NOW Toronto: It’s time to raise animals for meat in backyards

[marmar]

What the cluck?
It’s time to raise animals for meat in backyards

By Wayne Roberts


There’s everyday unsustainable and then there’s completely off-the-charts unsustainable.

In the latter category we can quickly place the worldwide move to a Western-style meat-centred diet relying on low-cost livestock fed corn and soybeans. To give the 9 billion carnivores expected by 2050 regular steak dinners would mean doubling global grain production and converting entire rainforests to grain monocultures.

Then there are reasonably modest alternatives like livestock raised on grass and bugs in managed wildernesses. Or we may eventually resort to completely out-there options like raising animals for meat in the city.

Of course, the over-the-top alternative is an everyday matter for garden-variety city food producers. According to Toronto-based food analyst Diana Lee-Smith, a leading figure in the booming African urban ag movement, heavy-duty city food production becomes normalized mainly during crises. In the UK, for example, where wartime rationing continued into the 1950s, “pig bins” for food scraps that could be fed to animals, both in town and out, were the norm in many urban neighbourhoods, she says. .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.nowtoronto.com/news/story.cfm?content=183707

[hlthe2b]

1. My grandfather had a farm. I saw animals slaughtered as a child...

and I have had occasion to visit a slaughter-house. I am not naive' and I do occasionally eat red meat. That said, any livestock or other animals in my backyard would be there for eternity--until they drop of natural causes. ;)

[MADem]

2. Do lots of people have "regular steak dinners?" I don't know anyone who does.

Steak is a luxury item, a "special occasion" type food, at least among the people I know who eat meat.

[marmar]

3. Replace steak with hamburger or meatloaf, same effect.

nt

[MADem]

10. We aren't fans of ground red meat, since the mad cow thing hit UK.

Ground turkey, sure, chicken, why not....cow? Naaah.

[JDPriestly]

4. As I understand it, the Northern Europeans used to literally live with their livestock peering from

the adjacent "barn" into their kitchen windows. There is a famous painting depicting a cow's head looking into some family's kitchen.

[PoliticAverse]

11. Just don't invite them in...

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/20100226-Cows-make-lousy-house-guests-1113.ece

[JDPriestly]

13. Great story! Made my day! Thanks!

You have to have grown up either on a farm or around a lot of farmers to appreciate that one.

[jayfish]

5. Pets or Meat...

[hlthe2b]

6. Beware, Michael...

Somewhere Glenn Close may be lurking, waiting to cook that sweet bunny.... BEWARE! ;)

[Aerows]

7. I wouldn't eat a French lop eared

Because they are bred to be pets. A wild rabbit that is nothing like your pet bunny? I would and have eaten them. Animals that are bred for food have different dispositions than animals bred as pets.

That's not to say that some people haven't ended up with pet chickens, pet goats, and everything else.

[sufrommich]

8. When I was growing up in metro Detroit we had at least 3

houses in our neighborhood who had chickens, I really don't know why people decided they didn't want chickens in their neiborhoods anymore and outlawed them. Let people raise chickens and rabbits for food if they want.

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. "a shopping bag of waste per week" is about what I produce of organic waste

So there seems little point in keeping 3 chickens to produce that, when clearly they'd need extra feed. I suspect I couldn't keep 1 chicken going on the waste I produce (since I doubt chickens get much out of wilted lettuce leaves, coffee grounds, bones or egg shells, which are my typical organic waste contents).

When I was at school in Britain in the 80s, the waste from the cafeteria was fed to pigs (we had to be careful to keep plastic yoghurt pots out of it, though foil butter wrappers were apparently fine). But BSE brought in a whole new raft of regulations about feeding waste to animals, so it's less practical now.

[Lizzie Poppet]

12. A bit more challenging for us piscatarians!

Then again, a small pond in the backyard might look pretty cool...