Properly grazed lifestock are good for the soil. However, most cattlemen do overgraze on government leased land, which is bad.
You also pointed out “It’s pretty simple, draw up a logistical supply chain in your mind. Just think of trucks and locations. How many trucks have to drive between how many locations over how many miles to accomplish each goal. Which causes more trucks to be driven?”
However, meat is many many times more concentrated as a food than corn, so over all, it balances out.
And you said "Not to mention Free Range beef is some insignificant percentage of total beef production, most is done in big factories…"
But cattle are only fattened in feedlots, for a month or two. Just about every beef cattle in the USA is grazed then brought to the Feedlot only for the final fattening.
Read “An Omnivore’s Dilema”, everyone. Great book.
She doesn’t bother with the details (I always bring up the size of our intestines…she has no real come back for that either)…she knows what she knows.
BTW, its a pretty common argument for the Vegan crowd. I think Cecil did an article on it once…if I have time later maybe I’ll do a search. I don’t remember what he even said now…but I’m pretty sure it was ‘we are omnivorous, you morons’…something to that effect.
I have issued this challenge many times on this board and I will do it again here: Show me a “factory farm” for beef production. Please. Give me an address. I want to visit the place…you know, just so I can confirm it is not a vegan fantasy.
DrDeth has it right. Nearly all cattle in this country are grazed for most of their lives. (“Free Range” in your parlance.) They eat grass. They wander about pastures or open range. They lie down for a while and chew their cud in the sunshine. They moo and shit happily in the open air.
It is only at the end of their lives that the cattle are penned and fattened on a grain diet before the slaughter. I suspect vegan activists see a fattening pen and wrongly assume that cattle spend their entire lives in this situation. In fact, it is a tiny part of a cow’s mostly contented life.
Now if you were talking about chickens or hogs (well, some hogs at least, and most chickens), you’d have a point. Those critters are often raised in unpleasant conditions. That bothers me a lot more with respect to pork, since hogs are very intelligent animals. It bothers me to the extent that I tend to avoid pork products. (Not always, just mostly.) Chickens not so much. In my experience, the average chicken is only marginally smarter than the average carrot, so I don’t think they even have the capacity to reflect on their living situation.
It does take a bit of work, but yes, you can do so. Now, with so much Soy, it is easier. However, poorly balanced plant proteins are still a source of malnutrition in many parts of the world.
This is from the book 'Unmentionable Cuisine" by Calvin Schwabe. Unfortunately, it was published in 1988 so the stats are entirely out of date and the way that global warming might affect the picture is left out.
Schwabe says that are problem is not meat consumption but INEFFICIENT meat consumption. His cookbook includes recipes from around the world for … parts.
I love the book, although I can’t say I’ver ever actually made anything from it.
Is it wrong that I find that link hilarious? Many beef cattle are born and live on the range, foraging and fending for themselves for months or even years. They are not adequately protected against inclement weather…
Oh noes! The cowies get rained on!!! Unconscionable I say!
the animals bellow loudly as ranchers’ brands are burned into their skin.
I used to live near a angus cattle farmer… let me tell you cows “bellow loudly” for a lot of reasons, for example, they would absolutely flip when he brought them their hay in the winter. Screaming their fool heads off.
Despite the alarmist language of your cite, I’m still not seeing anything resembling a “factory farm.” When you sift through the scary wording, even that propaganda site has to concede that cows spend most of their lives out in the open, grazing, and then (just as I said), “Most beef cattle spend the last few months of their lives at feedlots…”
So in other words, there really is no such thing as a “factory farm” when it comes to beef production, at least not insofar as that phrase conjures up images of cattle being rasied for most of their lives in dark, cramped or filthy conditions. mswas, you really need to concede that this
just isn’t true.
Or else accept my challenge and give me the address of a “factory farm” of the type you describe.
Cows are much easier on the land than crops. No nasty fertilizers or insecticides or herbicides running off into the water supply. Moreover, irrigation of crops leads to ever-increasing salinity of the soil and eventually soil failure. Growing crops organically? Guess what is used for fertilizer? Don’t want to use any fertilizer at all? Then you get drastically reduced yields, requiring you to use more land. And if you’re not using fertilizer, the crops are going to leech minerals out of the land resulting in depleted topsoil.
And erosion? Nothing promotes erosion more than tilling the soil every year. Topsoil gets washed away every time heavy rain meets tilled land or a dry wind blows across turned earth. Cattle, on the other hand, are fertilizer factories, and don’t significantly disturb the soil.
Let me expand on one point. “Organically-grown” foods are by definition grown without artificial fertilizers. So what natural fertilizers are used? Well, in my experience, the most commonly used “natural” fertilizers are chicken manure and pig manure, which come from the very sort of factory farms which many eaters of organic foods deplore. (The manure is collected into tanker trucks, then mixed with water and sprayed on the fields.)
So in case you think eating organic crops makes you cruelty-free, it ain’t so. You are indirectly supporting factory farming of chickens and hogs by creating a market for the byproducts of those farms.
I really am guilt-free when I eat beef. Most cows live happy lives up to the few months before slaughter. I happen to be out in the country at the moment, and am looking out my window at beef cattle grazing contentedly in a sunny field.
One other point of clarification: not all hogs are raised on “factory farms.” In my experience, a lot of individual farmers raise a few hogs as a sideline, in reasonably nice conditions. Hogs make good natural garbage disposals. They are omnivores, and will eat most human leftovers. This makes it inexpensive for a farmer to raise them (in small numbers, at least). So quite a few hogs get raised by individual farmers in reasonably good conditions up to the point they are sent to market.
On the other hand, chickens available at the supermarket are almost all raised in close quarters, in chickenhouses which might fairly be characterized as “factory farms.”
It also helps if the people working as cooks in restaurants aren’t unclear on the concept. When I order a dish here, I have to be very specific and order “No meat and no ham in it.” Apparently it’s a common misconception that ham comes from a plant. I’m afraid to ask, “What plant do you think ham comes from.” I’m afraid the answer will be, “Hormel, of course.” Then my head will explode.
