Dear Reader.
I cannot remember who said it but the ferocity with which you defend your position is directly proportional to the insecurity you feel about your position. Earlier this week I installed a freezer in Organic Zone in Lakeside with my produce in. (Details about our produce on at the top of the page, click on BUY MEAT&EGGS). It looked like this
2 days later the same freezer at Organic Zone looked like this…
The empty freezer was not as you might expect a result of the meat and eggs selling out. The vegan clients of Organic Zone bullied the staff into removing the meat.
Not having my freezer there is no problem as it is going to Wellness Warehouse in Kloof Street. The real issue for me is that an opportunity for debate was lost. Vegans, vegetarians, raw foodists and grass fed beef eaters are all on the same side. The side opposite chemical, industrial, processed, corporatised, sweetened, pastuerised, homogenised, factory farmed and GMO “food”.
On second thoughts it is not clear where vegans stand as their source of protein is soya which is over 90% GMO. Do these rabid individuals know that they ingest Monsanto produce on a daily basis?
Our beef reverses global warming. A claim no vegetarian, vegan or raw foodist can make. In fact no other beef operation in the country can claim to reverse global warming.
So in conclusion can the vegans please reflect on their inability to reduce climate instability and let those clients who like to eat meat do so in peace. Also stop harassing the Organic Zone staff.
I wrote a much more detailed blog recently on how a specific type of beef (and chickens) is reversing global warming. Click here if you are interested.
Angus
6 Responses
You know I recently went vegan, for animal cruelty reasons, only after that did I start reading up on the effects dairy and cattle factory farming has on our environment, and it is shocking, I am sure you will agree. I am extremely passionate about my stance, and it is a personal choice, key emphasis on the word personal. I believe in creating awareness so that others can see what is happening to the planet every time they chug down on KFC or a McDonalds burger, I believe people need to know where this meat comes from and the obvious and apparent cruelty involved. I would never try to put down the good works of someone like you, who is farming in the most responsible way possible. Some vegans just give the rest of us a bad name. I try to create awareness positively, within a personal circle of friends and family, I never say stop eating meat, I say, know where it comes from. That’s all.
Rest assured knowing we are not all such bad people 🙂
Jo, if you’re saying “don’t eat meat but know its origin”, and if you can so easily verify the humane and enviro-friendly manner of Angus’ farming – why would you then still not eat that meat?
Not that I’d make the same mistake as Tim Noakes and insist that eating meat is the best option for everybody (OK, to be fair he emphasises high fat/low carb and not high protein) but I believe there are very few individuals whose blood/nutritional types mandate a vegetarian or vegan diet.
So I don’t really understand your logic: just because the majority of meat and its origins are suspect, you would choose to eliminate it entirely from your diet, even when there are excellent alternatives available?
Angus, you’ve probably heard the one that goes: how do you find out who at the dinner table is a vegan? Don’t bother – they’ll tell you!
Angus, you make some false claims in your letter. Let me correct some of them.
Firstly, you claim that “Our beef reverses global warming. A claim no vegetarian, vegan or raw foodist can make.” What utter nonsense; the chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has argued that becoming vegetarian – and preferably vegan – is one of the best ways to tackle global warming. Forbes – not known for its pro-environmental or even ethical concerns – states that “the world’s best chance for achieving timely, disaster-averting climate change may actually be a vegetarian diet eating less meat.”
You also claim that somehow vegans are responsible for global warming by eating soy! I must confess that I find it difficult to believe that anyone who takes these issues seriously would make such a ludicrous claim. Most of the world’s soy ends up in feed for poultry, pork, cattle and farmed fish, making meat eaters directly responsible for exacerbating global warming. But even if it were true that some vegans do eat soya, this in no way is an argument against veganism – it just means that vegans should cut down on their soya intake, not that veganism is bad!
Your statement that “vegans, vegetarians, raw foodists and grass fed beef eaters are all on the same side.” Well – yes and no; we’re all on the same side in opposing chemicals, GMOs, etc, but we’re certainly not on the same side regarding animal rights and welfare. Although people are vegan for all sorts of reasons, one reason that many people are vegan is for ethical reasons regarding the killing of animals – in short, we consider that harming a sentient being for trivial reasons is morally wrong! This is something that you don’t seem to believe, and this, I imagine, is what led to the customer complaining about Organic Zone stocking dismembered animal carcasses. People who are vegan for ethical reasons understandably would like to do their fruit and veggie shopping in stores that do not contain dead bits of animal flesh. You may not like it, but you should at the very least understand that this is a perfectly reasonable position to take if one is concerned about animal welfare, and so getting all huffy about it and attacking vegans in this blog is – at the very least – just bad taste (no pun intended).
Finally, your claim that your beef production reverses global warming is somewhat disingenuous; you base this claim on the fact that your business generates carbon credits, and so is in this sense ‘carbon neutral’. However, a carbon neutral position could also be created by your simply not farming beef at all!! Better still, you could not farm beef and plant forests! So it’s certainly not the case – as your blog would like us to believe – that buying your beef is necessary in averting global warming. It’s not! Vegans are doing far more in this respect just by not buying any meat, fish, dairy or poultry.
I’m afraid that your claims against veganism are misguided, and indicate that you have not really taken the time to examine all the relevant issues, both ethical and environmental.
John
Your appetite for melodrama is only surpassed by your ignorance of the carbon cycle.
Read about carbon sequestration and then try to understand that vegans cannot sequester carbon. Perhaps come biodynamic vegetable farms come close. Our method of raising meat animals remains the way to reverse global warming/put carbon into the soil.
Glossing over vegan love for GMO soya does not change that you support Monsanto.
If you want to understand how we plant forests and more about carbon sequestration there are articles about this on my blog.
Angus
Grassfed beef, when done correctly, can certainly “save the world” – watch this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxMNHsK-IpI&feature=player_detailpage#t=1485
If the link is missing/broken, search Youtube for “How Grassfed Beef Will Save the World” by ChaffinOrchards
Most vegans are fanatics, taking their dietary ideology to the extremes of religious fanaticism. They will brook no dissent from their orthodoxies, which is, frankly, the behavior of a totalitarian jihadist.