[Ebyss]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Narz', 'A')FAIK, most grains crops are grown to feed factory farmed animals.

[untothislast]

'The Secret Plans To Turn Us All Vegetarian'? How sinister is that supposed to sound?!

Believe me, I can think of worse fates. Personally, I've got nothing against people eating meat. Your pet sheep or dog dies? Eat it, if you want. It would be stupid to waste such a valuable source of sustenance and nutrition. My only problem is with actively killing animals, which - like us - would obviously prefer to live their fully allotted lifespan.

For people who never cross-reference the information, or news, appearing in these forums:

1. We are entering into a period of enormous social and economic change, prompted by an impending liquid-fuels shortage

2. This is synchronous with the first serious effects of climate change and a burgeoning global water crisis (ref: Australia; S.E. England for topical examples)

3. Although electricity will still be able to be produced via a number of sources, the role of petrol/gasoline is envisaged to be largely replaced by bio-fuels

with me so far? . . .

4. To accommodate the increased production of bio-fuels, something in the agricultural firmament has to give. It's either land for food production (for people) or it's land for food production (for intensively reared animals). As meat-production is far more energy/resource intensive throughout the entire process than the former - and also requires the input of a lot more (increasingly scarce) water - I'm betting on it being the latter. And if this should be the case, you can see why governments might see a sensible option in encouraging people to make the transition.

Simple historical circumstance, together with practical economic reality, is going to force most of us, ultimately, to become vegetarian whether we want to or not.

Welcome aboard!


'To produce a kilogram of grain-fed beef, it takes,on average,10 kg of
grain and 680 litres of water. Pigs require about 4 kg of grain to produce 1kg of pork and chickens require 2 kg of grain to produce 1 kg of meat. In comparison, according to a study in California, 1 kg of tomatoes requires 190 litres of water, 1 kg of potatoes requires 198 litres of water, 1 kg of wheat requires 209 litres of water—but 1 kg of ranch-raised beef can require as much as a whopping 43,500 litres of water. Even rice, which uses more water than any other grain, requires one-tenth the water needed to produce meat'.

[Ebyss]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ''')To produce a kilogram of grain-fed beef, it takes,on average,10 kg of
grain and 680 litres of water. Pigs require about 4 kg of grain to produce 1kg of pork and chickens require 2 kg of grain to produce 1 kg of meat. In comparison, according to a study in California, 1 kg of tomatoes requires 190 litres of water, 1 kg of potatoes requires 198 litres of water, 1 kg of wheat requires 209 litres of water—but 1 kg of ranch-raised beef can require as much as a whopping 43,500 litres of water. Even rice, which uses more water than any other grain, requires one-tenth the water needed to produce meat'.

[eric_b]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Twilight', 'P')ost-crash every moving source of protein is dead. Endangered or not, behind a fence or not, it's dead.

Pre-crash it makes sense to eat whatever you need to stay healthy and fit. Knowing what we know, anything else is a futile gesture.

[Homesteader]

Oh I should resist replying but I can't. Vegetarians by and large love their yogurt, cheese, and products with eggs in them ie: bran muffins and the like. While militantly espousing their "holier-than-thou" diet they seem to forget biology. In order for cows to be milked they must be bred on an annual basis. Half the calves born every year are heifers (yaaay!) and the other half are bulls. What to do. . . .knock 'em on the head at birth? Eat them as veal? Raise them up as holy symbols? How many more dairy cows would be needed to support a population that was 40,50, or 60% vegetarian? Same idea for chickens. A lot of vegetarians think eggs are fine. Well, half the chicks born are male. Shall they be thrown out in the garbage as day-olds or raised to be eaten? Or kept as pets?

The amount of fresh produce and specialty/luxury fruits and veggies flown in daily to population centers in the developed world is bad enough now. How much would that increase if 50% of the population was vegetarian? Especially for for cities like Minneapolis or London in the depths of winter?

My family and I raise chickens, sheep, goats, pigs, rabbits and have one milk cow. The garden is large and organic. The apple, pear, and peach trees are well cared for and the results get canned every fall. Berries are picked, nuts are hulled. Our house is heated soley with wood that we cut with a chainsaw and split with a maul. We turn the house AC on only on rare occasions and then it is set at 80. No lawn mower, the sheep take care of that and I trim the seed stalks they leave behind with the weed wacker a couple of times a summer. Total gas useage maybe a gallon.

Vegetarians need to walk the walk before they talk the talk.

[Dukat_Reloaded]

It's just another another stage of normal light globes being banned and replaced by CF globes. Same, meat banned, forced to eat vegetarian. Next it will be forced euthanasia. Supporting this kind of thing, you are giving up your freedom, if someone wants to eat meat they are allowed to, don't force your philosophy onto other people.

