Consumer ethics - The Bear and Badger

RedDave2

JonB wrote:

One thing I will say, I'll never look at a plastic straw the same way again after seeing a video of one being removed with pliers from a turtle's nostril.

I know the video you are speaking of and it had the same effect on me. We removed all plastic straws from the restaurant 2 days latter.

The thing with being ethical is that there will always be ways we can improve so it's a constsnt process of seeing how you can change things. Maybe it starts with free range eggs. Than free range pork. Than veg with zero packaging etc. You cant fix everything all at once but you can keep improving.

If there is one thing i think should ve focused on its waste. Im currently getting as much paper wadte out of the restaurant as i can. Im sure someone will point out that the electricity usage by going digital maybe takes something away from that but I think overall less waste and better usage is a good mantra for most things. So for example if you are going to eat chicken, don't get the breast meat alone. Get the whole chicken and use it. Much better value for money for you and at the least the whole of the animal gets used. My cat loves the meat from the carcass for example.

GooberTheHat

Would hydroponic multilevel farming (which could be done in cities) have a positive effect on the ecological impact of farming? Or does it use more water? Energy use would also be high, but if its green energy that's not such an issue.

Kow

I'm pretty sure the meat industry will find a use for the rest of the chicken.

RedDave2

GooberTheHat wrote:

Would hydroponic multilevel farming (which could be done in cities) have a positive effect on the ecological impact of farming? Or does it use more water? Energy use would also be high, but if its green0 energy that's not such an issue.

I've seen it done small scale with rain water and reused water and it works fine. Not sure if it fully scales up to mass consumer levels but maybe that's the problem with our thinking anyway.

Diluted Dante

Andy wrote:

WorKid wrote:

They had to fight to get some places to serve them!

The canteen lady at my work refuses to give me my egg/sausage/bacon softie in just the napkin, she says it has to go in a cardboard box..

You could try speaking to whoever is in charge of the canteen, because that sounds like complete bollocks.

Or go for the passive aggressive making a show of taking it out of the cardboard box, leaving it there and loudly saying to use the box for the next person.

Diluted Dante

RedDave2 wrote:

GooberTheHat wrote:

Would hydroponic multilevel farming (which could be done in cities) have a positive effect on the ecological impact of farming? Or does it use more water? Energy use would also be high, but if its green0 energy that's not such an issue.

I've seen it done small scale with rain water and reused water and it works fine. Not sure if it fully scales up to mass consumer levels but maybe that's the problem with our thinking anyway.

I'm pretty sure that I saw a video about how the Dutch have re-invented farming that involved them doing stuff like this.

mistercrayon

I find the effectively simultaneous condemnation of straws with the rise in popularity of coffee pods a really odd bougie phenomenon.

Additionally. I buy from amazon but I feel bad about it. It’s too ubiquitous and good at what it does.

I also think that one of the real challenges is that we are perpetually surrounded by the imploration to consume. Even where we are speaking comes from a source of product advertisements essentially.

MattyJ

Guys... Could we make a lot of money here buy creating a website that people can use for ethical shopping?? All items in there are from companies that are ethical in all they do?

This probably already exists doesn't it

mistercrayon

Also: all veggie/vegan isn’t the guaranteed panacea (although better than cows with their ratio of resources to end food) because shit like how California is doing itself in through nut farming.

SpaceGazelle

The porn industry?

RedDave2

Kow wrote:

I'm pretty sure the meat industry will find a use for the rest of the chicken.

They will but that's missing the point. From your own personal development teaching yourself to use the whole of something (or repair rather than replace) is a great skill. If you live in Ireland you've probably seen dunnes stores 3 for 10 offer. You can get 3 packs of meat for 10 euro. Poultry wise that can either be 3 packs of 2 breast pieces or three whole chicken. If you get the 3 whole chicken you will get the addition of 6 pieces of leg meat, a carcass to make stock or gravy from (Or cat food in my case) and 6 wings. You will also get more breast meat once you get better at removing it from the bone as well as you have more options for cooking. Going further, a whole chicken will keep longer in the fridge than anything portions.

