Increase in Dairy heard mooted as cause for recent E.coli outbreak

ElKavo

Yet another reason to cut the dairy heard numbers and not expand them. Between Irelands increase in emissions and the poisoning of 715 people because of the recent outbreak on E.coli it seems to me anyway that this should be a no brainer. Our country is being heavily manipulated by the greed of a single sector (animal agriculture).

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/expanded-national-dairy-herd-may-be-behind-e-coli-outbreak-1.3597435

davidjtaylor

And they keep running out of fodder and are constantly baled out (pun intended). The problem is not that's there's not enough food...

ElKavo

davidjtaylor wrote: »

And they keep running out of fodder and are constantly baled out (pun intended). The problem is not that's there's not enough food...

Yep, from the outside it seems like pure madness!

Mooooo

In that article it mentions the west and Midlands as having the highest outbreaks, however the increase in the dairy herd has predominantly been in the south and east. Also there were more cows in the country in 1984 than there are now. I would put it down to the poor state of water treatment facilities of which there have been issues in Galway and the Midlands etc and the poor sewage treatment in most town's and villages in the country. My statement is more or less the same as that article's headline, in that it may be the case not that it is.

gozunda

ElKavo wrote: »

Yet another reason to cut the dairy heard numbers and not expand them. Between Irelands increase in emissions and the poisoning of 715 people because of the recent outbreak on E.coli it seems to me anyway that this should be a no brainer. Our country is being heavily manipulated by the greed of a single sector (animal agriculture).
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/expanded-national-dairy-herd-may-be-behind-e-coli-outbreak-1.3597435

ELKavo - this appears to have taken up the mantle of pushing anti-farming sentiment even where there the issue at hand is 'speculation'

The last outbreak of anti-farmism ended up as less than constructive and imo were detrimental to discussion.

It remains that transport and vehicles combined are responsible for more emissions than all forms of agriculture worldwide. At least agriculture feeds people.

Cucumbers have also been implicated in mass outbreaks of E coli infections across Europe and elsewhere. Should we therefore ban all Cucumbers? Or do we investigate and deal with the cause?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Germany_E._coli_O104:H4_outbreak

You talk of 'greed' as if it is some evil doers intent on destroying the world. Instead we have ordinary farmers in this country who are using the resources which we have - limited in many areas by our topograhy and climate to grass growing and animal agriculture. What do you want farmers to do? Give up because some individuals do not like eating meat? Really?

emaherx

davidjtaylor wrote: »

And they keep running out of fodder and are constantly baled out (pun intended). The problem is not that's there's not enough food...

We just came out of a drought which came directly after a non existent spring. If grass failed as a crop do you think vegetables or cereals did well?

davidjtaylor

emaherx wrote: »

We just came out of a drought which came directly after a non existent spring. If grass failed as a crop do you think vegetables or cereals did well?

This isn't the first time the animal industry has run out of fodder.

Apart from that, I agree, big ag. doesn't come out well from a drought; small scale gardening is far more productive for a given input.

emaherx

davidjtaylor wrote: »

This isn't the first time the animal industry has run out of fodder.

Apart from that, I agree, big ag. doesn't come out well from a drought; small scale gardening is far more productive for a given input.

Not the first time no, but a stretch to imply it's a regular occurrence. ( It's happened about twice in the last 40 years)

Small scale gardening is more productive? Now that's just untrue. If the world were to ever go vegan it couldn't survive without intensive farming and that is even if there is enough arable land in the world for the entire population to have a healthy vegan diet

davidjtaylor

emaherx wrote: »

Small scale gardening is more productive? Now that's just untrue.

Current oil-based farming practices one more 'efficient' way of producing a narrow range of crops on a labour input basis - but we're running out of both fossil fuels to power this and the soil itself (one estimate is fewer than 100 harvests left from UK soils, for instance).

Thus labour input is offset by oil input.

Diversity - both in terms of diet and in the biospheric sense - is lost.

The most efficient method of food production on an output-per acre-basis is intensive gardening but this involves a high labour input, thus it's frowned upon as 'inefficient'...allotments, the tiniest spaces used for food growing, produce far more food per square metre than monoculture industrialised ag.

emaherx wrote: »

If the world were to ever go vegan it couldn't survive without intensive farming and that is even if there is enough arable land in the world for the entire population to have a healthy vegan diet

There's more than enough arable land by a long shot - have you not read the report about land use by diet type? In fact, the world produces enough food today to feed everyone, just that most of it's fed to owned animals.

