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> Beyond Burgers, is they require no violence against animals. I find this interesting, in that cropping has plenty of violent against animals but one step rem

> Beyond Burgers, is they require no violence against animals. I find this interesting, in that cropping has plenty of violent against animals but one step removed. I have a small cattle property, we run on hill country with diversified ecosystem, mixed grass and bushland. We have a heap of native animals living across the property. And at the end of the day the steers do get sent of for slaughter after 18 to 24 months + we kill feral pigs when they get in large numbers. While cropping properties they tend to be monoculture, very little native animal presence. The spray like buggery wiping out insects with all that flow on effect (and to be fair we spray too, herbicide only and never pesticides and far less frequently). Also the cropping properties tend to shoot 'pests' heavily. We don't mind a few kangaroos and ducks type thing about but cropping properties are very serious about deterring and killing anything that hits their property. And to be clear, I'm not having a go at you. I admire vegetarians for their genuinely caring moral position, and my family actually try to do more vegetarians meals. While at the same time I'm not sure plant based options are so devoid of killing, only the end product is one step removed.

sweetheart 5y ago
I don't get the feel that you're having a go, no worries :) I think there are two parts to this: we can't raise the animals that folks want to eat without _also_ growing plants to feed those animals, so from my perspective it seems that we can apply most or all points about the negatives of cropping to the cropping that is done to support animal agriculture. So if cropping is bad, it's still bad when we do it for the animals we intend to eat. Secondly, and this is argument I don't make often because its _really_ not popular (but you seem like a great person so I'm happy to share!), I just don't think animals exist to provide or serve us. They are their own beings, and we are ours. Personally, I don't care if someone treats their animals like absolute royalty. If we kill them, or we forcibly impregnate them and remove their children so we can have their milk, it's wrong to me. But again, this is not an argument many people are swayed by, so I don't generally mention it.
- masonic 5y ago
  we can't raise the animals that folks want to eat without _also_ growing plants to feed those animals But... we can raise food and dairy animals on a combination of natural range grazing and agricultural byproducts that otherwise need to be disposed of (e.g. cotton seeds, almond hulls, distillers' and brewers' spent grains, etc.)
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    Not unless worldwide (and particularly US) total meat and dairy consumption drops precipitously.
    - gwd 5y ago
      Right, but "Let's not eat any animals at all ever" is a different target than "Let's raise and kill animals in a way that's ecologically sustainable and humane". I'd argue that working towards #1 is actively working against #2. The other factor that I don't quite get about think-of-the-animals vegans is this: What exactly do you think is going to happen to all those cows and chickens if the entire world becomes vegetarian? Are people going to keep them as pets? No -- they're simply not going to exist. Isn't it better to have free-range chicken and cattle, which have happy little animal lives, and then are quickly and painlessly killed, than to have (almost) no chicken and cattle at all?
      - tommit 5y ago
        Uhm ... I would personally say yes. First of all, the "painlessly killed" part is pretty wishful thinking/rationalization on your behalf. In many cases, the killing is not at all painful. Of course the other part makes for a pretty good ethical debate. Is it better to live a miserable life and die and early and unnatural death than it is to never be born at all? There is no right answer, but I myself feel like I wouldn't wish that kind of life on ANY conscious being. Is that a life you would want to life? Last, none of the think-of-the-animals vegans, as you so nicely put it, would kid themselves about what were to happen to the already existing farm animals, should be stop/greatly reduce our collective meat intake. They are already doomed. They were doomed the second they were given birth to, which brings us back to the original part. Most of us think-of-the-animals vegans would prefer if we could stop doing that going forward. I'm sorry to shake up your picture of happy little animal-life living chicken and cattle, frolicking on a green meadow, until one day they drop dead and become happy little meals. That is among the most delusional view of modern farming I can think of. Don't buy into the pictures companies put on their products. And if you say "well but I buy my meat from my local butcher..." ok cool. Most people still don't, and won't, and that's the real issue.
rallison 5y ago
