electric fences

[John Brown]

I'd be curious to know the current score, as in how many pigs have been eaten by humans, versus how many humans have been eaten by pigs. My guess is around a billion pigs eaten by human per year, fewer than 100 humans eaten by pigs per year.
I would imagine more humans die from bee stings or accidents involving trouser presses.
I'm not vegan, by the way, but I believe the human race may well have to rethink their diet.
Not us old people, obviously. We have tradition on our side.

 

[Trevanion]

In my opinion, Veganism at its core is unnatural. It's a lifestyle that could only be invented in a modern world where there's no real hunger anymore and food is abundant everywhere. It wasn't so long ago you ate what you could get, regardless of whether it was a plant or an animal.

As said a few pages ago by Lons and Roger, the only real way to make a dent to save the world would be to seriously cut back on the human populous.

Perhaps in 40-60 years, my opinion will change, but right now it is what it is.

 

[Lons]

I'm not trying to indoctrinate you! Out of interest, why don't you want someone (not me necessarily)to change your view? Why don't you want to learn, to be a better informed person?

Just out of interest is my diet not 'normal'

Sent from my SM-G960F using Tapatalk

I'm well enough informed but thank you for your concern regarding my education :wink: Am perfectly happy with my current situation which is certainly not an extreme one which I consider yours to be. As I said Humans as a species are omnivore the fact you are not does make me consider your diet is not "normal". That's where we differ and I don't intend to change.

Why don't you "want to learn, be a better informed person?" It's all subjective and as it's just going around in circles there's no further point in arguing so I can't be bothered tbh. You go your way I'll happily go mine. Now where did I put those mole traps? Can't set them tomorrow, I'm going fishing for a "trophy" trout. It can't be a trophy though 'cos I release them to catch another day.

 

[RogerS]

I wouldn't advocate the use of anything that wasn't humane - even if it did show up in the google search for humane ways to deal with moles!

Other circumstances would be where information is scarce (remote tribes in Africa, South America, Asia), where crops aren't available (extreme temperatures deserts, ice). Certainly in the western world I see no reason why we can't move to a majority plant based diet and in time wholly plant based. Nobody wears fur these days, I guess there was a time when that might have seemed like a ridiculous concept?

To be honest that smacks to me as a bit of a cop-out. If we take veganism to its extreme then I can't square that hypocrisy because if it happened overnight then all the sheep, cattle, horses, goats, oxen, camels, even pets...cats and dogs etc would need to be killed because no-one is going to feed them or pay for their welfare. I can understand vegetarianism but to my mind veganism is bordering on a cult. For example, that nutter...and yes, he is a nutter taking his employer to court over something inconsequential ...but this nutter won't go on a bus in case the wheels run over an insect.

Fair play to you if that's how you wish to live your life. And I appreciate you taking part in this discussion.

To be honest, I don't think you'll find one sane vegan that thinks the whole world will turn vegan overnight. There would never be a cull, that wouldn't make any sense to anyone on either side of the argument. I think that most of us would like to see the current trend of growing awareness and gradual conversion.

What's really interesting is that in the last year we have reached a tipping point which makes me believe that plant based will become much more prevalent. Business has realised that there's money to be made. It's cheaper to produce vegan food, but retails at the same or higher prices. As demand/scale grows, prices will fall and more investment will come. On the flip side, demand is falling for meat and dairy, scale drops, prices rise demand drops further - meat will become a speciality product. We'll see I guess.

Sent from my SM-G960F using Tapatalk

There will be a cull although not immediately. If people stop eating meat then those animals that might have given protein and sustenance to another human being....one probably starving...those animals are going to be culled. Economics dictate that.

Even if there is no 'next day' cull, a world without sheep, cattle, horses etc is going to look a very bleak place. So more/all those animals killed in preference to humans...how does that work then?

Moving on...I'd be interested to hear the argument for not eating eggs. Leaving aside the battery hen issue, assuming those chickens are happy wandering around freely and doing what chickens do, they will produce an egg. Those eggs aren't fertilised if there's no rooster around. The chicken doesn't suffer if you eat that egg. You're not 'killing an unborn chicken' so where is the logic in throwing away that protein ? Guess that's another animal doomed to extinction.

And here is an extract from an article which rather refutes the 'eating meat is bad' mantra.

