Thanks.Belinda wrote: ↑Tue Aug 16, 2022 9:51 amYou make a good point about the ecology of food animal farming. I don't know the answer but I suspect it's a balance of profit and loss as compared with the natural imperative.Sculptor wrote: ↑Mon Aug 15, 2022 10:49 pmEat what you want. I think the world would be a sadder place with no animals.Belinda wrote: ↑Mon Aug 15, 2022 8:55 pm Hill lambs are luxury food. Tesco does not even sell hill lamb. Not online anyway.
Dairy cows subjected to the highest welfare may live to be 25 years old. Commercial dairy cows live to be five years old. Organic dairy has higher welfare standards and as you will know it's more expensive.
I have no first hand evidence at all and rely for my info from Peta and Compassion in World Farming. I have reason to believe the facts are worse than when I last read anything from either source.
I really don't think you can fairly compare British farming standards with US feed lots, Danish bacon farms, or Dog meat markets.
And vegetables would be dreadful without the fertilizer that animals supply, and we would be forced to make more chemical fertilisers.
Animals form part of a natural cycle which utilises grass into the food chain. If you are unwilling to reduce the earth's population then we are going to be forced to use all the resources we can, and that would have to include the 60% of agricultural land that can only be used for pasture.
I think you have to ask what would the alternative be like. What would occupy the land were there no sheep on it. I have sheep farming and wheat/barley/rape farming around me. The crops are desert 3 months of the year. When ploughed all you can see is chalk rubble, the soil has blown away and growing is 100% reliant on chemical fertilizers. Occasionally they put human shit on it. The smell is gross. Only one species is allowed to thrive.
By contrast when I walk through the sheep fields and look around I see maybe a dozen species of grass. gauze buses, nettles, dock, several species of clover (you may know it brings atmospheric nitrogen into the soil), there are species of daisy and dandelion, There are also many species of flower I have no idea what they are, and we have some rare orchids here on the Downs. These all support bees and many other insects. Badgers, and Fox are very common. There are some wild deer in Sussex too, and even rumours of wild pig which are thought to have escaped from a boar farm in the storm of 1987. All this is possible because of sheep farming.