A vegan world is possible with intensive gardening, not agriculture.

emaherx

davidjtaylor wrote: »

Current oil-based farming practices one more 'efficient' way of producing a narrow range of crops on a labour input basis - but we're running out of both fossil fuels to power this and the soil itself (one estimate is fewer than 100 harvests left from UK soils, for instance).

Thus labour input is offset by oil input.

Diversity - both in terms of diet and in the biospheric sense - is lost.

The most efficient method of food production on an output-per acre-basis is intensive gardening but this involves a high labour input, thus it's frowned upon as 'inefficient'...allotments, the tiniest spaces used for food growing, produce far more food per square metre than monoculture industrialised ag.



There's more than enough arable land by a long shot - have you not read the report about land use by diet type? In fact, the world produces enough food today to feed everyone, just that most of it's fed to owned animals.

A vegan world is possible with intensive gardening, not agriculture.

Figuers based on habitable land?
Land suitable for food production is much much less than suggested by your report. Also live-stock can and mostly are raised on land not suitable for crop production. Habitable land, Agricultural land and Arable land are far from the same thing.

Who is going to run your intensive gardens that can produce enough food for our towns and city's?

_Brian

High labour intensity gardening isn’t going to feed the planet. Firstly there isn’t the labour available then in a country such as Ireland much of the land isn’t suitable for this.

I appreciate people have this as an ideal but if out onto practice we would have mass starvation and malnutrition.

I don’t like the trajectory Irish farming is on where it’s more and more likely that factory style farming is the only way to earn a full time living, but I still believe that conventional farming is a practical ethical safe way to feed populations.

It’s easy for first world ideologists to dream of a vegan world, but outside that bubble the real world exists, vast populations must be fed and the only way that is practical is intensive farming.

davidjtaylor

But take away the fossil fuels for power and chemicals, how then do you feed 'vast populations'?

emaherx

davidjtaylor wrote: »

But take away the fossil fuels for power and chemicals, how then do you feed 'vast populations'?

Most likely replaced with some form of renewables such as already developed electric and hydrogen powered tractors. There is one thing we can all agree on is we can and must move away from fossil fuels. That is not just an agricultural issue but an every major industry issue.


Chemicals? Like the ones you would absolutely need if you didn't have any farm animals to produce natural fertilizer?

Or the already available organic pesticides (which are actually worse for people)

gozunda

davidjtaylor wrote: »

There's more than enough arable land by a long shot - have you not read the report about land use by diet type?

In fact, the world produces enough food today to feed everyone, just that most of it's fed to owned animals.

A vegan world is possible with intensive gardening, not agriculture.

And unfortunately from this - much of the misinformation about agriculture is repeated ad infinitum .

Most of the crops fed to animals are those portions of crops which are left over after processing for human consumption. Also those crops which do not meet human food grade standards.

Where for example - it is stated that 60% of a particular crop is fed to animals - this 60% is generally made up of the waste or by-products of crop AFTER that crop has been processed with the consumables being used in the human food industry.

It would be extremly wasteful if the by-products of such crops were simply dumped.

Having been involved in the growing of food all my life - the biggest issue with intensive gardening to support a vegan world imo is that the majority of people neither have the interest or inclination to grow their own food.

Without conventional agriculture most people would starve.

Tar.Aldarion

_Brian wrote: »

High labour intensity gardening isn’t going to feed the planet. Firstly there isn’t the labour available then in a country such as Ireland much of the land isn’t suitable for this.

I appreciate people have this as an ideal but if out onto practice we would have mass starvation and malnutrition.

I don’t like the trajectory Irish farming is on where it’s more and more likely that factory style farming is the only way to earn a full time living, but I still believe that conventional farming is a practical ethical safe way to feed populations.

It’s easy for first world ideologists to dream of a vegan world, but outside that bubble the real world exists, vast populations must be fed and the only way that is practical is intensive farming.

Do you feel that this will come to pass? I think so. It's what the consumer wants and if people don't provide it for any reason, somebody will come along and do it that does not have ethical qualms about it. I imagine man yin the US have felt what you do now, in the past and currently, they are just ahead of us in inevitability of unchecked capitalism.

I saw an article recently from a newspaper site about the Knepp estate in the UK, and how the person running it was pushing it as a way to sustainable farm animals. A conventional small scale livestock farmer ran the numbers on it and it didn't work out.