Far from being the bogeymen portrayed by environmental campaigners, sustainably farmed beef and dairy cattle are integral to maintaining our green and pleasant land, keeping our waterways free of chemicals and feeding our population in the most efficient manner possible.

Two thirds of UK farmland is under grass and in most cases cannot be used for other crops. The only responsible way to convert this into food is to feed it to cattle, which are capable of deriving 100 per cent of their nutrition from grass and therefore are more efficient on such land than chickens or pigs. Even on grassland where crops could be grown, ploughing it up to create arable farms would release huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere and require the use of pesticides, herbicides and fertiliser, all of which can devastate biodiversity.

Cattle farming does not just help to maintain grassland – it also works to improve the sustainability of existing cropland. During the “Green Revolution” after the Second World War, many farmers abandoned mixed farming and instead made the most of industrial chemicals, which enabled them to grow vast monocultures. They were undoubtedly right to do so, given the huge leaps in productivity that were made at a time when food supplies were tight. The world, though, is now beginning to count the cost of this advance.

 

[RogerS]

I'd be curious to know the current score, as in how many pigs have been eaten by humans, versus how many humans have been eaten by pigs. ...

True but has no relevance to the valid point that Trevanion was making.

 

[Trainee neophyte]

Well, this all escalated quickly.

About pigs being smart, friendly, fun animals - I quite agree. They have a sense of humour, love belly rubs, and delight in pushing their mates into the electric fence for a laugh. Pigs are brilliant. They are also delicious. On a side note, there is a mad bit of science suggesting that humans are a chimpanzee/pig hybrid, so if this is the case, we are cannibals as well as murderers. (https://phys.org/news/2013-07-chimp-pig ... umans.html)

Veganism is not a lifestyle so much as a thought control system. Tie it in with the cataclysmic climate change hoax, and you end up with modern-day proselyting mind-control army of repression and control. People who know best how I should behave, and will force me to do it for my own best interests.

According to Nasim Talleb, it only takes a 3 to 4% intransigent minority to force all of society to their views (https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-int ... 1f83ce4e15). Most people take the easy route, and only want a quiet life, and the thought police make full use of this. You can see it happening with veganism in the new idea of being "flexitarian" - still eat meat, it try not to(!!?). Cultural bullying to gain a political result - why Facebook is such a marvelous invention. Conformity is all, and whoever shouts loudest wins (see Greta Thunberg for more examples).

So, politics aside, let's look at the reality of eating animals. I can't eat grass, and neither can you. I can eat sheep, which eat grass. This means I can eat grass after all, but only after it has been through a ruminant. If food and resources are scarce, and we are all in danger of starving (many billions of people on the planet to feed, don't forget), why remove a significant food source, i.e. grass, which can found on land that otherwise wouldn't be available for growing lettuce? All those goats in the middle East are there because they can survive on marginal land, and the people can survive on the goats. Oil wealth helps, but there were people and goats before oil, and there will be people and goats after the oil runs out, just fewer of both.

Veganism as a personal choice is fine: you do you, and I'll do me, and we all eat whatever we want. Veganism as political mind control is a scary, dangerous, insidious movement designed to produce a communist style dictatorship.

How did phill.p get on with the electric fence? Do we know?

 

[SBJ]

Well, this all escalated quickly.

About pigs being smart, friendly, fun animals - I quite agree. They have a sense of humour, love belly rubs, and delight in pushing their mates into the electric fence for a laugh. Pigs are brilliant. They are also delicious. On a side note, there is a mad bit of science suggesting that humans are a chimpanzee/pig hybrid, so if this is the case, we are cannibals as well as murderers. (https://phys.org/news/2013-07-chimp-pig ... umans.html)

Veganism is not a lifestyle so much as a thought control system. Tie it in with the cataclysmic climate change hoax, and you end up with modern-day proselyting mind-control army of repression and control. People who know best how I should behave, and will force me to do it for my own best interests.

According to Nasim Talleb, it only takes a 3 to 4% intransigent minority to force all of society to their views (https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-int ... 1f83ce4e15). Most people take the easy route, and only want a quiet life, and the thought police make full use of this. You can see it happening with veganism in the new idea of being "flexitarian" - still eat meat, it try not to(!!?). Cultural bullying to gain a political result - why Facebook is such a marvelous invention. Conformity is all, and whoever shouts loudest wins (see Greta Thunberg for more examples).

