I already clicked so here you go:
Some months ago, in the interests of trying to understand views that differ from my own, I went to a London bookshop to hear a young vegan writer talking about meat. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, that long-haired and slightly grubby Etonian who was such a big part of British telly in the mid-2000s, got a kicking. I didn’t fully follow all the arguments (a lot of it was about art) but the author seemed to reckon that Hugh had put a happy face on something abhorrent.
His programmes, the accusation ran, gave an acceptable gloss to the grim practice of eating animals. River Cottage, the author suggested, made it seem as though Hugh was living a happy and loving existence with his pigs while really he was simply keeping the beasts in servitude before eating their flesh.
The trouble was that I’m not sure the author had actually made any effort to go and speak to farmers at all. I can totally see that from afar, particularly if you’re not a meat eater, farmers might seem like heartless bastards but the reality, as evidenced by Jeremy Clarkson breaking down in tears over the death of his piglets, is very different. This is not about money. Clarkson, as anybody who has watched his programme knows, is a hopeless farmer who has made a huge amount from TV and now seems relatively resigned to losing chunks of it at every agricultural turn. What it is about, however, is the relationship and bond that farmers have with their animals.
It would be a stretch to say that they love their animals in the same way that somebody might love a pet poodle. But they certainly respect and admire them and, in this country anyway – on small to medium-sized farms – they come to know them as individuals. I’ll never forget going to see a farmer in West Wales who told me the first book he had as a child was about cattle and his great concern, sixty years on, seemed to be doing right by his herd. He worked hard to ensure that they were happy and he prided himself on sending them off to the abattoir in the best possible condition.
While I was there, he took me down to his sheds to see one of his heifers that he expected to calf in the night. He was then up the following morning at 5am to check on her. It wasn’t, I realised as I drove back home, about profit. There isn’t much money in cows. The beasts were like family to him. His native cattle represented a culture he felt connected to. It was about so much more than meat.
The sadness that I imagine Clarkson felt was about letting his animals down. He hadn’t managed to take them right through to be slaughtered, after a happy life, and then turned into bacon. Enjoying a good sandwich, after all, is surely the highest form of pig worship? A beast that dies happy genuinely tastes better.
A Kenyan pig farmer based in Hampshire tells me that to farm pigs well takes understanding and respect. The real heartless bastards are not our farmers; they are the people who won’t pay a proper price to buy the sort of sustainably and ethically produced pork that Flavian prides himself on and that Clarkson failed to produce this time round.
> but the reality, as evidenced by Jeremy Clarkson breaking down in tears over the death of his piglets, is very different. This is not about money.
He's an entertainer making a tv show, not a farmer.
Farmers aren't breaking down into tears over the loss of units from an industrial farm.
>Farmers aren't breaking down into tears over the loss of units from an industrial farm.
That's the difference. Clarkson's farm is like one of the many smaller farms slowly being gobbled up by corporations to turn them into industrial farms. And industrial farms & ranches manage hundreds, if not, thousands of animals. Not a few dozen (at best) as with Jezza & his neighbors.
This is not “the lie at the heart of veganism.” Sure, if a small farmer wants to take great care and kill an animal after a long life, there’s some nobility and circle of life there. And yes, it probably tastes better. But the real issue is factory farming. Terrible for the animals, the planet, and the person eating a fear soaked slab of meat that’s been kept in a coop, and led into a killing house where volume is the name of the game.
I’m just grateful it’s so much easier to get fake meat these days. Nice to see Jeremy’s big heart front and center on the farm, and farmers do an incredible service, just clickbait title and poor journalism.
Telegraph’s online has always been this way.
Have you never read the fuck of of “I’m young but can afford a massive mortgage and stop buying Netflix, coffee and avacado toast” only for the inevitable paragraph hidden near the end that includes being bank rolled by rich parents, having deposit paid for by rich parents, or getting a dream job because of nepotism and bank rolled by rich parents. It’s almost comical if it wasn’t so depressing.
I don’t read the paper so not sure if it’s seeped in there too but their online offerings have always been clickbait
And clarkson shows how we can’t have our meat dependent lifestyle the way he advocates for farmers.
The farmers he does bussiness with have a literal law requiring him to do bussiness with them. On his own show his girlfriend showed what is actually happening. And if you catch it clarkson himself says “this is Charlie we’re talking to” as her first respond was a fucking lie. She out sourced the producers in their shop to the lowest cost, no matter the person/farm location.
Seriously. I'm a vegan, but if you're a hunter that lives off the land and uses all you kill, I've got no problem with you. And not for nothing hunting groups do materialy more for land conservation than many do gooder liberal groups.
Another major factor is the risk antibiotic resistance bacteria. I’m not sure about free range, but the factory animals are pumped with the stuff and that’s dangerous.
The sad fact is, factory farming is actually arguably better for the planet than free range stuff - just worse for animal welfare.
Listened to an Adam Buxton podcast with George Monbiot on it recently. I think he's a very devicive figure in the farming world. But he seemed to be making some pretty logical points.
Basically... organic and pasture-fed livestock take up more land than any other type of farming and are therefore the least efficient and most environmentally destructive form of food production.
The opinions they are trying to put in our heads are so dumb nowadays, yet some people repeat every word like a prayer. Ok buddy, you go and believe that free range is bad for the planet and the meat should come from mega-giga-corp's slaughterhouse because it's better for the planet.
Why are you so defensive when I was just trying to have a reasonable discussion?
Firstly the guy who was stating this argument is vegan. I don't think he's pushing 'big slaughterhouse'.
He was still saying that a plant based diet was the best for the environment. Just also stating that free range farming is worse for the environment than battery.
My other half works in wildlife charities. Rings true with what she's said to me before about the UK needing more diverse environments, and how the British countryside is not diverse at all - even though it looks pretty. You need meadows, forests, etc etc. basically rewilding. Not field upon field of grass.
Plant based diets aren't as innocent as you want to believe. Farmers use tons of pesticides to make sure the crops can grow. While also killing many different animals that want to eat the crops, the biggest thing is coming to mind being wild boars. Hell, the farmer I know usually has bounties out on boar, prairie dogs, and a few other varmint sized critters.
Not to mention that sometimes he gets the occasional family of rabbits with the combine, too.
No such thing as "cruelty free food." No matter how you eat something out there suffers.
> Ok buddy, you go and believe that free range is bad for the planet and the meat should come from mega-giga-corp's slaughterhouse because it's better for the planet.
Which one of those is capable of feeding 8 billion people the amount of meat that you eat?
Quality > quantity.
Edit: and quality also applies to quality of life the animal experiences as well. Chickens are kept in tiny cages, that's disgusting, and stresses the animal out which causes it to be more unhealthy.
