UKC

youtube.com/watch?v=JWOGarotxJo&

Gnarly footage in Belgian abattoir.

Grim!

Its beyond grim.  Its obscene to say the least especially as cattle are quite clever and 'sentient' animals, much like dogs etc.,

I just trust that our abattoirs in the UK are better managed & run.

Just like we used to do when people were hunter gatherers eh. An argument I heard Piers Morgan give.  Odd that the anti vegan brigade are quiet on this one eh

Yup pretty grim

I involuntarily flinched on seeing them being poked with sticks. 

Terrible.

I'm not an Isobelle Oakeshot fan but she came down heavily against meat eating last night on Questiontime on the grounds of animal cruelty. Good on her.

Are you vegetarian? Im just wondering what your motivations are for posting this?

He might be a meat eater having second thoughts?

What kind of bastards poke animals with sticks and the rest? Vegan and veggie friends keep sharing stuff on facebook about the sentient nature of animals and their 'inner lives', it's definitely been making me think. 

If you cannot kill it, yourself, you have no right to eat. Chickens are hung upside down, electric shocked, then throat slit, sweet.  youtube.com/watch?v=-lNuvmGiXpU&

I’ve killed animals. It’s not pleasant. They look at you with sad eyes. I’m not sure whether they’re actually sad or whether nature has equipped them with sad eyes to try and play on human beings caring nature and invoke a guilty conscience.

Unfortunately nature has also equipped man with the tools necessary to catch and eat prey and the requirement to eat meat. Blame early man for that, I’m sure we’d be better off sitting in a tree in a a jungle somewhere eating bananas. The dolphins have it right, play all day and eat tuna. Oh hang on a minute... bastards!

and this is why I recently turned vegetarian.

I don’t eat meat of any kind and can’t even bring myself to click the link.

I don’t need to be reminded of how cruel the process can be.

Bollocks. If you can't design a computer you have no right to post on the internet.

Can't see any sense at all in that statement, especially in the real world of earning a living in a modern urban environment and raising a family

I've spent time with Cree hunters in NWT Canada.  They always went for the one shot which would guarantee a kill by getting as close as possible - often at the risk of scaring the animal off,  and I never saw one deliberately taunt, poke or do anything which would be classed as deliberately cruel.  A lot of the them also immediately killed large trout they netted too.

(Ps but I do like meat - but not when its been killed in such an obscene and callous way).

and the cruelty is just one of many issues; its been in the press recently how meat rich diets (of non organic meat) supply glyphosate to human bodies - because livestock is fattened with GMO soya

Really?  You think so? 

Perhaps he meant 'can't' in the 'Can't smack my children' sense, ie not having the emotional capacity?

English can be an ambiguous language, it's possibly worth an ask to see which he means?

hopefully nowadays they are but we carried out much worse here in the uk just a few decades ago. when i left school i worked in an  abattoir  for several years on a cattle slaughter line. while none of it was pleasant by far the worst was the halal killing that took place where cattle simply had their throats cut without being stunned. it was horrific and legal in this country as long as the meat was being produced to be sold abroad.

all done in the name of religous belief and all done in full view of the cattle waiting in line for the same fate.I wont give you the details  of the levels of sanitation pre BSE days but it was almost as horrific. glad i now have a different career. 

Good luck in getting a reply from paul mitchell 

I think with the exception of halal/kosher slaughter - a stain on this countries conscience - most U.K. abattoirs are a lot better than that.

The abattoir looks badly designed, bad from a welfare perspective, but also pretty unsafe for the slaughter men.

I firmly believe it’s possible to slaughter animals in a way that does not lead to suffering, and that farmed animals can have good lives.

What's the logic in that?

Humans divide labour precisely so that we don't all have to grow our own crops, breed and slaughter our own animals, make our own tools, build our own houses, write our own books, etc etc. We specialise and trade.

I think you've misunderstood the entire concept of civilisation.