So, politics aside, let's look at the reality of eating animals. I can't eat grass, and neither can you. I can eat sheep, which eat grass. This means I can eat grass after all, but only after it has been through a ruminant. If food and resources are scarce, and we are all in danger of starving (many billions of people on the planet to feed, don't forget), why remove a significant food source, i.e. grass, which can found on land that otherwise wouldn't be available for growing lettuce? All those goats in the middle East are there because they can survive on marginal land, and the people can survive on the goats. Oil wealth helps, but there were people and goats before oil, and there will be people and goats after the oil runs out, just fewer of both.

Veganism as a personal choice is fine: you do you, and I'll do me, and we all eat whatever we want. Veganism as political mind control is a scary, dangerous, insidious movement designed to produce a communist style dictatorship.

How did phill.p get on with the electric fence? Do we know?

As I said before, there are lunatics on both side of the argument.

Sent from my SM-G960F using Tapatalk

 

[SBJ]

I wouldn't advocate the use of anything that wasn't humane - even if it did show up in the google search for humane ways to deal with moles!

Other circumstances would be where information is scarce (remote tribes in Africa, South America, Asia), where crops aren't available (extreme temperatures deserts, ice). Certainly in the western world I see no reason why we can't move to a majority plant based diet and in time wholly plant based. Nobody wears fur these days, I guess there was a time when that might have seemed like a ridiculous concept?

To be honest that smacks to me as a bit of a cop-out. If we take veganism to its extreme then I can't square that hypocrisy because if it happened overnight then all the sheep, cattle, horses, goats, oxen, camels, even pets...cats and dogs etc would need to be killed because no-one is going to feed them or pay for their welfare. I can understand vegetarianism but to my mind veganism is bordering on a cult. For example, that nutter...and yes, he is a nutter taking his employer to court over something inconsequential ...but this nutter won't go on a bus in case the wheels run over an insect.

Fair play to you if that's how you wish to live your life. And I appreciate you taking part in this discussion.

To be honest, I don't think you'll find one sane vegan that thinks the whole world will turn vegan overnight. There would never be a cull, that wouldn't make any sense to anyone on either side of the argument. I think that most of us would like to see the current trend of growing awareness and gradual conversion.

What's really interesting is that in the last year we have reached a tipping point which makes me believe that plant based will become much more prevalent. Business has realised that there's money to be made. It's cheaper to produce vegan food, but retails at the same or higher prices. As demand/scale grows, prices will fall and more investment will come. On the flip side, demand is falling for meat and dairy, scale drops, prices rise demand drops further - meat will become a speciality product. We'll see I guess.

Sent from my SM-G960F using Tapatalk

There will be a cull although not immediately. If people stop eating meat then those animals that might have given protein and sustenance to another human being....one probably starving...those animals are going to be culled. Economics dictate that.

Even if there is no 'next day' cull, a world without sheep, cattle, horses etc is going to look a very bleak place. So more/all those animals killed in preference to humans...how does that work then?

Moving on...I'd be interested to hear the argument for not eating eggs. Leaving aside the battery hen issue, assuming those chickens are happy wandering around freely and doing what chickens do, they will produce an egg. Those eggs aren't fertilised if there's no rooster around. The chicken doesn't suffer if you eat that egg. You're not 'killing an unborn chicken' so where is the logic in throwing away that protein ? Guess that's another animal doomed to extinction.

And here is an extract from an article which rather refutes the 'eating meat is bad' mantra.

Far from being the bogeymen portrayed by environmental campaigners, sustainably farmed beef and dairy cattle are integral to maintaining our green and pleasant land, keeping our waterways free of chemicals and feeding our population in the most efficient manner possible.

Two thirds of UK farmland is under grass and in most cases cannot be used for other crops. The only responsible way to convert this into food is to feed it to cattle, which are capable of deriving 100 per cent of their nutrition from grass and therefore are more efficient on such land than chickens or pigs. Even on grassland where crops could be grown, ploughing it up to create arable farms would release huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere and require the use of pesticides, herbicides and fertiliser, all of which can devastate biodiversity.

Cattle farming does not just help to maintain grassland – it also works to improve the sustainability of existing cropland. During the “Green Revolution” after the Second World War, many farmers abandoned mixed farming and instead made the most of industrial chemicals, which enabled them to grow vast monocultures. They were undoubtedly right to do so, given the huge leaps in productivity that were made at a time when food supplies were tight. The world, though, is now beginning to count the cost of this advance.

