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It’s remarkable that we’ve setup a system of torture and murder to achieve: 1. Production of food that from all available evidence is worse for humans than alte

• pvaldes 3y ago
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• 082349872349872 3y ago
  For a long time the excuse (in the European context) was that animals weren't christians.
  • 082349872349872 3y ago
    To clarify: "a long time" means from roughly 500 to roughly 1800. (You all may not like it, but people really did distinguish between "beasts" and "christians" in this time period. Animal Farm is a much more thorough allegory than it appears to people with no farm experience, as all the animals behave much as their real life counterparts do [I understand that in the US the police even identify themselves as "sheepdogs"; compare the Animal Farm use], and on a farm the farmers do take care to act for the immediate benefit of all the stock, just as long as they're the ultimate beneficiaries: a farm being an economic unit composed of multiple living beings but organised for the benefit of a few)
• bumby 3y ago
  >Massive waste of land resources because of the inefficiency in having animals predigest plants for us I'm not staunchly defending the beef industry or factory farming for that matter, but I believe much of the land used for cattle grazing out west is not arable land suitable for much else. At least not without a corresponding change in agricultural habits, like massive irrigation that further impact a stressed water resource.
  • ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
    Cattle farming is a huge contribution to deforestation though: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/02/7-commodities-forests-deforestation-environment-cattle-palm-oil-soy-coffee-climate-change-trees/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/02/7-commodities-forests...
    • bumby 3y ago
      Worldwide, perhaps. But TFA is about Texas and Kansas. West TX where some of the largest cattle herding occurs, is largely semi-arid grassland.
    • sva_ 3y ago
      I personally don't eat meat, but I don't think it is a good-faith argument to say that rainforest deforestation in south america is a particularly good argument against cattle farming elsewhere. Those people are just unscrupulous in a different dimension.
      • roboticmind 3y ago
        It's not just South America. It's even in places like the UK >Most of the UK and Ireland’s grass-fed cows and sheep are on land that might otherwise be temperate rainforest – arable crops tend to prefer drier conditions. However, even if there were no livestock grazing in the rainforest zone – and these areas were threatened by other crops instead – livestock would still pose an indirect threat due to their huge land footprint (and those "grass-fed" cattle are also fed crops too) >Furthermore, most British grass-fed cows are still fed crops on top of their staple grass https://theconversation.com/livestock-grazing-is-preventing-the-return-of-rainforests-to-the-uk-and-ireland-198014 https://theconversation.com/livestock-grazing-is-preventing-...
  • blackoil 3y ago
    These aren't happy cows grazing in sunset, but from factory farms. About ~36% of crops are fed to livestock. https://news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could-feed-800-million-people-grain-livestock-eat https://news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could-feed-800-m...
• jelsisi 3y ago
  I don't think that this is the calculation that is made at the grocery store. Immense profit for the companies that supply the meat and flavor for the purchasers of it. The only people that actively know they are getting fucked is the farmers themselves. In terms of health, I'd rather someone in the west eat steak than potato chips and candy.
• ed_balls 3y ago
  Just to play devil's advocate 1. Livestock is a really good energy storage. In case of war, natural disaster crops diseases there is a backup. Most people that survived Holodomor, because the had cows. 2. No animal protein maybe bad for your health (meat is a different story) 3. Crops need a lot of herbicide
  • tpush 3y ago
    2) Not true. 3) More livestock => more crops => more herbicide
  • eliaspro 3y ago
    But if we wouldn't feed those crops to animals first to convert them to protein, but instead consumed them directly, we would need just a fraction of them and the herbicides required by them.
    • TylerE 3y ago
      We can’t eat grass and hay. Cows do. They have multiple stomachs just to digest it.
      • eliaspro 3y ago
        The majority of cattle feed isn't hay or grass, but instead crops like Alfalfa or Soy. And in the end, it doesn't really matter, it's the underlying land use and it's impact that's relevant. The feed conversion ratio for beef has the worst efficiency of all kinds of meat of 1:25. This dataset by OWI is very enlightening when it comes to the types of our food and what kinds of different impact (landuse, animal feed, transport, ...) they have: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/food-emissions-supply-chain https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/food-emissions-supply-cha...
      • throwaway5752 3y ago
        Your point by itself is valid. But in a practical sense, that is not the diet of the cattle that comprise most of the American beef supply. https://www.worldanimalprotection.us/latest/blogs/what-do-cows-eat/ https://www.worldanimalprotection.us/latest/blogs/what-do-co... has data and citations. To summarize, 70% of dairy cattle feed is not hay or grass (soy, corn, distilling industry byproduct). That figure is 80% for beef cattle.
• eimrine 3y ago
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• pc86 3y ago
  Your arguments, as legitimate as they may be, lose all credibility when you refer to the killing of livestock for food as "murder."
  • Weryj 3y ago
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    • pc86 3y ago
      If someone is willing to lie to try to make their point stronger what else are they lying about?