You would like to think so but I fear not, try watching Land of Hope and Glory www.landofhopeandglory.org 

I've looked at the video and looked at all of the replies on here and I wonder how you all thought it was done?

*where some meat comes from.

If the Evangelical veganists start targeting UKC I think we can always torch it and start again.

Emotionally I could build a computer. Emotionally I could kill an Animal.

What you seem to be trying to do is compartmentalise the food you eat, and not recognise that the Rump steak you eat, is the top of the leg of that animal with lovely eyes you see in a field.

Hi Jon, I think he’s trying to draw out the disconnect between consumption and the sentient animal at the other end of what some may see as a brutal industrial process. Some may also question the fit of this treatment of animals with the concept of civilisation. I think bedspring was observing that we effectively duck the issue and avert our gaze away by paying someone else to perform slaughter for us. Certainly worth thinking about.

paul

That's totally fair enough, I fully agree that we should be more aware of how meat's produced. That would guide better consumer choices: paying more for high welfare meat, and eating less of it.

All this is true, but I'm not being told sanctimoniously over the Internet what I do and don't have the "right" to eat. I can eat what the f*ck i like thanks, and others may or may not agree with my choices and reasons. If bedspring seeks to persuade, he should review his style and technique. 

Agreed. Fwiw I’m a vegan who thinks you can eat what the f**k you like

The implication from your post, is that the video shows where meat comes from.

But meat doesn't all come from abattoirs like that, hopefully the vast majority have far better standards and practices.

What you are showing is more akin to the practice of animal cruelty and I feel should have been posted as "animal cruelty in an abattoir" rather than the implication that meat eaters are supporting this practice by choosing to eat meat.

It certainly makes very uncomfortable viewing, whatever our individual opinions.

I do not care what Jon eats, just pointing out the disconnect, he can eat what he likes for me. I just think people should understand what is involved, then make a rational choice based on the facts.

Listen to this, not quite so emotional https://player.fm/series/the-food-chain-1301468/inside-the-abattoir

I thought that's what you meant.

That's interesting. The Cree don't live in the NWT. And it seems an odd analogy anyway. Almost all hunters would take the approach you described, Cree or not, but the comparison of hunted game vs farmed livestock for meat is slightly irrelevant unless you think everyone should eat wild game?

On a tangent - when I’m in the USA I try and eat game meat where I can and lamb where I can’t as their meat industry - especially cows - are so unpleasant both in welfare and in the crap inside them.

Really? That must be quite difficult to maintain. Lamb is not a large part of the North American diet and it is illegal to sell game meat from hunting.

Most curry houses have lamb and quite a few have goat.  So I tend to eat a lot of curry.  It’s only 2-3 week trips.  There’s a surprising amount of both sheep and goat reared in Texas of all places.

Yes, but a lot of meat is hunted compared to the UK and it all ends up somewhere...   You can with effort find organic ranch reared bison as well.  

I’m motivated by my entirely unscientific theory the growth hormone laden beef is entirely to blame for Florida.

Yes, that makes sense although I suspect most of the bison comes from Canada. FWIW a lot of the game meat you can get will be farmed and possibly even imported.

Its the Cocaine that is to blame for Florida

I should be so dismissive of Florida.  Shudder.

Oddly it’s easier to get Bison in County Durham that where I’ve been in the states.  There’s a herd of them near Fishburn.  I particularly like that they’re slaughtered on site by a single rifle shot to the head and not driven off alive in meat wagons to an abattoir.  This removes a lot of the concerns I have about farmed animals in the UK.  They got special dispensation to do this on the ground that transporting bison alive to slaughter is a prelude to a disaster movie...  Bisonic Park, The Stampeedingn!  

I try and eat a lot of venison and wood pidgin in the UK - both killed to protect crops.  

You can also get North American grey squirrels from a butcher in Hexham although I’ve not tried those...

The petty nationalism regularly exhibited on ukc never ceases to amaze me.  

