Do you ever feel guilt when eating meat?

I try to reduce my meat consumption as I know it is ecologically damaging, producing red meat in particular. I like Linda M's Mozzarella burgers more than most cheap beef burgers, as someone else said Quorn "chicken" nuggets taste the same as the avian derived ones. There are some great tasty non-meat products. But, I do love a bit of Venison which I justify as being like a really tasty chicken and revenge for one of them committing suicide on the bonnet of my old Porsche. I guess that you can justify eating pheasant in similar rationale as they seem intent on ending it all under the wheels of my car on a regular basis (stupid frecking birds)

This chart is quite interesting on the CO2 impact of producing 100g of Protein

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Prawns and Bananas are the surprising results here with Pork being surprisingly efficient.
 
Jonny Ingbar said:
The OP absolutely strikes a chord with me, I'd describe myself as a conflicted carnivore.

I try to eat less meat, but I don't think I have the self discipline to go fuller veggie, never mind vegan.

I do think that in a few hundred years we will be a meat free world and kids will be repulsed by our meat eating diet when taught about it in schools.
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The common folk will be, the people at the top will still be eating their steaks while telling people to cut down.

Can't see this planet ever giving up meat voluntarily
 
BoroPhil said:
Yeah. We are intelligent enough and have the ability to produce food without meat so it's not justifiable really. Future generations (if we survive) will be horrified with us.
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I don't get the future generations will be 'horrified by us' argument, it just doesn't stand up and sounds like an immature way of trying to make someone feel guilty for something that was a normal food source unless we had forward thinking parents. I was brought up in a household that had some form of meat/fish on the table every day of the week. The closest we got to a vegetarian meal was a homemade soup that would have a ham shank cooked in it. It was even the same throughout my school life.

Meat being a large part of our diet is changing and there are many more people going vegetarian and vegan. I certainly don't eat the amount of meat I use to but look forward to my Sunday roast every week.

I'm always confused by substituting meat for something that is supposed to look like and taste like meat but then I don't get non alcoholic beer, I would rather have a lemonade. Either argument doesn't make me right or wrong and it is the choice of the consumer.

To answer Brian's question, do I feel guilty that an animal dies to satisfy my table, no. I like meat too much to let that get in the way and would certainly struggle to cut out cheese and other dairy products from my diet.
 
Brian Marwood said:
That an animal has been killed just for your food. A mother sheep is mourning her lamb being taken away at young age for your Sunday Dinner eating pleasure. It feels barbaric at times when we probably don't even need to eat meat these days.

I do sometimes but never made it yet as a vegetarian despite several attempts.
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Yes absolutely, especially if it's just standard supermarket mass produced stuff
 
Sometimes with fish, purely because of the impact of overfishing.

Occasionally concerned about the environmental impact of cattle, but that's about it.

I'd happily move on to lab grown meat etc if it was as good as the real thing, but it's not right now.

I've no plans to switch otherwise.
 
Brian Marwood said:
That an animal has been killed just for your food. A mother sheep is mourning her lamb being taken away at young age for your Sunday Dinner eating pleasure. It feels barbaric at times when we probably don't even need to eat meat these days.

I do sometimes but never made it yet as a vegetarian despite several attempts.
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Not really know. The more I read about how much of the world's resources are used to make meat has made me think we should all eat less but no I don't feel guilt about the animal being killed
 
Muttley said:
I try to reduce my meat consumption as I know it is ecologically damaging, producing red meat in particular. I like Linda M's Mozzarella burgers more than most cheap beef burgers, as someone else said Quorn "chicken" nuggets taste the same as the avian derived ones. There are some great tasty non-meat products. But, I do love a bit of Venison which I justify as being like a really tasty chicken and revenge for one of them committing suicide on the bonnet of my old Porsche. I guess that you can justify eating pheasant in similar rationale as they seem intent on ending it all under the wheels of my car on a regular basis (stupid frecking birds)

This chart is quite interesting on the CO2 impact of producing 100g of Protein

View attachment 50873

Prawns and Bananas are the surprising results here with Pork being surprisingly efficient.
Click to expand...
Great chart. The reason that pheasants get underneath your wheels is that they are bred by the 10,000’s and then released en masse into the countryside so Belgians and London w@nkers can come here and pay £1,000 per day to shoot something driven into their path.
 
Conscience Vs genetics.
I'm programmed to be an omnivore, but I still have the guilt. I don't eat veal on principle. So why shouldn't I feel the same about lamb?
Maybe I could be a veggie.

Conflicted.
 
ThatFragranceGuy said:
Neither are clothes really. Or electronic devices. Or cars. Environmental impact of 20k+ fans gong to regular football games isn't great either but no one moans about that.
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you're right, but people do complain about the first three, especially the clothing, which has huge environmental impact. And the fans travelling to games is linked in with cars, poor public transport etc.
 
Brian Marwood said:
That an animal has been killed just for your food. A mother sheep is mourning her lamb being taken away at young age for your Sunday Dinner eating pleasure. It feels barbaric at times when we probably don't even need to eat meat these days.

I do sometimes but never made it yet as a vegetarian despite several attempts.
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Yes.. very guilty. Such a poor effort on my part to to change tho
 
wilkos_perm said:
you're right, but people do complain about the first three, especially the clothing, which has huge environmental impact. And the fans travelling to games is linked in with cars, poor public transport etc.
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Forest flew to Blackpool for their cup game last week and Cooper stated it was normal - It is these little battles we should be winning on the environment.
 
wilkos_perm said:
I'm not sure huge commercial animal farms, and excessive quantites of food are the "natural order" are they?
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That wasn't part of the question in the OP was it Wilko?
Good try though.
The question was do you feel guilty about eating meat? My answer is no.

Let's not go down the road of commercial vegetarian and vegan option food farms.

I've heard lab grown meat mentioned a few times in here. What exactly is in it?
 
Not really. But I have been reducing my intake, just from a health perspective more than anything. It is difficult though, because, especially in supermarkets, the vegetarian options promote lack of meat, but they tend to have so much sugar in them, I'll end up diabetic from saving animals. Doesn't seem like an especially fair trade :)
 
wilkos_perm said:
I'm not sure huge commercial animal farms, and excessive quantites of food are the "natural order" are they?
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Depends how you look at it. If you go back in history far enough we all used to catch and kill our own food. Didn't leave much time in the day for anything else. It makes more sense for one person to be doing it while the others do something else useful. We have arranged society, which is natural, into an efficient system. That is perfectly natural and many other species do the same thing. Even something like an ant colony will have some ants building the nest, some out searching for food etc. Commercial farms are just the same thing scaled up for a bigger colony.
 
Do I feel guilty when I eat meat? No. I respect those who, for whatever reason, don't consume meat but I won't be joining them.

When I see animals in the fields, even cutesy little lambs, I understand what they're there for. These aren't wild animals we have confined for our consumption they're domesticated breeds developed over thousands of years by man for one purpose alone. If no one ate meat the lambs wouldn't be free to gamble over the fields without the the fear of slaughter they'd simply cease to exist along with all the cattle and all the pigs.

Then what of the landscape and environment? I'd venture that most of the land in this picture is used for pastoral farming. What's going to become of it and the wild animals, birds and insects that rely on it in its current state? I'm not suggesting that a meat free world is inherently bad and the status quo good but moving to a world with no meat consumption would require some seriously joined up thinking to avoid unintended outcomes.

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