It's definitely true that just switching over to plant-based foods and away from animal-based foods won't solve all the issues, it's also worth noting that a lot of cattle, at least in the US, are not raised on a foraging model, so most feed that cattle consume come from plants raised elsewhere, which are going to largely be those same cropping properties. And, further, the amount of feed to raise cattle mean that those cropping properties have to grow significantly more product than if they were producing for plant-based foods. I do have a lot of respect for smaller cattle operations that run an ecologically sensitive operation, such that the land is used in a way that sustains itself and the cattle on it. It's just that, those are the exceptions, at least in countries like the US.
- toper-centage 5y ago
  To add to that, even grass fed, free range animals are often fed more grain at the end of their lives so the grow quicker in the last couple months.
  - medstrom 5y ago
    While not as efficient as if we'd eat that grain directly, it doesn't seem terribly inefficient, and it may reduce the number of individuals that need to be born & die. (Of course under a stark analysis of whether to have cattle at all, the conclusion could be different, so the question is what analysis you're using this info for). Anyway, if on top of that you subscribe to the hypothesis that grain is not good for human health, grain-finishing may do net good.
    - louthy 5y ago
      From what I understand grain used for animal feed is of a poorer quality and can't be used to make bread. And so it's essentially a waste product (usually because of rain just before a harvest). I won't claim to be an expert, this information was given to me by an arable farmer friend of mine.
      - 5y ago
mscarborough 5y ago
If animal and insect death from cropping is a big concern, then what does it mean to feed other animals many more crops, then kill them as well?
danShumway 5y ago
This is a complicated topic, with multiple responses, but I'm only going to touch on one specific aspect of it. Reducing violence in regular farming is an admirable goal that people should strive towards. It's also worth talking about the environmental costs of ingredients like palm oil, and it's worth talking about the human costs of products like cocoa. I don't mean to diminish any of that at all, it's all worth paying attention to. However, the majority of meat we eat today comes from factory farming, and the majority of the feed for those animals comes from... traditional crop farming. So it's not really like eating meat is ever going to result in less death. We would need to move entirely to free-grazing cattle, which frankly, I do not believe is scalable enough or cost-effective enough to meet food demand. I know people who are not vegetarian or vegan, but who care very deeply about animal welfare, and who care a lot about where their beef/pork/chicken is sourced from. I admire that, I am not going to shame anyone for caring about anything. My own opinions about killing animals aside, at the very least ethically sourcing meat is miles better than not caring at all. But I no longer believe that's something that's feasible to expect most people to do; in a weird way I think going vegetarian is easier for many people than figuring out where their burger at a restaurant came from. And where factory farming is involved, getting rid of meat allows us to engage directly with the costs of farming and eliminate one of the extra steps (cattle) that are layered on top of that process.
- toper-centage 5y ago
  There was a post of the front-page of reddit a few days ago saying that most Americans are lied to about the fish they are buying in restaurants and supermarkets. I think it hilarious when people like me, urban dwellers, tell me to my face they only buy meat from some small butcher because they only trust him, or some variation of that story. Truth is, we have no idea where our food comes from, labels lie, and sellers have all the incentive to manipulate the truth.
  - hiddevb 5y ago
    There is a simple solution to this: buy it local. It might solve all issues with the meat (how do they feed these animals, etc.) but you at least know where it comes from. I know it's not possible for everyone, but there is currently a big surge in local farm shops. I'm lucky enough to have a farming cooperative in my town where i can order weekly food from local farms and shops. I eat mostly vegetarian, but it's nice to have an option for some decent meat once in a while.
spicymaki 5y ago
> I find this interesting, in that cropping has plenty of violent against animals but one step removed. This is true, the produce farmers kills pests insects and animals to produce crops at high volume. The issue for me is scale. You need to feed the farm animals which leads to more soy and grain being produced which leads to more death. I also can’t guarantee that the produce farmer or the farm owner is vegan which means I might be indirectly supporting animal agriculture multiple steps removed. That way of thinking provides no viable solutions. I can at least control myself and know that I am taking steps to minimize harm.
murphy1312 5y ago
It's not one step removed, it's 90 steps out of 100 removed, right? The important part here is the consumption of resources, 90% less land/water/energy also means 90% fewer animals that had to die for the product. (Also we could enforce more environmental protection measures while still being able to feed everyone.)
adt2bt 5y ago