The numbers worked out that just 3m hectares of the farmland in the uk (out of the current 17.2m) would feed the population a vegan diet, and pushing this out to all the productive farmland it supports 200 million people. However if using the knepp method of farming that the author pushed as more ethical than conventional farming, on all available land people would get roughly 3% of the calories they needed to survive, each person getting just 75 calories a day. I'm sure there is more subtlety to the numbers but the farmer wanted to make an illustration. Then you take more middle ground livestock farming that conventionally happens and you'll find it falls somewhere in between.

_Brian

davidjtaylor wrote: »

But take away the fossil fuels for power and chemicals, how then do you feed 'vast populations'?

Fossil fuels can be replaced same as they are with transport functions be that electric or hydrogen or whatever developments will bring.
Chemicals are abundant on the planet providing they are extracted and used with appropriate caution.

Farming has been feeding the planet for a very long time while Vegan philosophy is akin to a religion, it’s a belief system with no proof of its claims. I accept people have their beliefs and respect them, but as with any religion or belief system it doesn’t give the believers the right to knock and abuse those who don’t concur.

Imposing your belief system on others is an attempt to take away their freedom and its the realm of dictators and barbarians.

davidjtaylor

emaherx wrote: »

Chemicals? Like the ones you would absolutely need if you didn't have any farm animals to produce natural fertilizer?

Or the already available organic pesticides (which are actually worse for people)

I'd encourage everyone to gen. up on stock-free growing. It's what we do on our small patch, producing a significant portion of our food with surprisingly little labour. Start here, for instance: https://veganorganic.net

emaherx

davidjtaylor wrote: »

I'd encourage everyone to gen. up on stock-free growing. It's what we do on our small patch, producing a significant portion of our food with surprisingly little labour. Start here, for instance: https://veganorganic.net

What?
Where does every town/city dweler get a small patch to produce a significant portion of their food. It's great that it works for you and I admire that. Produce plenty of my own food too and it is great to be able to do so but far from practical or even possible for everyone to do so.

davidjtaylor

Don't forget, people, "This is a supportive community for vegetarians and vegans and those curious about and new to the lifestyle."

If you don't want to support this community, could you post elsewhere, please? After all, a Fine Gaeler at a Shinner meeting would be unceremoniously booted out.

gozunda

Tar.Aldarion wrote: »

Do you feel that this will come to pass? I think so. It's what the consumer wants and if people don't provide it for any reason, somebody will come along and do it that does not have ethical qualms about it. I imagine man yin the US have felt what you do now, in the past and currently, they are just ahead of us in inevitability of unchecked capitalism.

I saw an article recently from a newspaper site about the Knepp estate in the UK, and how the person running it was pushing it as a way to sustainable farm animals. A conventional small scale livestock farmer ran the numbers on it and it didn't work out.

The numbers worked out that just 3m hectares of the farmland in the uk (out of the current 17.2m) would feed the population a vegan diet, and pushing this out to all the productive farmland it supports 200 million people. However if using the knepp method of farming that the author pushed as more ethical than conventional farming, on all available land people would get roughly 3% of the calories they needed to survive, each person getting just 75 calories a day. I'm sure there is more subtlety to the numbers but the farmer wanted to make an illustration. Then you take more middle ground livestock farming that conventionally happens and you'll find it falls somewhere in between.

And the issue remains - even if the figures are correct - would all of those 3 million hectares in the UK actually support the gowing of crops and vegetables suitable for a good vegan diet?

Edit: I checked for the source for the above scenario which was floated by Simon Fairlie Author of Meat - A Benign Extravagance

This is what he has commented about the the "3 Million" scenario above

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DlnsozrXcAEEsIc?format=jpg

See:
http://www.librarything.com/work/10422887/reviews/71651947

It should be noted that he does not support veganism as a means of feeding the planet

Tar.Aldarion

gozunda wrote: »

And the issue remains - even if the figures are correct - would all of those 3 million hectares in the UK actually support the gowing of crops and vegetables suitable for a good vegan diet?

Yes, the point of the calculations was to figure out could Britain feed itself and how, using things that could be grown in Britain. You can look up the farmers work, his name is Simon Fairlie and is editor of The Land magazine, but remonstration of his work may be best suited in another thread and after reading his book. He also pointed out issues with the vegan idea he proposed as well but the point about land use is valid and the rest is just in the detail of implementation and globalism.

Alas I fear we are getting far from ecoli now, whoops.

gozunda

Tar.Aldarion wrote: »

Yes, the point of the calculations was to figure out could Britain feed itself and how, using things that could be grown in Britain. You can look up the farmers work, his name is Simon Fairlie and is editor of The Land magazine, but remonstration of his work may be best suited in another thread and after reading his book. He also pointed out issues with the vegan idea he proposed as well but the point about land use is valid and the rest is just in the detail of implementation and globalism.

