In the event of Avian Flu now spreading to Bernard Matthews farms why aren't more people vegetarian/vegan?

Question

In The UK we also have had two BSE scares but we (especially us vegans) are still a huge minority?

I remember people once saying that there was no way we could get BSE either (VCJD mean anything?!?)

Answer 1

I found out yesterday that they found another mad cow but peeple are still eating cows. Maybe they just eaten so much of the dead stuff that their brains are to rotten to be able to think right.

Answer 2

For a start, they might well be, you don't tend to get statistics about these sort of things so soon after an event. No doubt there will be a poll in a tabloid in a week or two though.

Secondly, there IS no danger to humans, and I'm going by the official advise on the matter. A few people have said as much in a very concise and non-threatening way, and have got large numbers of thumbs down. What IS your problem? I think you just want to believe that meat is evil in every possible way, especially in this case, the official advice of scientists and the government to the contrary. Frankly I'm much more willing to believe them than a few nutters running around scare-mongering to promote vegetarianism.

Yes, they said CJD wasn't a problem, and we now know it is, in fact, a whopping 170 people have ever caught the disease out of billions of meat eaters. If that negligible danger is enough to put you of a steak I'd have thought you'd have run a mile before just crossing a road, given how much more dangerous it is.
Still, I'm much more willing to trust the scientists and that they made a mistake with CJD doesn't change that they're almost certainly right here. Unlike now they have the benefit of that Bird Flu is an older disease, with previous evidence to work from, and there has never been a case of a human catching it from consumption, but only living or working in very close proximity to infected birds. There was no such precedent with BSE.

Secondly, even if you COULD catch it from infected meat, this seems to be an isolated incident at the moment. All the animals at that plant have been culled and even if a few potentially infected birds did get sold before the culling, the virus is killed by cooking, which people do anyway. In a few days there will no longer be any potentially infected carcasses to be worried about at all.

Bird Flu isn't a new disease, it's just new here, and it's long been established you can't get it from eating cooked food. You can go round scaremongering all you want, but your unlikely to find many people thick enough to think this incident, which poses no harm to us, is a valid reason to go vegan.

Answer 3

Its a sad fact that the Bernard Mathews Munchers are directly responsible for the disastorous events of this last week.

Driving down the price with no regard to the Turkeys welfare has resulted in birds being kept in such close confines.

This raises the risk of all sorts of infections and any outbreak fo flu will spread rapidly.

BM farm had to kill 50,0000 turkeys last year as well, that just happened to be a different flu strain.

Meat eaters will not care about the avian flu and current culling situation. They have completely divorced themselves from the cruelty they sponsor. Many of them would be hard-pushed to see the connection between those turkey slices and a real animal.

I'm a chicken ( see pic ) and live on open pasture with my beak soaking up the sun. Thats how it should be.

EdIt ( 2:40 UK )
Just heard on the news they looking at recalling turkey products because of the possibility of spreading the flu.....the grim reaper in knocking on those meat-eater doors.

It would be quite ironic if the turkey, albiet unknowingly, was able to get rid of millions of turkey eaters just by spreading an itsy bitsy germ....Justice ? Probably.

Answer 4

8 people died of BSE within two months last year, here in the US. Only one case even made the news. 3 people die from spinach and it's a world wide media blitz.

All of the vegetable related e.coli scares here in the US have been traced back to factory farms. You think that might wake a few people up. Nope. No such luck.

Answer 5

People love meat too much,they might go a cuple of days without it,but then they completely forget.Or they think they are safe because of the protector in the U.S.,the USDA!The USDA only checks less than 1% of aniamls slaughtered for food.Well,you live in the UK and the standards seem a lot stricter out there.

Answer 6

for me personally the fear of death by bird is no deterrent, what needs to be got across is the logic of not eating meat, cause its true!!

Answer 7

all the vegi/vegans i know look ill

Answer 8

even if the the flu could be contracted through eating cooked meat, i still think I would prefer dying with a buffalo chicken wing in my mouth rather than living for 80 years on tofu and bean curd...

Answer 9

The virus can't be transmitted through cooked meat

Answer 10

Given that there would no longer be any requirement for farm animals, I think the countryside would be a much sadder place if everyone was a vegan.We would all be fed by intensive vegetable farming, sustained by bio fuels,fed by intensive,presumably organic,fuel farms. No leather or plastic shoes. No woolly coats, no oil based(bad for planet) synthetic yarns, no fun, no life, no choice, no roast lamb.
No thanks