It’s amazing how crude our agriculture system is. We’re so focused on serving ads, automating cars, creating virtual worlds, building bombs… but we can’t create a meal without hurting animals or the earth. Even a planet full of vegetarians requires the most fertile land and fresh water to be used for crops. Take a drive through Iowa or the San Joaquin valley, it’s amazing how unnatural it looks.
> Even a planet full of vegetarians requires the most fertile land and fresh water to be used for crops.
If everyone turned vegetarian—or better still, vegan—we could easily return 75% of current cropland to nature[1], and still feed more people than we do today. Meat is just ridiculously water- and resource-intensive; plus, the animals that are reared for said meat are non-trivial contributors to CO2 and CH4 in the atmosphere.
And there's a lot of money poured into keeping it that way. Sonoma County, CA lets organized theft gangs roam free, but conjure up the ridiculous charge of felony conspiracy to commit misdemeanor trespass for someone saving sick ducks from a duck farm after authorities refused to act on reports of California Prop 2 violations.
The reason the DA couldn't go with burglary is because that would require the object taken to have positive value, and those companies don't want to claim they also sell slaughtered animals who were diseased to the verge of death. If they discard their bodies as they corpses they do, they are of no value to the farmers and thus could not have been the subject of a burglary.
A lot of smart people and savvy farmers are working on regenerative agriculture. Monoculture crops turn the living soil into dirt, and there are simple, cheap practices to bring it back.
The common refrain against polyculture/intercropping/whatever is that it’s harder to harvest. That’s going to be a big deal I think - being able to reasonably, cheaply, automate fast harvesting. It doesn’t seem like there’s much on the subject of automating it yet. The other issue is the possibility of lower yields.
Honestly though, more labor and lower yields with the promise that future generations will have healthy soil is a reasonable trade off to me.
"We found some evidence for" does not equal " All crops were raised this way".
I.e. just because they found some evidence of specialized fields in the remains of those civilizations, does not mean they grew all their food exclusively that way.
Also, you are simply wrong.
"Three Sisters"
The Three Sisters are the three main agricultural crops of various Indigenous peoples of North America: squash, maize ("corn"), and climbing beans (typically tepary beans or common beans). In a technique known as companion planting, the maize and beans are often planted together in mounds formed by hilling soil around the base of the plants each year; squash is typically planted between the mounds. The cornstalk serves as a trellis for climbing beans, the beans fix nitrogen in their root nodules and stabilize the maize in high winds, and the wide leaves of the squash plant shade the ground, keeping the soil moist and helping prevent the establishment of weeds.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Sisters_(agriculture)
To say this, to say that humans just started off right from monoculture is crazy. We just went straight from hunter gatherers to having large curated monoculture fields that are cultivated and specifically planted.
No.
"Though the transition from wild harvesting was gradual, the switch from a nomadic to a settled way of life is marked by the appearance of early Neolithic villages with homes equipped with grinding stones for processing grain."
https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/developmen...
The intense thing is, each number is an individual with thoughts, feelings, fears and pain. Remember, if you don't want to be a part of those numbers, you can pick a different sandwich filling.
>Philosophical take: Every day animals kill other animals to survive. We can't change that. Why should humans be forbidden to kill & eat animals?
Adopting the moral code of animals, as justification for killing them, while simultaneously leaning on our supremely advanced intelligence to separate us from them so that we don't feel bad about it. Ironic.
It's unfortunate. Hard to have open conversations about this stuff because of how it reflects on one's moral identity. Vegans say "don't kill animals", nonvegans hear "you're a bad person". Nonvegans say "animals kill animals, why can't we?" and vegans hear "you are stupid". Probably not all that different to a lot of discourse really.
I guess I don't take my moral code from animals, else I'd be saying it's OK for people to do horrendous things like rape, murder, torture, eating each others' children etc.
We have higher-order thinking as well as choice - can use those to choose not to cause terrible suffering to sentient beings where we don't have to.
As a human, I can live a perfectly happy, healthy life without eating animals. Statistically it’s healthier, cheaper, and has no downside other than taste (meat tastes good, no argument here).
So ethically, how is eating meat any different than torturing and killing animals for pleasure?
When we will be able to grow meat in a lab, indistinguishable from real meat, with the same nutritional values, etc..., I will stop eating real animals.
Exactly 0% of my enjoyment of eating meat comes from inflicting pain to animals.
"It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes."
NHS UK
"A vegetarian or vegan diet can be suitable for everyone, regardless of their age."
British Dietetic Association
"[I]t is possible to follow a well-planned, plant-based, vegan friendly diet that supports healthy living in people of all ages, and during pregnancy and breastfeeding."
> Meat is a package of pre-processed vitamins, minerals and energy sources.
In addition to saturated fats, cholesterol, and common additives like nitrates and preservatives, meat consumption can also entail exposure to antibiotics, hormones, bioaccumulated pesticides and herbicides, and ethical concerns related to cruelty and mistreatment in the meat production industry.
> Other than health, taste, tradition, habit and convenience, what has meat ever done for us?
If everyone on Earth adopted the American or European diet, we would require more than five Earths to feed everyone [0]. Animal agriculture is already the leading cause of deforestation [1], biodiversity loss [2] [3], and water pollution [4]. Our current agricultural practices are pushing over a million species towards extinction [5].