You make an interesting point I have not considered before. I think it analogous to the argument that even electric cars have emissions, as almost all of them are charged on grids that are dirty. I personally think in both cases (vegetarians, electric car drivers), the first order benefit of not directly eating animals or burning gasoline exceeds the second order harms. Plus, one can pressure local utilities/politicians to clean up their electricity or only purchase from farms that do the least animal harm (though it's hard to entirely avoid). Also not trying to have a go at you, thanks for the insightful comment.
pacomerh 5y ago
It's funny how the counter argument (even if friendly) will always be "But your solution is not perfect and also doesn't solve the issue completely". It doesn't have to be perfect, it just needs to be better.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
  >doesn't solve the issue completely I don't see an issue with animal suffering but I do see an issue with greenhouse emissions. Greenhouse emissions are concrete and measurable.
hliyan 5y ago
Really appreciate this perspective and the info. But I do think we shouldn't let perfection be the enemy of good here. Anything that moves the needle in the right direction should be encouraged.
rbg246 5y ago
Firstly, thank you for preserving some of the natural ecosystem on your farm. That is a tricky choice to make but from what I see driving about you are in a minority. You take a drive from Melbourne to Sydney and you get to see the effect of livestock farming, it's been completely denuded of natural vegetation everywhere where it's flat enough to smash down. The destruction is right there in front of your eyes. Knocking down scrub for cattle farming wipes out the natural environment, there are some species where it does good for them or kangaroos and birds that like open grasslands but for everything else it's really bad. Drive from Melbourne to Adelaide you get the same thing. Australia knocked down more open forest in the last four years than they did in the Amazon - 90% for beef farming. You can grow crops on a much smaller area, without even mentioning organic crop growing where you don't use chemicals to wipe everything out.
nxpnsv 5y ago
Small cattle and typical burger meat are different. That said, do you think small cattle would scale replace factory style production? I doubt it. Furthermore: Cows are not perfect machine and eat plants - you have to grow more plants for to make a meat burger than you have to make a pea protein burger. So if cropping is bad for animals, farming meat requires more of that too. You could argue your cows eat different, but what do most cows eat? For mass market, fake burgers are simply better for land use, water use, animal welfare, emissions, environment, and even health.
oliwarner 5y ago
It doesn't need to though. https://www.soilassociation.org/take-action/organic-living/what-is-organic/ https://www.soilassociation.org/take-action/organic-living/w...
BiteCode_dev 5y ago
To raise cows, you need crop. So real burgers already include the suffering from cropping, even more so because you need a lot more crop per calorie of you have a cow between you and the plant. Now I want to emphasis that guilt is not a good reason to start with beyond meat. The desire to try to do a nice thing can be, but as a vegetarian, it's important that people are not pushed out of meat because of some negative emotion. I'd rather have happy meat eaters than frutsrated veggies. But give it a try, just for curiosity sake. I like the taste of BM, but find them hard to digest. Also remember it's still process food, and organic free range steak is likely healthier.
ainiriand 5y ago
You can grow crops without pesticides but you cannot have beef without killing cows.
cies 5y ago
> I admire vegetarians for their genuinely caring moral position Actually vegetarians follow a diet along traditional lines (dairy okay, meat nay), they are not so much into moral positioning. Vegans are the ones making an ethical stance: "no animals harmed for me whenever I have the choice" Hence vegans dont wear wool/silk/leather, dont go to zoos/animal races, and dont consume eggs/dairy.
- cameronh90 5y ago
  As a vegetarian maybe I can provide some insight to my position. The reason I consume dairy and eggs is because I think that fundamentally dairy and egg (honey too) production CAN be ethical, whereas I think intentionally killing an animal for food can never be ethical. I'm aware not everyone shares the same opinion - but for me, killing a conscious being for food is not something I want a part in, even if it had a great life before the slaughter. However I should also note that I carefully select dairy and eggs I consume, only from organic, free range farms that I've researched. I choose the vegan option if I can't be sure of the provenance of the dairy/eggs. In practice I'm vegan most of the time and consume very little dairy/egg. I do think I might become some form of vegan in the future though, once I've thought about it more. However, there are a whole bunch of moral inconsistencies in my position. Per calorie, harvesting certain crops probably kills more conscious beings than certain types of fishing. And I'm not sure certain water creatures (bivalves?) even meet the threshold of consciousness, yet I nevertheless would refuse to eat them. There are a lot of difficult moral issues at the edges that I think most people ignore. For me, the overall goal of my diet is to try and find a balance between providing me adequate nutrition for a healthy life while reducing overall negative moral and ecological impact to everything that isn't me.