Take this approach to as much food as possible, it's no bad thing.

Kow

Won't work for me as I hate wings and legs and all that stuff. The only bit of the chicken I'll eat is the breast.

Kow

I do try to get free range chicken breast though.

tigersgogrrr

I've accepted I'm hopeless and use Amazon relentlessly. I buy free range eggs and that's about it.

I would be happy for government intervention that reduced my levels of comfort for the greater good, much like I would accept higher tax rates if they improved public services etc.

Starting at home is a bit of a non-starter. Legislation is needed to truly drive change.

regmcfly

My concession is with food. All meat and products come from a good butcher (crombies) where everything can be traced back. Helps that it tastes better too

JonB

SpaceGazelle wrote:

The porn industry?

Haha.

RedDave2

Kow wrote:

Won't work for me as I hate wings and legs and all that stuff. The only bit of the chicken I'll eat is the breast.

Learn to change maybe? The attitude of "I only like" is part of the problem. It relegated a good 80% of the life you took to make your food to disposable. The key reason we eat is to fuel our bodies, not our taste buds. It's great when we can combine both but it can't be the only deciding factor.

Try taking off the breasts and roasting the rest. When it's cold down, strip the chicken and the leg meat is perfect for pastas, stir fries, stews, sambos.

Kow

Nah, I'd prefer to eat only vegetables. I'm not going to eat stuff I don't like. I don't have any great love for chicken in general anyway. Nor do I have time for hacking up chickens either.

GooberTheHat

Curries too. Breast meat is pretty rubbish for most curries, or anything that requires a long cook, like stews or casseroles.

Kow

Tandooried breast meat is great for curries, you heathen. Chop it into big chunks, skewer and roast it then add to your curry.

RedDave2

Kow wrote:

Nah, I'd prefer to eat only vegetables. I'm not going to eat stuff I don't like. I don't have any great love for chicken in general anyway. Nor do I have time for hacking up chickens either.

Saying you will eat veg instead is a bit of a dodge. I'm saying if you are going to eat chicken try and value the whole animal, not just the piece you like.

It goes for veg too. Buy the pre-peeled and cut version or get the whole veg and use the trim to make a soup or stock (and usually have less packaging too)

Also goober is right.

WorKid

Chicken is amazing. The legs, the oysters all much better than the breast. Each to their own.

Kow

No, I'll eat the pieces I like. The chicken is dead one way or the other and somebody will eat the other bits in some shape or form so I don't see the problem.

RedDave2

Kow wrote:

No, I'll eat the pieces I like. The chicken is dead one way or the other and somebody will eat the other bits in some shape or form so I don't see the problem.

I dont want to sound like im having a go at you but i think you have missed the ethics point of the discussion. We are very lucky at the moment to have great choice that we can point to a piece of an animal (a living creature) and say only that please, i dont care about the rest. Yes, someone will find a use for it but if you make the chooce to threat the whole animal in the same you do the piece you like then the whole animal is valued. Sure, the carcass could be sold dirt cheap to some other buyer but thats why we have battery farms.
Chicken is seen as cheap with a large part of the animal seen as disposable. So farmers get less and have to resort to battery farming (I know plain greed is also a part)

I pay over twice as much per whole bird for free range chickens for the restaurant then I could get them for if I just bought them pre portioned and from battery farms. The quality is noticeable but on pure ethics I feel it's an important choice.

[Deleted User]

Loving the idea of a vegan calling others smug, Frosty.

Dante, Sodexo run the canteen, having won the national contract for all domestic services. They’re a bunch of clowns.

MattyJ, that’s too short a list to bother having a website for. People lose their shit over Nestle but, because of the exposure, they’ve fixed a lot of their problems. That’s more than can be said for so many others.

Vela

Frosty wrote:

Vela wrote:

Blue Swirl wrote:

This is for environmental reasons, rather than purely ethical. Reducing the cruelty to animals that my diet causes is a nice bonus after effect to reducing my CO2 footprint, essentially.