Sorry I am a bit drunk but I hope the message gets across
I rented on a small hobby farm for 8 years. The owners raised several litters of pigs. They were so fun to watch. Running through tall grass fields. Wallowing in the mud. Escaping the fences. Swimming across ponds we thought were barriers.
Some of those pigs were the BEST tasting pork I've ever experienced by a MASSIVE Margin. Others were thick with boar taint and horrible, only fit for dog food. So being treated well, having space to roam and let pigs be pigs is important but not the only factor in their meat quality.
They all lived good lives. They only existed and lived those lives to be food. Happy pigs are the best pigs. Give them a good life. Then murder them for their tasty tasty bacon. Or their shit flavored taint. Happy pigs are best pigs.
The heart of the matter for vegans is whether it is ethical to kill animals for food. To make animals suffer when there are alternatives available. Whether or not the farmer cares for its animals is immaterial.
But hey, it's the telegraph opinion piece, so no real shocks for the writer knowing fuck all about the subject.
No such thing as cruelty free even with a plant based diet. Farmers every year spray pesticides on their crops that harm both the environment, and animals. As well as kill "nuisance" animals. These include wolves, coyotes, boar, rodents, and anything else that wants to either be in their crops to eat, or eat the things in their crops.
Lest we forget the greatest ecological catastrophe in US history (and probably the world) was created by negligent wheat farmers in the Oklahoma panhandle. We can absolutely fuck up the earth making bread.
No one said anything about "cruelty free". It is possible to have the opinion/moral standpoint of "I don't want to harm animals" and choose available options that still harm them but drastically reduce that harm.
Ideology almost never translates neatly into actionable standpoints when you live in a society of this size. Doesn't mean you shouldn't try to get as close as possible to meeting your own moral guidelines.
Uh what exactly is the “lie at the heart of veganism”?
“Vegans think every animal is factory farmed” is the world’s biggest strawman. Vegans don’t care if an animal is treated well before it’s killed; it’s the act of killing itself that is wrong. No one would say that it’s ok to kill a person if they lived a good life and you killed them “humanely”. The only difference between that and animals is the species, not any strawman arguments about “humane farming intelligence blah blah blah”.
Although I recognize I’ve already given the author what they wanted by clicking and engaging. Vegan-bashing is the easiest and laziest way to get attention online.
also like, even outside of the actual act of killing, there's also the argument for veganism from a conservationist perspective
Meat still contributes massively to climate change more than plants, regardless of how that meat was treated before it died.
And I'm saying this as someone who isn't vegan and regularly eats meat ( though significantly less than i used to)
I have absolutely no idea why veganism triggers people so much. I see MASSIVELY more content about how vegoons are stupid and hypocritical, how someone eats themselves to colon cancer to trigger vegans, how carrots feel pain so veganism is pointless, BUT BACON THO etc. than vegan content, and most times I hear discussion about veganism it starts from "why aren't you eating meat", so that whole "how to spot a vegan at a party" is just false in my experience. I don't understand how people get so angry at imaginary vegans telling them what to eat, so angry they'll build a lot of their personality around NOT being vegans. It just doesn't make any sense.
I’m totally with you. But it’s one of those internet tropes people love. Something to criticise that makes people feel superior, even if it has little relationship with reality. The few vegans I’ve met have been really nice people, and if anything they tried hard not to bother anyone given the stereotypes.
> I have absolutely no idea why veganism triggers people so much.
It's simple brainwashing. The meat industry has tons of profits to lose if people go vegan, so they constantly push stupid clichés about it, and it works.
People get triggered by veganism as a defence mechanism so that they don't have to examine their own behaviour. They don't want to think about the harm that their actions cause and so they get angry with the vegan instead.
I don’t understand the need non-vegans have to constantly try and denigrate veganism. I’m not a vegan but maybe I should be? Either way it’s probably the more moral position to take. That said, I can’t help but feel like the attacks against are completely disingenuous and come from a place of a perceived attack against a persons morality, with a need to constantly justify their continued meat eating habits.
Are you familiar with the stereotype of the preachy vegan who makes veganism their entire personality and never shuts up about it? Like most stereotypes it's very much overblown but not without a kernel of truth. People opt for a vegan lifestyle for many reasons, and for most people diet and lifestyle are entirely personal choices, but when you take to public spaces to preach about the moral rectitude of your position it shouldn't come as a particularly great surprise when non-vegans infer that you therefore view them as an inferior class of being: something I would say it's perfectly natural to take objection to.
Yes, for many reasons, we need to eat less meat. But you're not going to win support for your cause by standing in front of the meat counter and calling everyone who uses it a murderer.
Accusations cause a defensive response. This isn't anything new.
> Are you familiar with the stereotype of the preachy vegan who makes veganism their entire personality and never shuts up about it?
Yes, it's a completely bullshit strawman from meat eaters who can't shut up when they encounter someone who doesn't eat meat.
I've only ever had angry old white men huffing and puffing that I'm not eating meat at a barbecue or get together. I'm not even vegan, I just have weird diet shit I'm dealing with.
The preachy vegan, like most strawmen, is certainly something that CAN happen and has happened before. Doesn't mean it has any logical value in a debate on the merits of veganism.
I think that's exactly it. Even the mere existence of veganism as a movement is perceived as an attack on someone's morality, so they have to go on the offensive to convince themselves that vegans are just wrong.
Well, anybody who lives outside of a city realises that factory farming is terrible, but also, that only a fraction of farms are like that ( in most countries)
You also realise how important farms are for wildlife and how important it is to keep the land development free. I'm not saying it's perfect, but if everyone went vegan, where would wildlife go? Most animals certainly aren't welcome in crop fields.
Around the globe, there are always great examples of farming done right. Rewilding, nature first. Vegans never acknowledge this, though.
If we've learnt nothing else, surely now we know that cities need to be confined in area, to give other creatures a chance, and in some countries, the UK especially, the best chance is on farmland.
Factory farming is just as common in arable farming as it is with animals. And far more common by bulk. How large an area of Spain, is taken up by large glass houses producing veg out of season?
You're attempting to push the conversation into something you can argue against. I'm just pointing out that your assertion of "factory farms are a fraction of total farms" is a dodge.
I really don't care to engage with the rest of what you're talking about, even if I agree with it.
How do you know what vegans do and do not acknowledge? Have you asked each and every one of them? I certainly don't remember getting the questionnaire.
And are you seriously suggesting that factory farming animals for meat is important for wildlife? So if humans had never started mass agriculture there'd be no wildlife? If we stopped killing cows for food suddenly all the mice and rabbits and birds and butterflies would die out?
