5 ms·
This is how it works with cows too. And to a lesser extent, pigs. And to an even lesser extent, chicken. All meat by and large has a much worse impact on the e
by Taek 9y ago
This is how it works with cows too. And to a lesser extent, pigs. And to an even lesser extent, chicken.
All meat by and large has a much worse impact on the environment per-calorie than vegetarian diets.
- chillwaves 9y agoWhat is this called.. trophic entropy? The laws of physics must be obeyed.
- hedora 9y agoMany (certainly not all) cattle are fed diets of plant material that is inedible for humans, and that was grown on land that is not suitable for other crops with minimal to no fertilizer usage and no irrigation. The cows themselves are raised on similar land. Such cows are raised in a much more sustainable / efficient manners than others, and the important tradeoffs are independent of whether they are "organic" or not. I've never seen product labeling that reflects this, and it makes me sad.
- robotbikes 9y agoFrom my understanding of the economics of the majority of US beef cattle, they are fed a diet composed largely of corn and soybeans, which grow on land that could otherwise produce varieties of the crop edible to humans. They are grown in CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operafion) lots and produce huge amounts of waste. This is in contrast to the more 'expensive' grass fed cattle that does indeed eat plant matter otherwise indigestible to humans. Our food system is designed to produce food in massive industrialized systems that trend heavily towards requiring massive inputs and producing massive waste outputs.
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoPigs are the ultimate recyclers, and we'd really not want to eat their inputs in much of the world. Have some organic waste? Well, feed it to the pigs! As an aside, the Coptic christians in Cairo stopped collecting trash because the government slaughtered all their pigs, leading to a huge garbage crisis in the city. Cows and sheep graze on marginal grassland that is unsuited to agriculture. Most countries aren't like India and suited to vegetarianism. Tibet would basically not exist without meat (and Tibetan Buddhist are specifically not vegetarians accordingly). The Inuits could never make a go at it in the arctic as vegetarians.
- roywiggins 9y agoNYC used to have pigs too. https://qz.com/1025640/hogs/ https://qz.com/1025640/hogs/
- mirimir 9y ago> Pigs are the ultimate recyclers, and we'd really not want to eat their inputs in much of the world. Indeed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_toilet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_toilet
- whyenot 9y agoCows have a rumen. You can feed them a diet that is almost entirely sawdust and they will do just fine.
- mirimir 9y agoOr newspaper waste: http://www.allaboutfeed.net/Raw-Materials/Articles/2017/3/Feeding-cows-shredded-and-treated-newspapers-111828E/ http://www.allaboutfeed.net/Raw-Materials/Articles/2017/3/Fe...
- garyclarke27 9y agoI don't know many humans who eat grass!