Abattoirs everywhere continuing to be hit: time to go veggie?

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Brightonian
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Abattoirs everywhere continuing to be hit: time to go veggie?

Post by Brightonian » Sun Aug 09, 2020 9:47 am

* Belgium
* Denmark
* Ireland

Never been a vegetarian myself, but for the greater good (at least during covid) should we all try going vegetarian, or at least go vegetarian for several days a week? Or can abattoirs be made a lot safer somehow?

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Re: Abattoirs everywhere continuing to be hit: time to go veggie?

Post by Martin_B » Sun Aug 09, 2020 10:03 am

From what I've heard (which is only information available in the public) the issue with abattoirs is the stress on people working in conditions which are often close together for long periods. This has been done in the name of efficiency to keep the cost of meat down in the supermarkets.

Making abattoirs safer would require their efficiency to go down severely, which would lead to shortages of meat (in the short term, anyway), and increases in prices, either of which on it's own would end up with near riots (imagine shoppers fighting for the last packet of sausages similar to the fights for the toilet rolls).

Going vegetarian, or semi-vegetarian, is an option for you, but any politician who tries to get the general public to go vegetarian (especially the cliched sort of knuckle-draggers who refuse to wear masks) is on to a losing ticket.

Maybe, people would be more susceptible to the idea if there was no meat in the shops; after all, the idea of working from home was largely thought unfeasible by many people until they actually had to do it, but the idea of returning to rationing oddly isn't one of the things from the 1950s which the Tory party are keen to bring back.
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Re: Abattoirs everywhere continuing to be hit: time to go veggie?

Post by Hunting Dog » Sun Aug 09, 2020 11:22 am

I'm not so sure it's a meat related thing (except perhaps the cold helping preserve the virus)

I thought there'd also been outbreaks amongst fruit/veg pickers and packers - this is a recent one in ireland

the common denominator being more lots of people crowded together, possibly with poor working/living conditions - due to attempts to keep costs down
(see also textile industry)

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Re: Abattoirs everywhere continuing to be hit: time to go veggie?

Post by shpalman » Sun Aug 09, 2020 11:33 am

Last edited by shpalman on Sun Aug 09, 2020 11:33 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Abattoirs everywhere continuing to be hit: time to go veggie?

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sun Aug 09, 2020 11:33 am

Levels of meat consumption in the West are totally unsustainable. Meat production in general uses huge amounts of water, vast areas of land (often driving deforestation) and diverts human-edible food into non-human mouths. Even relatively low-impact modes of production, like upland sheep farming in the UK, prevent land from being used for other purposes like reforestation, and contribute to the meat market in general.

The conditions in which most meat is produced is absolutely horrible too, of course.

Given that we're in an age of urgent climate and biodiversity crises, it's absolutely a good time to be reducing meat consumption - though, despite having been veggie myself for 20 years, I don't think it's necessary for everyone to cut out all meat/animal produce forever. Change is hard, habits are difficult to break and life without a few luxuries is far less enjoyable. But it's definitely time to start viewing meat as one of those luxuries, rather than a quotidian staple.

In particular, eat less beef. More generally, go for smaller animals, and omnivores rather than grazing ruminants: pigs and chickens are less damaging than cows and sheep.

(The arguments around seafood are a bit different - populations of pretty much everything popular are in long-term decline, many habitats are totally f.cked, and the industry is very difficult to regulate as it mostly takes place in the vastness of international waters.)

Luckily it's never been easier. There are huge numbers of great vegetarian and vegan recipe books and ready meals, and meat substitutes have never been better quality - for instance, swapping beef mince for a meatless alternative won't make much difference to the difficulty of cooking or the taste of the final dish.

In terms of the politics, at the very least we should stop subsidising meat production from taxpayers' money (outside of the rare cases where grazing is used as a conservation tool, perhaps). It's nuts that on the one hand we're paying to reduce, mitigate and adapt to climate change and biodiversity decline, and on the other hand paying people to accelerate it. As part of a "just transition", some of the money saved should be used to help farmers etc adapt their livelihoods, and some to help educate consumers. We need big-picture, joined-up thinking.