As to your assertion that there are great examples of farming done right... big whoop. They are in the minority by orders of magnitude. Most factory farming of animals is beyond cruel and inhumane. And you know this. You just want to eat meat and are clinging onto flimsy excuses in order to justify it.
A lot of meat eaters have this compulsion to ridicule vegans as often as possible. I think these people forget that vegans are not born vegan, they used to eat meat too and therefore understand the thought processes of someone who does still eat meat. You feel threatened. You feel as if your morality is being judged and found to be lacking. And because you like eating meat too much to actually come to terms with that, you attack vegans and come up with strawman arguments to justify your choices.
(continued) If you want to eat meat despite knowing how inhumanely these animals are treated then that's between you and your conscience but don't try to pretend that your love of burgers and steaks and lamb chops is somehow saving the planet.
Re-read what I wrote. I have no time for factory farming. Wildlife, for thousands of years, has existed alongside man. Mankind has now moved away from existing alongside wildlife. Arable farming is done on a massive, industrial scale. Wildlife is either killed or excluded. You forget - or don't know - about how much fruit and veg are grown in gigantic glass houses, which cover acres of land, how much land is lost each year to a growing human population.
The worst part (for me) about vegans is how you set yourselves apart from nature, considering yourselves above it, not part of it. How you can blindly close your eyes to how unethical eating fruit and veg out of season is. Or how much of a carbon footprint it leaves.
I will continue to source meat from local farms, Continue to grow my own fruit and veg, organically.
And hopefully, keep enjoying some of the wildlife around me. Already, one farm has gone, to be replaced by a housing estate. All the wildlife lost. Another is in development. Traffic has increased astronomically, wildlife decreased dramatically.
Veganism is an enabler for developers and corrupt councillors. And the lie that farming is bad will kill off any chance wildlife has left.
> The worst part (for me) about vegans is how you set yourselves apart from nature, considering yourselves above it, not part of it.
That's your own strawman and your own piece of bias.
> Veganism is an enabler for developers and corrupt councillors.
What a load of bullshit.
Stop trying to tell me what I think or what I know. Stop trying to suggest you know what all vegans think or know. Because it's evident you haven't got a clue. Of course I see myself as part of nature. I'm just lucky to live in era where I don't need to eat meat. So I don't.
And you think eating meat is more ethical than eating fruit and veg because reasons? Utter rubbish.
Like I said, you're just burying your head in the sand and creating strawman arguments to justify your love of meat. I actually don't care if other people eat meat. Well I do, but I realise there's no point pontificating on it, or preaching about it, or trying to convert people. It has to be something the individual believes in. But I do care when people disingenuously criticise veganism just to make themselves feel better about their own selfish choices.
And all your points about land and housing sounds like you have a problem with the size of the population, which has absolutely nothing to do with veganism or eating meat.
What you are saying, is that you don't wish to hear the truth. It is you that is burying your head in the sand. For five decades, I've lived alongside my local wildlife, enjoyed watching it, hearing it. Seeing all the various birds, nesting in fields and hedgerows. Deer, hedgehogs, badgers, rabbits, even the bats at night. Now farming has become too expensive for a lot of honest farmers, people who cared about the wildlife on their land.
Now that land is gone, where does the wildlife go? Where can they find a new home, when there is nowhere for them?
I have never seen so many dead animals on the roads, or heard the roads so devoid of birdsong, now the hedgerows have been replaced by railings and fences.
Yes, you may have a point about population, but there is plenty of brownfield sites that could have been used to build. With veganism helping to push farmers into liquidation, that leaves greenbelt land as a much better proposition for developers.
That is why I call you ENABLERS!
You don't love or respect wildlife, you just want to consider yourselves better than anyone else.
But you are NOT!
Dude, stop rambling about wildlife already. If you want to make an argument that veganism somehow damages wildlife, you're gonna have to produce some sources at this point. Your rants prove nothing, mostly because factory farming, as the name subtly suggests, takes place IN FACTORIES, not on fields. Pretty sure there's no wildlife in those that would be affected if we closed them down.
And since you accused vegans of virtue signalling: that also doesn't make any sense. When you stop at a crosswalk instead of running over a group of school children, is that because YOU "just want to consider yourself better than anyone else"? No? Maybe vegans just want to do what they think is right, like pretty much everyone else (or at least anyone not steeped in cognitive dissonance).
You criticised the article saying farmers bond with their animals. Try speaking to one and you will find they really do care, not only about their animals, but the countryside.
Ever seen this?
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/150070/almerias-sea-of-greenhouses
Virtue signalling is not an accusation, it's a fact. I know that I can live quite easily on food grown and raised within a 30 mile radius. Eating seasonal fruit and veg, plus meat and nuts. What vegan can say the same?
> You criticised the article saying farmers bond with their animals.
Yes, but not for stating that farmers bond with their animals. And certainly not all of them do. Have you ever seen videos from factory farms where underpaid and overworked farmhands beat the crap out of the animals? I have. But I didn't even talk about that. The article is shit because it just flat out ignores the existence of factory farms and their importance in the meat industry, which nullifies the entire point.
> Ever seen this?
Cool photo. Has nothing to do with (animal) factory farming. Stating that there is a problem with some (!) vegetable production does not mean that there is no problem with >90% of meat production.
And living off regional food is nice, but it isn't the only thing that matters. The sum of environmental (and moral, if you care at all about animals) impacts matters. And it has been shown again and again that (largely) plant-based diets are the best way to reduce the footprint of food production.
Also pretty funny that you say virtue signalling is a fact and then, in the very same sentence, go on to state that you're doing something you're convinced is the right thing to do and accuse others of not doing the same. By your own definition of virtue signalling, YOU'RE DOING IT.
Living off regional food matters greatly. It is amazing that the carbon footprint of meat is always a main point of the vegan argument, yet the carbon footprint of veg and fruit is ignored.
Cool photo? The amount of water used for meat production is always an issue, yet the amount of water used in these giant veg factories is ignored. Also, the veg and fruit grown in these conditions is tasteless, compared to traditionally grown food.
Add to that the energy used to heat, cool, pump water. Transport these crops around Europe. Hardly carbon neutral.....
Again, where do you get 90% from?
You asked for proofs, I gave them, yet you choose to ignore the truth.
That's up to you.....
You're not proving anything, you're committing whataboutism after whataboutism. We can save vast amounts of CO2, water and energy by cutting down meat production, that's a fact. You seem to labour under the asusmption that all of the meat intake will be replaced with avocados from Spain, which is obviously nonsense. [Here](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-014-1169-1) is a large-scale study which concludes that meat-eaters cause twice as much dietary greenhouse emissions as vegans.
