No words...again

Fast food and delivery is not cheap.
You even see them delivering breakfast around 10.30 here, probably to most that are on benefits and dont work.
I couldn't afford to live on it all the time like half these people do.

 

I am that type of vegan too. No leather or wool (much of it is just a byproduct of the meat industry these days). I wouldn't have leather furniture. I won't use cosmetics that contain animal ingredients. And no-ones going to convince me to use fish,blood and bone on my garden!

 

I wasn't really thinking of take-aways, @pete. If you are feeding a family on a few pounds a week, you are going to go for the cheapest sausages or burgers or chicken, not the ethically reared, grass-fed, free range stuff. As I say, the top-of-the-range cuts and joints may have come from animals not treated well, of course.

 

I was really trying to say that all the take away and fast food places are only using the cheapest stuff they can get hold of so pretty much what you say about the fact it's all going to raised under poor conditions as well.
I usually buy pretty cheap meat when I make a casserole, it's just a cheap cut rather than raised in a different way.



I often wonder about all the extra prices of so called better reared meat.

 

@Escarpment I used to use BWC cosmetics when I wanted to bother with such things! And I remember when I discovered Ecover washing up liquid - it was a godsend! Seaweed is my main garden fertiliser!

 

You are probably right, @pete. Ethics will always come second to profits for the very big producers sadly, and as more and more small producers go out of business as they cannot compete, the whole industry levels down to the poorest standards they can get away with.

 

When I replied I had thought you meant that meat can be a cheaper option for low income families, rather than, they are more likely to purchase less ethically treated meat. I completely agree with what you have said about that. In my initial reply I was saying that a vegetarian diet doesn't have to be expensive which is where my ethical thoughts were lying, not thinking about the spread of ethics if eating meat.

The slaughter of animals is on an industrial scale nowadays and I think it's very hard to give them an excellent life and humane death, because the last part is always at the hands of someone else. There are people who care and people who don't.

 

Not everyone can be a vegetarian, even if they wanted to. For some, digestion dictates. If you can't manage pulses, rice, pasta, lentils, nuts, vegetables like onions/garlic or dark leafy greens, stoned or high fructose fruits, milk, etc, except in very small quantities, you would really struggle to get everything you needed without meat, fish, and chicken. I speak from experience here! That said, you might still be well informed and want an ethical choice.

 

For that to work, then you would need more people to have less disposable income. If you ban the wealthiest third of the worlds population from flying and eating meat/dairy products etc etc then there would be a far greater reduction in meat consumption and c02 emissions, than if you were to ban the poorest third of the population. So even though a growing population is still a factor, the more disposable income the world's population has will have a more significant factor in consumption.

I understand people going vegan due to the cruelty of animals, but as gardeners, do you still use organic fertiliser, like BFB and sterilized bonemeal?

 

In short, no animal-based fertiliser is used here either. I use predominantly seaweed extract.

 

So how did we survive when the world population was half of what it is now.

If you look at the figures, which I haven't for some time, it was a surprisingly short time ago.

It's OK keep adding to the population but where does it end.
There will come a day when the whole planet is devoid of life that is of no use to humans.
I don't consider climate change to be the big problem facing the human race it's our own population that is the biggest problem, but nobody even wants to talk about that one.

 

Its the economic model that needs changing, rather than trying to breed our way out of it. There is plenty of money but it isn't distributed to fit the current plan very well.

People don't need to be vegetarian but it wasn't that long ago when chicken used to be a treat, my parents only really had it at Christmas, but now it's just so common. We don't need meat and two veg everyday, or even meat daily.

 

Exactly!

 

I've never used Ecover because many of their formulations contain whey - or at least they used to, I haven't checked in years. Whey used to be a big problem for me, because it's a waste product of the cheese industry and cheap, so was used to bulk out a lot of other foods. It was hard to buy biscuits without whey in them. But now they've managed to con people into buying it as a protein supplement, so the problem has gone away!

 

Lots of cheap pizzas don't have actual cheese on top, but cheese-flavoured whey apparently. I guess that stands to reason as real cheese is pretty expensive.