Switching to plant-based diets could free up an area equivalent to the combined size of both Americas [6], allowing us to reforest it and promote biodiversity recovery. By reforesting this vast area, we could sequester enough carbon to potentially reverse climate change [7] [8] (assuming a simultaneous phase-out of fossil fuels, of course) [9].
This approach represents the only sustainable way to feed a population of 10 billion [10] while reducing our agricultural land requirements from 4 billion hectares to 1 billion hectares [11]. Animal agriculture is one of the major culprits pushing six out of nine Earth boundaries beyond safe levels [12] [13].
It’s pretty horrifying. I never thought about the raw number, but millions of animals tortured and killed every day is astounding. Hundreds of millions. Future generations are going to look back in horror.
It’s not.
We have needs.
The problem isn’t that we kill animals, but rather people like you have no respect and are privileged to have been shielded from having to participate in hunting animals all your life.
We live in abundant times, in terms of food (atleast in the first world, because i rather kill and eat 10 cows than eat a dog like some people do)
Eating your veggies has an environmental impact too.
You are contributing to killing of rodents and many other beings that are a threat to crops.
But you only fancy cows so they don’t matter right?
I hope that one day in the future our children will look back to this the same way we look at our ancestors having slaves and burning witches: “how ethically primitive yet technologically advanced they were”.
Fair point, though I hope by that time the same will hold for abortion, which (according to the Wikipedia article) kills *73 million human beings* every year...
Given that animals will eat a lot of crops in their life and burn through those calories in order to grow, it seems self evident that more crops will be required than eating the crops directly. Why is it a lie?
> Can we agree to stop raising animals >specifically< for killing and consumption?
No, because we omnivores enjoy eating animals, and there are not enough which die of natural causes to go around, and many natural causes make the meat unsafe to eat.
This is controversial, but I feel that eating animals is fundamental to being human and that to eat only plants is less than human — perhaps paradoxically, like an animal. I know many, many people disagree, but it’s how I feel, and no amount of rational argument will change that.
Crop fields do indeed disrupt the habitats of wild animals, and wild animals are also killed when harvesting plants. However, this point makes the case for a plant-based diet and not against it, since many more plants are required to produce a measure of animal flesh for food (often as high as 12:1) than are required to produce an equal measure of plants for food (which is obviously 1:1). Because of this, a plant-based diet causes less suffering and death than one that includes animals.
Crop fields do indeed disrupt the habitats of wild animals, and wild animals are also killed when harvesting plants. However, this point makes the case for a plant-based diet and not against it, since many more plants are required to produce a measure of animal flesh for food (often as high as 12:1) than are required to produce an equal measure of plants for food (which is obviously 1:1). Because of this, a plant-based diet causes less suffering and death than one that includes animals.
Threads on veganism are 100% flamebait here. I'm thankful for the thoughtful discussions some users engage in, but I don't believe it's worth keeping this much fuel open for discussion.
I’m wondering how many fish, birds, and mammals get eaten by non-humans every day. I wouldn’t be surprised if that number is less than the number of animals humans slaughter. Like, I’ve heard that there are more chickens alive right now than all other birds combined. I think it’s a similar thing for pets and livestock when it comes to mammals.
I would assume that the majority of the animals that humans kill are kept in captivity and therefore not exposed to other animals. Since this breeding/captivity is happening at a staggering scale, my second assumption is that animals have absolutely no way of keeping up with humans.
I would also like to see the numbers of kills by non-humans too!
I’m quite appalled actually, seeing it laid out like this, and I eat my share of chicken and fish..
In a paper published today in the journal PLOS One, Okin says he found that cats and dogs are responsible for 25 to 30 percent of the environmental impact of meat consumption in the United States. If Americans’ 163 million Fidos and Felixes comprised a separate country, their fluffy nation would rank fifth in global meat consumption
I'm not a vegetarian or vegan. I'm weak-willed in this area and the best I've managed is to choose a non-meat option where the choice is easily available and comparably appetising. I want to do better, but am not in a position to moralise.
Nevertheless I'd recommend reading "The Extended Circle: An Anthology of Humane Thought" (Jon Wynne Tyson). It's one of only a handful of books I've kept a copy of for a very many years and peruse regularly, taking the form of quotes from famous people, not so famous people, historical personages, and founding texts, all concerning the human relationship to animals. A very moving and wounding book.
I think it's confusing because person 1 was talking about America, person 2 was talking globally. That said, I eat dangerously close to .66 of a chicken every day.
You should try switching to beef. Killing one animal feeds my family delicious meat for pretty much a whole year. If we round your diet down to half a chicken a day my family would have to cause 730 chickens to be killed each year if we ate it instead of our one beef cow.
For a variety of reasons, I'm interested in incorporating more plant-based food into my diet, including plant-based main dishes. Anyone have any favorite dishes, cookbooks, websites that are good introductions to vegetarian/vegan cooking?
I am considering the same and will have a look at Indian food (they have so many vegetarians and food styles that it must be a good reference) as well as at tofu (which I have never tried to cook)
As a midwest Bible belt farm boy, the entire premise of this article is lost on me. Yes, many animals are slaughtered for food. We try to do it as humanely as possible, and we can and should improve on this.
Another side effect of the federal government shutdown: mass euthanization of lab animals (including those who aren't in any research that would lead to it normally). Hooray \o/