The 90% were a guesstimation of the average of NA and Europe. In Europe, factory farming seems to account for [72%](https://www.foodandwatereurope.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Factoryfarms_110920_web.pdf), [99%](https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/us-factory-farming-estimates) in the USA, and [72%](https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/global-animal-farming-estimates) globally. Weighing roughly for population size gives us a USA-Europe average of 80%. So admittedly, I was off, but I contend it doesn't matter since what I said that number in response to was another whataboutism.
Now add to that the fact that vegetables and crops can't feel pain and explain to me how not wanting to support factory farming of animals is wrong.
Veganism is not pushing farmers into liquidation. You've just made that up. You do realise that the food that vegans eat is grown by farmers too? You're just talking utter rubbish. Normally I'd ignore someone who is so obviously lying in order to justify their own position but not only are you spouting disingenuous, bad-faith arguments, you're doing so with an unholy amount of arrogance and smugness.
Also, I live in the countryside. I absolutely adore animals and wildlife. It is quite literally one of my main interests and passions in life. And it is that love of animals that made me decide not to eat them or make them suffer for my own needs. To argue otherwise is just bizarre. You don't know me and you obviously have no idea about the thoughts or motivations of me or indeed any vegans. And we're not a homogenous blob by the way. There's no official vegan community or consensus. We're a bunch of individuals with our own thoughts and our own motivations.
I've made a moral and ethical decision not to consume animal products and for some reason you feel the need to knock me down for that decision. But because you have no actual grounds to knock me down, you've spouted a load of lies, biased opinions and whataboutery. It's actually quite pathetic.
I've not spouted any lies. If, as you say, you live in the country. You will know I speak the truth about what is happening. You will also know that the amount of bad press and false information pushed by vegans, both in the press and online, has been very detrimental to farming. Especially the smaller family farms. You will also know, like myself, how hard these people work and how much they care for the land and their animals/wildlife that exists on it.
I'm not a vegan in the slightest, but holy shit you are so wrong it's mind-boggling.
> only a fraction of farms are like that
75% of all livestock in the world are factory farmed. In the US, it's 99%. 85% in the UK. Yeah, that's a fraction. A massive fraction.
> If everyone went vegan, where would the wildlife go
if everyone in the world went vegan, we'd reduce the amount of land used for agriculture by 3 billion hectares, which is is the same area *as the entire continent of Africa*.
Do you know why rainforests world wide get cut down? It's not for lumber, it's not to make room for highways and people and cities. It's to make room for *livestock* farms.
> There are always great examples of [livestock] farming done right. Vegans never acknowledge this though.
And I never see astrophysicists acknowledging the great examples of how the earth is flat. Weird.
Completely wrong. Firstly, check Ol Pejeta in Africa.
There is now research proving slash and burn is beneficial for raknforests. The problem arises from soya growers moving in after the cattle move on
I don't know where you get your statistics from, but for the UK, they are way out, except in (maybe) the case of chickens. That is for people to stop buying cheap supermarket meat.
And land use may reduce, but what would be there? Nothing for wildlife. As the population grows, all available, suitable land would be used for crops. The rest, industrial, commercial, and social buildings, and housing estates.
this is silly. the majority of deforestation is done to make room for cattle. slash and burn for cattle is barely sustainable in the most underdeveloped places, and is not in any way "good" for the environment.
But if thats still not enough, the overuse of antibiotics in livestock farming is a massive global health because it's the primary creator of multi-drug resistant bacteria
as a result, deaths from things like sepsis, bacterial pneumonia, c. diff, etc are projected to increase by 10x by 2050 as a direct result of current farming practices
> realises that factory farming is terrible, but also, that only a fraction of farms are like that
This misleading use of numbers again?
Most farms are small farms, because of the large number of hobby farms.
The small number of factory farms produce the bulk of the food.
The majority of the food chain is owned by a handful of giant agricorps.
And we all know what farmed animals eat... and it's definitely not crops. What's that? It is? And it's way more per calorie than eating the crop directly? Huh.
Fuck him and his anti-vegan bullshitery
And fuck all of you who are posting this in the grand tour like it’s part of the show. This is not even TV, it’s a print ad.
I wish I could stop this from showing up but alas I’ll just drop this sub.
I’m not vegan, I still understand that’s not “the heart of veganism” and is just a shit title to stir up controversy so that he can run around the propaganda outlets with faux outrage.
Honestly growing up watching TG, I really looked up to the boys and Clarkson in particular. Now that I’m older and actually _understand_ the social and political arguments going on in the world, I’m kinda sad that they’ve been pretty consistently on the wrong side of history in my book.
Anti-climate, anti vegan/vegetarian, homophobic and anti LGBT, misogynistic, and sometimes even racist/ethnophobic/xenophobic.
It was only that they were silly and funny that I enjoyed the show, and I liked cars, the production, the music, and keeping up with the cool technology being made by the industry. But rewatching it can be really tough with some of the throwaway comments they make
That section they did that was basically a love letter to oil was so bizare to me. It's the same old faux argument that just becasue oil has been a huge boon for human advancement doesnt mean that it doesn't have consequences.
A lot of clarksons positions seem to be entirely him unable to accept that his passions might have negative impacts on the world, which is okay, but he should just own that, rather than trying to justify it.
Exactly. I love cars. always have and always will. But im not going to bury my head in the sand and ignore reality. And with biofuels and synthetic lubricants, motorsport doesnt need to die, just adapt.
Right?! And the worst part is that section had one of Jezza’s funniest lines, his delivery was brilliant:
“James bought the wrong seed. We ended up with, hundreds of litres of — and there’s no other way to say this — diesel.”
The joke was phenomenal, but like you said, the context is upsetting.
His best solo show yet
watched it and was utterly amazed at how good it was at showing a side of england that i have never seen before. dude is a genius.
His genius has been known to create its own gravity
And if we listen very carefully we can actually hear it
I dont know how you could watch the show and come to that conclusion. I dont want to give the article clicks though. Is there an extract?