Alas I fear we are getting far from ecoli now, whoops.

I have. I reconmended the book to someone here previously. You didn't put in a reference - hence my question. But as stated his eight scenarios were to show the best outcome of different agricultural production methods.

He doesn't support veganism as a means of feeding the planets population. Quoting just one scenario out of the eight is problematic as it is dealing with that scenario is isolation.




The 3 million hectares vegan model is based on high yield intensive industrial farming using non organic production methods. It produces what Fairlies describes as a 'restricted vegan diet' only.

Agreed - poor old ecoli is getting a bad rap between speculative newspaper headlines and the danger of cucumbers . Mea culpa...

gctest50

davidjtaylor wrote: »

Don't forget, people, "This is a supportive community for vegetarians and vegans and those curious about and new to the lifestyle."

If you don't want to support this community, could you post elsewhere, please? After all, a Fine Gaeler at a Shinner meeting would be unceremoniously booted out.

This is how you do it if you don't want cows n other tasty things wandering around your land :

gozunda

davidjtaylor wrote: »

Don't forget, people, "This is a supportive community for vegetarians and vegans and those curious about and new to the lifestyle."

If you don't want to support this community, could you post elsewhere, please? After all, a Fine Gaeler at a Shinner meeting would be unceremoniously booted out.

I would add that this is a discussion board to express opinions and ideas, good, bad and otherwise but at the end of the day - all are generally held up to scrutiny - which as a wise man once said 'is a good thing'

I'm sure you do not wish to liken any forum to a beer hall putsch

davidjtaylor

gctest50 wrote: »

This is how you do it if you don't want cows n other tasty things wandering around your land :

Thanks for that gctest50. That set-up would produce so much food!

gozunda

davidjtaylor wrote: »

Thanks for that gctest50. That set-up would produce so much food!

Whatever the issues relating to food quality and pollution of intensive covered horticulture - is that the future you see for the Irish landscape?

I'll stick with a more bucolic vision thanks

_Brian

davidjtaylor wrote: »

I'd encourage everyone to gen. up on stock-free growing. It's what we do on our small patch, producing a significant portion of our food with surprisingly little labour. Start here, for instance: https://veganorganic.net

That’s just an online store “selling the dream”, I may as well post an accompanying link to Scientology, they are interested in taking your money too for their ideals.

ElKavo

gozunda wrote: »

ELKavo - this appears to have taken up the mantle of pushing anti-farming sentiment even where there the issue at hand is 'speculation'

The last outbreak of anti-farmism ended up as less than constructive and imo were detrimental to discussion.

It remains that transport and vehicles combined are responsible for more emissions than all forms of agriculture worldwide. At least agriculture feeds people.

Cucumbers have also been implicated in mass outbreaks of E coli infections across Europe and elsewhere. Should we therefore ban all Cucumbers? Or do we investigate and deal with the cause?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Germany_E._coli_O104:H4_outbreak

You talk of 'greed' as if it is some evil doers intent on destroying the world. Instead we have ordinary farmers in this country who are using the resources which we have - limited in many areas by our topograhy and climate to grass growing and animal agriculture. What do you want farmers to do? Give up because some individuals do not like eating meat? Really?

Don't make me laugh, I am simply spreading the information that is already out there. This is a typical ploy of any group of people who are simply trying to cover their own backs and their own interests.

ElKavo

gozunda wrote: »

Whatever the issues relating to food quality and pollution of intensive covered horticulture - is that the future you see for the Irish landscape?

I'll stick with a more bucolic vision thanks

Problem with that utopia you push is beef and dairy are heating up the planet.

https://www.iatp.org/blog/emissions-impossible

https://www.iatp.org/emissions-impossible

Bury your head in the sand all you want, big fines related specifically to emissions are headed our way with a lot of them down to the fact that our dairy herd is increasing.

charolais0153

ElKavo wrote: »

Don't make me laugh, I am simply spreading the information that is already out there. This is a typical ploy of any group of people who are simply trying to cover their own backs and their own interests.

Why?

ElKavo

charolais0153 wrote: »

Why?

Why not?

What does the animal ag sector have to hide?

Oh yeah.... https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/ireland-dairy-cows-greenhouse-gas-emissions-climate-change-farming-agriculture-a8417801.html

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding-meat-and-dairy-is-single-biggest-way-to-reduce-your-impact-on-earth