Meat as a treat?

[simon hudson]

Title says it all really heard on news this morning,Some clown has suggested we eat less meat to conserve food stocks!!.

Here's me thinking it might be to save the ozone layer.Me I don't eat meat every day but I do like it.

To quote Burt Lancaster in the film Tough Guys "God gave me a perfectly good set of teeth so I'd like a nice juicey steak".Think I agree.Anyone for  Quorn-Simon

[Gruffalo]

And you can bet your last cent that the proposer will continue to insist he/she should have as much meat and as often as he/she wants, it is only the Plebs that must comply!

 

Perhaps a 5-year plan for limiting childbirth as in China would help, it certainly may prevent another such proponent from appearing.

[Sasquatch]

Saw a bumper sticker on a dodge pickup yesterday it read "I love animals, they're really tasty".

Deer & turkeys wander into our yard quite often, it might explain why Americans like their guns so much. Free free range meat! 

[PhilJ W]

The answer is easy, make cannibalism legal. Reduce the demand for other meats and reduce the population all in one.

[skipepsi]

The answer is easy, make cannibalism legal. Reduce the demand for other meats and reduce the population all in one.

Careful the health ministry is watching....

[Gruffalo]

The answer is easy, make cannibalism legal. Reduce the demand for other meats and reduce the population all in one.

I wouldn't recommend the flesh from Walmart patrons given recent pictures on this site!

[The Stationmaster]

Don't worry - there'll soon be a shortage of meat anyway as the politicos concrete over increasing areas of the country in order to accommodate all the people they keep importing.  Regrettably they seem unable to equate population size with land availability with food production with the balance of payments with a nation earning enough to buy imported food.

(n.b. politicos of all brands and colours are available, this comment is aimed at all of them - they all seem as daft as each other in this respect)

[pH]

The answer is easy, make cannibalism legal. Reduce the demand for other meats and reduce the population all in one.

That was proposed a long time ago - http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal

[Fat Controller]

One of life's little puzzles; to take one's own life is, here anyway, illegal, yet the freedom to over populate whilst ultimately leading to mass suffering and premature mortality is unquestionably defended by many who should know better. Those who govern us aren't very good are they?   

Suicide hasn't been a criminal act in the UK since the Suicide Act of 1961; this did away with the idea that 'Survivors will be prosecuted'. Both laws on suicide and those on controlling procreation are founded on religious beliefs that only God has the right to give or take away life; hence their continued existence in more theocratic societies. 

Curiously, the lowest birth-rates in the EU are in two of the most Catholic countries, Spain and Italy.

BTW, Dean Swift's 'Modest Proposal' was a satire.

[ess1uk]

if we keep putting solar panels on farm land then there wont be any grass for meat to eat and thus no meat for us to eat, nor veg either

[Adrian Wintle]

if we keep putting solar panels on farm land then there wont be any grass for meat to eat and thus no meat for us to eat, nor veg either

 

But there will be power (at least when the sun is shining). Over here they keep building new subdivisions on the farmland.

 

Back to the OP, if we cut down on eating meat we'll have to cull the farm stock, providing (albeit temporarily), more meat to be eaten...

[Horsetan]

I do enjoy a vegetable curry.....

[APOLLO]

The answer is easy, make cannibalism legal. Reduce the demand for other meats and reduce the population all in one.

 

 

You certainly would get a lot of 1/4 pounders out of Eric Pickles !!!!!!!!!!!!

 

A right "Yorkshire Pudding !!

 

Brit15

[skipepsi]

You certainly would get a lot of 1/4 pounders out of Eric Pickles !!!!!!!!!!!!

 

A right "Yorkshire Pudding !!

 

Brit15

Isn't he from Birmingham?

[Tony_S]

Isn't he from Birmingham?

Not unless Birmingham is now under Yorkist control, he is from Yorkshire though he is an Essex MP,

[skipepsi]

oooh the shame..

[steve1]

2. Interesting indeed, certianly flies in the face of the beleifs of the lads down the pub.

 

 

Most things do...

 

steve

[cromptonnut]

Soylent green...

[Debs.]

The answer is easy, make cannibalism legal. Reduce the demand for other meats and reduce the population all in one.

 

Trials are in hand on the Isle of Wight: the meat-replacement product is to be known as Solent Green.

[iL Dottore]

I am a confirmed carnivore, my preferred recipe is "kill cow, remove horns and inedible bits, slap on grill 2 minutes a side, serve" but paradoxically, I think that meat is currently too cheap, which I believe promotes two things: appalling "in-humane" (but oh-so-human) treatment of food animals as well as wastage and industrial recycling of meat bits.

