Happy Meat

Given over-fishing I think my preference (were I to abandon my veggie ways) would be free-range meat rather than fish.

I have a friend who, despite being a die hard vegan, has a balanced view:

It isn't possible for most people to be strictly ethical in their eating habits all of the time. life/convenience/lack of information or access often gets in the way.

but something is better than nothing. when people agonise over every aspect of their diet and seek to label themselves according to it, it becomes more about them than the animals.

I think I largely agree with that TDB.

I do think, though, the onus is incumbant on all of us to make the chances of having to consume meat from ill-treated animals as unlikely as possible.  The only way we can do that is to metaphorically slit the troat of the industry by shunning its product as much as possible and championing the cause of them that so it proper as much as we can.

There will never be a revolution overnight but I do think we've made some progress in the right direction and we can go much, much further still.

That's very true. We all can and should do more. there aren't many excuses now.

I think what I meant was...I toyed with the idea of being a vegan for a while, but then decided I couldn't because I enjoy non-vegan cask ale too much.

But it was rightly pointed out to me that just because I want to have beer doesn't mean I can't go without (especially intensive) dairy, eggs etc. I pointed out that I wouldn't be vegan and she said 'yeah, so what? this isn't about you".

the labels 'i eat only corn-fed chickens' etc can be limiting.

Yeah man, I fully understood what you meant and it's that sort of attitude that in all reality that will probably get us much further than people just switching to veganism because they don't want to eat meat from intesively reared animals.

A general shunning of the IR product will have a huge affect on the farm that do it if we all adopted this approach.  Of course, sometimes it's just not practical, easy or polite to shun some bad meat but if 90-95% of what all of us ate was meat from properly reared animals, the IR farms would have to adapt or die anyway.  The result would be the right result without us having to totally sacrifice our enjoyment of meat, takeaways and eating out in the process.

All that said, I still can't help but feel a little hyocritical that I take a moral stance on the issue but don't always have the full courage on my own convictions.

me too. but that doesn't make what you say any less right.

Meat is meat. It's been killed and probably didn't want to be. I'm not sure how you keep animals makes it right to kill them.

not right (arguably). but much less wrong.

but that's sort of a different argument, and one that has been had a million times on here and other message boards.

I stun my tomatoes first

I just give them some bad news...

Usually that I've just eaten their brothers and sisters

Oh what the hell

I think its a little bit ironic to talk about being more comfortable eating 'happy' meat as a happy animal surely wants to live more than a miserable one who is badly treated.  If you eat the 'miserable' meat you can surely rest assured that you were part of putting a badly treated animal out of its misery rather than extend its horrible life. 

Is it really about the life of the animal of the fact free range are generally not pumped with drugs and improvers and therefore better for the you the consumer consumer

I can understand the not wanting to support a cruel side of the industry but I actually think that if you couldn't face killing an animal yourself for you own plate then you shouldn't be eating them.  I appretiate that we are not allowed to do that but how many could stomach it?  I mean REALLY stomach it .....  not just saying so to shout a gobby vegan down

Probably very few of us on here will have killed a lamb/cow/pig but plenty on here will have killed a fish to eat and a reasonable number may have shot game to eat. There shouldn't be a difference but somehows seems to be one between these categories

i could stomach it (and have).

what I can't stomach is refusing a meal in someone's house because i think it might not be ethical. that is because I am agonisingly polite, british and awkward.

Dave The Ex- Spartan wrote (see)

It's being able to deal with the carcass ! Easy to deal with a salmon or a couple of mackerel but more difficult to deal with half a ton of beef lying on the kitchen floor !

You could boil it for a couple of days and make a nice stock which, in turn, could be used to make a tasty gravy that you could have with your next slab of beef.