In North America, bison are transported to slaughter. Elk are not and are shot on the site they are reared. I suspect that in the UK there isn't the ability to follow the American slaughter process as it involves the use of a handgun which is why Bison are shot on the site they are reared.

Come March 29th you probably will be.

A)  I spent about two months with two Cree families living/hunting out of Fort Smith NWT.

I sure there were plenty others In Fort Smith. There were plenty of other Indians living there but I can't remember what tribal origins they had.  

(Just as well I didn't mention the Hotel keeper at the Pelican Rapids Hotel.  He was an Innuit who had walked/hunted his way over from Greenland, liked Canada & fort smith so stayed.)

B)  My comparison with hunted game was in reply to an earlier poster who'd suggested (or I'd misunderstood), that the implication was that when we hunted all slaughter was carried out it would have been just as gruesome and deliberately cruel.

"The petty nationalism regularly exhibited on ukc never ceases to amaze me."

Pardon me?  Petty nationalism for hoping we have higher standard of animal welfare than an other country is hardly 'petty nationalism'.

If it is, then you must get pretty upset every time your neighbours go on to us europeans how much bigger everything is in the US of A.

I don't doubt it. But your post did imply (if not directly state) a sense of living and hunting with an indigenous group of native hunters rather than living and hunting with people you met in Fort Smith.

Fairy Nuff

.With the saying 'All looks yellow to the jaundiced eye' in mind, whatever prism one views things through, makes that seem to be true - relatively often. 

I just took it to mean that he hopes what he posted to be true, but an outside perspective on things UK related is always welcome. 

What I said is what I thought I implied.  

I joined two families of Cree hunters in Fort Smith and spent several days travelling  from there to their camps in the bush (forests).  They spent that time in the bush hunting - fishing, trapping and so on. 

 I hope that is a little clearer.  Maybe its my bad English.

Once you've heard the screams of hundreds of animals being forced towards an end they can smell and hear, you don't forget it. Battery, free range, organic, RSPCA assured - it all goes to the same slaughterhouse. 

youtube.com/watch?v=sS1XHQ7hoXE&t=67 

Perhaps I can help with this question:

Did you join two families, who identify as Cree and live in Fort Smith on a hunting trip? Or did you join two families, who identify as Cree Hunters, in their daily routine?

I get that I'm being utterly pedantic here but I do feel that your first post gave a certain impression that might not be correct. 

Perhaps better expressed as “if you are not WILLING to kill something, then you should not be prepared to eat it” I don’t think the poster was advocating we all start slaughtering our own....

Yes you are getting rather pedantic but never mind.

a).  Both families told me they were Cree, although one women told me she was a Slavey indian.  I didn't check their ID cards if they have them in Canada.

b).  Both of your questions are correct.  They lived/occupied/rented or borrowed, or had somewhere to live in Ft. Smith - I don't know the precise details of occupancy It felt rude to ask.    They used this property when they were not travelling or doing whatever else they did.

c).  We (me and the two families)  travelled from Ft. Smith into the bush.   Once we were at their camps (they used two about a days paddle apart) I took part in their daily routines.  I was there in the bush for just about two months.

But this post is really about the unnecessary cruelty involved in killing animals for food.  

Just holding you to account. 

Slavey is not Cree

Yes.

I doubt if most meat eaters are WILLING to kill something, either for themselves or for their families, so I don't see much difference.

"Slavey is not Cree"  

I never said they were.  read a) again.  

Philosophical question.  Is it better for the cows to not have existed than to have existed and then die in these circumstances?

I have pondered this one and no existence = no suffering, but also no joy or happiness.  Assuming the cow, for the rest of its life, had a reasonable existence wandering in the fields munching grass would the happier elements of its existence cancel out the massively crap part at the end where it’s treated terribly.  Nobody can know the answer (even the cow, I suspect!), so it all comes down to personal choice and opinion.