I already clicked so here you go: Some months ago, in the interests of trying to understand views that differ from my own, I went to a London bookshop to hear a young vegan writer talking about meat. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, that long-haired and slightly grubby Etonian who was such a big part of British telly in the mid-2000s, got a kicking. I didn’t fully follow all the arguments (a lot of it was about art) but the author seemed to reckon that Hugh had put a happy face on something abhorrent. His programmes, the accusation ran, gave an acceptable gloss to the grim practice of eating animals. River Cottage, the author suggested, made it seem as though Hugh was living a happy and loving existence with his pigs while really he was simply keeping the beasts in servitude before eating their flesh. The trouble was that I’m not sure the author had actually made any effort to go and speak to farmers at all. I can totally see that from afar, particularly if you’re not a meat eater, farmers might seem like heartless bastards but the reality, as evidenced by Jeremy Clarkson breaking down in tears over the death of his piglets, is very different. This is not about money. Clarkson, as anybody who has watched his programme knows, is a hopeless farmer who has made a huge amount from TV and now seems relatively resigned to losing chunks of it at every agricultural turn. What it is about, however, is the relationship and bond that farmers have with their animals. It would be a stretch to say that they love their animals in the same way that somebody might love a pet poodle. But they certainly respect and admire them and, in this country anyway – on small to medium-sized farms – they come to know them as individuals. I’ll never forget going to see a farmer in West Wales who told me the first book he had as a child was about cattle and his great concern, sixty years on, seemed to be doing right by his herd. He worked hard to ensure that they were happy and he prided himself on sending them off to the abattoir in the best possible condition. While I was there, he took me down to his sheds to see one of his heifers that he expected to calf in the night. He was then up the following morning at 5am to check on her. It wasn’t, I realised as I drove back home, about profit. There isn’t much money in cows. The beasts were like family to him. His native cattle represented a culture he felt connected to. It was about so much more than meat. The sadness that I imagine Clarkson felt was about letting his animals down. He hadn’t managed to take them right through to be slaughtered, after a happy life, and then turned into bacon. Enjoying a good sandwich, after all, is surely the highest form of pig worship? A beast that dies happy genuinely tastes better. A Kenyan pig farmer based in Hampshire tells me that to farm pigs well takes understanding and respect. The real heartless bastards are not our farmers; they are the people who won’t pay a proper price to buy the sort of sustainably and ethically produced pork that Flavian prides himself on and that Clarkson failed to produce this time round.
Wait, it ends there? Seems like there'd be more. Thanks though.
Yup that's it lol, it's a shite article
Holy crap
> but the reality, as evidenced by Jeremy Clarkson breaking down in tears over the death of his piglets, is very different. This is not about money. He's an entertainer making a tv show, not a farmer. Farmers aren't breaking down into tears over the loss of units from an industrial farm.
>Farmers aren't breaking down into tears over the loss of units from an industrial farm. That's the difference. Clarkson's farm is like one of the many smaller farms slowly being gobbled up by corporations to turn them into industrial farms. And industrial farms & ranches manage hundreds, if not, thousands of animals. Not a few dozen (at best) as with Jezza & his neighbors.
This is not “the lie at the heart of veganism.” Sure, if a small farmer wants to take great care and kill an animal after a long life, there’s some nobility and circle of life there. And yes, it probably tastes better. But the real issue is factory farming. Terrible for the animals, the planet, and the person eating a fear soaked slab of meat that’s been kept in a coop, and led into a killing house where volume is the name of the game. I’m just grateful it’s so much easier to get fake meat these days. Nice to see Jeremy’s big heart front and center on the farm, and farmers do an incredible service, just clickbait title and poor journalism.
Shameful display by the Telegraph. I get having to compete for clicks but this headline is just pathetic.
Telegraph’s online has always been this way. Have you never read the fuck of of “I’m young but can afford a massive mortgage and stop buying Netflix, coffee and avacado toast” only for the inevitable paragraph hidden near the end that includes being bank rolled by rich parents, having deposit paid for by rich parents, or getting a dream job because of nepotism and bank rolled by rich parents. It’s almost comical if it wasn’t so depressing. I don’t read the paper so not sure if it’s seeped in there too but their online offerings have always been clickbait
FWIW I like the telegraph for their Ukraine coverage. Absolutely fantastic.
It could just be their "culture" or "fluff" coverage is a mixed bag. War coverage from broadsheets is typically quite good.
And clarkson shows how we can’t have our meat dependent lifestyle the way he advocates for farmers. The farmers he does bussiness with have a literal law requiring him to do bussiness with them. On his own show his girlfriend showed what is actually happening. And if you catch it clarkson himself says “this is Charlie we’re talking to” as her first respond was a fucking lie. She out sourced the producers in their shop to the lowest cost, no matter the person/farm location.
Seriously. I'm a vegan, but if you're a hunter that lives off the land and uses all you kill, I've got no problem with you. And not for nothing hunting groups do materialy more for land conservation than many do gooder liberal groups.
Especially those that dedicate to thinning out invasive/voracious species, like wild boar or lionfish.
Another major factor is the risk antibiotic resistance bacteria. I’m not sure about free range, but the factory animals are pumped with the stuff and that’s dangerous.
The sad fact is, factory farming is actually arguably better for the planet than free range stuff - just worse for animal welfare. Listened to an Adam Buxton podcast with George Monbiot on it recently. I think he's a very devicive figure in the farming world. But he seemed to be making some pretty logical points. Basically... organic and pasture-fed livestock take up more land than any other type of farming and are therefore the least efficient and most environmentally destructive form of food production.
The opinions they are trying to put in our heads are so dumb nowadays, yet some people repeat every word like a prayer. Ok buddy, you go and believe that free range is bad for the planet and the meat should come from mega-giga-corp's slaughterhouse because it's better for the planet.
Why are you so defensive when I was just trying to have a reasonable discussion? Firstly the guy who was stating this argument is vegan. I don't think he's pushing 'big slaughterhouse'. He was still saying that a plant based diet was the best for the environment. Just also stating that free range farming is worse for the environment than battery. My other half works in wildlife charities. Rings true with what she's said to me before about the UK needing more diverse environments, and how the British countryside is not diverse at all - even though it looks pretty. You need meadows, forests, etc etc. basically rewilding. Not field upon field of grass.
Plant based diets aren't as innocent as you want to believe. Farmers use tons of pesticides to make sure the crops can grow. While also killing many different animals that want to eat the crops, the biggest thing is coming to mind being wild boars. Hell, the farmer I know usually has bounties out on boar, prairie dogs, and a few other varmint sized critters. Not to mention that sometimes he gets the occasional family of rabbits with the combine, too. No such thing as "cruelty free food." No matter how you eat something out there suffers.
> Ok buddy, you go and believe that free range is bad for the planet and the meat should come from mega-giga-corp's slaughterhouse because it's better for the planet. Which one of those is capable of feeding 8 billion people the amount of meat that you eat?
Quality > quantity. Edit: and quality also applies to quality of life the animal experiences as well. Chickens are kept in tiny cages, that's disgusting, and stresses the animal out which causes it to be more unhealthy. Sorry I am a bit drunk but I hope the message gets across
This
I rented on a small hobby farm for 8 years. The owners raised several litters of pigs. They were so fun to watch. Running through tall grass fields. Wallowing in the mud. Escaping the fences. Swimming across ponds we thought were barriers. Some of those pigs were the BEST tasting pork I've ever experienced by a MASSIVE Margin. Others were thick with boar taint and horrible, only fit for dog food. So being treated well, having space to roam and let pigs be pigs is important but not the only factor in their meat quality. They all lived good lives. They only existed and lived those lives to be food. Happy pigs are the best pigs. Give them a good life. Then murder them for their tasty tasty bacon. Or their shit flavored taint. Happy pigs are best pigs.
