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Vegetarianism as means to help with hunger and climate change

Vegetarianism as means
to help with hunger and climate change


I do not mean to spoil anyones dinner, if you want to lose your appetite for steak, look at the Earthlings doc**entary (narrated by Joaquim Phoenix), and I dont really feel like hearing things like 'vegetarians eat my foods food', 'if we are not supposed to eat animals, why are they made of meat'.

Fact is, humans are omnivores. While it was perfectly plausible to eat animals in order to survive thousands of years ago, in the modern world we live in, it might not be as plausible - now it is a lot easier to live off vegetables and fruits alone than it was back then.

There are several compelling arguments as to why society as a wh*** might want to abolish farming animals/eat less meat.

Actually, farming animals is not quite the phrase that describes the process correctly - I believe mass production to be a lot more accurate today. Still, I do not wish to get into the morals and animal rights. That is a discussion better suited for somewhere else.

What I do want to get into is the reasons for environmental and economic vegetarianism as well as why a reduction of ranching will improve the overall standard of living.




1. Farming roughly accounts for a large percentage of nitrous oxide and methane emissions, with regards to climate change, I dont think I have to explain that any further.


2. More importantly, a kilogram of animal proteine requires an input of about 16 kilos of plant proteines (because cows have a metabolism) and it is quite obvious we could feed a motherload more people with wheat instead of giving that wheat to animals that are then converted into steak. Cornell has interesting figures on a lot points i am making here.


3. Cattle, chickens and turkey etc are fed with a number of different steroids and medicines in order to increase production. only by a high output can cheap prices be achieved in the long term - that is one reason bio-meat is so expensive. those substances later end up in you and according to doctors, might account for several ailments common in the developed world as well as increasing bacterial immunity to drugs.


4. A huge portion of the worlds crops are used to feed cattle. What many people do not know is that there is actually a large economy built around farming in Africa. The local prices for produce are well below the world market price - big players in farming know that and buy large portions of the supply for a price above the local price, which leads to locals unable to afford their own local produce.


5. Grazing has horrible effects on soil erosion, not just because the roots of gra**** keep the soil together, wind then carries away nutrients, slowly killing good land and furthering desertification.


6. Water usage! Sustaining an animal fed with produce needs a lot more water than just growing the produce.


7. Subsidies and their attached rules lead to farmers being paid to not produce anything, just to sustain an economic branch that is utmost inefficient and out of touch with reality, and when they produce, it is sometimes just to feed livestock or to ultimately see those crops be burnt in order to not drive prices down too low. (but that is a topic that is waaaay to complex to get into it now)

8. Meat is very expensive
in a lot of ways: to transport, not just because live animal transports cost a lot and big trucks tend not to be green, also because of the infrastructure necessary to support a big cattle farm - that is including the infrastructure already needed for producing crops. Then again meat goes bad rather quickly - unfrozen raw meat will go bad within days, while rice and wheat, if stored dry, hold for months and longer. (thx Laryssa)

9. ... and then there is the moral side to it - not just animal rights - that by sustaining livestock the developed world quite frankly steals available, cheap food from starving people.

EDIT: I am not saying we should abolish ranching completely - halving of quartering though sounds like a really good thing.

That concludes it, time permitting. So I will just mention one problem with this: the soy most vegans/vegetarians use to up their proteine intake might be from illegal plantations in the Amazon rainforest, which is really bad, obviously. Still, that soy is also used to feed cattle. Awesome.


If anyone has good arguments against this, please share! (note: 'hitler was a vegetarian' is not an argument. he also was a painter and a homicidal f***head with a coke addiction)


Also, I would love to hear anyones thoughts or input on any of this.

Views: 25

Comment by Alyssa Laurel Crum on March 21, 2010 at 3:28pm
Interesting arguments. The biggest thing I have against eating meat is that really strange idea of raising something to kill it, but that's something else altogether.

I think you raise a lot of good points, and another point to make about the wh*** thing is that produce is way easier to STORE than meat is. Meat goes bad so easily, but grain can be stored with much less preparation.

I say none of this having come from the vegitarian point of view though. I DO try to be a localvore as often as possible, though.
Comment by Nicole Kerly on March 21, 2010 at 3:44pm
Many farmers don't use steroids, one of my good friends' parents own at 32 000 acre farm with cattle and sheep and they don't use steroids.
as for the environmental concerns you have you might be interested in looking at this website;

http://www.themainmeal.com.au/Red+meat+production/Frequently+asked+...

specifically the answers to 6 and 7
Comment by Rahul Dewanjee on March 21, 2010 at 4:43pm
Very well written:) +1 for Knowledge Share

Well, I certainly propose a diet that has a lot of veggies but we do need meat (only source of first class proteins) as well. A sustainable way would be having non-veg food limited to three days a week and making sure that even on those days, we are consuming disproportionately a large amount of vegetables.

First class proteins are the only way you can synthesize the 9 essential amino acids that are essential part of your body. First class proteins cannot be synthesized from plant sources or vegetables likes pulses or soybeans. (Caveat: there are interesting debates nowadays where some of the proponents of absolute vegetarianism might actually debunk this theory)

So, as it stands out, more vegetables we all consume, it will be good for us. Whether we can really do that will always be a result of how motivated we are to. As Nikki Chapman points out here, to put this message of going veg to all those who only like to eat non-veg, we might need something that is a bit radical way of communicating why we should go veg.
Comment by Jan Lampe on March 22, 2010 at 3:40pm
alyssa - so i did picture you as a vegetarian correctly. i am better than i thought.
yeah i did not want to get into the morals, i dont want to preach, id like to convince, although there is a wh*** world of uncomfort to get into if necessary. but good point, i will work that in - how could i forget meat is really expensive compared to produce?

nicole - i did not mean that every rancher uses steroids, i just think the bigger the farms get, the more likely it is. surprisingly enough, your website there contradicts the cornell research whichs says that 800 million people or so could be fed with growing crops on ranch land in the US alone.
also, where does it say anything about subsidies?

rahul, you have a point, that is why i said vegetarianism and not veganism - i eat eggs and drink milk for exactly those proteins.
Comment by Hayden Darrell Linder on March 26, 2010 at 9:03pm
Thank you for posting the film. I had heard of "Earthlings" but never got around to watching it. That was horrific.

I do need to get one thing out of the way because eventually some one is going to mention it in an attempt to belittle the film. Some of the footage in it was the footage P.E.T.A. got slammed for staging. However, most of the footage was not staged and I have no doubt the makers of the film did not realize it when they used it. The vast majority of the material does not speak well of us no matter what excuses you make.

As for me, I am very proud to be from Texas so you can imagine what my diet consists of. And since we are omnivores I will not be giving up my meat even after that film, which did not make me dislike meat so much as want to kill most of those people in the film. I was very happy when the circus elephant stomped the trainers, and like all good Americans I thought it was great when the bull knocked the Matador on his butt.

What the film did do was drive home the fact that I need to start buying my meat locally. Most of the abuse I saw in the farm animals is exactly the kind of thing that would stop if it were a small farm. No ones going to bother with 'beak breaking" chickens when they only have 100 chickens.

Anyway, those are my thoughts.

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