[Homesteader]

Oh yeah, forgot to mention all our lights are CF.

[untothislast]

Apart from the occasional contribution to these forums, whenever the topic has arisen, I've never wasted a breath from my body proselytising on behalf of vegetarianism, simply because it's one of those issues where you either 'get it' or you don't.

Of interest to me now, is that it's no longer just a question of personal ethical choice, but the foundation for continued existence about to be offered as the only rational option for millions of people who just won't be able to be fed in any other way. Again, the shortfall in liquid energy supply - in tandem with the scarcity of water - means that wasteful intensive rearing programmes will not be economically viable, and such land that is available will probably be given over, increasingly, for bio-fuels production, despite the progressive depletion of nutrients in topsoils entailed, which the increasing cost and unavailability of petrochemical fertilisers will be unable to assuage.

What continues to surprise me, however, is how some people seem to think they're going to be able to exercise any form of personal choice in those areas dictated by the possession of wealth, when the oil-based economic superstructure - together with all its hierarchies and promises of discretionary spending opportunities - is about to fail. It's as if some of the contributors genuinely feel they'll be comfortably observing the misfortunes of others, while innoculated from the wider effects spreading out towards them from the centre.

There is no time left now to manage any form of orderly transition. In fact, no form of orderly transition was ever envisaged. Unless I'm very much mistaken, we seem to be heading for a future of the sort of intensive societal control which exists during wartime. Except this will be a permanent state of affairs.

As I said: 'welcome aboard!'

[Twilight]

I am under no illusions that I will be able to watch from a safe distance. But mass vegetarianism will not avert a die-off, maybe prolong exponential growth for a decade, so the way I see it, when it's my turn to be dragged off the stage, I will be dragged off the stage. There are too many people waiting to take my place in the final minutes of the show, for me to make a sacrifice on their behalf. I know I won't have the choice for ever, but so long as do, I choose to be thus. At this stage in our predicament, we have no choice but to plant our flags and let the chips fall wherever.

[NoLogos]

Wow. Lots of strong feelings here on this thread!

No-one has mentioned bio-accumulation yet, tho. Remember DDT? It was banned because it accumulates in living tissue. This means that plants pick it up and can't get rid of it. An animal that eats plants gets the DDT and can't get rid of it. Going up the food chain, the DDT is more and more concentrated until it causes problems (such as the American eagle had, the birds could not lay many viable eggs). I wish I could provide links, but I am a book lover and have my copy of 'Silent Spring' (by Rachel Carson) right here.

It is probably possible to use DDT in a responsible manner, rather than spraying large areas of the world with it. However, many chemicals are difficult for living things to get rid of. Many of them come from various forms of waste, like dioxin. Others have uses, like the large PCB family of chemicals, but escape into the environment. Very little research is done on the effects of these chems on living things, probably because they are not intended for use with living things. And the MSM covers this not at all, AFAIK.

Humans living in areas where crops are limited or impossible (such as the Inuit, or eskimo) very often have high concentrations of these chemicals in their bodies. Most of the time, there doesn't seem to be many problems, even if there are more susceptable animals out there. However, I don't see the world getting cleaner. I don't think there will be much extra cash around for making sure waste dumps don't leak or that accidents get cleaned up. You pays your money, you takes your chances.

That's my plug for vegan living today. BTW, if you go vegan for a very long time and then eat some meat, you will prolly get so sick in an hour or two that the temptation to eat a well-made hamburger at 2 am will be easily resisted no matter how hungry you are.

[DoubleD]

I am not a vegan or vegetarian and I do enjoy meat and dairy quite a lot, but we increasingly eat several meals a week that are "no meat" - primarily as a frugality choice and because it IS less burdensome on the planet's resources.

However, having read the posts here one get's the impression that the choice to eat lower on the food chain is a black and white - value/religion based option only. I would just like to say our food behavior and choices does NOT have to fit that model.

We can eat a proportionally larger portion of our food from plant products and reduce/minimize the animal proteins (meat and dairy) without abandoning being an omnivore. Not all of us making a choice to eat a little ess meat then our neighbors are advocating "no meat" and certainly are not demanding others do the same.

[untothislast]

I can't see how the post PO world, coming at the same time as global water/mineral wars and climate change, can possibly be a place able to accommodate the same materialistic, over-consumption 'lifestyle' choices we took for granted in the 20th century. We're at the nexus of some really bad events, and the accepted ground rules are changing. And that's the truth of it.

Accept that in years to come, meat may just not be as widely available as it is today. No food producer is going to commit to a process which involves the profligate use of increasingly expensive resources, in pursuit of a market no longer able to draw upon the same pool of wealth to fund its discretionary spending.

