First of all, obviously, one of the best username/post combos ever.
Second, this article mentions my first thought:
“It had been unclear, however, given their voracious appetite for carrots, potatoes and other top quality vegetables, how they could actually alleviate the food shortages in North Korea rather than actually adding to them.”
The breeder said when he donated them that they cost a lot to feed. So, how is this helpful? Also, why does the breeder suspect the rabbits were eaten?
They haven’t been eaten. They’ve been put to work digging new incursion tunnels beneath the DMZ.
It would seem illogical that a rabbit could dig a tunnel a human could use, but these ARE giant rabbits. And North Koreans (even soldiers) are probably pretty skinny by now. So it might just work.
It’s true. Simple physics means you can get more calories out of plants than out of animals who eat those plants…inevitably, energy is expended on things other than growth. It’s actually much less efficient. If your country is actually starving, the last thing you want to put any effort into is meat production.
Seriously. Anyone who buys into the idea that meat production fights hunger just isn’t thinking it through.
So in fact the All Wise North Korean Glorious People’s Leader and his all-obedient Minions detected the vile but clever German plot to force starvation upon the Glorious People of NK via the diabolic means of giant rabbits meant to breed wildly and devour all the Glorious People’s food.
Gloriously did the People’s representatives prevent the plot by instead devouring the ghastly Capitalist Rabbits of Intended Devouring.
Except rabbits can eat grass and we can’t. Animals can eat silage and we can’t.
So, you’re wrong. In fact a noted agronomist sez that if we cut back meat production by 70% or so, it would balance perfectly. That does mean we eat too much meat, but not that meat is necessarily a bad idea.
Those rabbits eat high quality vegetables. There may be some areas we can’t farm economically that grow enough grass to feed some grazing animals, but we need undisturbed land as well. Maybe there is a corner case where it would be slightly effective, but it’s not nearly as important as mezt advocates imply.
And in any case, obviously you have never lived on a farm. Slop and stuff goes to the pigs and chickens, sheep and cows graze on grass, and also the silage. They live on waste and what we cant eat.
True, currently, in order to raise fat animals fast in small spaces, we feed them grain. But we feed cows & pigs dent or feed corn, which has a yield *TEN Times *per acre what human sweet corn does.
