5 ms·

> If someone can find a way to make a product near-indistinguishable from meat without raising and killing animals, it would be a massive victory for the enviro

> If someone can find a way to make a product near-indistinguishable from meat without raising and killing animals, it would be a massive victory for the environment (meat production is CO2-intensive), for the cause of bringing decent food to poor people, and for reducing animal suffering. I'm all for reducing animal suffering (especially from CAFOs) but replacing meat with plants isn't necessarily a victory for the environment. Widespread factory farming agriculture has destroyed entire ecosystems. Ever flown over the midwest? You see miles and miles of plots of the same crops repeated over and over... monocultures with very little of the original grassland remaining. Agriculture has accomplished the wholesale destruction of entire ecosystems. "70% of all water from rivers and underground reserves is being spread onto ... irrigated land that grows one-third of the world’s food", according to _When the Rivers Run Dry: Water--The Defining Crisis of the Twenty-first Century_ by Fred Pearce. In some regions up to 90% of the water from the environment is used for irrigation. The green revolution as we know it is only possible due to fossil fuels, the Haber-Bosch process breaking down oil to create nitrogen fertilizer. With industrial farming, all in all an acre of corn requires about fifty gallons of oil according to _The Omnivores Dilemma_ by Michael Pollan. How much fossil fuel does a typical acre of wheat or soy consume? How sustainable is it compared to pastured meat, which thrives on the renewable resource of grassland? Bringing decent food to poor people is also a noble goal, but is fraught with a moral hazard. Many developed nations have agricultural subsidies, including the US at $1.173 billion for wheat and $610 million for soybeans as of the 2004 USDA report. The billions of dollars in subsidies causes an oversupply, and the developed nations are all too willing to dump onto other countries, putting local farmers out of business and advancing an imperialist dependency. Lierre Keith, vegan for 20 years (now ex-vegan), in her book _The Vegetarian Myth_ says it best: > Why should people in Cambodia be dependent on the US for their basic sustenance? It condemns them to participating in a market economy where they will have to dedicate their labor and local resources to produce raw materials, like timber and metal ore, or cheap consumer goods like sneakers or computer chips, for rich nations. With the pennies they get in return, they will then have to buy food from the same rich nations or their progeny, the grain cartels. This is a destructive, inhumane, and oppressive arrangement. I have to believe that the political vegetarians haven’t thought it through.

dc_gregory 8y ago
What do you think the animals are being fed exactly...?
- gorilla_fight 8y ago
  Cattle naturally eat grass, in a symbiotic relationship with the grasslands. Joel Salatin, legendary proprietor of Polyface Farms, considers himself a "grass farmer". He maintains the grassland, which the cattle graze on and perform several important functions. Not only does grazing stimulate root growth, but the cow digests cellulose (or technically, the bacteria in her rumen ferment it) and emits fertilizer, feeding the plants ever hungry for more nitrogen and predigested nutrients. Grass uniquely grows from its base instead of its tips, so the cows eating and grazing on grass doesn't kill the plant, but rather the opposite. Contrast with other plants with thorns or spines or chemical deterrents (such as coffee, caffeine originally a pesticide generated by the plant to deter predators, now cultivated by humans as a stimulant) or anti-nutrients or toxins. Grass has none of these. Lierre Keith explains in her usually floral prose how grasses want to be grazed, metaphorically: the grass created the cows (a similar point can be made about human domestication and lactose tolerance gene). Of course, concentrated animal feed operations additionally feed cattle with grains. Grains are a recent invention on the evolutionary timescale: they didn't exist until humans domesticated annual grasses about 12,000 years ago, whereas the progenitors of the domestic cow, the aurochs, were around more than 2 million years ago. Cattle aren't adapted for grain, upsetting the delicate balance bacterial balance of their rumen, causing sickness. Poultry fed too much grain will develop fatty liver. So why do it? Grains are cheap, very cheap. An ideal commodity, storable and portable. A dense organic form of energy, most likely converted from fossil fuel fertilizer thanks to Fritz Haber. And they cause explosive growth in animals, dramatically increasing both meat and milk production. The economic incentives are there. That doesn't mean it is a good idea, or is sustainable or ecologically wise or nutritionally healthy. Fortunately, grassfed grass-finished pastured beef is getting easier and easier to find. Thousands of years ago, used to be the only kind there was, now we are coming back full circle.
- gorilla_fight 8y ago
  I regret butchering the paraphrasing in my previous reply to you, this is I believe the most powerful point (at least the most convincing to me personally) so I want to make sure it is clearly communicated as possible, quoting another ex-vegan: > Start with Africa seven million years ago, because that’s where human life began. The climate, the creation of our ancestors—our beloved kin of bacteria, fungi, and plants—eased from wet to dry. The trees gave way to grasses and a tide of savannas rippled across the world. Cradled in the grasses were large herbivores. Twenty-five million years ago, in the exuberance of evolution, a few plants tried growing from their bases instead of their tips. Grazing would not kill these plants; quite the opposite. It would encourage them by stimulating root growth. All plants want nitrogen and predigested nutrients, and ruminants could provide those to the grasses as they grazed. This is why, unlike other plants, grasses contain no toxins or chemical repellents, no mechanical deterrents like thorns or spines to discourage animals. Grasses want to be grazed. It was grass that created cows; human “domestication” was, in comparison, just the tiniest tug on the bovine genome, and cows tugged back with the lactose tolerance gene. - Lierre Keith, _The Vegetarian Myth_: Chapter 4, Nutritional Vegetarians, pg. 139 Put another way, the grass depends on the cows as much as the cows depend on the grass. A symbiotic interdependence. If the implied argument is to instead of eating animals that eat plants, to eat their plants directly, in the spirit of "refuting the central point" in Paul Graham's hierarchy, I responded in depth to @maxxxxx elsewhere in this thread who made the same point, but long story short humans cannot digest the grass which cows (naturally) eat. I definitely wouldn't advocate for grain-feeding, it is indefensible, but even grain-finished cows eat grass. Through the marvel of the rumen, indigestible (to us) cellulose is turned into delicious meat, milk, and (to grass) fertilizer. Pastured grassfed beef does not depend on industrial agriculture/grain farming (corn, wheat, soy, etc.), and is in fact directly opposed to it. Instead of disrupting ecosystems by planting rows and rows of monocultures, grasslands of clover, millet, bluegrass, plantain timothy, sweet grass, fescue, etc. are sustainably nurtured by ruminants. Working with nature, instead of against it.

