Chris Packham - Champion for the Countryside or Out of Touch Fool ?

shirley_basso

ugo.santalucia wrote:

rjsterry wrote:

Assume you are relaxed about the mass starvation that would result from ending farming. Will you be off to your survivalist hut?

It's a bit rich to talk about mass starvation, when the western world has an obesity epidemic, don't you think?

this made me chuckle.

UGo - notice how after a few more coherent posts your position makes a lot more sense.

surfercyclist

Tangled Metal wrote:

Yeah! I'd find where they live, dig them out of their bed and give them a right good kicking for all their badger killing activities.

Strewth! What are laws for? If anyone has evidence of criminal activity such as dog fighting, badger baiting, etc seek out the relevant police officer. If course if you're just spouting generalisms then the forum is the right place. Perhaps twitter or Facebook is more your place though?

Well it was more of a term of phrase than actual recommendation however, if the complete ladies front bottoms should find themselves by way of karma or whatever getting their teeth put through I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. I've not seen badger baiting etc personally but have seen film of it and it is stomach churning so anyone who thinks it is OK needs a serious look at themselves. As for Twatter, God no.


Quite who the relevant police officer is an interesting one. I always thought any crime could be reported to well, any police officer. I didn't realise you could only go to the badger dept. Live and learn eh.

TheBigBean

ugo.santalucia wrote:

TheBigBean wrote:

ugo.santalucia wrote:

briantrumpet wrote:

We could import it from the US, if that easy trade deal does through.

We don't need it... eat less meat, eat only organic meat once a week or don't eat it at all... save the countryside, save the planet and save yourself from heart disease in one go

What about eating organic fox? That way production could be increased and meat craving satisfied.

Wild can't be organic... if you want to eat a fox, eat a fox, I don't have any objection. I think hunt was banned for its cruelty rather than for the hunting per se. If people shot foxes in the same way they shoot pheasants during the hunting season to eat them, it wouldn't be a massive deal to be honest.

As an aside, you will find that fox is not very good meat, just like dog isn't

Wild can't be organic? I know that there are different interpretations of what organic means, but I am fairly sure something wild is organic unless its chosen diet is full of pesticides and fertilisers.

I'm guessing you haven't tried either dog or fox. Aside from the cultural view point, dogs, as carnivores, are expensive to farm.

rjsterry

ugo.santalucia wrote:

rjsterry wrote:

Assume you are relaxed about the mass starvation that would result from ending farming. Will you be off to your survivalist hut?

We probably waste a similar proportion of food as the one produced in the UK, so waste food management could be a viable alternative to farming.
You could go as far as re-training farmers to teach how to avoid food waste... they probably have a better understanding than most.

It's a bit rich to talk about mass starvation, when the western world has an obesity epidemic, don't you think?

Pretty sure almost everyone outside the western world relies on farmed food as well.

surfercyclist

duplicate

surfercyclist

I'm guessing you haven't tried either dog or fox. Aside from the cultural view point, dogs, as carnivores, are expensive to farm.

When I worked offshore, I did a few trips off South Korea and we had an interpretor onboard to speak to local shipping. Anyway, she'd eaten EVERYTHING. Cat, dog, snake, rat, you name she'd scoffed it. Completely bemused by my slight taken aback reaction, she just thought it was completely normal. As it is there.

TheBigBean

SurferCyclist wrote:

I'm guessing you haven't tried either dog or fox. Aside from the cultural view point, dogs, as carnivores, are expensive to farm.

When I worked offshore, I did a few trips off South Korea and we had an interpretor onboard to speak to local shipping. Anyway, she'd eaten EVERYTHING. Cat, dog, snake, rat, you name she'd scoffed it. Completely bemused by my slight taken aback reaction, she just thought it was completely normal. As it is there.

These days it is relatively hard to get in South Korea as there is a perception that eating it makes Korea look backward in the eyes of the rest of the world. Furthermore, the young now associate it with poverty. Apparently, it is a fairly cruel thing to farm, so perhaps not the worst thing to die out.

