I call for a worldwide ban on the consumption of frogs legs.

Discodog · 22-02-2012 1:09pm

wetdogsmell wrote: »

i'd imagine that cloning meat cost alot more than growing it naturaly, if anything people are getting more into growing their own meat, and eating free range food, plus were not running out of land in this country,
to repeat myself THIS WILL NEVER HAPPEN

We will not run out of land for a while but as meat prices rise our meat will be exported. We deal in World markets so when meat becomes expensive elsewhere it does here as well. We will also reach a point where deforestation has to stop so it will become harder to clear land. Also farm animals are claimed have an impact on climate.

The research is incredibly expensive. The scientists joke that the first burger will of cost 200k to produce. But they are doing this because they are certain that it will become cost effective. The two obvious answers are cloning meat & using insects.

kildare.17hmr · 22-02-2012 1:30pm

Our meat is already exported, every cow a friend of mine sells ends up in the east europian market.

I watched a documentery on food for the future and they were saying similar to what you are saying but not because of price. They were saying because the worlds population is set to rise signifigently in the next 80 years we will have to start looking at other food sources like insects and this cloned meat your talking about because the supply will not be enough to feed the demand. Will that effect price? Possibly but i dont know.

Demonique · 24-02-2012 1:56am

paddyandy wrote: »

I worked in the high end of catering years ago and they had the practice of boiling alive Crabs and Lobsters starting with cold water heating up and i remember watching the creatures struggling in the pots with elastic bands on their claws . It has to be done that way to destroy the natural poison in them .That's High Class Haute Cuisine for you .I'm out of it a long time .The excessive frippery and nonsense disgusted me .

I thought they were killed by being dropped into boiling water

Whispered · 24-02-2012 2:25am

Not always as far as I know, a chef friend of mine told me about how they regularly kick each others legs off when cooking - laughed about it too

Evac101 · 24-02-2012 10:10am

Was always boiling water when my mum prepared crabs I know.

blatantrereg · 24-02-2012 4:42pm

Hector Mildew wrote:

The vegsource article linked by blatantrereg (http://www.vegsource.com/news/2009/1...of-eating.html) states that herbivores evolved from carnivores (via omnivores). It compares anatomies and concludes that we are herbivores who eat meat.

The article I linked suggests the opposite, based on differences between teeth, that the first humans evolved to eat meat from their vegetarian ancestors.

I dont think that's the opposite at all. I think that is the same thing being expressed differently.
What I said was that we adapted to tolerate meat in a limited manner.
What the article I linked says is that we are physically more suited to vegetarian diet, and provides plenty of evidence to support this.
Both your source and mine agree that we were herbivores who adapted to tolerate meat.

nteresting also that the vegsource article makes lots of comparisons between the jaws, teeth, and head muscles of carnivores and ours. However it does not recognise our ability to use our hands, and therefore tools, to help us hunt and prepare meat - negating the need for the wider jaws and sharper teeth of carnivores.

That is also not recognised by the article you linked, or by what others are arguing here: The argument that we needed meat to satisfy our caloric requirements. That fails to recognise that we could cook and prepare vegetable food to achieve the same ends....In any case the evindence is that we did spend pretty much all day eating and getting food before civilization developed. The development of the first civilization was thanks to fertile farmland for crops in the Nile basin incidentally. Their diet was primarily vegetarian. Meat was an indulgence for feast days or for the rich (which supports the idea that meat and hunting in humans and chimps is lots to do with status and little to do with nutrition).

The suggested link between intelligence and meat consumption is simplistic imo. Carnivorous land mammals tend to be more intelligent than their prey, by necessity for successful hunting. However if you consider the most intelligent land animals, herbivores (or animals consuming very little meat) are top. Apes are remarkably intelligent. There are studies of the mental abilities of gorillas and orangutans that are amazing - both of which are herbivores I believe. Probably more surprising is the level of intelligence possessed by elephants, which is ranked alongside apes and dolphins. Elephants are herbivores too.

One theory is that that meat eating enabled the development of our large brain.. http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor...bigger-brains/

That article is highly speculative tbh. Occams razor comes to mind. Our bodies are very much like herbivores' bodies, nothing like carnivores'. The animals most similar to us dont eat meat (or dont require it if they do). Vegetarians as a whole are significantly healthier than meat eaters. Sure there are complex theories that explain how we are in fact designed to eat lots of meat. The simple facts really indicate otherwise though.

Evac101 · 24-02-2012 5:04pm

blatantrereg wrote: »

However if you consider the most intelligent land animals, herbivores (or animals consuming very little meat) are top. Apes are remarkably intelligent. There are studies of the mental abilities of gorillas and orangutans that are amazing - both of which are herbivores I believe. Probably more surprising is the level of intelligence possessed by elephants, which is ranked alongside apes and dolphins. Elephants are herbivores too.

Just as a point, there's an increasing number of science folk who consider that dogs may actually have one of the highest demonstrated levels of intelligence amongst mammals because of some of the abilities they've developed from human interaction. For further details have a watch of the BBC documentary "The secret life of the dog" which was linked a few weeks ago in another thread in this forum (with a better link too).

blatantrereg · 24-02-2012 5:21pm

Evac101 wrote: »

Just as a point, there's an increasing number of science folk who consider that dogs may actually have one of the highest demonstrated levels of intelligence amongst mammals because of some of the abilities they've developed from human interaction. For further details have a watch of the BBC documentary "The secret life of the dog" which was linked a few weeks ago in another thread in this forum (with a better link too).

I've seen it and it's brilliant

I was actually thinking of that documentary in a previous post here, when I said dogs were key in the development of human society.

Discodog · 24-02-2012 5:22pm

The recent two hour series The World's Smartest Animals also had some mind blowing examples. I think that attitudes will change as we begin to understand more about animal intelligence. And I think that the research will greatly increase as more is discovered. We have always assumed that man is the only species capable of sophisticated conversation & this is clearly untrue.

The strange thing is that we continue to learn more about animals like dogs & horses despite them have a close relationship with man for thousands of years. For example Monty Roberts is convinced that horses have a huge range of communications that are so subtle that we miss them. He believes that we will learn to have sophisticated conversations with horses.

Evac105 · 24-02-2012 8:19pm

I suspect that any herd/pack animal necessarily has a large range of social interaction signals to facilitate communication, regardless of whether those are noticeable for most humans (and I've seen the amazing Monty in Martin Clunes Horses series). I'm not altogether convinced though that horses have the same level of behaviour/capabilities developed specifically through interaction with humans which dogs appear to have.

As always I'm not a person who studies this so I'm open to being proven wrong but my viewings/readings so far bring me to the conclusion above ; )

Discodog · 24-02-2012 9:29pm

The interesting thing is that the horses appear to be able to understand Monty's version of their own language. Whereas dogs seem to of developed two languages, one that they use between themselves & one that they use with humans.

Given the dog's ability to recognise & memorise new objects, I wonder if anyone has tried to teach a dog to use a symbol board as they do with apes.

I call for a worldwide ban on the consumption of frogs legs.

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