The numbers of people giving up meat here is starting to rise quickly. I think mostly from health, moral and emotional issues. However, the big push will come from environmental and resource pressure, and some of the choice about that will be taken out of our hands in legislation, just like coal power stations and the internal combustion engine. I don’t think meat based products will disappear, but they’ll certainly be high priced items. 

https://www.facebook.com/barry.bradley.332?__tn__=%2Cd-]-h-R&eid=ARBR0S...

 I ask myself why I eat meat. The answer is that it is a habit formed by my society perceiving it as a luxury. Basically its a habit. Last night we had a Veggie Cottage pie it was just as good as a meat one.
I have no moral problem with eating meat that has come from a well treated animal. I could kill a lamb and eat it.

My major driver will be Environmental reasons

I would suggest yes it does cancel out, beef cattle live for around 2 years and then have a terrible day at the end of this, we should do better, but for me i can live with this.  What I think is far far worse is the pigs (also chickens but to a lesser degree) that are battery farmed barely unable to move for their entire lives, for me this is a thousand fold worse and really why i should be a vegetarian (i'm not).  sadly a lot of cows are now also being raised in barns so even more reason to go veggie!

It's the "Wonderful Life" option. I imagine some cow saying "attaboy Clarence"

No you really can't; there are inescapable ethical and social dimensions to food consumption (other organisms dying so we can live). The extreme embodiment of 'I eat what I want' is predatory cannibalism which is obviously problematic, morally and socially. Those (moral and social) considerations don't suddenly vanish somewhere on the ethical spectrum between cannibalism and eating ordinary food.

You seem to be aware of this (your mention to high welfare) but (if I read you right) are asserting that the assessment and weighting of those considerations should be a matter for the individual themselves? 

That view isn't very compatible with animal welfare or environmental legislation (relating to food production) and would be disastrous if 7 billion humans adopted it; imagine if we all decided to eat shark fin soup or Ortolans?

Perhaps you are specifically saying that so long as one remains within the law, one ought to be able to eat whatever one wants to (and perhaps without social censure)?

This view is also curious as it simultaneously leans upon legal permission to abdicate moral responsibility whilst ignoring the origin of law in social customs and values. It is telling that a parallel argument was well-rehearsed by slave-owners in the US prior to 1965. And did the morality of slavery change due to Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation? Did it f***.

To the original point which so irked you: an assertion that one should not eat an animal that one would not be willing to kill. Extending the slavery analogy: one should not buy goods manufactured by slave labour if one is too squeamish to keep slaves oneself; to do otherwise is rank hypocrisy.

(To be clear, I am not endorsing slavery by suggesting that a lack of moral hypocrisy is the only/best guide to ethical action but I am saying that it is a pretty low bar to set for starters.)

No thanks. I really wont be clicking that link.

Out of interest, have you visited many beef cattle farms?  I remember having a look around one once in the States and it  convinced me to stop eating meat for a while.  I've since been to one or two farms in the UK, which were much better.  We live surrounded by veal producers in France and the cows seem to have a fairly decent lives for the most part.  I try to now buy meat from local sources - mostly places I have actually seen, although this isn't always possible.  While my conscience is a little clearer with this approach, I still have little or no idea about the feed used and the environmental consequences of such.  Is there an accreditation or labelling system for beef as if there is I am not sure how it works and what any codes might tell me about standards? 

People are, in general, too disconnected from the food they eat these days.  I remember reading about survey results where kids barely knew that milk came from cows etc.  What proportion of people have visited a working farm or abbatoir?  Yet another thing that should be an essential part of a young person's education....  We rely a lot on imports in the UK - making the problem worse, in my view.

if we All eat less meat will there be a shortage of milk?  We eat less meat anyway but I do like milk - can you have one without the other?

I don't think so.  Adult cows are not normally slaughtered for meat.  The ones which go for the meat are normally the ones which are not sold or used for milk production and are one or two year olds.

I was just wondering if the young aren't being produced for beef and hence cows were not gestating for breeding, how would they lactate?