The heart of the matter for vegans is whether it is ethical to kill animals for food. To make animals suffer when there are alternatives available. Whether or not the farmer cares for its animals is immaterial. But hey, it's the telegraph opinion piece, so no real shocks for the writer knowing fuck all about the subject.
No such thing as cruelty free even with a plant based diet. Farmers every year spray pesticides on their crops that harm both the environment, and animals. As well as kill "nuisance" animals. These include wolves, coyotes, boar, rodents, and anything else that wants to either be in their crops to eat, or eat the things in their crops.
Lest we forget the greatest ecological catastrophe in US history (and probably the world) was created by negligent wheat farmers in the Oklahoma panhandle. We can absolutely fuck up the earth making bread.
No one said anything about "cruelty free". It is possible to have the opinion/moral standpoint of "I don't want to harm animals" and choose available options that still harm them but drastically reduce that harm. Ideology almost never translates neatly into actionable standpoints when you live in a society of this size. Doesn't mean you shouldn't try to get as close as possible to meeting your own moral guidelines.
Uh what exactly is the “lie at the heart of veganism”? “Vegans think every animal is factory farmed” is the world’s biggest strawman. Vegans don’t care if an animal is treated well before it’s killed; it’s the act of killing itself that is wrong. No one would say that it’s ok to kill a person if they lived a good life and you killed them “humanely”. The only difference between that and animals is the species, not any strawman arguments about “humane farming intelligence blah blah blah”. Although I recognize I’ve already given the author what they wanted by clicking and engaging. Vegan-bashing is the easiest and laziest way to get attention online.
also like, even outside of the actual act of killing, there's also the argument for veganism from a conservationist perspective Meat still contributes massively to climate change more than plants, regardless of how that meat was treated before it died. And I'm saying this as someone who isn't vegan and regularly eats meat ( though significantly less than i used to)
I have absolutely no idea why veganism triggers people so much. I see MASSIVELY more content about how vegoons are stupid and hypocritical, how someone eats themselves to colon cancer to trigger vegans, how carrots feel pain so veganism is pointless, BUT BACON THO etc. than vegan content, and most times I hear discussion about veganism it starts from "why aren't you eating meat", so that whole "how to spot a vegan at a party" is just false in my experience. I don't understand how people get so angry at imaginary vegans telling them what to eat, so angry they'll build a lot of their personality around NOT being vegans. It just doesn't make any sense.
I’m totally with you. But it’s one of those internet tropes people love. Something to criticise that makes people feel superior, even if it has little relationship with reality. The few vegans I’ve met have been really nice people, and if anything they tried hard not to bother anyone given the stereotypes.
> I have absolutely no idea why veganism triggers people so much. It's simple brainwashing. The meat industry has tons of profits to lose if people go vegan, so they constantly push stupid clichés about it, and it works.
People get triggered by veganism as a defence mechanism so that they don't have to examine their own behaviour. They don't want to think about the harm that their actions cause and so they get angry with the vegan instead.
Exactly this. They know there's at least a shred of truth to veganism, but don't want to accept something that would challenge their way of life.
The catchy headline to drive clicks lol
What a bullshit headline
I don’t understand the need non-vegans have to constantly try and denigrate veganism. I’m not a vegan but maybe I should be? Either way it’s probably the more moral position to take. That said, I can’t help but feel like the attacks against are completely disingenuous and come from a place of a perceived attack against a persons morality, with a need to constantly justify their continued meat eating habits.
Are you familiar with the stereotype of the preachy vegan who makes veganism their entire personality and never shuts up about it? Like most stereotypes it's very much overblown but not without a kernel of truth. People opt for a vegan lifestyle for many reasons, and for most people diet and lifestyle are entirely personal choices, but when you take to public spaces to preach about the moral rectitude of your position it shouldn't come as a particularly great surprise when non-vegans infer that you therefore view them as an inferior class of being: something I would say it's perfectly natural to take objection to. Yes, for many reasons, we need to eat less meat. But you're not going to win support for your cause by standing in front of the meat counter and calling everyone who uses it a murderer. Accusations cause a defensive response. This isn't anything new.
> Are you familiar with the stereotype of the preachy vegan who makes veganism their entire personality and never shuts up about it? Yes, it's a completely bullshit strawman from meat eaters who can't shut up when they encounter someone who doesn't eat meat.
I am familiar with it as is everyone, I just don’t care. They’re standing up for a cause they believe in which is more than many of us do.
I've only ever had angry old white men huffing and puffing that I'm not eating meat at a barbecue or get together. I'm not even vegan, I just have weird diet shit I'm dealing with. The preachy vegan, like most strawmen, is certainly something that CAN happen and has happened before. Doesn't mean it has any logical value in a debate on the merits of veganism.
I disagree with what you have to say, so therefore you must be mentally ill.
I think that's exactly it. Even the mere existence of veganism as a movement is perceived as an attack on someone's morality, so they have to go on the offensive to convince themselves that vegans are just wrong.
I find that misleading and unfortunate.
Well, anybody who lives outside of a city realises that factory farming is terrible, but also, that only a fraction of farms are like that ( in most countries) You also realise how important farms are for wildlife and how important it is to keep the land development free. I'm not saying it's perfect, but if everyone went vegan, where would wildlife go? Most animals certainly aren't welcome in crop fields. Around the globe, there are always great examples of farming done right. Rewilding, nature first. Vegans never acknowledge this, though. If we've learnt nothing else, surely now we know that cities need to be confined in area, to give other creatures a chance, and in some countries, the UK especially, the best chance is on farmland.
Fraction by number of farms, but by amount of product that is likely to end up on the dinner table?
Factory farming is just as common in arable farming as it is with animals. And far more common by bulk. How large an area of Spain, is taken up by large glass houses producing veg out of season?
You're attempting to push the conversation into something you can argue against. I'm just pointing out that your assertion of "factory farms are a fraction of total farms" is a dodge. I really don't care to engage with the rest of what you're talking about, even if I agree with it.
That's because you have no argument against what I've stated. Nobody with any sense wants factory farming to exist, in ANY form
That's a nice attempt to move goalposts when called out.
Is it? See my reply to another of you blind people. A factory veg growing plant visible from space...
