Daily Express Pushing To End Meat Eating
By Paul Homewood
This week the newly Green Express has been trying to persuade us to stop eating meat:
It found that seven percent of us are vegetarian, three percent vegan with another four percent pescatarian – people who will eat fish but not other meat. Another nine percent class themselves as occasional vegetarians because they regularly choose not to eat meat. Overall, three in four still see themselves as carnivores but 26 percent are already reducing their meat consumption and another 36 percent are considering it – a total of 62 percent.
In reality the number of vegetarians and vegans is still tiny. Indeed it is less than the 12% which a poll three years ago, reported by the Guardian.
But what will be the impact on British farming if the green vegan lobby gets its way?
According to DEFRA, dairy, livestock and poultry farming directly employs 166,000 people, and is worth $18bn to the economy, accounting for about two thirds of the total agricultural sector:
http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#compare
These are only direct jobs; many thousands of other indirect jobs rely on the farming sector.
As many have pointed out, it is not only meat eating which will suffer. Dairy farming will also have to be cut back to meet climate targets, so we will simply end up importing dairy products instead. Other products such as leather will also have to be replaced.
Many dairy and livestock farmers will be unable to transition to other types of food production, because of the nature of their land and climate. Remember too the uncounted value which farmers generate by their custodianship of the countryside. Eco loons would rather see the land return to the wild.
And what will we eat instead? As I pointed out a few weeks ago, most of the food eaten by vegetarians has to be flown into the country, making a nonsense of Net Zero targets.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Poll shows. Did the meat consumption go down? Have the Beefeaters been disbanded?
This is highly irresponsible from a health and nutrition point of view, many would-be Planet Savers will substitute carbs for meat, as many did when the entirely unjustified anti-fat crusade began. Vegetarianism is now not good enough for the zealots, they simply have to be vegan, but where does their protein and vitamins come from? You CAN get enough of those from vegan sources, but you have to study the subject in depth, in particular vitamin D and zinc for immune system health need special attention, and there are probably many other essentials that need to be added to the list.
Good point. It will be interesting to see if Covid statistics pick up any dietary factors like that.
I remember my now dead father a doctor coming home and telling us he had “read the riot act” to a ¤%&/ vegan mother who had just inflicted rickets on her child! Now no doubt he would be the one to be censured but in this case he threatened her with a psychological assesment as she was clearly not competent to care for a child unless she stopped inflicting her own mental problems onto her child!
I forgot to say, he gave her a very detailed lecture on evolution and our dietary needs and why the appendix, our celulose handling organ was so small and effectively redundant.
Vitamin B12 is the one that comes almost exclusively from animal sources. Even the Vegan society has dire warnings about making sure you get enough of that one.
You forgot Fat soluble vitamins A,D,E,K
As well as Iron…
The brilliant chemist, E.L. Smith’s, work on the separation and identification of vitamin B12 was largely driven by the sad outcomes of veganism pre-war. His work is described in his book on the subject, Vitamin B12 (Methuen). Although pernicious anaemia in veganism can be controlled by vitamin B12 supplements, it would be wise that all prospective vegans be aware of past problems. I wonder how many vegan fashionistas are?
Most cereals (pick one off your shelf and check) have B12 added as standard.
Perhaps they hope readers will eat the Express. There is surely little other reason to buy it now.
Do vegetarians consume photosynthetic materials that have sequestered CO2 in amounts that are greater than those eaten by meat eaters? Do these “greens” drink ethanol from cans and bottles that could be used for biofuels to save the planet? What is the net change in CO2 to the global atmosphere from not eating meat? Some numbers please, in parts per million.
‘Overall, three in four still see themselves as carnivores’
Ignorant journalist.
Mr Ingham, please look up “omnivore,” so you don’t look so stupid in the future.
In Norway a news headline last week said “1 in 5 want to stop oil exploration, why does the energy minister not pay attention to the wishes of this LARGE portion of society?” Notwithstanding that that “one in five is a deluded fool with a soft boiled egg for a brain, the weasels and maggots know they are in a minority so they try every which way to pretend they are the majority and as far as democracy goes…well that is only useful when they get the vote THEY want.
PMFB… I share your frustration. But, please don’t continue to lower these discussions with the unnecessary kinds of abusive language used by internet trolls.
I pointed out a factual report which was the front page of a Norwegian Newspaper. There is a concerted effort to make the politically motivated views of a minority be inforced on the majority by any devious means possible and it is working. A lot of people no longer know which way is up.
Betcha most who ‘want to stop oil exploration’ don’t want to stop using oil products. They don’t make the connection between getting more and their continued use. Yes, these people are that dumb.
Does this 20% feel so strongly that they would want to forgo Norway’s Sovereign Wealth Fund, which is derived from oil revenue, much as some of the lunatics here that want to hand over huge amounts to descendants of slaves to salve their guilt. Thought not.
There’ll only be more of this. Propaganda comes in all shapes and sizes, including anti-meat campaigns and the recent ‘Seaspiracy’ anti-fishing documentary from Netflix. (Which DID raise some good and legitimate issues amongst the scaremongering)
As for the Daily Express, if I was a subscriber or took the paper, I’d be out of there by now. The owners are completely mis-reading that papers customer base.