Those of us getting through the early years of entropy and economic deterioration, are simply going to have to learn how to get by on less. And, as has historically been the case, meat will once again become an occasional adjunct to our diet - not its main component. The days when families (those who could afford to, that is) kept a few animals for eventual slaughter and careful use of by-products, may be with us once again before too long. This will have nothing to do with morals, ethics, guilt-trips or new-agey feelgood vibes - and everything to do with simple economic reality.

[drgoodword]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('untothislast', ' ')Unless I'm very much mistaken, we seem to be heading for a future of the sort of intensive societal control which exists during wartime. Except this will be a permanent state of affairs.

[gg3]

Sure, let's do with less. Less babies!

Otherwise, today it's no meat, tomorrow no milk, and the next day nothing but mush of the type we see being ladled out to starving multitudes in films on international relief.

Strictly speaking, it makes sense to reduce overall meat consumption somewhat. But strict veganism in order to make room for the unrestrained population explosion is not only unfair to those who aren't overpopulating, it's stupid because it's ultimately self-defeating.

Meanwhile, yeah I do see an ideological agenda here. It comes from the same part of the political spectrum that bans smoking in tobacco shops, bans restaurants selling foods made with transfats, and so on: the Oral Puritans who believe they own your mouth and can dictate what you can put into it.

IMHO those countries that want to multiply like mice should starve like mice when they run out of food. And those countries that can achieve a sustainable population balance should be entitled to whatever degree of prosperity they can provide for themselves using their own resources. Steak for dinner and ice cream sundaes for desert included.

[untothislast]

To go back to the source of the original newspaper article; we have to bear in mind that the 'Daily Mail' holds as its core principle, the belief that any UK government not headed by the right-wing Conservative Party, is inherently illegitimate and has to be undermined. Considering that no party has done more to suck up to corporate interests and the money-markets (as well as to the Mail's traditional middle-class audience) than Blair's New Labour Party, makes this opposition seem truly bizarre. What do they want? Jackboots?

Sean Poulter seems a reliable, indeed award-winning journalist, so there's no question of the intercepted email being anything other than genuine. Rather than seize on its existence as proof of some sort of 'Invasion of The Body Snatchers' type plot, to 'turn' us all vegan/vegetarian (look out for anyone leaving large pods anywhere around your home), I'd say it's just government doing what governments are supposed to do: looking ahead to a foreseeable problem, and putting the feelers out to test all available options for dealing with it.

For US readers unfamiliar with being subjected to a naval blockade on supplies (a bit like the domino effect of shortages predicted to occur with the onset of PO) here's a reminder of life for the typical Brit family in the 1940s. I believe the future is about to revisit the past. Enjoy that 540g of meat.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationing_ ... ed_Kingdom

[Gazzatrone]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gg3', 'S')ure, let's do with less. Less babies!

Otherwise, today it's no meat, tomorrow no milk, and the next day nothing but mush of the type we see being ladled out to starving multitudes in films on international relief.

[nocar]

I rather ban cars than cows.

Or can we make an individual choice - a meat-including diet or car-ownership?

And I do believe that some veggies, like industrially grown lettuce, transported chilled across continents, produces as much GW per food calorie as meat.

nocar

[mentmush]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')nd I do believe that some veggies, like industrially grown lettuce, transported chilled across continents, produces as much GW per food calorie as meat.

[Dukat_Reloaded]

Meat will not become unavailable. If beef becomes unattainable, or shops run out of meat, people will grow their own at home. Alot of places, such as peru, they grow guinea pigs in their homes, they eat leftover cuts of carrots and other things. People will eat rabbits, in Australia we have a rabbit over population problem, it costs a lot of money to contain the rabbits, instead of grazing expensive cattle for consumption, people will hunt rabbit and sell it onto the market instead. I think alot of food production will happen in the home, people will being to raise rabbits and grow their own food as just like what happened in WW2 when all these things became expensive and in short supply. I've become much less pessimistic over the years, I think we may get a taste of peakoil, but then the financial markets will crash, which I suspect because of the debt bubble will happen very soon, and the great depression which ensures, the people will not feel any effect of peak oil, until the economy begins to recover and pickup steam, and then I think that is when we will feel peak oil. At that time, most people would not have been able to afford oil during the debt depression and would have been fending for themselves without oil, growing their own food and suriving that way, when peak oil comes those people will just continue on as they are.

[Doly]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dukat_Reloaded', 'I') think we may get a taste of peakoil, but then the financial markets will crash, which I suspect because of the debt bubble will happen very soon, and the great depression which ensures, the people will not feel any effect of peak oil, until the economy begins to recover and pickup steam, and then I think that is when we will feel peak oil. At that time, most people would not have been able to afford oil during the debt depression and would have been fending for themselves without oil, growing their own food and suriving that way, when peak oil comes those people will just continue on as they are.