dc_gregory 8y ago

What do you think the animals are being fed exactly...?

gorilla_fight 8y ago
Cattle naturally eat grass, in a symbiotic relationship with the grasslands. Joel Salatin, legendary proprietor of Polyface Farms, considers himself a "grass farmer". He maintains the grassland, which the cattle graze on and perform several important functions. Not only does grazing stimulate root growth, but the cow digests cellulose (or technically, the bacteria in her rumen ferment it) and emits fertilizer, feeding the plants ever hungry for more nitrogen and predigested nutrients. Grass uniquely grows from its base instead of its tips, so the cows eating and grazing on grass doesn't kill the plant, but rather the opposite. Contrast with other plants with thorns or spines or chemical deterrents (such as coffee, caffeine originally a pesticide generated by the plant to deter predators, now cultivated by humans as a stimulant) or anti-nutrients or toxins. Grass has none of these. Lierre Keith explains in her usually floral prose how grasses want to be grazed, metaphorically: the grass created the cows (a similar point can be made about human domestication and lactose tolerance gene). Of course, concentrated animal feed operations additionally feed cattle with grains. Grains are a recent invention on the evolutionary timescale: they didn't exist until humans domesticated annual grasses about 12,000 years ago, whereas the progenitors of the domestic cow, the aurochs, were around more than 2 million years ago. Cattle aren't adapted for grain, upsetting the delicate balance bacterial balance of their rumen, causing sickness. Poultry fed too much grain will develop fatty liver. So why do it? Grains are cheap, very cheap. An ideal commodity, storable and portable. A dense organic form of energy, most likely converted from fossil fuel fertilizer thanks to Fritz Haber. And they cause explosive growth in animals, dramatically increasing both meat and milk production. The economic incentives are there. That doesn't mean it is a good idea, or is sustainable or ecologically wise or nutritionally healthy. Fortunately, grassfed grass-finished pastured beef is getting easier and easier to find. Thousands of years ago, used to be the only kind there was, now we are coming back full circle.
gorilla_fight 8y ago
I regret butchering the paraphrasing in my previous reply to you, this is I believe the most powerful point (at least the most convincing to me personally) so I want to make sure it is clearly communicated as possible, quoting another ex-vegan: > Start with Africa seven million years ago, because that’s where human life began. The climate, the creation of our ancestors—our beloved kin of bacteria, fungi, and plants—eased from wet to dry. The trees gave way to grasses and a tide of savannas rippled across the world. Cradled in the grasses were large herbivores. Twenty-five million years ago, in the exuberance of evolution, a few plants tried growing from their bases instead of their tips. Grazing would not kill these plants; quite the opposite. It would encourage them by stimulating root growth. All plants want nitrogen and predigested nutrients, and ruminants could provide those to the grasses as they grazed. This is why, unlike other plants, grasses contain no toxins or chemical repellents, no mechanical deterrents like thorns or spines to discourage animals. Grasses want to be grazed. It was grass that created cows; human “domestication” was, in comparison, just the tiniest tug on the bovine genome, and cows tugged back with the lactose tolerance gene. - Lierre Keith, _The Vegetarian Myth_: Chapter 4, Nutritional Vegetarians, pg. 139 Put another way, the grass depends on the cows as much as the cows depend on the grass. A symbiotic interdependence. If the implied argument is to instead of eating animals that eat plants, to eat their plants directly, in the spirit of "refuting the central point" in Paul Graham's hierarchy, I responded in depth to @maxxxxx elsewhere in this thread who made the same point, but long story short humans cannot digest the grass which cows (naturally) eat. I definitely wouldn't advocate for grain-feeding, it is indefensible, but even grain-finished cows eat grass. Through the marvel of the rumen, indigestible (to us) cellulose is turned into delicious meat, milk, and (to grass) fertilizer. Pastured grassfed beef does not depend on industrial agriculture/grain farming (corn, wheat, soy, etc.), and is in fact directly opposed to it. Instead of disrupting ecosystems by planting rows and rows of monocultures, grasslands of clover, millet, bluegrass, plantain timothy, sweet grass, fescue, etc. are sustainably nurtured by ruminants. Working with nature, instead of against it.