6 ms·
> we'll then have a lot less livestock to eat Even if that's true, while meat is tasty, it's a luxury, and arguably a step in the food chain that's a waste. I
by wwweston 13y ago
> we'll then have a lot less livestock to eat
Even if that's true, while meat is tasty, it's a luxury, and arguably a step in the food chain that's a waste.
If the entire industrial meat sector evaporated today, my guess is the biggest impact would be an economic disruption from large number of suddenly unemployed and businesses no longer buying services/products, rather than any kind of food shortage per se.
But if we're talking about an antibiotic ban, the impacts wouldn't even reach that far. ABX don't enable production, they enable cheaper production. The most likely outcome isn't a serious collapse in supply, it's some combination of an increase in costs and modest reduction in supply.
- baddox 13y ago> Even if that's true, while meat is tasty, it's a luxury No more a luxury than, say, cancer treatments.
- rosser 13y agoIf you don't get your cancer treated, you die. If you don't eat meat, you don't eat meat.
- seanmcdirmid 13y agoIf you live in Tibet or any other 4000+ meter environment where growing things is quite a bit more difficult, and you don't eat meat, you die. Say whatever you want about the Chinese, but the Tibetans do very much welcome the fresh vegetables that they can now get via better transport links and internal trade. I visited north Xinjiang once, and was quite over-exposed to meat so much that I was happy to get back to lower elevation lands where I could actually get some vegetables again.
- gohrt 13y agoThat's completely off-topic in a conversation that is obviously about large-scale ranches. Do those Tibetans use antibiotics to promote growth?
- seanmcdirmid 13y agoIn my defense, parent was an off-topic false dichotomy. Do two wrongs make a right?
- rosser 13y agoIn this context, Tibet is a rounding error on pretty much any metric you can imagine.
- baddox 13y agoSo what about medical treatments that save lives but have yet to be invented? How is humanity possibly surviving now when there are still medical conditions that lead to death?
- chris_mahan 13y agoIf you don't eat your meat, how can you have any pudding?
- ImprovedSilence 13y agoHow can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat!
- bobbydavid 13y agoHow can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?
- chris_mahan 13y agoStand still laddie!
- billyjobob 13y agoThe main difference being that cancer treatment saves your life while eating meat shortens it.
- swombat 13y agoArguable. According most low-carb diets, eating meat is good for you and it's carbs that screw you over.
- ihsw 13y agoLow-carb diets advocate replacing carbs with fat in addition to protein, and there are many non-meat sources of fat and protein. And the premise of the diet is supported by sound scientific research rather than simply hearsay (as your comment implies).
- geoka9 13y ago> According most low-carb diets, eating meat is good for you Those diets may be good for losing weight, but are they good for a healthy person?
- speeder 13y agoAfter figuring low-carb on my own (I never had heard of it before), and making my nutrition person (forgot the name in english for that profession) cringe, it worked wonder. First, I started to lose 1kg a week, until I was in a healthy weight (when the weight stabilized instead, without much adjustments to diet), and my choleterol that I was fighting for years, dropped to healthy levels in 4 months, also several other broken blood levels got fixed. Also my sleep got better, and for the first time in my life going to the gym made a difference (before that, I could go to the gym all I wanted, and I would never get stronger, and I was very weak, sedentary 14 year old girls could lift more weight than me in the upper body). But that is just a anecdote, it happened to me, I did no research to see WHY it happened, it just did, and now I stick with that diet.
- cperciva 13y ago
- marcosdumay 13y agoCurrently, meat serves the important function of regulating the supply of cereals. When there is overproduction, the grain producers can still sell for meat producers, not going out of business. Where the production reduces, meat producers sell thiner (and sometimes younger) animals, freeing more grains for human consumption. Left alone, grain consumption is extremely inelastic, and production is extremely variable - not a good combination. But yes, it's not that hard to create other mechanisms for regulating that market, even world wide.
- rosser 13y agoYou don't think biofuels could take up an appreciable portion of that slack? I'd expect that buying up grain in bulk at surplus prices, and converting it into ethanol to be pretty profitable.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- bunderbunder 13y ago> Currently, meat serves the important function of regulating the supply of cereals. She swallowed the cow to catch the goat. She swallowed the goat to catch the dog. She swallowed the dog to catch the cat. She swallowed the cat to catch the bird. She swallowed the bird to catch the spider That wiggled and wiggled and tickled inside her. She swallowed the spider to catch the fly. But I dunno why she swallowed that fly. Perhaps she'll use a combination of market forces and warehouses to accomplish the same thing much more simply next time around.
- jasonkolb 13y agoThis is so relatively unimportant compared to the issue of antibiotics becoming useless that it made me laugh. It needs a healthy dose of perspective.