  - cies 5y ago
    Not to be condescending, but I practiced the exact same mental gymnastics for many years. I used the exact same reasoning ("can be ethical"). I also did select organic/etc eggs and dairy. Buttt... This lead to people believe that I was okay with dairy/eggs, and when others picked for me I had a hard time rejecting. And dairy and egg producing animals are hurt big time: children taken away, caged, slaughtered, selectively bread to have unnatural bodies (hen only lay ~12 eggs per year in nature vs. 300+ for domesticated variants). This is maybe worse than wild animals being killed. After 12+ year vegetarian I went vegan 7+ years ago. I regret not doing so earlier.
lm28469 5y ago
I'm not sure it's fair to compare cropping and slaughterhouses. Anyone looking at that (nsfw) video and telling me "but what about the insects/pests" have to be trolling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O15Owo7jGtU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O15Owo7jGtU Anything we do will have an impact on the rest of our eco system, even if we just ate wild berries you'd find someone complaining about the beetle you stepped on while walking in the woods. But putting everything in perspective I doubt cropping comes anywhere close to animal slaughtering in term of crime against nature. I think anyone will agree that modern industrial agriculture comes with its own set of problems.
hellbannedguy 5y ago
To those that don't want to become 100% vegetarians, even though we all know it's better for everyone including the animal that'slaughtered; How about just using meat in small quantities, and for seasoning? A little bit of beef/chicken goes a long way. Most Americans do not need more protein. I have gotten by with a few pounds (less than 5 lbs) of meat a year. If a cash strapped, loser, like myself can do it, anyone can.
- me_me_me 5y ago
  I honestly believe that the best strategy to take at the moment is to teach people recepies for good and tasty vegetarian food. I am not vegetarian but my absolutely favourite dish is Blueberry dumplings with sour cream. I don't care if its vegetarian or not its simply good food. Its much easier for people to make the 'ethical' choices when they are given good alternatives. The whole thing with meat eaters are evil killers is counter productive signal virtue pandering to your own tribe. Instead of picketing and protesting infront McD, create vegetarian cooking classes.
  - gibspaulding 5y ago
    This is a good point about finding good recipes that use less animal products. It seems like there's a lot of focus on replacing meat with something else pretending to be meat but I don't know that you're going to bring many people around that way. Vegetarian food needs to be good in it's own right, and it absolutely can be, but that generally means going beyond your grandma's copy of "Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook".
v77 5y ago
Canada just added an explicit recognition of grazing land into our carbon tax program for just this reason. Not only are pastures incredibly better for native plant/animal conservation (in North America) than crop fields but native grasslands are also incredible carbon sinks: https://www.canadiancattlemen.ca/news/forage-program-aims-to-conserve-canadian-prairies-through-collaboration-with-ranchers/ https://www.canadiancattlemen.ca/news/forage-program-aims-to...
shlant 5y ago
Definition of veganism: "Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment"[1] The key parts being "seeks to" and "as far as is possible and practicable". Veganism is not about being perfect (that's impossible), and although some might speak as if it is, they should not be taken seriously. What we do know is that striving for a more vegan way of living is unequivocally less harmful for sentient beings and I and many others think that is a very noble endeavor. 1. https://www.vegansociety.com/go-vegan/definition-veganism https://www.vegansociety.com/go-vegan/definition-veganism
gibspaulding 5y ago
Over the last couple of years my wife and I have been adopting what I jokingly refer to as a "local-etarian" diet. Essentially we've been paying attention more to how our food is sourced (trying to buy meat from folks like you!) rather than trying to cut out anything specific. My take away from that experience specifically in the US is that if you want to be sustainable/humane/etc. the best effort to effectiveness ratio is probably just to be a vegetarian. Finding and vetting sources for meat in much of the US is not easy. Most normal grocery stores simply don't stock anything resembling what you describe and even at our local Co-Op, the choices can be pretty inscrutable. Do I want the "We've ticked all the boxes to be labeled 'Organic'" or "We're Amish, so you should totally trust us" or the "We're too small to bother with fancy packaging or certifications"? It's hard to say, though generally we lean towards the last option.

