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> Climate change? Get educated! It's not caused by sustainable animal farming! Grass-fed and free range cattle are an even larger contributor to deforestation
by qrendel 11y ago
> Climate change? Get educated! It's not caused by sustainable animal farming!
Grass-fed and free range cattle are an even larger contributor to deforestation and climate change than intensive animal agriculture is, since it requires vastly more land area to graze them, or to grow grass to transport to them, than it does to intensively grow corn or soybeans. The only way it can even be supported now is because only a small proportion of meat consumers buy meat produced in this way. Carnivorous animals are at a higher trophic level than herbivores. A meat heavy diet necessarily requires more resources than a plant-based one. As the GGP comment suggested, I'd really recommend Cowspiracy for a more detailed overview on the issue of "sustainable" animal agriculture.
> Vegans have worse health than people who eat sustainable animal products.
This is at worst a lie and at best a controversial statement with little evidence to back it up. The biggest known downsides to a vegan diet that I'm aware of are a risk of some vitamin deficiencies, which can be easily corrected with cheap supplements: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veganism#Health_effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veganism#Health_effects
> The animal products I eat come only from Certified Humane pastured livestock!
Certified Humane has been widely criticized as not actually particularly humane, though it's probably a mild improvement over the worst possible practices. You don't have to do much research to see stuff like:
"Certified Humane. This label, offered by Humane Farm Animal Care (HFAC), holds equal appeal to industrial producers, largely due to its tacit allowance of farrowing crates— cruel confinements that prevent sows from moving enough to even roll over— and for its lax pasturage standards (CH beef can be fattened in feedlots). CH does not require outdoor access. Its meat is processed in industrial slaughterhouses and, as a result, the label allows the unlimited transportation of farm animals. CH audits its slaughterhouses, but only to ensure that they meet American Meat Institute standards, which were designed with industry oversight in 1990 by none other than Temple Grandin." [1][2]
That's aside from other ethical issues such as continuing to kill the male offspring of hens and diary cows, confining chickens in large pens with only an average 1.5 sq. ft. per bird, on top of the basic ethical concerns associated with any use of livestock. To the best of my knowledge, all of the "humane" labels have the same problems to some degree or another.
So please do some research yourself before you go around telling others to "get educated" and referring to their arguments as "propaganda."
[1] http://freefromharm.org/farm-animal-welfare/animal-welfare-labeling-what-theyre-not-telling-you/ http://freefromharm.org/farm-animal-welfare/animal-welfare-l...
[2] http://www.businessinsider.com/the-truth-about-humanely-raised-chicken-2014-12 http://www.businessinsider.com/the-truth-about-humanely-rais...