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The raw products for fake chicken are mostly soybeans or chick peas, hot water, and a mineral coagulating agent. The biggest energy input is for boiling the wa

by 3am 14y ago

The raw products for fake chicken are mostly soybeans or chick peas, hot water, and a mineral coagulating agent. The biggest energy input is for boiling the water and growing the crops. Cows require 50 times more protein from grain as input than they provide after being slaughtered (you can google this, it's research from Cornell). You are 180 degrees wrong on that point, the cost of feeding them is _very high_. Unless you can genetically engineer them to have more efficient metabolisms, this is a fundamental problem for beef. I can't tell if you're serious about the last paragraph. Citations would be great, because it's hard to believe that real meat is less regulated than plant-protein based fake meat or that the risk to workers that make it is less than to those working in an industrial slaughterhouse. I'm not even a vegetarian...

deleted 14y ago
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anamax 14y ago
> Cows require 50 times more protein from grain as input than they provide after being slaughtered (you can google this, it's research from Cornell). I suspect that you're referring to the research summarized at http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/aug97/livestock.hrs.html http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/aug97/livestock.hrs.htm... . I'm not sure that it supports the conclusions that you (and its author) make. For example: (quoting) "> For every kilogram of high-quality animal protein produced, livestock are fed nearly 6 kg of plant protein." 6 << 50. And, a lot of that "plant protein" isn't available to people. "More than 302 million hectares of land are devoted to producing feed for the U.S. livestock population -- about 272 million hectares in pasture and about 30 million hectares for cultivated feed grains." Much pasture land is pasture because it isn't all that suitable for other purposes. Unless you eat grass/hay.... "THIRSTY PRODUCTION SYSTEMS. U.S. agriculture accounts for 87 percent of all the fresh water consumed each year. Livestock directly use only 1.3 percent of that water. But when the water required for forage and grain production is included, livestock's water usage rises dramatically. Every kilogram of beef produced takes 100,000 liters of water. [wheat and potatoes take much less]" It appears that he's counting rain as "use". While technically true, that water can't be used elsewhere. (Grain land is rarely irrigated and pasture almost never is.)

by 3am 14y ago

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

anamax 14y ago

> Cows require 50 times more protein from grain as input than they provide after being slaughtered (you can google this, it's research from Cornell). I suspect that you're referring to the research summarized at http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/aug97/livestock.hrs.html http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/aug97/livestock.hrs.htm... . I'm not sure that it supports the conclusions that you (and its author) make. For example: (quoting) "> For every kilogram of high-quality animal protein produced, livestock are fed nearly 6 kg of plant protein." 6 << 50. And, a lot of that "plant protein" isn't available to people. "More than 302 million hectares of land are devoted to producing feed for the U.S. livestock population -- about 272 million hectares in pasture and about 30 million hectares for cultivated feed grains." Much pasture land is pasture because it isn't all that suitable for other purposes. Unless you eat grass/hay.... "THIRSTY PRODUCTION SYSTEMS. U.S. agriculture accounts for 87 percent of all the fresh water consumed each year. Livestock directly use only 1.3 percent of that water. But when the water required for forage and grain production is included, livestock's water usage rises dramatically. Every kilogram of beef produced takes 100,000 liters of water. [wheat and potatoes take much less]" It appears that he's counting rain as "use". While technically true, that water can't be used elsewhere. (Grain land is rarely irrigated and pasture almost never is.)