Friday, March 29, 2024

FROM THE RIDGE: Chewing out the vegetarian preachers

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I was a vegan myself once. It was in India 40 years ago in a small village where it seemed everyone was vegan, going by the menus in the cafes. But it was only for one day.
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The next village appeared to eat meat and nothing else.

The term vegan was coined in 1944 when the Vegan Society was set up in England.

At first it was used to describe no-dairy vegetarian but from 1951 the society defined it as the doctrine that man should live without exploiting animals.

Vegetarianism formally goes back to 1847 when the Vegetarian Society was formed, also in England. But the practice goes back thousands of years with the Indus Valley civilization, for example.

Vegetarianism and veganism are trends that will increase and we need to understand those trends and not feel threatened.

There will continue to remain plenty of folk wanting to eat ethically grown, nutritious, healthy meat and animal products.

I interviewed James Wilson the other day on my radio show. He once was a farmer in Manawatu and preached “the only good vegan is a dead vegan”.

Now, he’s not only a vegan himself but an activist and just put out a book that I’ll read sometime.

A health scare pushed this once big meat eater into a vegan lifestyle.

One thing he couldn’t answer was what I and all the other farmers are going to farm on our hill country with poor draining soils, other than ruminants and trees.

After the interview I spotted the pictured Chicken Free Chicken Soup in the supermarket. I felt obliged to buy it to share the photo with you.

A couple of days later we ate it and it was very nice but didn’t taste remotely of chicken.

Why a vegan would want to buy chicken soup, though devoid of chicken, remains a mystery.

I’ve already had a go at James and Suzy Cameron recently after they presented to that Taranaki conference and preached to the rest of us what we should be doing with our land and lives.

Since then they have featured on the Sunday programme, which continues with its anti-farming bias and which Mazda continues to sponsor.

It continues to expound the fallacy that our free-range, grass-fed animal proteins are in the same basket as grain-fed feedlot proteins with all their environmental drawbacks.

What the Sunday programme failed to point out or film is that the Camerons have no objection in using ruminants to graze on their land. They soon realised that mowing and cropping a whole farm is not sustainable so needed something to eat the grass and crop residues.

So, they don’t emit methane while they are on this particular property? And won’t be contributing to the food chain when they go home?

I’m told they have large numbers of dairy and beef cattle come in as well as stud ram hoggets and other finishing stock.

The good old ruminant digests this pasture and crop residue and sends it out the back end to be incorporated into the soil, greatly assisting in building the soil fertility and structure so necessary for a sustainable, long-term cropping operation.

Cropping, of course, emits great quantities of carbon into the atmosphere as well as relying on those terrible emissions from burning all that diesel.

Last week I delved into hypocrisy.

Cameron does contribute to offset his emissions but he needs to because they are big.

They told us of their constant flights across the Pacific.

His three adjacent homes in Malibu with 24,000 square feet of living space and each with a heated swimming pool, Jet Ranger helicopter, yacht, fleet of cars and trucks and submarines to name a few of his toys jointly emit more than many countries. 

I do agree with him that we all must all live with less.

I’ll get rid of the kids’ old go cart if he drops the submarines and helicopters.

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