I'm happy to try any animal.

ugo.santalucia

TheBigBean wrote:

Wild can't be organic? I know that there are different interpretations of what organic means, but I am fairly sure something wild is organic unless its chosen diet is full of pesticides and fertilisers.

I'm guessing you haven't tried either dog or fox. Aside from the cultural view point, dogs, as carnivores, are expensive to farm.

Wild is not organic... it's wild... organic means it's all traceable, wild is not, for what you know a wild deer might have eaten a diet of cow pats, so it can't be certified organic.

What makes you think I haven't eaten a dog?

ugo.santalucia

rjsterry wrote:

Pretty sure almost everyone outside the western world relies on farmed food as well.

Of course, but my point is that if farming in Egypt is profitable and here is not... either we find a way to make it viable here, or we buy it from Egypt, in the same way people buy goods from China and electronics from Korea...

The idea that you need to subsidise farmers to grow your own cheap food is a bit silly and dated... I am all for agriculture, but it needs to be viable, hence more expensive higher welfare/quality produce. If you want broccoli for £ 1.50 a kg , then buy them from abroad... if you want Organic Broccoli at £ 5 a Kg then grow them here

john80

ugo.santalucia wrote:

john80 wrote:

https://www.foodsecurity.ac.uk/challeng ... is-global/

Have a look at these stats. Are you really saying that you could remove 52% of the UK produced food and just import it and somehow that would be a good idea. Have you ever seen the aftermath of a fox in a chicken coup or do you so fundamentally not understand how they are funded to see that losing a load of livestock would impact their earnings.

I am just saying that farming operates at a loss... so either you change the way it operates, by producing food which is more profitable to sell (organic? Biodynamic? Whatever?) or you don't... if you don't, then it's not worth killing pests to try and make it less of a liability... address the real elephant in the room, which is that it would be better to NOT farm

I am more than happy to come round yours every week and through out 52% of your food and see how you get on. Are you putting question marks after words because you don't know what they mean and what their impact of complying with them would be on global food production?

Just because you subsidise farming with tax payers cash does not make it a liability. Sure you could pay the 2-3 times increase on food for its real cost but you would lose all farming on less good ground or Northern areas and pay slightly less tax. It is just a slightly more bureaucratic way of doing it.

Maybe you should go to America where they subsidise less and you can feed your elephant what they feed the cows whilst calling it organic and biodynamic.

ugo.santalucia

I subsidise a type of farming that kills the land, kills biodiversity, kills the insects, produces food that for the most gets thrown away and we could produce a lot less, throw away a lot less and have a lot more biodiversity without anyone going hungry

Just saying...

TheBigBean

ugo.santalucia wrote:

TheBigBean wrote:

Wild can't be organic? I know that there are different interpretations of what organic means, but I am fairly sure something wild is organic unless its chosen diet is full of pesticides and fertilisers.

I'm guessing you haven't tried either dog or fox. Aside from the cultural view point, dogs, as carnivores, are expensive to farm.

Wild is not organic... it's wild... organic means it's all traceable, wild is not, for what you know a wild deer might have eaten a diet of cow pats, so it can't be certified organic.

What makes you think I haven't eaten a dog?

Within your definition of organic, how do you get organic honey?

ugo.santalucia

TheBigBean wrote:

Within your definition of organic, how do you get organic honey?

I don't make up definitions... they already exist and you know that you can buy organic salmon (farmed) or wild salmon, which is wild but not organic.
For bees is down to whether in their range there are fields cultivated with pesticides or not.
Each organic produce has its own definition

Tiesetrotter

I am an anti-Packham stance person. But hanging dead birds on his gate is always going to defeat you. He is passionate about what he believes in, he certainly is not some psycho-looney.

My view is we have a managed environment and have done for centuries if not millennia. Therefore it needs managing. Deer culls are a point, invasive species and a lack of predation mean old, sick and weak animals slowly die rather than ending in a quick way. I live in London now, watching foxes slowly die of mange and festering injuries is a product of man's unwillingness for squeamish reasons not to manage these animals.