It's not quite so simple. Big milkers don't have as much meat on them. So a herd of diary calves that were raised for meat, won't have such a high carcass weight as a beef herd.

Most diary farms balance this by breeding their good diary cows with a bull from a good diary herd  but all the diary cows the farmer doesn't think are best and won't keep calves from for themselves(replacing older diary cows) they cross with beef cattle, to give a slightly better finished weight. It is a little more complex in practice as farmers don't want to risk losing a diary cow giving berth to a large beef calf, so it's a slight compromise on which breeds to cross. 

Yeah I worked on a cattle farm in NSW, Australia, actually maybe the best job i ever had! we used to chase through the bush on quad bikes rounding up the cattle.  I understand that this probably doesn't represent the majority of beef production and apart from 3 months in this job i just see cows in fields and think they look happy enough?  What was it that changed your mind? 

Does your post suggesthat you find the veal farming to be more humane than other beef farming you've witnessed, that's really surprising to me, why is this? Ben

LOL, Good effort in trying to explain but I think you might have added more to the confusion

I think this is what you were trying to say:

http://beefandlamb.ahdb.org.uk/market-intelligence-news/developments-beef-p...

That's horrific! Bet it happens closer to home too. That's no way for anything to be treated. 

Without wanting to get into a semantic debate about the meaning of the words "can" and "cant": In the sense I used those words, that is, what choices I make in the supermarket, I really can. This said, I agree with you that there ethical and social considerations, which rather than deny, I specifically made reference to. And you noticed, so I'm a bit bemused by this remark - I clearly don't need to be told. 

When it comes to what to choose from the supermarket, yes. But at the level of what gets into the supermarket, i.e. policy, then we live in a democracy in which rules are made with our endorsement (kind of). 

I fully support regulating the living shit out of the food industry for human health, environmental sustainability and animal welfare. As a voter, I make the choice to vote for such policies (kind of). 

Yes, one should be able to choose from what is available. Do you think that this choice (from what is available) should be restricted? How could such a restriction operate?

No it doesn't. It says that there is a mechanism for influencing what is available (policy) and from what is available, the individual should be free to choose. In what type of society would the individual not be free to choose?

I'm baffled. But I'm fascinated by morality and will continue this post from a keyboard, after I've ate my tea. Which is vegan (apart from the beef stock and Worcestershire sauce, without which it wouldn't taste nearly so good). 

History will judge that the way we treat animals is barbaric. The arguments for a vegan lifestyle are overwhelming.

I was reading the other day about meat eating and its common associations with masculinity. It's something I've noticed and have been thinking about. Does anyone here feel like not eating meat would emasculate them in some way/feel open to ridicule by men who consider it a necessary part of being male? 

For context: I'm a vegan who eats eggs from time to time (free-range, organic). 

This argument is hard to follow. But it seems to be founded on the idea of some kind of cosmic, unchanging morality, which with regards to slavery, we (humans) did not follow prior to abolition and voting rights. And then we fell into line with this cosmically correct morality. There is then an implication that veganism is aligned with this cosmically correct morality, but eating meat is not, and perhaps in the same way we will at some point fall into line on that matter too.

This is really tricky, because I do, kind of, believe in a cosmically correct morality, in a sense. I'm a consequentialist and think that all moral decisions can be evaluated in terms of the effect that actions have on the experience of conscious beings. However, I'm also fully aware that this moral scheme is at odds with what morality really is: it's instincts and emotions that we evolved in order to co-operate in societies. As such, we're often naturally motivated from deep evolved instincts to do stuff that doesn't fit my consequentialist ideas of right and wrong - this is what it's like to be human. On the one hand, we're still just monkeys, fighting and f*cking and doing whatever our programming determines is a good strategy for the replication of genes; but on the other, we're self-aware, reflective, rational humans who can reason what's right and what's wrong in terms of consequences (or less sensible schemes like religious morality or rule-based morality).