sweetheart 5y ago

I don't get the feel that you're having a go, no worries :) I think there are two parts to this: we can't raise the animals that folks want to eat without _also_ growing plants to feed those animals, so from my perspective it seems that we can apply most or all points about the negatives of cropping to the cropping that is done to support animal agriculture. So if cropping is bad, it's still bad when we do it for the animals we intend to eat. Secondly, and this is argument I don't make often because its _really_ not popular (but you seem like a great person so I'm happy to share!), I just don't think animals exist to provide or serve us. They are their own beings, and we are ours. Personally, I don't care if someone treats their animals like absolute royalty. If we kill them, or we forcibly impregnate them and remove their children so we can have their milk, it's wrong to me. But again, this is not an argument many people are swayed by, so I don't generally mention it.

masonic 5y ago
we can't raise the animals that folks want to eat without _also_ growing plants to feed those animals But... we can raise food and dairy animals on a combination of natural range grazing and agricultural byproducts that otherwise need to be disposed of (e.g. cotton seeds, almond hulls, distillers' and brewers' spent grains, etc.)
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  Not unless worldwide (and particularly US) total meat and dairy consumption drops precipitously.
  - gwd 5y ago
    Right, but "Let's not eat any animals at all ever" is a different target than "Let's raise and kill animals in a way that's ecologically sustainable and humane". I'd argue that working towards #1 is actively working against #2. The other factor that I don't quite get about think-of-the-animals vegans is this: What exactly do you think is going to happen to all those cows and chickens if the entire world becomes vegetarian? Are people going to keep them as pets? No -- they're simply not going to exist. Isn't it better to have free-range chicken and cattle, which have happy little animal lives, and then are quickly and painlessly killed, than to have (almost) no chicken and cattle at all?
    - tommit 5y ago
      Uhm ... I would personally say yes. First of all, the "painlessly killed" part is pretty wishful thinking/rationalization on your behalf. In many cases, the killing is not at all painful. Of course the other part makes for a pretty good ethical debate. Is it better to live a miserable life and die and early and unnatural death than it is to never be born at all? There is no right answer, but I myself feel like I wouldn't wish that kind of life on ANY conscious being. Is that a life you would want to life? Last, none of the think-of-the-animals vegans, as you so nicely put it, would kid themselves about what were to happen to the already existing farm animals, should be stop/greatly reduce our collective meat intake. They are already doomed. They were doomed the second they were given birth to, which brings us back to the original part. Most of us think-of-the-animals vegans would prefer if we could stop doing that going forward. I'm sorry to shake up your picture of happy little animal-life living chicken and cattle, frolicking on a green meadow, until one day they drop dead and become happy little meals. That is among the most delusional view of modern farming I can think of. Don't buy into the pictures companies put on their products. And if you say "well but I buy my meat from my local butcher..." ok cool. Most people still don't, and won't, and that's the real issue.

rallison 5y ago

It's definitely true that just switching over to plant-based foods and away from animal-based foods won't solve all the issues, it's also worth noting that a lot of cattle, at least in the US, are not raised on a foraging model, so most feed that cattle consume come from plants raised elsewhere, which are going to largely be those same cropping properties. And, further, the amount of feed to raise cattle mean that those cropping properties have to grow significantly more product than if they were producing for plant-based foods. I do have a lot of respect for smaller cattle operations that run an ecologically sensitive operation, such that the land is used in a way that sustains itself and the cattle on it. It's just that, those are the exceptions, at least in countries like the US.