Is it though? The ethical reasons are well known, I have no quarrel there. But environmental claims that vegetarian diet alone is better is not entirely true. Sure, there are less CO2 emissions than cow bums, but what about the ecological impact of monocultures, pesticides, herbicides and land clearing? That has surely driven many species to the brink or beyond of extinction. Flying over hundreds of continuous kilometres of grain crop really drives home how little room is left for native flora and fauna.

Most of that grain will be for cattle feed. Growing food for people would take up less space and resources. People always smugly talk about how soya is bad actually as if it justifies not needing to bother examining or changing their own eating habits. I'm vegan and try to avoid palm oil and almonds but its hard and I don't think it makes any difference other than on a personal level. I'm also a shitty hypocrite that loves an avocado. Everything is fucked.

I'm not saying vegetarian diet is less harmful than a (farmed) meat diet. Obviously that's not the case. But when you see hundreds of kilometres of land that was cleared in the last century in this part of Australia, with fauna that has been generally geographically isolated until 220 years ago, then the loss of unique species is magnified.

Maybe its less obvious to the European locals where agriculture has been firmly established for thousands of years. In this region I'm typing from, the introduction of widespread and intensive urbanisation and agriculture is less than five generations old. Prior to that, you had responsible diets from the local indigenous people who had a direct necessity for sustainability.

[Deleted User]

For the record, being single and living alone makes the buying a whole chicken thing a nightmare. I’ve got limited kitchen space, and extremely limited freezer space.

Vela

And look, I'll never consider vegans as smug. Really, good attempt and ethical in itself. But with the global population touching 8bn soon, they are the equivalent of people tossing buckets of water off the Titanic.

We are already in the 6th mass extinction event and it was underway before we were born.

Kow

RedDave2 wrote:

Kow wrote:

No, I'll eat the pieces I like. The chicken is dead one way or the other and somebody will eat the other bits in some shape or form so I don't see the problem.

I dont want to sound like im having a go at you but i think you have missed the ethics point of the discussion. We are very lucky at the moment to have great choice that we can point to a piece of an animal (a living creature) and say only that please, i dont care about the rest. Yes, someone will find a use for it but if you make the chooce to threat the whole animal in the same you do the piece you like then the whole animal is valued. Sure, the carcass could be sold dirt cheap to some other buyer but thats why we have battery farms. Chicken is seen as cheap with a large part of the animal seen as disposable. So farmers get less and have to resort to battery farming (I know plain greed is also a part) I pay over twice as much per whole bird for free range chickens for the restaurant then I could get them for if I just bought them pre portioned and from battery farms. The quality is noticeable but on pure ethics I feel it's an important choice.

I understand the ethics of the discussion. That's why I'll always try to get free range chicken. That's as far as I'm going with it. The other choice is I buy a full chicken and most of it goes in the bin. I don't think that's valuing the animal more.

RedDave2

Kow wrote:

RedDave2 wrote:

Kow wrote:

No, I'll eat the pieces I like. The chicken is dead one way or the other and somebody will eat the other bits in some shape or form so I don't see the problem.

I dont want to sound like im having a go at you but i think you have missed the ethics point of the discussion. We are very lucky at the moment to have great choice that we can point to a piece of an animal (a living creature) and say only that please, i dont care about the rest. Yes, someone will find a use for it but if you make the chooce to threat the whole animal in the same you do the piece you like then the whole animal is valued. Sure, the carcass could be sold dirt cheap to some other buyer but thats why we have battery farms. Chicken is seen as cheap with a large part of the animal seen as disposable. So farmers get less and have to resort to battery farming (I know plain greed is also a part) I pay over twice as much per whole bird for free range chickens for the restaurant then I could get them for if I just bought them pre portioned and from battery farms. The quality is noticeable but on pure ethics I feel it's an important choice.

I understand the ethics of the discussion. That's why I'll always try to get free range chicken. That's as far as I'm going with it. The other choice is I buy a full chicken and most of it goes in the bin. I don't think that's valuing the animal more.

I guess im saying you try to change your habits so that you don't throw anything out, use the whole animal instead of just chucking it. I accept it doesn't suit everyone.

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