Like on like sales down almost 20% in a year. Go woke, go broke. Give it 5 years and the Express will be another internet only comic. John Junor will be rolling in his grave.
There is quite a lot of evidence emerging that a meat rich diet can successfully treat many diseases, and that products made with seed oils are harmful.
Absolutely right, there are certain genes necessary for maintaining healthy homeostasis and immune systems which are only found in meat and some in fish.
I did some research on this with Chinese foods here; https://www.weather-research.com/weather-and-genetics
Bonkers will be bonkers!
There’s no reason to stop them but they should not expect the unconvinced to follow their silly ineffectual example.
GWPF feed had a story about BBC’s Blue Peter programming kids to be anti-meat as part of an opportunity to get a ‘green’ BP badge.
It would be more appropriate as the BBC are in the brain washing business to have a red Blue Peter Badge with a hammer and sickle emblem in the top corner!
Where I live, grass is the only worthwhile crop. If sheep and cows were not there to eat the grass, the land would return to useless scrub, which is not good for most wildlife. The countryside would become deserted and worthless.
Phillip, there you go again challenging a baseless opinion piece with reason.
Sheep and cows are – contrary to the propaganda – extremely good at concentrating energy. A bit of fatty beef is highly calorific and again, despite the propaganda, we need calories.
If livestock farming disappeared we would see nothing but huge monoculture arable expanses devoid of hedges, copses and all the features of our land which encourage wildlife. We need arable of course but do the campaigners (i’ll bet mainly urban dwellers) have any inkling of how many animals are sliced up in harvesting?
I thought cows and other livestock ate biofuels like corn and grass so surely they come under the heading of renewable.
It’s the Express, home of rabid lunatics.
Must be getting like the Guardian then!
Different cheeks of the same arse.
😀
In one of his comic novels Compton MacKenzie described a meeting of protesters in the AstroVegan Hall. There each vegetable had an astrological sign assigned to it. Obviously he thought that nothing could be more absurd, but look how far we’ve come in the last 70 years.
Let’s see the consumption figures, not some poll where people give the answers they think they are expected to give.
As Sir Humphrey said, “Polls are not there to gauge public opinion. They are there to sway public opinion.”
‘Eco loons would rather see the land return to the wild.’
Except of course, much of the land , stripped of its value for agriculture, will be developed instead. And when the country is concreted over, the likes of the Gruaniad will decry what the government has done to the environment, without admitting their role in the disaster.
Sadly the eco-loons don’t understand the concept of land management being a good thing and that left to grow wild you will end up with a vast reduction in species. Being communists and having no environmental knowledge – Delingpole’s classic watermelons – they would have no understanding how animals have evolved over centuries to live alongside our land management. Change that and things change.
I have witnessed a pandemic experiment where a field has gone from grown for haylage to being home to 5 horses. A regular barn owl has disappeared since all the neighbouring fields are grazed, there is no long grass for voles or mice to live an breed now the horse crop this field as well. But we now have little owls breeding who will like the short grass as do other birds such as egrets given how wet it has been and the churned up nature of the ground. But change it to a messy scrub of first brambles and then saplings they will all be gone.
And on a happier note today’s Mail has a bit on battery cars with a guy trying a mini. Yes, battery cars have zip because of their torque characteristics but he soon had range anxiety as the dash warned of insufficient power left. So after waiting to use a charger and then 1 hour of charge his journey took 3 hours instead of just one hour. His conclusion that while battery cars may be the future they are not practical as yet.
How to upset a vegan part 1. Your taste buds are sensitised to like things that you generally need a lot of which explains why salt is such a common additive. Your body also needs a lot of iron daily. Dietary iron comes in two principal forms “heme iron” which is predominantly found in meat and fish which is why they taste so good. Iron derived from vegetable matter is known as “non heme iron” and is much harder for your body to absorb hence it doesn’t have such an attractive taste to make you like it so much. The clever food technologists get over this by genetically modifying crops to artificially produce more heme iron (notably peas and soya beans) so that they can be made into faux meat products like sausages, burgers etc.
So point out to your GT vegan that most of their food intake is genetically modified and see how happy they feel about it!
We used to have a ‘dinner-party’ debate: If you throw a DP and a veggie friend is coming, would you cook a special meal for them?
That said, if you were attending a DP thrown by your veggie friend would you expect them to cook you a steak in return?
I can answer that for me and Mrs B. We’re both enthusiastic meat eaters, but have 3 couples who are veggie friends. I’ll admit we do enjoy the occasional, maybe even twice a month, veggie meal ourselves. We always cooked a full on veggie meal for all of us, wouldn’t eat meat in front of them, and wouldn’t expect a steak.
Really, Isn’t that just polite, like not smoking in someone else’s house?
(I don’t drink when I visit my teetotal son either, but he knows me so has to put up with me attacking the whisky when he comes here! So I’m a hypocrite.)
I don’t know where society is going with this, the newly woke Express wants meat eating to join bear baiting, cock fighting (and smoking unless its marijuana) as things we just don’t do. I’ve killed and gutted fish and rabbit, but I really don’t think I could gut a cow, so perhaps I’m doubly a hypocrite.
I guess they’re going to have to tell all the doctors prescribing Low Carb diets for those suffering from diabetes, high blood pressure, heart conditions, MS, epilepsy etc etc etc.
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