toper-centage 5y ago
To add to that, even grass fed, free range animals are often fed more grain at the end of their lives so the grow quicker in the last couple months.
- medstrom 5y ago
  While not as efficient as if we'd eat that grain directly, it doesn't seem terribly inefficient, and it may reduce the number of individuals that need to be born & die. (Of course under a stark analysis of whether to have cattle at all, the conclusion could be different, so the question is what analysis you're using this info for). Anyway, if on top of that you subscribe to the hypothesis that grain is not good for human health, grain-finishing may do net good.
  - louthy 5y ago
    From what I understand grain used for animal feed is of a poorer quality and can't be used to make bread. And so it's essentially a waste product (usually because of rain just before a harvest). I won't claim to be an expert, this information was given to me by an arable farmer friend of mine.
    - 5y ago

mscarborough 5y ago

If animal and insect death from cropping is a big concern, then what does it mean to feed other animals many more crops, then kill them as well?

danShumway 5y ago

This is a complicated topic, with multiple responses, but I'm only going to touch on one specific aspect of it. Reducing violence in regular farming is an admirable goal that people should strive towards. It's also worth talking about the environmental costs of ingredients like palm oil, and it's worth talking about the human costs of products like cocoa. I don't mean to diminish any of that at all, it's all worth paying attention to. However, the majority of meat we eat today comes from factory farming, and the majority of the feed for those animals comes from... traditional crop farming. So it's not really like eating meat is ever going to result in less death. We would need to move entirely to free-grazing cattle, which frankly, I do not believe is scalable enough or cost-effective enough to meet food demand. I know people who are not vegetarian or vegan, but who care very deeply about animal welfare, and who care a lot about where their beef/pork/chicken is sourced from. I admire that, I am not going to shame anyone for caring about anything. My own opinions about killing animals aside, at the very least ethically sourcing meat is miles better than not caring at all. But I no longer believe that's something that's feasible to expect most people to do; in a weird way I think going vegetarian is easier for many people than figuring out where their burger at a restaurant came from. And where factory farming is involved, getting rid of meat allows us to engage directly with the costs of farming and eliminate one of the extra steps (cattle) that are layered on top of that process.

toper-centage 5y ago
There was a post of the front-page of reddit a few days ago saying that most Americans are lied to about the fish they are buying in restaurants and supermarkets. I think it hilarious when people like me, urban dwellers, tell me to my face they only buy meat from some small butcher because they only trust him, or some variation of that story. Truth is, we have no idea where our food comes from, labels lie, and sellers have all the incentive to manipulate the truth.
- hiddevb 5y ago
  There is a simple solution to this: buy it local. It might solve all issues with the meat (how do they feed these animals, etc.) but you at least know where it comes from. I know it's not possible for everyone, but there is currently a big surge in local farm shops. I'm lucky enough to have a farming cooperative in my town where i can order weekly food from local farms and shops. I eat mostly vegetarian, but it's nice to have an option for some decent meat once in a while.

spicymaki 5y ago

> I find this interesting, in that cropping has plenty of violent against animals but one step removed. This is true, the produce farmers kills pests insects and animals to produce crops at high volume. The issue for me is scale. You need to feed the farm animals which leads to more soy and grain being produced which leads to more death. I also can’t guarantee that the produce farmer or the farm owner is vegan which means I might be indirectly supporting animal agriculture multiple steps removed. That way of thinking provides no viable solutions. I can at least control myself and know that I am taking steps to minimize harm.

murphy1312 5y ago

It's not one step removed, it's 90 steps out of 100 removed, right? The important part here is the consumption of resources, 90% less land/water/energy also means 90% fewer animals that had to die for the product. (Also we could enforce more environmental protection measures while still being able to feed everyone.)

adt2bt 5y ago

You make an interesting point I have not considered before. I think it analogous to the argument that even electric cars have emissions, as almost all of them are charged on grids that are dirty. I personally think in both cases (vegetarians, electric car drivers), the first order benefit of not directly eating animals or burning gasoline exceeds the second order harms. Plus, one can pressure local utilities/politicians to clean up their electricity or only purchase from farms that do the least animal harm (though it's hard to entirely avoid). Also not trying to have a go at you, thanks for the insightful comment.

pacomerh 5y ago

It's funny how the counter argument (even if friendly) will always be "But your solution is not perfect and also doesn't solve the issue completely". It doesn't have to be perfect, it just needs to be better.

