Right now, if I had to bicycle to work and back I would just quit. I could not make it up a huge hill; chemo will do that to you. My father, at 93, would be forever home-bound.
Surely immediate draconic decrees when not seen as necessary must rarely work in the long run. Getting people to slowly reduce the amount of meat has to be a better bet.
I can’t cook and nobody cooks for me. I’m pretty sure if I eliminated pre-prepared and microwaveable products that have meat in them from my diet I would die of malnutrition, if not starvation. Plus, and let us not understate the importance of this, I don’t want to. There are very few vegetables that I like the taste of, and my diet is enough of a wasteland as it is!
Grazing land is usually not suitable for crops, that’s why it’s grazing land. Left alone, in many cases it will revert to natural grassland, where there is more rainfall, it will go back to forest. There is no “have to” involved.
This fact is also an argument for raising livestock (the old way, without grain) – land that is too hilly, dry, or otherwise too difficult to crop can produce high quality protein in the form of meat and milk and eggs, where otherwise it would produce no food for humans at all.
In this part of the world, where poor rocky land and forest cover are the norm, some farmers are experimenting with the ancient practice of free-ranging pigs in the woods. Like most reversions to previous, sustainable farming techniques, it doesn’t produce nearly as much pork of course. But, the energy inputs are close to nothing, similar to grass-raised beef and lamb.
This is mostly it.
Moral arguments against meat eating frankly go back thousands of years. IMO it’s never become a settled issue, it’s still argued about, is because though I understand where people can get to a moral basis, veganism isn’t a more efficient ecosystem. It’s less efficient, less robust. I think that an ecosystem that contains predators, scavengers, meat-eaters, is more likely to be sustainable than one that isn’t. So veganism is only sustainable through very invasive practices. Take humans out of the equation, and animals will continue with their current food chain. Reduce humans to sustenance living, that’s going to include meat eating.
im considered a "bleeding heart " on everything but food … I need my salt, grease, sugar, and protein … and if I can get all that in a pile of biscuits o’ ham gravy washed down with a bucket of Mtn. dew … well sorry piggy …
If pigs were apex predators and had the society of 21st century humans, I think cannibalism would still be practiced.
This is… complicated. Thankfully Kurzgesagt has made it a bit less complicated.
I encourage everyone in this thread the actually watch the whole video. It’s food (heh) for thought. Except the OP. Because a True Believer™ is never bothered by pesky facts.
well, that wasn’t what I thought it was going to be …
I don’t understand how this is so. I’ve always heard that it takes something like 10 times as much resources to produce a unit of meat protein than it does to produce a unit of vegetable protein. How is that less efficient?
Not understanding this at all. It’s animal-raising meat producers who are the ones who get rid of the predators and meat eaters in the environment. Vegans and vegetarians have no problem with predators out there in the wild. In fact, they generally approve of them, for the reason you state.
Bird’s eggs are going to exist regardless of whether they are eaten by people or animals or not. They are part of the life cycle of a bird. I am talking about the difference between a world where sentient animals or their products are subject to being eaten by others, or one where sentient animals eat vegetation only and nothing ever eats them. The eggs exist in either world, so given that, the efficiency of production is irrelevant. It’s only whether some of the eggs are utilized as a food source or they aren’t.
I think on balance predation is a good thing. Without it, population control either is boom and bust depending on food supply or disease, or the animal has to have a low enough reproductive rate that it may not be able to bounce back should some problem arise. It’s good for the long term survival of a species to be able to overproduce offspring when needed, and have that checked by predation - when needed.
Then I am not understanding vegans. I don’t think that vegans are in favor of humans eating animals by any means. Sustenance farming, hunting, fishing, all are out as far as I understand it. Humans are also part of the ecosystem.
Yes, but we don’t need a gazillion chickens cooped up in warehouse-sized buildings, just sitting on their ass laying eggs. And when they don’t produce enough, it’s off with their heads.
I’m talking about wolves. Perfectly fine predators but hunted to virtual extinction by ranchers. And when they get reintroduced, they’re frequently shot or poisoned by ranchers in violation of the law.
RIP, Pluie.
For the massive amounts of meat we eat, supported by animals fattened on grain, that’s true. But there’s a lot of land that’s fertile enough to support cattle but not fertile enough to support grain. If we only ate pastured meat (and ate a lot less of it) eating that small amount of lean, tough meat would increase our overall agricultural productivity, not decrease it.
Most of these things aren’t black and white.
That’s a good video.
And now i feel all smug and morally righteous for buying fabulously expensive led bulbs before they were ready for prime time. Yes, i spent $100 on a single bulb, once, and it didn’t even work very well. But i wanted to support the development of LEDs. And hey, it worked.
Why are all the anti-meat arguments here based on domestic meat? In some cultures and subcultures, including some North American subcultures, most meat is obtained through hunting. I’m not a big fan of game meat, but I view that as a weakness. Venison and elk are not only better for the environment than beef, lamb, pork, or chicken, they’re better for us.
Probably because only around 300 million pounds of venison is hunted per year, while total meat consumption is about 47 billion pounds. I don’t think the OP would have bothered posting if meat consumption was <1% of the current value.
These are the top 5 mammals (excluding humans) on earth (2020 numbers)
Humans are 7.7 Billion
So approximately, there’s one animal per two humans (list excludes chicken) bred for human consumption.
Right. But the OP is about meat production, as in
Again, I don’t like game meat but wish I did. The “well-meaning liberals” who do eat game meat, and I know a number for whom deer, elk, and antelope comprise the majority of the protein in their diet, don’t require cropland that’s “dedicated to growing livestock feed.” I’m wondering whether those liberals, however common they are, are more understandable to the OP than the beef-, pork-, chicken-, and lamb-eaters among us.
Maybe, but their numbers are in the noise. It’s not possible to have current levels of meat consumption without industrialized agriculture. Those small numbers of people that get their meat intake from hunting depend on protected breeding/feeding grounds and limits on how many can be hunted. There’s not remotely enough space for the US population to get even 10% of their meat from wild sources. And if more people tried, the current population of hunters would have to decrease their consumption proportionally. It only works because hardly anyone does it.
I was watching The Daily Show a few days ago. Trevor Noah was interviewing a Japanese-American scholar who had made a personal decision to stop eating fish since recent studies suggested, to him, that fish can suffer. He was defining this rather broadly, but I am sure that the international fishing industry has many areas which fall short of the scholar’s ideals. Unsurprisingly, the scholar also eschewed milk, eggs and meat.
Noah expressed sympathy for these views but pointed out even those hoping to eat less meat needed to eat something, and if eating fish was also cruel that left fewer options. He also pointed out people forget that humans are animals with appetites informed by thousands of years of history. People like the taste of meat.
If it is true the meat industry has excesses most would find intolerable these should be improved - and pricing adjusted accordingly. I admire vegans and vegetarians on a philosophical and moral level, although I will not be joining their ranks in the foreseeable future. Highly processed alternative meats at high cost have their own concerns and little nutritional advantage over meat from a physical standpoint, although there are possibly environmental benefits these are reduced if the amount of processing is significant. Environmental concerns can be addressed in many ways.
Many things in life have good and bad points. I do not want to stop eating meat. There may be logic in eating somewhat less of it, pricing which reflects actual costs, doing other things to improve the environment including applying better methods. This may fall short of your ideals, like the scholar who was praised for saying what he personally did rather than lecture other people. His ideals will not be soon met either. Small improvements are usually better than not improving. Alternative meats and more ethical and efficient meat production will presumably improve in the future as well. Regardless of one’s politics.