This pandemic wouldn't have happened without meat consumption, and previous near-misses have all resulted from meat production too. Even if conditions for workers in abattoirs were improved, for example by building lots more of them, it would be daft not to change meat-eating habits.

The amount of meat westerners eat is also, in general, unhealthy.

For an idea of what a diet optimised for both health and sustainability looks like, the EAT Lancet project is a good place to start. https://eatforum.org/eat-lancet-commission/
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Re: Abattoirs everywhere continuing to be hit: time to go veggie?

Post by Martin Y » Sun Aug 09, 2020 1:33 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sun Aug 09, 2020 11:33 am
This pandemic wouldn't have happened without meat consumption, and previous near-misses have all resulted from meat production too.
That's probably applicable to previous pandemics ever since agriculture caught on. It's people living cheek-by-jowl-or-other-appropriate-body-part with their livestock which has given bugs the opportunity to try a new host.

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Re: Abattoirs everywhere continuing to be hit: time to go veggie?

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sun Aug 09, 2020 2:05 pm

Martin Y wrote:
Sun Aug 09, 2020 1:33 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sun Aug 09, 2020 11:33 am
This pandemic wouldn't have happened without meat consumption, and previous near-misses have all resulted from meat production too.
That's probably applicable to previous pandemics ever since agriculture caught on. It's people living cheek-by-jowl-or-other-appropriate-body-part with their livestock which has given bugs the opportunity to try a new host.
For sure - Guns, Germs and Steel makes much of this, for instance, along with less controversial sources.

The difference now is in scale and intensity, which commonly produce qualitatively different outcomes in ecology. For any given pathogen there'll be a threshold of host population density, immunosuppression etc below which it goes extinct and above which it can become endemic. We need to shift food production systems below that threshold, reliably, and unless the human population plummets overnight that means rearing a lot less livestock.
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Re: Abattoirs everywhere continuing to be hit: time to go veggie?

Post by basementer » Sun Aug 09, 2020 2:06 pm

Martin Y wrote:
Sun Aug 09, 2020 1:33 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sun Aug 09, 2020 11:33 am
This pandemic wouldn't have happened without meat consumption, and previous near-misses have all resulted from meat production too.
That's probably applicable to previous pandemics ever since agriculture caught on. It's people living cheek-by-jowl-or-other-appropriate-body-part with their livestock which has given bugs the opportunity to try a new host.
English milk bottles in the late 1960s often bore the abbreviation TT, signifying that the farm supplying the milk had a tuberculin testing regime in place. Bovine tuberculosis in the dairy herd often crossed into the human herd in the first half of the 20th century, and was potentially fatal. TT was the screening process to identify and limit potential outbreaks.
Some more detail here : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC546294/
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Re: Abattoirs everywhere continuing to be hit: time to go veggie?

Post by sTeamTraen » Tue Aug 11, 2020 4:22 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sun Aug 09, 2020 2:05 pm
The difference now is in scale and intensity, which commonly produce qualitatively different outcomes in ecology. For any given pathogen there'll be a threshold of host population density, immunosuppression etc below which it goes extinct and above which it can become endemic. We need to shift food production systems below that threshold, reliably, and unless the human population plummets overnight that means rearing a lot less livestock.
I thought it was claimed that the source of the coronavirus was a bat - not exactly something you'd find in one of Bernard Matthews' mass-production cages. ISTM that you could make a case that modern agriculture, with Western levels of consumer protection, is safer, at least in terms of infections, than at any time in the past. (Questions about CO2 emissions and what to do with all the manure are very likely another matter.)
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Re: Abattoirs everywhere continuing to be hit: time to go veggie?

Post by shpalman » Wed Aug 19, 2020 1:46 pm

having that swing is a necessary but not sufficient condition for it meaning a thing
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Re: Abattoirs everywhere continuing to be hit: time to go veggie?

Post by Bird on a Fire » Wed Aug 19, 2020 2:01 pm

Clearly not enough fur-wearers have been doused in red paint yet.
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