The future of farming in Wales is vegan

I gave up eating meat and fish nearly 20 years ago because the cruelty to animals and their method of slaughter upset me so much. I believe matters are a lot worse now with the intensive farming methods being used so widely, not to mention the effect this has on our environment. There is a book called Farmageddon which is an interested read

Carys Bennett is wrong to state "not a case of a few bad apples". The case of Cildywyll Farm near Llanddowror she highlights. It was actually a raid from the Animal Health Department of Carmarthenshire County Council and was most certainly an isolated incident. Her attack on Wales and the agriculture of our country is misinformed claptrap.

There have always been people who behave badly. Not every farmer hits their animals (just as not every care worker hits residents in care homes) and it is right to call people to account when they have crossed a line. We have been eating meat for a very long time and I don’t think any good comes from telling people whether they should eat meat or not. We should be open and realistic and let people decide for themselves. Huw Fearnley-Whittingstall wrote a book titled ‘Meat’ in which he said that ‘for us to eat meat an animal has to die’. This is what everyone who eats meat has to come to terms with. I went to agricultural college at the end of the ‘70s and continued to be involved in dairy farming until 2000. The conditions on the farm improved during this time and UK standards were often higher than Europe (eg veal production) . I have always believed that animals that are destined to be eaten should have the best possible life and the best possible death. At one point I had a small holding and with a neighbour we had facilities to slaughter our animals at home and could pay a slaughter man/ butcher to come and kill our animals on site where they could be lead by a halter and killed with minimum distress. What did change was the legislation involved in slaughter which stopped us home slaughtering and resulted in fewer slaughter houses therefore longer journeys for the livestock. The other big change has been the value of meat has reduced. I can remember when meat was a treat and not a fast food. Perhaps we should put a true value on meat and consume it thoughtfully.

Industrial chicken farms should not be lumped in with grass fed livestock. The chicken farms pollute the rivers and watercourses, as well as providing appalling living conditions for poultry.

Is this an early april fools? Either that or the author is a closet reform supporter doing her utmost to scare farmers in Wales into believing claims that a middle class elite in 'the bay bubble' are hellbent on destroying their living (and destroying Welsh speaking communities - of which farmers are the backbone - in the process).

See the documentary "Eating You Alive" (ignore the over emotive bits) and-or read the book "How Not To Die" by Dr Michael Greger (playfully exaggerated title). Neither are faultless but both are very revealing - and verifiable.

There are many farmers who treat their animals with care and genuine affection and take their responsibilities as stewards of the land seriously. The fact that some farmers are abusive is no more an argument against farming than abusive parents are an argument against families. Anyone with even a casual acquaintance to the countryside knows this to be the case. If upland pastures were given to intensive arable farming it would create an environmental catastrophe by destroying wildlife habitats and arable farming on poor soils would require large quantities of fertiliser. Sheep have been farmed in the UK for six thousand years. Attempting to turn the clock back six thousand years would involve reintroducing the European Bison and wolves, an experiment which would require us to recreate the former ecosystem almost perfectly or face unintended consequences and yet our knowledge of ecosystems six thousand years ago is sketchy at best. I accept that intensive chicken farming is environmentally damaging as is over grazing. The fact that previous generations had no recourse to our technology meant that farmers worked alongside nature, and over the millennia nature adapted and thrived in this environment. It is only changes to farming in recent decades that have seen numbers of birds and insects plummet.

Loving the lack of citations to so many "facts". Always fun to spit out "information" in a vacuum. Quite why there's a growing need to attack producers and not the actual issue, retailers and consumers. Easy pickings I guess, kicking those on their knees. Good job "Dr"

If any of you are open-minded enough to properly consider the psychology of meat-eating, you could do worse than start with this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology_of_eating_meat And before any of the hard-of-reading chime in with "you can't believe Wikipedia", I will just say that Wiki is generally considered to be highly accurate, and you should note that I say "start with." It is up to you to determine how accurate the article is, but not by spouting your prejudices in the guise of "common sense", which is all too common unfortunately, but not very sensible.

The idea that the future of farming in Wales is a nonsense perpetuated by people with little knowledge of the facts and reality of farming. Sheep farming and other animal rearing in Wales hasn't been a historical norm for thousands of years without reason. Many farmers have tried their luck over various landscapes with various crops and found that over time, they just don't work, the yield is not enough to make a sustainable income. Most farms in Wales are comparatively small and to make a profit out of arable products such as wheat... you need acre upon acre of good quality arable land... the likes of which you mostly find in England. That's not to say that arable farming can't be done in Wales and that it isn't possible to reduce the land use somewhat. However, some farm land will always need to be set aside to rear animals that will be used to graze land that would be otherwise unsuitable or not permitted. A fellow commentator made a comment about how such land could be replaced with forestry instead and makes a reference to the treeline. I'm wondering whether this person truly lives in Wales and whether they have seen the shape of the hills. Never mind arable farming, even if you planted trees via... I assume abseiling... harvesting the trees is basically impossible at scale in such areas, where as goat and sheep farming is great. I would also beg the question of the value in covering every square meter in coniferous plantations... which is exactly what will happen.

I recently went 6 months as a pescatarian. I told people I did it for health reasons (which wasn't a lie)but the truth is, I couldn't kill something in order to eat and I felt like a hypocrite. While the experience was mostly positive, it's not all milk and honey. Vegan recipes contain a lot of sauces (which are high in sugars and fat),processesd foods and as for vegan sausages? The ones I ate were tasty. They also had so much salt in them, you could grit the roads with them.