      • mjyoon 3y ago
        It's not a 'lie', it's a discrepancy between whether an animal (non-human) life equates a human life. I know you don't think so, but to call it a 'lie' is false.
        • nullstyle 3y ago
          no, it's a lie about our common definition of murder. I also don't murder a head of lettuce when I kill it.
          • mjyoon 3y ago
            There is a better term than murder sure, but you're still "killing" a plant or animal therefore ending it's life. People who use the term raise the plant or animal's importance of life to that of a human. Whether you agree or disagree that's entirely up to you.
            • nullstyle 3y ago
              I disagree with your assertion that "People who use the term raise the plant or animal's importance of life to that of a human." Doing that with wildlife or livestock is a much much larger thing than just extending the right to protection from killing by way of murder laws. Perhaps people say they "raise the plant or animal's importance of life to that of a human" but I haven't seen anyone earnestly make that case. Instead, I often think people who use that line of argumentation are trying to launder the feelings that listeners have towards murder into concern about their dietary choices at best, at worst they are working a rhetorical script in which they get to condemn those who disagree with them as murderers and therefore "win". In my own history, the people who don't fit that mold are willing to have a more nuanced discussion about what types of killing happen throughout the course of our lives, what makes a killing justified or not, how your stances change in a "survival situation" vs. the industrial killing that happens for most meat production, etc.
• gadders 3y ago
  The other items can be debated (although I don't agree with some of them) but this point "Production of food that from all available evidence is worse for humans than alternatives" is just flat out wrong. How could a species that evolved as omnivores suddenly find meat unhealthy?
  • blackjack_ 3y ago
    Not all meat even, it's mostly red meats (and generally ruminants) that are found to be generally unhealthy. And one of the large reasons is that over time, we have started breeding these meats to be extremely fatty, because it tastes better. No cows 200 years ago would have the same fat -> protein profiles as what we see today, and all of those fats are saturated fats, which tend to have large negative health effects. All of the leaner meats and some fish (ones without pollution issues, harder to come by as time goes on) are generally measured with improved health effects when consumed in moderate quantities in diets like the Mediterranean diet or Okinawan diet.
• sschueller 3y ago
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  • sgregnt 3y ago
    I served in IDF, and your comment can't be further away from the truth. The fact that you interject it as a matter of truth just speaks for the kind of news diet you are consuming. I personally would apriori doubt any of your claims from this point on.
    • lamontcg 3y ago
      > I personally would apriori doubt any of your claims from this point on. And I can't stand people who dismiss the entirety of another person's opinions based on managing to find one opinion that they disagree with. That's how you wind up with the tribalism in all our politics.
  • NewJazz 3y ago
    I met a vegan Zionist recently.
• lolbullshit 3y ago
  i was a vegitarian for 16 years The diet is more carb rich and less nutrious than if meat was included. If meat was never sold that would be the best option. And that is Buddhist Pali Cannon advice on Right Livlihood btw. My gums receeded and my teeth were in the worse shape of my life. Although i was able to perform strong physical acts i got tired faster, had more emotional issues and sex/fight drive was diminished slightly. "We" didnt set the system up so stop blaming me and others whoo didnt you hatefull person. "Greenhouse gases" are recycled by plants and nature. We have Climate instability and the planets tempature changes over the years. Instead of spewing that to people you shold say, "We have a polution problem" or "We have an industrial chemical problem" both which cause more death of the planet largely. You have been scammed. Global Warming has been an alarm bell since long before 2000. I was told as a child i would see the consequences and i really havent. Ive seen climate changes. you cant raise a baby into a man without meat. It has been tried by vegans and what we see is that you need doctors and blood tests and a rich pleathora of bacterial-processed foods and fats and prteins. And all these things are alive too. A cow can live a long happy life and then its body not 'fed right back to the ground' but instead feed us. also the phytoestrogens in plants like almonds, soy, pistacios are not good, the lectins in beans Limit the absorpsion of food, grains have gluten which binds the gut..
  • znpy 3y ago
    Thanks for sharing your experience. There’s a huge narrative bias because most people giving up vegetarian/vegan diets don’t talk about it (but it does happen).
  • mjyoon 3y ago
    Phytoestrogens have little or no effect in the human body. Animal hormones and antibiotics however do have adverse affects. Vegans tend to have a bigger issue with the larger organizations of the animal agriculture industry, not the whole - mechanizing the production of meat means that animals are treated with cruelty for profit. Slaughterhouse workers are also affected physically and mentally. Factory farming is the largest contributor to greenhouse gases and climate change. It is a pollution problem and industrial chemical problem and we can make those changes on an individual level by making choices on what we put on our plates. We all eat after all. I have to say, your view of advocates for vegetarianism and veganism is very misguided, your experiences on the other hand I can not comment on, but personally I have been vegan for over 8 years now and I've never felt better - I've completed many marathons ever since I started eating plant-based foods. At the beginning of my journey, I was obese/overweight.