So, I'm not really sure what you're saying, with the parallel to slavery. I would say that the consensus morality regarding racism changed over time. I think that as we become more sophisticated through the development of culture, we do sometimes move towards my idea of the cosmically correct morality of consequentialism. But this is really a matter of coincidence: the force behind change is our evolved instincts that help us to live better together as societies. Slavery seems like a good idea at first, but once you've actually got to live next to people being horrifically abused, it actually turns out to better to treat people with different skin colour as equals: that makes a better society to live in, it's win-win, it's not falling into line with cosmically correct morality. Human beings do things for reasons, and those reasons depend on built-in programming from our evolution.

The point does indeed irk me, because it's not compelling (it's inconsistent), and it's moralising. This is a bad combination, unless you're specifically trying to irk me.

So, if you want to defend this nonsense, tell me:

 - Why "can't" I eat meat, but I presumably "can" drive a car, even though I can't make one? What decides what products fall into the set of things that I must be able to produce myself, before it is morally permitted that I purchase them?

 - I'm too squeamish to do cataract surgery on my mum, or indeed anyone. Does this mean I can't have cataract surgery myself, because I don't have the stomach to do it personally?

Now, to the charge of hypocrisy. I tend to view such charges with very little interest because every human being is a hypocrite (this is because of the tension of our programmed, evolved behaviour and our reflective, rational minds). But there is a type of hypocrisy that I think is fair to raise: that's when someone moralises over others, but is guilty of a similar moral transgression themselves. The kiddy-fiddling priest is the classic example. Now, I think it's impossible to live in our society while not consuming products whose production is in some way morally repugnant to the consumer. We can try to make good choices, but I think nearly everything in the supermarket has at least a little of splash of blood in there somewhere. I think that capitalism infuses our lives with complicity in atrocities, often in a very dilute or removed way. And for this reason, I find it irksome when someone moralises over me about consumer choices.

Now I'm emphatically not saying that all vegans are sanctimonious pillocks. But if I did want to find someone who was eager to moralise over others from a sincerely held but ultimately inconsistent and poorly justified position, then I know precisely what type of cafe I would look in.

I agree. 

Are they overwhelming just to you in the UK, or do you think they'd be overwhelming to the San people of the Kalahari and Inuits as well?

Interesting question, but it's not something I think influences the vegan question much, for this reason: eating meat is the default position, it's not something you *do*, it's something you go out of your way to avoid. As such, if you're motivated to go vegan, you probably have a good deal of conviction behind your choice, and you're unlikely to be swayed much by the consideration "will people think I'm a poof?". If you're influenced by those kinds of factors, you've got a different set of character traits to the person who gives thorough consideration to the ethical issues surrounding their food choices, and who has the conviction to make the sacrifices of going vegan. (And whatever way you cut it, it is sacrifice - you can't just go with the flow and eat whatever because it's polite and convenient, you have to think and plan a lot more.)

In some instances yes. I think many farm animals live in better conditions than many pets though. They have the freedom to roam, eat, drink and poo as they wish etc.. right now 1000s of dogs will be left indoors with limited room, after being conditioned to not go to the toilet for 6,8,10 hours etc.. a nation of animal lovers! 

I'm sure the whole idea of animal "ownership" is anathema to some people in the same way as eating them is to others. (No objection to either, personally)

Make the effort Jon, at least swap out Worcestershire Sauce for vegan Henderson’s Relish from the Glorious People’s Republic of South Yorkshire

Neither have I. But at least UK abbatoirs have cameras and farms are subject to some level of inspection.

Like most things everyone has their bias, you can buy vegan dog food, but then you'd think the whole principle of keeping a dog would be against their ethics too. 

I think that when you replied to me before, you obeyed a basic rule of Psychology. You think I criticised you, and you did not like it. Its amusing to watch, if someone is doing something they know is wrong, and someone else pulls them on it, they will very often defend what they are doing. This is why it is so very difficult to change peoples minds, because if they even sense, as you did, criticism they will defend their position.

There is a book called How to Win Friends and Influence People. The very first chapter is about not criticising people, for just this reason.

