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> the food chain would collapse It's necessary for the world to realize breeding livestock like we do now is unsustainable. Either we go vegan, lab meat or hyb

by xvilka 6y ago

> the food chain would collapse It's necessary for the world to realize breeding livestock like we do now is unsustainable. Either we go vegan, lab meat or hybrid agriculture. But the current industry is the dead end.

hedora 6y ago
I wasn’t talking about an agricultural collapse. I mean the natural food chain will collapse. If you kill all the mammals, then the birds of prey will go extinct, and stuff the mammals eat will overrun what’s left. If you don’t, then the mammals will keep spreading all sorts of pandemics. For example, if you live in Silicon Valley, start feeding the squirrels in the woods near you. Eventually, they’ll give you the Bubonic Plague. The plague is not a big deal these days, thanks to antibiotics, but this is an entire hemisphere away from where it hit, and hundreds of years later. It wouldn’t surprise me if you could already catch covid from a squirrel if you tried hard enough. Apparently people catch it from bats fairly regularly, and on average, they don’t get nearly as close to humans as an average rodent would.
- avar 6y ago
  > If you kill all the mammals, then the birds of prey will go extinct Birds of prey eat a lot more than just mammals, e.g. fish, reptiles, other birds etc. So no, if there magically weren't any mammals tomorrow most species of birds of prey would survive.
avar 6y ago
Livestock breeding isn't inherently unsustainable. E.g. you can have closed-off poultry or pork farms with greenhouse-fed animals, all powered by wind or solar, with sewage processing to ensure there's no external pollution. This isn't sci-fi, it exists today in e.g. the denser parts of western Europe. Yes it's costlier than beef from the developing world raised on cut-down rainforest land, but growing lab is a lot more expensive. You can argue that it's inefficient, sure, but so is a vegan eating an avacado instead of white rice. Things can be relatively inefficient and still be sustainable.
- zaarn 6y ago
  growing lab meat is expensive because it requires an economy of scale.

by xvilka 6y ago

hedora 6y ago

I wasn’t talking about an agricultural collapse. I mean the natural food chain will collapse. If you kill all the mammals, then the birds of prey will go extinct, and stuff the mammals eat will overrun what’s left. If you don’t, then the mammals will keep spreading all sorts of pandemics. For example, if you live in Silicon Valley, start feeding the squirrels in the woods near you. Eventually, they’ll give you the Bubonic Plague. The plague is not a big deal these days, thanks to antibiotics, but this is an entire hemisphere away from where it hit, and hundreds of years later. It wouldn’t surprise me if you could already catch covid from a squirrel if you tried hard enough. Apparently people catch it from bats fairly regularly, and on average, they don’t get nearly as close to humans as an average rodent would.

avar 6y ago
> If you kill all the mammals, then the birds of prey will go extinct Birds of prey eat a lot more than just mammals, e.g. fish, reptiles, other birds etc. So no, if there magically weren't any mammals tomorrow most species of birds of prey would survive.

avar 6y ago

Livestock breeding isn't inherently unsustainable. E.g. you can have closed-off poultry or pork farms with greenhouse-fed animals, all powered by wind or solar, with sewage processing to ensure there's no external pollution. This isn't sci-fi, it exists today in e.g. the denser parts of western Europe. Yes it's costlier than beef from the developing world raised on cut-down rainforest land, but growing lab is a lot more expensive. You can argue that it's inefficient, sure, but so is a vegan eating an avacado instead of white rice. Things can be relatively inefficient and still be sustainable.

zaarn 6y ago
growing lab meat is expensive because it requires an economy of scale.