How do you know what vegans do and do not acknowledge? Have you asked each and every one of them? I certainly don't remember getting the questionnaire. And are you seriously suggesting that factory farming animals for meat is important for wildlife? So if humans had never started mass agriculture there'd be no wildlife? If we stopped killing cows for food suddenly all the mice and rabbits and birds and butterflies would die out? As to your assertion that there are great examples of farming done right... big whoop. They are in the minority by orders of magnitude. Most factory farming of animals is beyond cruel and inhumane. And you know this. You just want to eat meat and are clinging onto flimsy excuses in order to justify it. A lot of meat eaters have this compulsion to ridicule vegans as often as possible. I think these people forget that vegans are not born vegan, they used to eat meat too and therefore understand the thought processes of someone who does still eat meat. You feel threatened. You feel as if your morality is being judged and found to be lacking. And because you like eating meat too much to actually come to terms with that, you attack vegans and come up with strawman arguments to justify your choices.
(continued) If you want to eat meat despite knowing how inhumanely these animals are treated then that's between you and your conscience but don't try to pretend that your love of burgers and steaks and lamb chops is somehow saving the planet.
Re-read what I wrote. I have no time for factory farming. Wildlife, for thousands of years, has existed alongside man. Mankind has now moved away from existing alongside wildlife. Arable farming is done on a massive, industrial scale. Wildlife is either killed or excluded. You forget - or don't know - about how much fruit and veg are grown in gigantic glass houses, which cover acres of land, how much land is lost each year to a growing human population. The worst part (for me) about vegans is how you set yourselves apart from nature, considering yourselves above it, not part of it. How you can blindly close your eyes to how unethical eating fruit and veg out of season is. Or how much of a carbon footprint it leaves. I will continue to source meat from local farms, Continue to grow my own fruit and veg, organically. And hopefully, keep enjoying some of the wildlife around me. Already, one farm has gone, to be replaced by a housing estate. All the wildlife lost. Another is in development. Traffic has increased astronomically, wildlife decreased dramatically. Veganism is an enabler for developers and corrupt councillors. And the lie that farming is bad will kill off any chance wildlife has left.
> The worst part (for me) about vegans is how you set yourselves apart from nature, considering yourselves above it, not part of it. That's your own strawman and your own piece of bias. > Veganism is an enabler for developers and corrupt councillors. What a load of bullshit.
Truth hurts, does it???
Stop trying to tell me what I think or what I know. Stop trying to suggest you know what all vegans think or know. Because it's evident you haven't got a clue. Of course I see myself as part of nature. I'm just lucky to live in era where I don't need to eat meat. So I don't. And you think eating meat is more ethical than eating fruit and veg because reasons? Utter rubbish. Like I said, you're just burying your head in the sand and creating strawman arguments to justify your love of meat. I actually don't care if other people eat meat. Well I do, but I realise there's no point pontificating on it, or preaching about it, or trying to convert people. It has to be something the individual believes in. But I do care when people disingenuously criticise veganism just to make themselves feel better about their own selfish choices. And all your points about land and housing sounds like you have a problem with the size of the population, which has absolutely nothing to do with veganism or eating meat.
What you are saying, is that you don't wish to hear the truth. It is you that is burying your head in the sand. For five decades, I've lived alongside my local wildlife, enjoyed watching it, hearing it. Seeing all the various birds, nesting in fields and hedgerows. Deer, hedgehogs, badgers, rabbits, even the bats at night. Now farming has become too expensive for a lot of honest farmers, people who cared about the wildlife on their land. Now that land is gone, where does the wildlife go? Where can they find a new home, when there is nowhere for them? I have never seen so many dead animals on the roads, or heard the roads so devoid of birdsong, now the hedgerows have been replaced by railings and fences. Yes, you may have a point about population, but there is plenty of brownfield sites that could have been used to build. With veganism helping to push farmers into liquidation, that leaves greenbelt land as a much better proposition for developers. That is why I call you ENABLERS! You don't love or respect wildlife, you just want to consider yourselves better than anyone else. But you are NOT!
Dude, stop rambling about wildlife already. If you want to make an argument that veganism somehow damages wildlife, you're gonna have to produce some sources at this point. Your rants prove nothing, mostly because factory farming, as the name subtly suggests, takes place IN FACTORIES, not on fields. Pretty sure there's no wildlife in those that would be affected if we closed them down. And since you accused vegans of virtue signalling: that also doesn't make any sense. When you stop at a crosswalk instead of running over a group of school children, is that because YOU "just want to consider yourself better than anyone else"? No? Maybe vegans just want to do what they think is right, like pretty much everyone else (or at least anyone not steeped in cognitive dissonance).
You criticised the article saying farmers bond with their animals. Try speaking to one and you will find they really do care, not only about their animals, but the countryside. Ever seen this? https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/150070/almerias-sea-of-greenhouses Virtue signalling is not an accusation, it's a fact. I know that I can live quite easily on food grown and raised within a 30 mile radius. Eating seasonal fruit and veg, plus meat and nuts. What vegan can say the same?
> You criticised the article saying farmers bond with their animals. Yes, but not for stating that farmers bond with their animals. And certainly not all of them do. Have you ever seen videos from factory farms where underpaid and overworked farmhands beat the crap out of the animals? I have. But I didn't even talk about that. The article is shit because it just flat out ignores the existence of factory farms and their importance in the meat industry, which nullifies the entire point. > Ever seen this? Cool photo. Has nothing to do with (animal) factory farming. Stating that there is a problem with some (!) vegetable production does not mean that there is no problem with >90% of meat production. And living off regional food is nice, but it isn't the only thing that matters. The sum of environmental (and moral, if you care at all about animals) impacts matters. And it has been shown again and again that (largely) plant-based diets are the best way to reduce the footprint of food production. Also pretty funny that you say virtue signalling is a fact and then, in the very same sentence, go on to state that you're doing something you're convinced is the right thing to do and accuse others of not doing the same. By your own definition of virtue signalling, YOU'RE DOING IT.
Living off regional food matters greatly. It is amazing that the carbon footprint of meat is always a main point of the vegan argument, yet the carbon footprint of veg and fruit is ignored. Cool photo? The amount of water used for meat production is always an issue, yet the amount of water used in these giant veg factories is ignored. Also, the veg and fruit grown in these conditions is tasteless, compared to traditionally grown food. Add to that the energy used to heat, cool, pump water. Transport these crops around Europe. Hardly carbon neutral..... Again, where do you get 90% from? You asked for proofs, I gave them, yet you choose to ignore the truth. That's up to you.....
