please ask vegan puritans not to go around putting people off. Veganism great just dont let the vegan police let you us down.Lets get everyone veggie first, veganism definetely isnt for everyone. Veggie-vegan diets are usually much heathier, but for minority like diabetics etc at moment they die without a tiny amount of animal insulin.
The worst thing though about insulin isnt that it comes from pigs its that its unecessarily genetically modified in UK & uSA after drug companies lied & said that normal insulin was running out.

Vegetarianism still causes methane from dairy cows.

Probably even better for the environment that being vegan is not breeding. One child could produce thousands of other humans a few generations down the line, and even if they were all vegan themselves (very unlikely), even vegans destroy the environment to some extent.

Methane Sources - Rice Paddies

At between 50 and 100 million tonnes of methane a year, rice agriculture is a big source of atmospheric methane, possibly the biggest of man-made methane sources. The warm, waterlogged soil of rice paddies provides ideal conditions for methanogenesis, and though some of the methane produced is usually oxidized by methanotrophs in the shallow overlying water, the vast majority is released into the atmosphere.

James - for clarity - insulin used to come from cows and pigs - it was taken as part of the slaughtering process - and that is what all insulin dependent diabtics used to inject.

insulin is now formulated artifically, and the vast majority of insulin dependent diabetics use this - however, there are some who can't use this artificial stuff, and have to rely on porcine/bovine insulin. This tends to bhe the case more in the US than europe.

i've been on the needle for nearly 20 years now, and have never used any animal derived insulin.

but i agree that veganism scares people off.

What the asterisk for?

Please don't take this as in any way being against veganism or even vegetarianism. Just talking about the argument being used.

Environmental arguments can be used to claim that we should eat a great deal less meat/anima;l products. But you can't get from "very much less" to "none" that way because it simply isn't true. Because that might seem like a strange claim to make, let me prove it before going on.

Assume that a given place is already producing the maximum sustainable amount of vegeatble food for human use. Well in the course of doing that there will be parts of plants that aren't utilizable by humans but perfectly fine food for some other sorts of animals. Maybe not a lot of animals, but some could live on the byproduct of maximum systainable vegetable food for humans and some of them could be eaten or otherwise utilized slightly increasing the amount of food for humans.

Stop -- that is not an argument FOR eating or otherwise using animals which might be wrong for perfectly valid moral reasons. But you shouldn't try to link that to "environmentalism". For that you argue "eat very little meat/animal products" which is what most humans have been doing through most of our history. The problem is that eating very little is not "veganism". You wouldn't call me a vegan if I lived almost entirely on grains, fruits, and vegetables but once a week ate a meal of meat or dairy products.

Stop a second time, because I can predict what you would say next. You'd say "But Mike, if you only eat animal once a week, why not be BETTER and give it up entirely?" But notice that the sense of "better" here isn't "more environmentally in balance" but "higher, nobler, less like an animal" etc. Not my vision. I'm not trying to be "better than an animal" (is there such a thing? we're talking religions, not environmentalism) I am an animal.

Simon Fairlie's article 'can britain feed itself?' shows what the uk might look like, producing all its own food, with differen farming styles and livestock vs vegan - with back of a (large) envelope calculations. Doesn't give a 'we should do x' but is a good source of information.

 http://transitionculture.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/CanBritain.pdf

Hi James. You start by asking vegan 'puritans' not to put people off. Your request is already charged with resentment by the use of the word 'puritans'!
I suggest that every new challenge to our existing comfortable lives is unwelcome to begin with. Yes it's true that a positive friendly and supportive attitude towards people thinking of changing their diet is helpful, but the bottom line is that making changes is difficult for many but absolutely vital and no amount of nicey-nicey changes that.
I guess that some of our more strident voices come from a proper understanding of the utter misery of animal exploitation and a rising panic at the fast-approaching climate disaster.

The `*` asterix simply substitues either `A` for vegan or `ETARIA` for vegetarian.

So hopefully that makes it clear what the march and The Campaign for Eco-Veg*nism is all about. Vegetarians have made a massive contribution to combatting climate change by avoiding meat. The event is inclusive, definately not exclusively for strict 100% puritan vegans!! It`s for all those that recognise the fact that their diet effects the planet in a big way and have done something about it!


FURTHER READING
Check out the following in depth reports on this issue

Diet of Disaster, by Viva!  http://www.viva.org.uk/campaigns/hot/index.php

Hoofprints, by Friends of the Earth  http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/briefings/hoofprints.pdf

Livestock`s Long Shadow, a comprehensive report by The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations  http://www.virtualcentre.org/en/library/key_pub/longshad/A0701E00.pdf


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We actually have to use all the available arguments, for the sake of the animals. Using environmental arguments might not completely erradicate the comsumption of animal products but a sufficient reduction in people's consumption makes the ethical arguments viable....to take them the on the final stage from eating a little to eating none.

You may say people only eat a small amount of animal products anyway, to justify your point, but that simply isn't true! I watch most people eat, and as a vegan they never seem to eat more than a couple of things a day I would eat (and even then they often contaminate it with butter, mayonaise or other non-vegan condiment).

The ethical argument is great, except some people, (in my experience at least 30%), will never be swayed by any ethical consideration of animals, their right to live free from harm and often even their most basic level of welfare!

People are selfish and they don't like to change so, knowing this, are you seriously saying that we should focus all of our efforts solely on an argument which we know is destined to fail with a large part of our audience?

I represent the animals and their interests, and despite all I hear about how we should restrict ourselves to using the ethical argument, (one which I personally am wholly convinced by), I see NO physical evidence to show us that it works!

Lots of times when I ask this question people reply that we have tried environmental and scientific arguments for over 100 years without success, and they use this as justification for the point made by MDN, however it's my understanding that we have used solely the ethical argument in that time....and whilst we have made some advances from barbary, (despite what some claim), we appear to have come up pitifully short!

I find it wildly ironic that we use our failings as a justification for continuing on the path we're on. We need to be more flexible in our approach, and whilst the end goal is always to convince people that there is no justification for exploiting animals, whatever we can do to reduce their exploitation of animals in the meantime (and to protect the environment, which provides a home for more animals than all of the man made prisons combined) is an essential step in the process.

The idea that we should ever limit our approach to only one angle is retarded in the extreme!!!

If human beings were all robots, devoid of anything beyond basic rational, then there would be no point in using anything other than the most direct arguments to reach the desired logical outcome.....except human beings are complex, illogical, creatures who rarely ever function in a rational way.

We have to use our social skills to convey our message in the best way, and that changes with each and every person we encounter.....because unfortunately not everyone is going to be swayed by the "hypothetical" situation where a mouse's life is worth the same as their child's, or by the argument that a cow's life is worth far more than their selfish desire to eat something which "tastes good".

Forget what you've read in books, the ethical argument makes us a small clique who are viewed as "extremists" by the vast majority....and as we're doing this for the animals, (and not for our egos or selfish desires to be part of a small clique), we have to make ourselves the majority to make the social changes we need.

Think about it,

That’s silly because:

a)At this point in time animals are not raised that way in the main.
b)if they were they would still produce methane and consume the water supply.


Even if you only eat a bit of meat you are damaging the environment.