For clarity:

• I think that there are lots of good reasons not to eat meat
• While I think veganism is a perfectly good choice for people to make, I don't believe it makes a consistent moral position that I could ever sign up to : when I think through it, I don't agree with it
• The "kill it yourself" argument is a load of crap and annoys me because it's a bad argument 
• I hate being moralised over, especially when I've thought a great deal about the issue in hand

I assure you that while your criticism did annoy me, it's because I don't agree and your remarks were phrased using remarkably arrogant language ("don't have the right" - as if you're the one doling out rights!), not because you've "caught me" doing something I know is wrong.

I wonder if you can take this criticism seriously, or whether you'll seek to defend your position?

Thank you. So that is what annoyed you. Maybe you could see it as arrogant. It is something I feel strongly about. That animals are treated abominably, and that people chose to turn away and try and ignore their suffering.

I will rephrase. I do not think people should have the right to eat another creature, unless they have courage to dignify the animal, by killing it themselves, or at least being able to witness the process.
Otherwise, personally I thing they are hypocrites.

Thats a quick reply, could be better, but pretty much what I think.

That's not nearly so annoying. I agree with the idea that people should show animals the respect they deserve. For me this doesn't mean not eating them, or getting involved in their slaughter; it means not giving them miserable lives, turning them into chicken nuggets and selling them for under a quid. I think the moral problem of eating meat would disappear if we ate only expensive, high welfare meat, and an awful lot less of it. We could also then retain and enjoy the beautiful aspects of our food culture, which veganism seeks to destroy. 

The problem I have with the vegan position is that I've neve heard a vegan admit that there are significant losses as well as gains inherent in veganism: in my experience it's always presented as a position of moral purity, and I totally disagree with this. 

I think everyone's a hypocrite, so that's like saying "I think they are human"  

Interesting question........the short answer is no. We are a rich, advanced civilisation where people have the luxury of being able to make informed and resourced choices.....not everyone is so privileged.

Of the many arguments, all of which I find pretty conclusive, for moving to at least a vegetarian diet, the one that I’d have thought might have won the day far more than it does is cost. What’s the most expensive thing on the average restaurant menu, steak? £22? £25? What’s the most expensive vegetarian option? Probably at least £10 cheaper. Maybe I spent too long living in Yorkshire......but saving £50 when the 5 of us ate out swung it for me!! ????????

I guess the flip side of that is the cheap price of meat in UK supermarkets......

Oh I am a Hypocrite, maybe I should not be so hard on myself.

This is cost vs value though; if you like steak, you will probably enjoy it twice as much as the cheaper veggie option, and as such it has fulfilled its more expensive price by being more satisfying.  If cost was the only decision making criteria, one wouldn’t be eating out, but enjoying lentil curry at home instead! 

Possibly if Vegetarian food was perveived as more expensive, it would be more popular.
http://freakonomics.com/podcast/freakonomics-radio-do-more-expensive-wines-...

Maybe this is the way ahead, IF vegetarianim is to be promoted https://www.theguardian.com/food/shortcuts/2019/jan/16/the-14-cauliflower-s...

Yes, I think everyone should understand what killing a mammal is like.

Why not make sure that every school send's its 14 year olds yo work in an abattoir for a day? If people think its barbaric and might damage the children then perhaps we shouldn't be slaughtering animals like that but in primitive cultures all children would have experienced the slaughtering and butchering process from an early age.

Hang on a second, are you actually agreeing with me on something?

Strangely enough, yes.

Not personally but in some of the more "laddish" of my friends I see them try to claim how caveman-ish they are (never a compliment in my book, but hey ho) when they get to eat gigantic pieces of steak or ribs or whatever. It's good old fashioned male showing off basically.

There’s clearly a lot of common ground here and this is one of those conversations that would reach an amicable conclusion in less than 10 minutes at a pub… Within the limitations of this format, here’s my tuppence worth:

Why "can't" I eat meat, but I presumably "can" drive a car, even though I can't make one? What decides what products fall into the set of things that I must be able to produce myself, before it is morally permitted that I purchase them?