When I was younger I was in two hunts. One certainly wasn't posh, just small farmers who created a shared syndicate. Same with their shoots. Most observations on here are right .... the fox kill rate was incredibly low. Even lower once sabs started laying false trails. Personally, when we went to drag hunts, before the ban, it made no difference to the fun of tearing around at breakneck speed on a horse that absolutely loved it as well.

One thing I found was that the number of members on the hunt went up once drag was introduced and that the number of saboteurs went down to leave just the radicals that had to hate someone. No amount of telling would convince them that we were not hunting foxes ..... the hounds soon worked out that if they followed the drag at the end there was a shower of treats rather some mangey flea bitten fox anyway.

I didn't agree with the ban, but if you held a poll on it we all know the result would be massively against it. So banning meets the public census, doesn't stop the hunt and actually reduces some pretty nasty civil disobedience. Believe me, some of the sab's actions caused some horrific damage to hounds and horses, a lot more than we ever achieved to foxes.
I also remember the main League Against Cruel sports MP owned 5 cats. So banning fox hunting was really important .... despite the main premise was that it was social and supplied a lot of work for the local country community. But owning 5 ornamental creatures that tore into the local songbird population every time he opened his back door was all OK all because he didn't get on a horse and follow them around whilst they did it.

I could go on forever. Although what would help if we started eating this stuff i.e. wood pigeon, venison, rabbit, squirrel rather than bits of big farty cows.

ugo.santalucia

Tiesetrotter wrote:

I could go on forever. Although what would help if we started eating this stuff i.e. wood pigeon, venison, rabbit, squirrel rather than bits of big farty cows.

It's the burping... not the farting. Methane is produced during rumination

I'm all for eating wild animals, if they are not endangered... I guess it's the killing for sport that people find hard to accept.

rjsterry

ugo.santalucia wrote:

TheBigBean wrote:

Within your definition of organic, how do you get organic honey?

I don't make up definitions... they already exist and you know that you can buy organic salmon (farmed) or wild salmon, which is wild but not organic.
For bees is down to whether in their range there are fields cultivated with pesticides or not.
Each organic produce has its own definition

All of which tells you that organic farming is as much a branding exercise as it is concerned with biodiversity. Organic farming also produces lower yields so doesn't really seem like a way to reduce the amount of farmland.

shirley_basso

I think it's more a question of overproduction, wastage, chemicals and subsidies.

ugo.santalucia

Shirley Basso wrote:

I think it's more a question of overproduction, wastage, chemicals and subsidies.

yes,

it's never about producing more food, but rather don't waste it and maybe eat less of it, if I am allowed to say...

It's a romantic idea that farmers are producing the food we eat, but bizarrely, people who need it don't seem to get it... it's rather destroyed and allowed to rot in the fields or in the fridges

rjsterry

Tiesetrotter wrote:

Although what would help if we started eating this stuff i.e. wood pigeon, venison, rabbit, squirrel rather than bits of big farty cows.

Deer are just slightly smaller farty ruminants.

ugo.santalucia

rjsterry wrote:

Deer are just slightly smaller farty ruminants.

Burpy...

I think the carbon footprint of beef farming is a lot more than a bit of methane burped out. It's energy intensive, whereas wild animals don't need any intervention.

shirley_basso

It's also inefficient to deforest large areas of woodland to grow soy (or any plant) to feed to cows (or any animal).

But soy is rank and beef is delicious. Conundrum.

rjsterry

ugo.santalucia wrote:

rjsterry wrote:

Deer are just slightly smaller farty ruminants.

Burpy...

I think the carbon footprint of beef farming is a lot more than a bit of methane burped out. It's energy intensive, whereas wild animals don't need any intervention.

Of course. You need a lot of wild deer to make them a viable food source for any more than a few hundred people.

BTW, population of western Europe + US is about half a billion so while we are undoubtedly wasteful in our food production, it's how the other 7 billion are fed that is the more relevant question.

ugo.santalucia

Shirley Basso wrote:

But soy is rank and beef is delicious. Conundrum.

