Today's Hunt

[MattPo]

Sign in the butchers in Machynlleth - "All our meat is vegetarian"

[Mossdog]

Sign in the butchers in Machynlleth - "All our meat is vegetarian"

Love it

Reminds me of 'the special stuff' in the League of Gentlemen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4M3FrHsiSfE

[molehill]

…….
But if I were starving, say, on a life boat in an ocean I, along with many predecessors, would willingly eat you to stay alive.

I suppose you wouldn't find many vegans on said lifeboat because they will have been eaten first.

Eating a vegan should also go a long way towards preventing scurvy on that lifeboat voyage, they should contain plenty of vitamin C.

[Mark G]

I bought a vegetarian pie. There didn't seem to be any vegetarians in it.
I eat mainly vegetarian and fish but can be tempted by meat on occasion. There is a fascinating and chilling novel, I think the title is just 'Meat'. It follows an abbatoir worker in a world where meat is seen as a very valuable commodity and as the story unfolds you gradually realise that the meat in question is sourced from a sub class of humans.

[Marco]

Eating a vegan should also go a long way towards preventing scurvy on that lifeboat voyage, they should contain plenty of vitamin C.

Sorry to be a pedant, but eating a vegan wouldn't offer an advantage over eating an omnivore. Whilst most animals make their own vitamin C, humans and some other mammals can't do this and so have to rely on their diet

[Mike T]

Some of the most horrific scenes in Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" involve cannibalism. Unforgettably awful, yet it could be what humanity will come to.

[noel]

Sorry to be a pedant, but eating a vegan wouldn't offer an advantage over eating an omnivore. Whilst most animals make their own vitamin C, humans and some other mammals can't do this and so have to rely on their diet

Along with guinea pigs apparently. https://www.nature.com/articles/180553a0#

[PiesAreGood]

The tilling of soil (for growing vegetables) kills more animal organisms than killing animals for food.

Eating locally sourced meat versus the environmental consequences of a vegan diet if we consider the air miles and amount of plastic etc in a supermarket shop.

2 points worthy of discussion if we are looking at veganism.

BTW I do eat meat but am mainly vegetarian. I advocate a seasonal locally produced diet whatever that may provide.

It is never a simple/straightforward calculation though is it? Grazing and arable crops grown for animal feed uses 85% of UK farmland. Another 850,000 hectares globally is used to grow soy, which is shipped to the UK, to feed our livestock.
Cereal crops to feed animals use 40% of the UKs arable land area and 50% of our wheat harvest.
You can argue that less livestock production would require less tiling of the soil overall and less airmiles spent transporting animal feed.

It is not that simple though. Not all animals eat the same. Roughly 80% of what cattle and sheep eat is grass, while over 80% of what pigs and poultry eat is arably grown food that could have been eaten by humans. How often are chickens thought 'friendlier' to eat than cows?

I'll hold my hands up, I've only eaten plants for 20 some years. Not for those reasons above, I mainly just want to inflict as least suffering *as I define* it in my life. Just thought I'd point out the oft forgotten aspect that we have to grow the stuff to feed the stuff we eat, and yep I know we need to feed the plants as well.

I also advocate a local seasonally produced diet.

No preaching here though. It's not simple is it? We all have different values, different ways of viewing the world, different needs and circumstances. As long as everyone made their choices thinking about what would be the "nice" thing to do *as they see it*, that would surely be a good place.

Oh and by the way. If it was just me and someone else on a desert island with no food to be had? I'd be trying to remember what chicken tastes like while chewing down. (I'd probably bore them to death with my conversational skills) In that case the nicest option *in my view* is for me to live.

[PiesAreGood]

Desert island thought experiment:
population - 1 fatty, 1 skinny
food sources - 1 fatty, 1 skinny
What is the most ethical option in terms of eating?

Thoughts:
Let nature run and eat the one who dies first? That would probably be "skinny", but by then would there be anything left of nutritional value?
Eat fatty? That would give the longest lasting supply of food, but fatty might have lived the longest if you just waited it out for rescue?
Does skinny have a choice?

(I don't want to be marooned alone with a prop forward )

[molehill]

Fatty will eat skinny, because fatty became fat by being the better hunter and gatherer, more ruthless and cunning at hiding and storing food for later.
In fact skinny is a loser all round, hence why he is skinny whilst fatty is fat. Fatty will eat what he can of him whilst there is still some flesh on his bones, whilst the rest of his carcass will be smoked over the camp fire or salted in brine and preserved for Christmas dinner.