[Closed] Stop the first US-style cow factory farm being built in the UK

I haven't followed this thread but this caught my attention and made me chuckle :

No, I am not a lion, which is a pure carnivore. I am a human, which is an omnivore. There's quite a difference in the teeth from vegetarian species you see

[img] [/img]

I love the comparison with a group of animals which we are not even vaguely related to 😀

Here are the teeth of a [i]very close[/i] relative of ours which is exclusively vegetarian (apart from the odd termite or grub)

[img] [/img]

The teeth are remarkably simular to ours. In fact other than the canines being a tad longer than ours, there doesn't appear to be any real difference. And obviously the canines aren't used for eating meat.

like it or not the world is now in the position where intensive/highly efficient farming is required to feed its growing population.

This can all be done responsibly. Its never too late to maintain high standards.

To try to say that we should all go vegy or vegan mat be a solution but it just is not going to happen.

Don't think anyone has stated that at all. What has been said is that we don't have to eat steak for every dinner.

Don't think anything really new is being proposed here - just the scale.
I worked on a zero grazing dairy farm in Lancashire in 2001-2002. Not quite as big but probably exactly the same type of system. We were milking 1,000 cows 3 times a day.
As others have said above the cows need to be happy or they won't produce the milk. The cows I worked with were mostly very happy and well looked after.

ernie

gorillas can and do eat meat as DNA from small monkeys and forest antelopes has be found in gorilla fecal matter

here is an even closer relative of ours and they will quite happily hunt in packs for monkeys and small deer

[img] [/img]

see, you can't outrun your evolutionary design, now pass me some fruit and insects 😀

ernie

gorillas can and do eat meat as DNA from small monkeys and forest antelopes has be found in gorilla fecal matter

Contaminated "fecal matter" then.

Western lowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla):
Consumes parts of at least 97 plant species. About 67% of their diet is fruit, 17% is leaves, seeds and stems and 3% is termites and caterpillars.

Mountain gorilla (Gorilla beringei beringei):
Consumes parts of at least 142 plant species and only 3 types of fruit (there is hardly any fruit available due to the high altitude. About 86% of their diet is leaves, shoots, and stems, 7% is roots, 3% is flowers, 2% is fruit, and 2% ants, snails, and grubs.

Provide with me with evidence that Gorillas hunt.

here is an even closer relative of ours

Yes I am fully aware that Chimpanzees have a more varied diet. You have obviously completely missed the point I was making which was, you don't need the teeth of a cud-chewing herbivore for proof of a vegetarian diet - just look at Gorilla teeth.

And btw I completely accept that humans are naturally omnivorous, although I believe that the point is overstated - I doubt whether large quantities of muscle flesh from large prey is entirely natural. I reckon much owes itself to social convention and protocol, rather anatomical evolution. Which is quite possibly the case with Chimpanzees too.

"Stop the first US-style cow factory farm being built in the UK"

Or should it be: "Stop the growth in the population explosion on our planet"??

Food production is a competitive business and the abuse of animals is an inevitable consequence of this.

We could take the moral high ground here, but you can be sure if we do this that cheaper food will find it's way onto our plates form elsewhere in the world. Suprize surprize, this has already been happening for decades!

Intensive food production methods are the future, unless of course, you wish to starve!

We need to get in check the rapid increase in the world's human population.

That all production of animal products is necessarily less sustainable than the vegan alternative projected is a blanket notion that is utterly true for 99.9% of the animal products consumed in this country.

Possibly, given the current UK diet is heavily biased towards beef, chicken and pork. But given that a large percentage of land is useless for arable farming a mixed diet would actually be more sustainable - more vegetarian that is currently the case, definitely less beef, but there's no real environmental reason to completely eliminate pork, chicken, goat, rabbit...

[i]The teeth are remarkably simular to ours[/i]

Ha! They may be similar to [i]yours[/i]

And [i]my[/i] point was, I am not a lion. (Grr) (referring to the silliest post on this whole thread)

Intensive food production methods are the future, unless of course, you wish to starve!