2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
>doesn't solve the issue completely I don't see an issue with animal suffering but I do see an issue with greenhouse emissions. Greenhouse emissions are concrete and measurable.

hliyan 5y ago

Really appreciate this perspective and the info. But I do think we shouldn't let perfection be the enemy of good here. Anything that moves the needle in the right direction should be encouraged.

rbg246 5y ago

Firstly, thank you for preserving some of the natural ecosystem on your farm. That is a tricky choice to make but from what I see driving about you are in a minority. You take a drive from Melbourne to Sydney and you get to see the effect of livestock farming, it's been completely denuded of natural vegetation everywhere where it's flat enough to smash down. The destruction is right there in front of your eyes. Knocking down scrub for cattle farming wipes out the natural environment, there are some species where it does good for them or kangaroos and birds that like open grasslands but for everything else it's really bad. Drive from Melbourne to Adelaide you get the same thing. Australia knocked down more open forest in the last four years than they did in the Amazon - 90% for beef farming. You can grow crops on a much smaller area, without even mentioning organic crop growing where you don't use chemicals to wipe everything out.

nxpnsv 5y ago

Small cattle and typical burger meat are different. That said, do you think small cattle would scale replace factory style production? I doubt it. Furthermore: Cows are not perfect machine and eat plants - you have to grow more plants for to make a meat burger than you have to make a pea protein burger. So if cropping is bad for animals, farming meat requires more of that too. You could argue your cows eat different, but what do most cows eat? For mass market, fake burgers are simply better for land use, water use, animal welfare, emissions, environment, and even health.

oliwarner 5y ago

It doesn't need to though. https://www.soilassociation.org/take-action/organic-living/what-is-organic/ https://www.soilassociation.org/take-action/organic-living/w...

BiteCode_dev 5y ago

To raise cows, you need crop. So real burgers already include the suffering from cropping, even more so because you need a lot more crop per calorie of you have a cow between you and the plant. Now I want to emphasis that guilt is not a good reason to start with beyond meat. The desire to try to do a nice thing can be, but as a vegetarian, it's important that people are not pushed out of meat because of some negative emotion. I'd rather have happy meat eaters than frutsrated veggies. But give it a try, just for curiosity sake. I like the taste of BM, but find them hard to digest. Also remember it's still process food, and organic free range steak is likely healthier.

ainiriand 5y ago

You can grow crops without pesticides but you cannot have beef without killing cows.

cies 5y ago

> I admire vegetarians for their genuinely caring moral position Actually vegetarians follow a diet along traditional lines (dairy okay, meat nay), they are not so much into moral positioning. Vegans are the ones making an ethical stance: "no animals harmed for me whenever I have the choice" Hence vegans dont wear wool/silk/leather, dont go to zoos/animal races, and dont consume eggs/dairy.

cameronh90 5y ago
As a vegetarian maybe I can provide some insight to my position. The reason I consume dairy and eggs is because I think that fundamentally dairy and egg (honey too) production CAN be ethical, whereas I think intentionally killing an animal for food can never be ethical. I'm aware not everyone shares the same opinion - but for me, killing a conscious being for food is not something I want a part in, even if it had a great life before the slaughter. However I should also note that I carefully select dairy and eggs I consume, only from organic, free range farms that I've researched. I choose the vegan option if I can't be sure of the provenance of the dairy/eggs. In practice I'm vegan most of the time and consume very little dairy/egg. I do think I might become some form of vegan in the future though, once I've thought about it more. However, there are a whole bunch of moral inconsistencies in my position. Per calorie, harvesting certain crops probably kills more conscious beings than certain types of fishing. And I'm not sure certain water creatures (bivalves?) even meet the threshold of consciousness, yet I nevertheless would refuse to eat them. There are a lot of difficult moral issues at the edges that I think most people ignore. For me, the overall goal of my diet is to try and find a balance between providing me adequate nutrition for a healthy life while reducing overall negative moral and ecological impact to everything that isn't me.
- cies 5y ago
  Not to be condescending, but I practiced the exact same mental gymnastics for many years. I used the exact same reasoning ("can be ethical"). I also did select organic/etc eggs and dairy. Buttt... This lead to people believe that I was okay with dairy/eggs, and when others picked for me I had a hard time rejecting. And dairy and egg producing animals are hurt big time: children taken away, caged, slaughtered, selectively bread to have unnatural bodies (hen only lay ~12 eggs per year in nature vs. 300+ for domesticated variants). This is maybe worse than wild animals being killed. After 12+ year vegetarian I went vegan 7+ years ago. I regret not doing so earlier.