Sidestepping the semantics as you suggest elsewhere, a key concern here (for me) is the decoupling of emotional and actual ethical responsibility. I don’t have moral qualms about specialised labour per se (although there are undoubtedly risks and down-sides to it) so there is no* problem in you getting someone to build you a car or kill and butcher and animal for you so long as you are relying on them for their technical expertise and not as a means of protecting your conscience (in which case: problem).

*by which I mean it is not worse than doing it yourself.

My chair (high-horse?) has two legs. The first is whether there are ethical differences between direct action and action by proxy. For instance, would it be (i) more, (ii) less or (iii) equivalently evil for me to (a) burn down a care-home to bump off a particularly irritating elderly relative or (b) pay you to do the same deed? I suspect most people would intellectually agree with (iii) (or even (i) in certain cases).

The second leg relates to human conscience. As you observe, our experience of morality is a curious amalgam of instinct, social conditioning and (hopefully) intellect. Intellect can deliver rigorous (post-hoc if you are a cynical emotivist) moral reasoning but it is generally directed/enslaved by our instincts and conditioning. The attention of our instincts (such as empathy) is best roused by immediate experiences and in the absence of strong emotive cues it is easy for the intellect to slumber (a corollary of being cognitive misers) or be subverted into defensive patterns (such as rationalisation) to avoid discomfort. The upshot of all this is that (broadly) we experience less guilt for indirect actions (than ethically equivalent direct actions) and are more able to defend against that guilt.

As a consequence I think we need to be very careful with indirect actions; if the thought of doing something makes one’s conscience squeak, it’s probably not a good thing to be doing and is definitely a dodgy thing to delegate. Bottom-line, if I wouldn’t be willing to do something myself (due to a tender conscience) I ought not to inveigle a patsy to do it for me.

I'm too squeamish to do cataract surgery on my mum, or indeed anyone. Does this mean I can't have cataract surgery myself, because I don't have the stomach to do it personally?

If there’s no moral dimension to the action or your squeamishness (e.g. your mum gives informed consent to the procedure) then no problemo.

I hope you don’t mind but I have paraphrased you here: there is a mechanism (policy) for influencing what choices are available to individual consumers and as citizens we have a democratic means of influencing policy (voting). In a free society consumers should be free to choose from what’s legally available. Do you think that consumer choices (from the legal options) should be restricted? How could such a restriction operate? What kind of society would impose such restrictions?  

Our laws are currently inadequate (an accurate reflection of our legislature) so yes I think restriction is necessary. In an ideal world this would be achieved by getting Noam Chomsky and Peter Singer to dictate a global utopian constitution. In our far from ideal world I can only push for the rules to change, vote (both electorally and with my purchasing power) and apply social pressure to influence the voting/buying choices of fellow citizens. The last aspect is crucial; there are no free choices in our society; we are at the mercy of early conditioning, commercial propaganda and an ideological ecosystem/war of values.

My eyes are burning so I will have to come back to veganism and moral hypocrisy later in the week. 

The thread is sorely missing a Brexit dimension, so may I say that had Ed Miliband not eaten that fateful bacon sandwich we'd not be in our present pretty pickle?

Interesting points, thanks. I have got a few thoughts (mainly about whether we should trust emotional "System 1" reasoning, or reflective "System 2"* reasoning more), but I'm off on a trip for a week and a bit so can't reply just now. I will reply when I'm back though, I think this is a good discussion.

Have you read Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind? I think he has morality nailed, which is impressive - although he doesn't really do the philosophy, he does give a brilliant description of what morality is, how it works, and why. And I would argue that you can't do moral philosophy without first understanding what you're talking about (i.e. having an accurate description) - so any philosophy that doesn't account for the description (e.g. religious and rule-based morality) is a load of rubbish.

*Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow