Is it time to boycott meat?

As regular readers will be aware all my boycotts have been set to zero whilst I undergo a process of re-examination. I've determined that I will either boycott two things (on the basis that you can't realistically boycott everything) and leave an option open for not boycotting anything on the basis that they don't work.

Once the definitive list of options is ready, perhaps in time for New Year's Day, it will be put to the public vote and I'll boycott whatever the public decides. Be kind.

As luck would have it, just as I was thinking about whether it was time to go Vegetarian again, Ros Paterson advocates just that in the latest edition of Scottish Socialist Voice.

She argues that "eating meat doesn’t just choke your arteries and condemn captive creatures to a life of lonely agony, it is ravaging the planet too. Rearing cattle produces more CO2 than cars. It also produces nitrous oxide and methane, both of which are significantly more damaging to the earth’s atmosphere than C02."

The ever increasing demand for meat means deepening ever growing global environmental dangers. Not just through CO2 production but also vast swathes of have been forest cut down (e.g. 70% of the Amazon rainforest). Ros states that "This vast expansion is eating up the face of the planet. Some 30 per cent of the earth’s surface is given over to livestock rearing, including 33 per cent of all arable land, now dedicated to producing animal feed."

She finishes with the words "if we all ate a vegetarian diet, there would be enough food in the world to feed every human being without destroying the earth we grow it on. If we don’t, there isn’t, simple as that. All we are saying is give chick peas a chance."

Now obviously I'm not becoming a vegetarian if I have to eat chick peas - but I'm willing to try. I was a veggie for two years about a decade ago and I know I could do it if I tried. I also know I didn't particularly enjoy being vegetarian. I had one of the nicest sandwiches of my life yesterday in Indigo. If someone had replaced the bacon with, say, beetroot I would have spat it across the room so I would.

I became a veggie after attending the Brightlingsea live animal export protests. I came because it was a case of the local capitalist shitting on the entire community to make a fast buck, I became a veggie after seeing the conditions the animals were transported in. Of all the suggestions so far giving up meat would be the hardest one to stick to - but what is life if it doesn't contain challenges?

Previous posts on boycotts include: Flights of fancy, 729 means made in Israel, Taste of Bacardi, Killer Coke (out sourced to Red Mantis), and it all began with Mea culpa: I drank Coke.

Suggestions, and even guest posts, on other possible boycotts are more than welcome.