lm28469 5y ago

I'm not sure it's fair to compare cropping and slaughterhouses. Anyone looking at that (nsfw) video and telling me "but what about the insects/pests" have to be trolling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O15Owo7jGtU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O15Owo7jGtU Anything we do will have an impact on the rest of our eco system, even if we just ate wild berries you'd find someone complaining about the beetle you stepped on while walking in the woods. But putting everything in perspective I doubt cropping comes anywhere close to animal slaughtering in term of crime against nature. I think anyone will agree that modern industrial agriculture comes with its own set of problems.

hellbannedguy 5y ago

To those that don't want to become 100% vegetarians, even though we all know it's better for everyone including the animal that'slaughtered; How about just using meat in small quantities, and for seasoning? A little bit of beef/chicken goes a long way. Most Americans do not need more protein. I have gotten by with a few pounds (less than 5 lbs) of meat a year. If a cash strapped, loser, like myself can do it, anyone can.

me_me_me 5y ago
I honestly believe that the best strategy to take at the moment is to teach people recepies for good and tasty vegetarian food. I am not vegetarian but my absolutely favourite dish is Blueberry dumplings with sour cream. I don't care if its vegetarian or not its simply good food. Its much easier for people to make the 'ethical' choices when they are given good alternatives. The whole thing with meat eaters are evil killers is counter productive signal virtue pandering to your own tribe. Instead of picketing and protesting infront McD, create vegetarian cooking classes.
- gibspaulding 5y ago
  This is a good point about finding good recipes that use less animal products. It seems like there's a lot of focus on replacing meat with something else pretending to be meat but I don't know that you're going to bring many people around that way. Vegetarian food needs to be good in it's own right, and it absolutely can be, but that generally means going beyond your grandma's copy of "Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook".

v77 5y ago

Canada just added an explicit recognition of grazing land into our carbon tax program for just this reason. Not only are pastures incredibly better for native plant/animal conservation (in North America) than crop fields but native grasslands are also incredible carbon sinks: https://www.canadiancattlemen.ca/news/forage-program-aims-to-conserve-canadian-prairies-through-collaboration-with-ranchers/ https://www.canadiancattlemen.ca/news/forage-program-aims-to...

shlant 5y ago

Definition of veganism: "Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment"[1] The key parts being "seeks to" and "as far as is possible and practicable". Veganism is not about being perfect (that's impossible), and although some might speak as if it is, they should not be taken seriously. What we do know is that striving for a more vegan way of living is unequivocally less harmful for sentient beings and I and many others think that is a very noble endeavor. 1. https://www.vegansociety.com/go-vegan/definition-veganism https://www.vegansociety.com/go-vegan/definition-veganism

gibspaulding 5y ago

Over the last couple of years my wife and I have been adopting what I jokingly refer to as a "local-etarian" diet. Essentially we've been paying attention more to how our food is sourced (trying to buy meat from folks like you!) rather than trying to cut out anything specific. My take away from that experience specifically in the US is that if you want to be sustainable/humane/etc. the best effort to effectiveness ratio is probably just to be a vegetarian. Finding and vetting sources for meat in much of the US is not easy. Most normal grocery stores simply don't stock anything resembling what you describe and even at our local Co-Op, the choices can be pretty inscrutable. Do I want the "We've ticked all the boxes to be labeled 'Organic'" or "We're Amish, so you should totally trust us" or the "We're too small to bother with fancy packaging or certifications"? It's hard to say, though generally we lean towards the last option.