There would be no overnight cull, the worst case situation I'd that animals (who were bred to be killed) would be killed, but long term suffering of animals would end.

I don't think that you can have a conversation about chickens and exclude talk of battery/farmed birds. What do you think happens to the males chicks which are born?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick_culling

Sent from my SM-G960F using Tapatalk

 

[RogerS]

...There would be no overnight cull, the worst case situation I'd that animals (who were bred to be killed) would be killed, but long term suffering of animals would end.

That's still missing the point. A countryside devoid of animals will be a very colourless and insipid vista. It will be humanities loss.

I don't think that you can have a conversation about chickens and exclude talk of battery/farmed birds. .....
Sent from my SM-G960F using Tapatalk

You're now being very selective as to what you are responding to and ignoring my point regarding eggs.

 

[SBJ]

...There would be no overnight cull, the worst case situation I'd that animals (who were bred to be killed) would be killed, but long term suffering of animals would end.

That's still missing the point. A countryside devoid of animals will be a very colourless and insipid vista. It will be humanities loss.

I don't think that you can have a conversation about chickens and exclude talk of battery/farmed birds. .....
Sent from my SM-G960F using Tapatalk

You're now being very selective as to what you are responding to and ignoring my point regarding eggs.

I don't particularly want to get caught up in every aspect of the meat industry or we'll be here a long time! But, to answer your point, chickens lay lots of eggs as a result of selective breeding over the centuries. If you were to keep chickens as pets (?) rather than just a means of food, I guess that would be a decision for the individual. I would imagine that given the choice of laying lots of eggs or less then it would probably prefer less, so a breed with better temperament rather than an egg laying machine would be a better choice. But, as a by product of owning a pet, although I wouldn't want to do it, I could see why others would do it.

In you other point, you have said that you are going to kill rabbits m, deer and moles, yet your concerned about Ma lack of wildlife? Not sure I can see your position.

That kind of sums up my feelings on the hypocrisy of the meat industry and people's attitudes towards it. Outcry on any story that shows animal cruelty, devastation of the environment etc, but stick a pig in a shed, feed it up, put it in a crate and kill it nobody bats an eyelid!

Sent from my SM-G960F using Tapatalk

 

[RogerS]

......
That kind of sums up my feelings on the hypocrisy of the meat industry and people's attitudes towards it. Outcry on any story that shows animal cruelty, devastation of the environment etc, but stick a pig in a shed, feed it up, put it in a crate and kill it nobody bats an eyelid!

Sent from my SM-G960F using Tapatalk

Wow...you've managed to conflate about half a dozen viewpoints into one. None of them connected. No causation. Not all meat eaters have that viewpoint. I don't eat battery farmed chickens or eggs, for example, neither do many other meat eaters. So where is the hypocrisy ?

Yes, some chickens have been bred selectively to lay more eggs but 'over the centuries' is stretching things just tad. No evidence for that statement that I can find.

With regard to killing vermin such as rabbits, moles and deer... I see no contradiction with my assertion that a 'Vegan-world' will be a very empty and bleak place and devoid of many types of animals. At least I'm being honest and upfront as opposed to the hypocrisy of Ultra-veganism (not that I am suggesting that you are one).

 

[Phil Pascoe]

When everyone goes vegetarian and the fields are full of cereals and vegetables, rabbits, moles, deer etc. will be even bigger pests than they are now. What will people do do instead of killing them? Build them restaurants? By the bye .......... I'll let you know how I get on with the fence.

 

[SBJ]

Globally speaking, we'll grow less crops as we wont need to feed the livestock which require more calories than they produce in meat. Use much less water and land too. That's where the deer and moles could live.

Sent from my SM-G960F using Tapatalk

 

[Trevanion]

I’m dropping out of this now, I’ve never heard such delusional nonsense.

 

[RogerS]

Globally speaking, we'll grow less crops as we wont need to feed the livestock which require more calories than they produce in meat. Use much less water and land too. That's where the deer and moles could live.

Sent from my SM-G960F using Tapatalk

Sorry, Stuart, but it's clear that you know little about farming and cattle farming in particular.

I appreciate your willingness to partake in this discussion but, like Trevanion, I am now out of here.