... or pay more.

With regards to 'sustainability' and the veggie / omni / carni arguments, for instance this:

Using land to grow food to then feed that to animals and then feed the animals to humans is retarded. If you don't know why learn2food chain- trophic levels- energy flows, ****s

... I was under the impression that the farmland required to feed the population a wholly vegetarian diet (even assuming all the cows magicall vanish) would require more arable farmland than we actually have land. Far from being "retarded" it's actually a lot more efficient in terms of land usage to find animals made of meat and then feed them grass.

I don't have a readily demonstrable source for this, but I've read it a few times in what I'd like to think are realtively unbiased publications (most recently, Wired).

Much as I'd like more people to be veggie (if only so that I can go to a restaurant and not be presented with a menu with three different kinds of steak, twenty chicken dishes, several varieties of fish, and at the bottom the old lip service "vegetarian option available"), I don't believe that going vegetarian globally (or even nationally) is sustainable.

To try to say that we should all go vegy or vegan may be a solution but it just is not going to happen.

Don't think anyone has stated that at all.

I did say that, cos it is a solution, and I also said it's probably not gonna happen. Shame really.

no real environmental reason to completely eliminate pork, chicken, goat, rabbit...

Wild rabbit, and other "game" may well be very sustainable, but there's no way it could possibly feed the current huge consumer demand for meat. Chickens and pigs though... just where exactly in the world do you reckon their feed comes from? I'll make it easy with two options: home or abroard? Or: a sustainable source or not...?

And those arguing about teeth: just stop it. Only silly vegans point to our teeth and go "Imma a horse! Derp!" The others know that our omnivorous bodies can indeed make healthy use of animals as food but also realise that, as I think I might have mentioned, we don't [i]need[/i] to. At all. I'm not vegan for environmental (well, not primarily), health or hipster-cool reasons; I'm vegan because making animals suffer for our 'needs' and then killing them is just pointless. Ramble over.

Edit: (Ramble on!) Oh Cougar, there's a few things wrong with your post but sadly I'm late for work and can't point out the holes. Would indeed be nice to have a few more options when eating out, agreed!

Far from being "retarded" it's actually a lot more efficient in terms of land usage to find animals made of meat and then feed them grass

All these animals are veggies that are beinng eaten so how many KG of veg matter [and water] does the walking meat need to consume in order to make 1 kg of meat?
This number varies if we replaced it with potatoes we would get 200 kg of potatoes for eack kg of meat that we could eat instead. How is it more efficient to feed a cow - that will waste some of the energy- that eat the food ourselves? Granted upland sheep land is of little no use for growing but we do not need more land to all go veggie we would need less. A lot of animals are actualy fed feed, rather than grass or hay, as they want to fatten them up quickly - ironically this is often soya based and imported - hence the wiki link I posted above re C02 emisions of the industry and links to deforestation to grow [generally] soya to ffed the cows.

Wild rabbit, and other "game" may well be very sustainable, but there's no way it could possibly feed the current huge consumer demand for meat. Chickens and pigs though... just where exactly in the world do you reckon their feed comes from? I'll make it easy with two options: home or abroard? Or: a sustainable source or not...?

That's why I said you'd have to reduce meat eating. Chickens and pigs can be fed on waste / foraging - again, you'd have to reduce meat eating, and industrial feeding wouldn't be possible, but eliminating it completely wouldn't be the most environmentally friendly option.

Don't think anything really new is being proposed here - just the scale.
I worked on a zero grazing dairy farm in Lancashire in 2001-2002. Not quite as big but probably exactly the same type of system. We were milking 1,000 cows 3 times a day.
As others have said above the cows need to be happy or they won't produce the milk. The cows I worked with were mostly very happy and well looked after.

This kind of straight talking practical experience based opinion will not be stood for! Please re-state your comment with extra swear words, exclamation marks and random made-up statements. 😆

just get on and built it already and see how it works...