water per kilo one) and the video you provided a link to about the "Carbon Cowboys".

A little snippet of info you might find interesting:

Quote:

Estimates of the global warming potential of the primary production of beef vary from 32.3kg CO 2 equivalent per kg beef (Ogino et al., 2004) to 15kg CO 2 eq. per kg beef in an intensive American feed lot system (Subak, 1999), a figure which was more than double that of a traditional African style pastoral system beef rearing system. The contribution to global warming potential of UK beef production is calculated as 16kg CO 2 eq. /kg by the Silsoe team (Williams et al 2006).

I downloaded a PDF by bunging "www.ifr.ac.uk/ waste/ Reports/ DEFRA-Environmental%20Impacts%20of%20Food%20Production%20%20Consumpti on.pdf" into a search engine.

I'm interpreting that remark as meaning that the best a US beef producer can manage environmentally, is about the same as your average UK beef producer.

We should, as a society, be far more circumspect about the quantities of meat that we consume. What meat we do eat should not be imported from the USA. Rob R

I've just come back from the cows, the fields look manageable when you stand at one end, but by the time you've reached halfway, carrying something heavy, you think again. We're not winning, not by a long shot, and I don't think we will if the cut back message carries on. It's very depressing to hear it.

On the plus side, I got a fantastic view of the owl hunting. oldish chris

I do feel for you, honest. My views haven't been changed by the recent propaganda, we should eat less meat, however what meat we do eat should be should be produced in an environmentally benign way. (Same goes for wheat actually.)

When Michael Moseley reported on the American "factory farm" they focused on the methane production. He did slip in a little comment about antibiotics.

The elephants in the room are the fossil fuel industry and a flawed economic system. We burn vast amounts of coal and oil to produce, amongst other things, far more food than we actually need. One of the many pollutants coming from the agricultural industry is methane, which seriously amplifies the negative impact of the fossil fuel based food production system. But don't worry, by handing meat production over to a major multinational corporation, we can bring about a 50% reduction in methane emissions. And don't worry your pretty little head that most antibiotics will be rendered useless over the next 10 years.

When I saw Moseley in a US fast-food (aka junk-food) restaurant, ordering burger and fries (that particular outlet sold Pepsi rather than Coke), I observed that the beef was the only part of the meal that would also appear in a health fanatic's diet.

I'm planning another rant some other time about "Risk Factors". Parting shot - wait for a TV series about the world's fresh water crisis, which will contradict everything we've argued about! Rob R

I'm planning another rant some other time about "Risk Factors". Parting shot - wait for a TV series about the world's fresh water crisis, which will contradict everything we've argued about!

That's why I can't stand the whole approach of only looking at each issue in isolation. I was told recently in a debate on the subject that, in a vegan world, we could manage the wetlands with cattle but not have to kill them, only producing a sustainable number of replacements (I didn't enquire whether they were one of those vegans who were in favour of genital mutilation). The one flaw in that plan is that I don't have enough meat eaters who recognise the importance of these habitats, I can't see the vegansputting their hands in their pockets to support it.

I'm already hoarding fresh water in my carbon rich soils though, I guess that's the real reason I want more cows... Smile

Rob R

The ironic thing is being called 'greedy' for farming livestock. Hairyloon

It struck me as simplistic pro-industrial food production propaganda masquerading as fact.
I didn't watch it, so I cannot comment, but if you feel as strongly as you appear to then you should make a complaint, perhaps to the Broadcasting Standards Commission. Rob R

Linky; the real source of increased methane levels? Nick

Lovely town, Guelph. Bars with beer taps built in for an all you can drink evening not to be forgotten.

Except, in parts. Rob R

Quote:

I also came across this piece of information in that pdf, which seems to go against pretty much everything I've read or experienced in the past;

Quote:

A market analysis conducted by Mintel indicated that 301,000 tonnes of beef were sold in the UK in 2004, accounting for 51% of the red meat market. Beef sales have experienced an increase of 4.5% since 2002, a trend that is predicted to continue, with a forecast growth of 3% in the period 2004-2009. This is
in contrast to all other red meat sales that are to fall (Mintel, 2005).

I can only assume that we are importing more beef. Perhaps the increase is from a low after the BSE scare, or perhaps it is just made up of a liking for horse. dontknow

Mistress Rose

I rather suspect that it is the cheaper meat such as mince that is showing the rise. Some of it may be British, but is probably from bigger farmers as sold through supermarkets. There is also the burger, ready meal and ready made pie market which uses beef, but goodness knows where some of that comes from.

You are doing the right thing environmentally Rob; lets hope that you get the sales to help you with it. Rob R

I rather suspect that it is the cheaper meat such as mince that is showing the rise. Some of it may be British, but is probably from bigger farmers as sold through supermarkets.

The cheaper meat has got to come from somewhere, though. You can't produce more mince without producing more steaks, unless you mince the steaks, but then it's not cheaper.

You can, of course, use more cull cows which have a higher proportion of mince, and that has been happening, which is why I keep predicting supply shortages in the future as the availability of prime beef goes down due to the combination of less physically being produced and more heifers being kept for breeding.

Few people think long term (apart from dpack) when buying their food though, so I think we just have to ride the waves.

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