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.
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