Eat less of it, enjoy it more.
I think the UK is around 70-80 kg of meat per person per year... if we kept it at 10 kg, we would probably be sustainable and certainly in better health.
Those 10 kg per person would obviously be better welfare and won't need soy for feed

ugo.santalucia

rjsterry wrote:

BTW, population of western Europe + US is about half a billion so while we are undoubtedly wasteful in our food production, it's how the other 7 billion are fed that is the more relevant question.

Don't know, but it's not the UK's business... we certainly don't produce food for Mozambique... they have to sort their own food production issues

If they are clever, they can use their pristine environment to attract paying tourists, if they are not, they can cut trees and plant soy, like others have done and they can remain poor

shirley_basso

ugo.santalucia wrote:

Shirley Basso wrote:

But soy is rank and beef is delicious. Conundrum.

Eat less of it, enjoy it more.
I think the UK is around 70-80 kg of meat per person per year... if we kept it at 10 kg, we would probably be sustainable and certainly in better health.
Those 10 kg per person would obviously be better welfare and won't need soy for feed

I am starting to eat less of it, but buying local and paying not a lot more than supermarket 'butcher' prices, and often less, I certainly do enjoy it more!

I am just trying to eat less in general now I don't really cycle. (New baby, no commute)

ugo.santalucia

Shirley Basso wrote:

I am just trying to eat less in general now I don't really cycle. (New baby, no commute)

It's a funny one, as we have this historic fear of not having enough nutrients... being that proteins, vitamins, omega 3, calcium, iron and whatnot... the reality is that all populations with a very healthy diet seem to have little access to these "luxury building blocks" and don't have any of the diet related diseases we carry with all our nutrient packed diets.

We certainly don't need as much protein as they want you to believe and I am beginning to think we don't even need as much essential Omega 3 fatty acids either...

The RDA is the biggest con, if I was to attempt to have the RDA in all the key minerals and vitamins I would be obese and with diabetes

In other words, I think we evolved for the struggle... and we need the struggle to thrive... maybe all these fasting diets have a point

TheBigBean

rjsterry wrote:

ugo.santalucia wrote:

TheBigBean wrote:

Within your definition of organic, how do you get organic honey?

I don't make up definitions... they already exist and you know that you can buy organic salmon (farmed) or wild salmon, which is wild but not organic.
For bees is down to whether in their range there are fields cultivated with pesticides or not.
Each organic produce has its own definition

All of which tells you that organic farming is as much a branding exercise as it is concerned with biodiversity. Organic farming also produces lower yields so doesn't really seem like a way to reduce the amount of farmland.

Yes, it is very much a branding exercise. I think the EU has harmonised some organic standards as it used to be the case that there were number of associations that would recognise things as organic based on different standards. The soil association being most highly regarded.

In TheBigBean world things would be marked on a scale of self-sufficiency - farming without diesel as well as fertilisers and pesticides would be required to achieved the highest score. The problem with this is that it is really hard as many subsistence farmers around world will attest. Nonetheless, it would at least bring in a level of honesty to the system rather than a binary organic or not.

haydenm

rjsterry wrote:

ugo.santalucia wrote:

rjsterry wrote:

Deer are just slightly smaller farty ruminants.

Burpy...

I think the carbon footprint of beef farming is a lot more than a bit of methane burped out. It's energy intensive, whereas wild animals don't need any intervention.

Of course. You need a lot of wild deer to make them a viable food source for any more than a few hundred people.

Very crudely there are about 2 million deer in the UK, 350,000 shot annually and ~50,000 hit on the roads. Roughly 20% died in Scotland last winter too. The numbers are through the roof and are extremely unlikely to ever be effectively controlled... Please eat more venison!

ugo.santalucia

HaydenM wrote:

Please eat more venison!

I've turned vegetarian, but seeing it is lean and wild meat, I would eat venison if:

1) It wasn't so heavily packaged... often the packaging weighs more than the meat in supermarkets
2) Was priced a bit more in line with what I can afford, happy to eat offal or less expensive cuts

bompington

ugo.santalucia wrote:

often the packaging weighs more than the meat in supermarkets

Where on earth do you shop?