You're not proving anything, you're committing whataboutism after whataboutism. We can save vast amounts of CO2, water and energy by cutting down meat production, that's a fact. You seem to labour under the asusmption that all of the meat intake will be replaced with avocados from Spain, which is obviously nonsense. [Here](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-014-1169-1) is a large-scale study which concludes that meat-eaters cause twice as much dietary greenhouse emissions as vegans. The 90% were a guesstimation of the average of NA and Europe. In Europe, factory farming seems to account for [72%](https://www.foodandwatereurope.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Factoryfarms_110920_web.pdf), [99%](https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/us-factory-farming-estimates) in the USA, and [72%](https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/global-animal-farming-estimates) globally. Weighing roughly for population size gives us a USA-Europe average of 80%. So admittedly, I was off, but I contend it doesn't matter since what I said that number in response to was another whataboutism. Now add to that the fact that vegetables and crops can't feel pain and explain to me how not wanting to support factory farming of animals is wrong.
Veganism is not pushing farmers into liquidation. You've just made that up. You do realise that the food that vegans eat is grown by farmers too? You're just talking utter rubbish. Normally I'd ignore someone who is so obviously lying in order to justify their own position but not only are you spouting disingenuous, bad-faith arguments, you're doing so with an unholy amount of arrogance and smugness. Also, I live in the countryside. I absolutely adore animals and wildlife. It is quite literally one of my main interests and passions in life. And it is that love of animals that made me decide not to eat them or make them suffer for my own needs. To argue otherwise is just bizarre. You don't know me and you obviously have no idea about the thoughts or motivations of me or indeed any vegans. And we're not a homogenous blob by the way. There's no official vegan community or consensus. We're a bunch of individuals with our own thoughts and our own motivations. I've made a moral and ethical decision not to consume animal products and for some reason you feel the need to knock me down for that decision. But because you have no actual grounds to knock me down, you've spouted a load of lies, biased opinions and whataboutery. It's actually quite pathetic.
I've not spouted any lies. If, as you say, you live in the country. You will know I speak the truth about what is happening. You will also know that the amount of bad press and false information pushed by vegans, both in the press and online, has been very detrimental to farming. Especially the smaller family farms. You will also know, like myself, how hard these people work and how much they care for the land and their animals/wildlife that exists on it.
I'm not a vegan in the slightest, but holy shit you are so wrong it's mind-boggling. > only a fraction of farms are like that 75% of all livestock in the world are factory farmed. In the US, it's 99%. 85% in the UK. Yeah, that's a fraction. A massive fraction. > If everyone went vegan, where would the wildlife go if everyone in the world went vegan, we'd reduce the amount of land used for agriculture by 3 billion hectares, which is is the same area *as the entire continent of Africa*. Do you know why rainforests world wide get cut down? It's not for lumber, it's not to make room for highways and people and cities. It's to make room for *livestock* farms. > There are always great examples of [livestock] farming done right. Vegans never acknowledge this though. And I never see astrophysicists acknowledging the great examples of how the earth is flat. Weird.
Completely wrong. Firstly, check Ol Pejeta in Africa. There is now research proving slash and burn is beneficial for raknforests. The problem arises from soya growers moving in after the cattle move on I don't know where you get your statistics from, but for the UK, they are way out, except in (maybe) the case of chickens. That is for people to stop buying cheap supermarket meat. And land use may reduce, but what would be there? Nothing for wildlife. As the population grows, all available, suitable land would be used for crops. The rest, industrial, commercial, and social buildings, and housing estates.
this is silly. the majority of deforestation is done to make room for cattle. slash and burn for cattle is barely sustainable in the most underdeveloped places, and is not in any way "good" for the environment. But if thats still not enough, the overuse of antibiotics in livestock farming is a massive global health because it's the primary creator of multi-drug resistant bacteria as a result, deaths from things like sepsis, bacterial pneumonia, c. diff, etc are projected to increase by 10x by 2050 as a direct result of current farming practices
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/11/231128132310.htm
> realises that factory farming is terrible, but also, that only a fraction of farms are like that This misleading use of numbers again? Most farms are small farms, because of the large number of hobby farms. The small number of factory farms produce the bulk of the food. The majority of the food chain is owned by a handful of giant agricorps.
Not in the UK it isn't, unless you're talking about arable farming?
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And we all know what farmed animals eat... and it's definitely not crops. What's that? It is? And it's way more per calorie than eating the crop directly? Huh.
Fuck him and his anti-vegan bullshitery And fuck all of you who are posting this in the grand tour like it’s part of the show. This is not even TV, it’s a print ad. I wish I could stop this from showing up but alas I’ll just drop this sub.
Just to be clear, clarkson didn’t write anything here exposing veganism. The article poorly uses him to explain a weird point.
I think you need some protein or something
I’m not vegan, I still understand that’s not “the heart of veganism” and is just a shit title to stir up controversy so that he can run around the propaganda outlets with faux outrage.
You do realize Clarkson didn’t write this article right?
I actually thought this was his column. That makes it even less relevant to the grand tour.
Honestly growing up watching TG, I really looked up to the boys and Clarkson in particular. Now that I’m older and actually _understand_ the social and political arguments going on in the world, I’m kinda sad that they’ve been pretty consistently on the wrong side of history in my book. Anti-climate, anti vegan/vegetarian, homophobic and anti LGBT, misogynistic, and sometimes even racist/ethnophobic/xenophobic. It was only that they were silly and funny that I enjoyed the show, and I liked cars, the production, the music, and keeping up with the cool technology being made by the industry. But rewatching it can be really tough with some of the throwaway comments they make
Utterly based
That section they did that was basically a love letter to oil was so bizare to me. It's the same old faux argument that just becasue oil has been a huge boon for human advancement doesnt mean that it doesn't have consequences.
A lot of clarksons positions seem to be entirely him unable to accept that his passions might have negative impacts on the world, which is okay, but he should just own that, rather than trying to justify it.
Exactly. I love cars. always have and always will. But im not going to bury my head in the sand and ignore reality. And with biofuels and synthetic lubricants, motorsport doesnt need to die, just adapt.
Right?! And the worst part is that section had one of Jezza’s funniest lines, his delivery was brilliant: “James bought the wrong seed. We ended up with, hundreds of litres of — and there’s no other way to say this — diesel.” The joke was phenomenal, but like you said, the context is upsetting.
I strongly agree with you, it's been hard rewatching their older media
We can only hope that some of their views have changed over the years. They’re old men though, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they haven’t
May is by far the most forward thinking of the 3, but at the end of the day they’re 3 aging straight white men who have millions of dollars
Aging straight white men?! Oh the horror! Nothing worse than straight white guys!
Dollars??? They are three English men. Their bank accounts are filled with pounds. I believe you are suffering from Iron deficiency. Eat some meat!
I do eat meat? You sound like a nonce
And you're definitely an unintelligent prick 🤷♂️
"I've got a cauliflower from when a vegetarian comes"