 

Let me explain: a happy and contented cow or pig who has lived its short life in natural surroundings ("free range") will cost a lot more to raise, slaughtered locally (or after low stress transport) on a per kilo basis the meat will be more expensive than intensively factory reared, crammed transport, meat animals. Furthermore, as the Italians and the French well know, a happy animal is a tasty animal. Secondly, by focussing only on the prime cuts (as they do here in Switzerland), there is an absence of cheaper, but still tasty cuts (such as beef cheeks). This in turn means that [a] without the sale of the cheap cuts to help reclaim the cost of the carcass for the butcher, the cost of steak or filet (not the cheapest cuts at the best of times) is further inflated and without the cheaper cuts available, people turn to industrially created meat "products".

 

I would support a slightly more costly meat from "happy pigs" and "contented bovines" provided every bit of the animal is used as far as is possible (mind you, there's only so much tripe a man can take...). I, for one, would be happy to have oxtails, breast of lamb, pigs trotters, pork belly and "beefe buttocks" (a medieval cut of meat) on a regular basis and also be able to afford the occasional Filet Mignon or Rib Roast.

[Bon Accord]

Some hae meat and cannae eat
Some would eat that want it
But we hae meat and we can eat
Sae let the Lord be thankit

 

With apologies to Robert Burns.

[Pacific231G]

I'd rather (and do) eat and savour the flavour of a smaller quantity of well produced high quality meat than trench down vast platefuls of the industrially produced factory-farmed version stuffed with antibiotics (I also don't relish a return to incurable TB) We don't actually need to eat as much meat as we do and in excess it's  not particularly healthy. I also don't want to eat meat from animals that have been badly treated when there's a viable alternative.

[Pacific231G]

Fats and Proteins tend to be self limiting with regard to how much an individual eats, the trouble starts with sugars which basically confuse the body into thinking that it's not had enough food so we eat more. Sounds familiar? Read the labels and see if you conclude that Governments and Agri. Business have probably not served us that well at all. Our diet is a legacy of unstable food prices in the USA over forty years ago, the instability that, with Government coercion, made food manufacturers turn to high fructose corn syrup in lieu of cane or beet sugar, much cheaper and more potent, combined with previous poor statitistcal follow up by Ancell Keys who simply wanted to nail saturated fat and the Mcgovern Comittee in the U.S. Senate whose head was a comitted vegetarian (yes, I know that he lived to be 90 years of age) and was assisted by a member of the White House Staff who was likewise, vegetarian. Medical people giving evidence were not convinced about saturated fat as a danger at all but were not listened too. The result was a low fat high sugar diet and a massive increase in Heart Disease, Obesity etc. I recall that when I first went to school there was one diabetic child on the entire roll and now, I am told, that it is highly likely that there will be several in every class. I am not a medical person but some of the information that has been emerging over the last few years has been an eye opener, even the cherished low fat/protein, high carbohydrate food triangle adopted in the USA has been abandoned.  As soon as I saw the headline over meat consumption alarm bells started ringing, as I said earlier "Politicians are involved, what could possibly go wrong?".   

Though I don't think you'd find a programme like "Man versus Food" on French television I've never been convinced that the notably large size of Americans in particular is really all down to gluttony and sloth. There have to be other factors at work and I suspect that excess sugar- especially corn syrup- has a lot to do with it. All those sodas can't help either. On recent trips I have noticed that the French seem to be getting more portly so I'd guess they're also eating more processed food and they do eat more of a certain well known brand of hamburger than us. 

 

Personally I'm trying to eat far less food that needs to have its contents labelled and far more that I've prepared myself. Unfortunately there seem to be food producers that are about as interested in our health as tobacco companies.

Going back to the OP, growing crops intensively to feed animals and then eating those is a pretty inefficient way of feeding ourselves.

[mezzoman253]

Trailing round the supermarket each week, as you do, I thought we'll all be veggies soon as the price of meat is making it less attractive to buy. Even on the "reduced" bay, there a heaps of meat that no-one is buying, as even the "lower" price is making it sell.

 

Rob

[bluebottle]

The answer is easy, make cannibalism legal. Reduce the demand for other meats and reduce the population all in one.

 

I once remarked to Mrs BB - rather thoughtlessly, I must admit - that I believed human flesh to taste similar to that of pigs. Still, I did get to finish off her roast pork sandwich.