I didn't write the article so I won't argue their own points throughout.

I think it's totally fine to eat meat if you want to, I think if I could raise and kill my own pigs I'd probably still eat bacon, but I can't (probably wouldn't) and I don't agree with mass farming and the conditions around it. Sure I could eat locally raised and slaughtered meat but I choose not to do that.

Would you raise and kill your own animals? (Not trying to make a point, just a question)

Paul: you're right about the natural levels, agree with you there, I think if most people went veggie the demand for meat would fall so dramatically that we would have to change the way animals are farmed and it would go from there. I guess we won't ever really know.

I wasn't having a go at you - I think the crux of the matter is the way we treat animals. The notion we can let dairy cows go free is laughable. There's a reason they need milking so often, and in the wild that won't happen. So, really, you're into the realms of euthanising every dairy herd in the UK (from a vegan POV). For the vegetarians who consume dairy, why shouldn't we then eat the animal once it's dead?

Would I raise and kill my own animals? Perhaps. If we were all to go down that road, we'll need more space. And more vets. There are good reasons for ending up with the farming situation we have now, not that it can't be improved upon. Factory farming is a terrible thing.

I didn't think you were I agree it's the way we treat them not what we do with their parts and fluids! I think for vegetarians who eat dairy, it's not an issue of eating the animal once it's dead it's the fact that aniamls are being specifically raised to be killed and are treated very poorly in the time they are alive, obviously not everywhere but I think in the majority of places where mass meat exists (supermarkets etc).

Edit: in fact it's not just the way we treat animals, it's the pollution mass farming causes, the food the animals are fed and how that is maintained, it's the roll on affect of factory farming too, that's what stopped me.

+1

It's an argument with some merit but it's not the full picture. There are other natural mediators to over population - food supply for one. if we turf a bunch of sheep into an area and let them roam around with no predators the population will increase, yes, but not infinitely. Eventually the amount of grazable material will be too small to sustain the population and then it will die back to a sustainable level. We have lots of sheep and cows and etc not just because they have no predators but also because we use organised farming to maintain their food supply - without us feeding them, the population of cows a given space can support is actually less than we can farm on it. Whether you consider the 'animal famine' that this would be as acceptable or not is a question - it's undoubtedly true that as part of this process some animals would suffer greatly. Predators tend to be quite efficient at killing things, whereas starvation isn't.

This also assumes there are limits to where the animals can roam - if we give them the whole country to roam over, we'll end up with a country covered in sheep to a given density .

Never mind the animals, the animals are fine.
What's the point in Humans?!?

Mark

There’s clearly a feeling that the deer population in some areas is bigger than the land can support, hence the need for a cull. If nature was left to control the population on its own, it would get pretty ugly as deer out grow the food supply and they start dying from starvation.

I would also guess that the domesticated livestock would phase out slowly I don’t imagine the countryside populated by roaming sheep and cattle. I don’t think that one day, the farmers just hoof their livestock out into the wild. That would only happen if the whole country went vegetarian over night, and even if that did, meat would be an export product for some time - until it was banned.

My brother-in-law raises his own chickens and rabbits for food.

I actually work for a company that produces software for the automation of slaughter houses and slaughter lines. The amount of animal welfare information that has to be gathered is astounding. Once the animals arrive at the slaughter house, they must be fed, they can't be overcrowded and they have to rest for a set number of hours, before they can be sent to the slaughter line, they have to be rested and as stress free as possible - and this has to be monitored, one of our biggest sellers in the last 18 months has been the animal welfare monitoring software.

Additionally, at least for pigs, they generally go through a CO2 bath these days, so they fall unconscious before they are killed, so they don't actually know what is happening to them - for them, they just fall asleep and never wake up.

Cattle go through a similar procedure, although they are not knocked out before being killed, they are brought into a box, where they are alone and they are shot in the head, direct into the brain. Again, monitors and software at this point ensure that the animals are killed cleanly and that they are not bled out until they are dead.

A new wave of beef producers offer cattle killed in the field, the cow is moved to another field, on its own and it is left to graze, then somebody with a high powered rifle shoots the animal in the head. This is supposed to cause less stress and the meat tastes better - you also pay for the privilege, the meat is about 30 - 40% more expensive that normal beef.

This is also filtering back to the farms, the farmers in Germany are now getting bonuses for looking after their stock better. They are regularly inspected and if they meet the standards (less densely populate stalls etc.) then they get a couple of cents per Kg more for their animals.

That was also a huge sales area for us recently, as all of the slaughter houses need to register which farmers are in the program and automatically report the weight of the animals slaughtered in that programme.

Yes - I have raised Pigs - Rare Breed Tamworth Reds (The 1st one we got was called "Chops"), Cows ( Sussex, Angus mix) and Chickens - although they were for eggs

I did not kill them myself (not allowed to as we used them in my mums business) but have taken them to the slaughter house and was very happy to eat them

I personally haven't raised any animals for food but my family did when I was young. Not a lot of room so it was mostly chickens.

It's worth pointing out that most domestic animals provide useful things while they are alive, I think pigs may be the only animal we farm exclusively for slaughter. If you have one cow or a couple of chickens, it's almost certainly more worth your while to keep them alive than eat them.

A couple of things. First thing, I have and would again raise my own animals for food, when we have our own land again then we will be rearing sheep and pigs for food.

Second thing, an interesting discussion sparked with the Mister the other night. Now we're in a position to 'grow' various different types of meat from stem cells in a lab, presumably at some point the cost of meat produced in that way will come down. The question raised was whether I would be more experimental with the meat I would eat if it was grown in a lab rather than farmed from an animal. I'm not sure if it's hypocritical or not, but I would. I would be far more likely to try lab-grown dog, cat, horse, guinea pig, even human meat if it wasn't from a farmed animal.

I'm a meat eater currently, I have been vegetarian and vegan in the past for medical reasons so I know I can do it and I don't naturally pooh-pooh vegetarian food the way some people do. I choose to supplement my diet with meat because I don't want to end up like a panda, but I would be much happier eating meat that didn't result from animal mistreatment in any way.

IMO, lab grown protein may have the DNA of some particular animal but it's not 'that animal'. Lab grown cow protein was never actually a cow. So it's not any more experimental to eat one piece of it than another. I suspect in the end it won't even taste like one particular animal or other (i.e. it won't be beef or pork or whatever) although I imagine it may be hard for people to come round to that idea. In the end we may end up with manufactured protein that has been processed to look and taste like beef, but that doesn't make it 'beef'.

I don't know, because I haven't actually tried any, but the people who have tried the 'created' meat have commented on the life-like flavour of it which I think might be of some assistance when getting the mass markets to make the switch. I expect, as they have done with vegetarian 'meats' (which I don't understand as a concept btw) that they will be made to have different flavours and textures and also be grown from the stem cells of the individual animal which might make them more distinct from each other, but it was merely hypothesis. I'm not keen on the idea of a generic "proteinous" substance that is the substitute for all meat, I don't think the uptake would be very good either, but then, the number of people making protein shakes and eating protein bars may make me mistaken?!

This is putting me in mind of 'synthetic meat' you could buy in the Elite Games (Frontier I think).

We already produce large quantities of synthetic 'meat like' protein - it's called Quorn and is made from a type of fungus. Granted, it's not the same as lab grown meat.

Also seems right to post this: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-guy-who-want-to-sell-you-salami-made-out-of-james-franco-are-100-serious