4 ms·

Right, but (at least in theory) the total economic/environmental cost of growing the plants is lower than that of raising the chickens to produce the eggs.

• wavefunction 12y ago
  Do you have information on the environmental cost of growing the plants vs eggs? I would agree that factory farming of eggs has a terrible effect but it seems like on a small scale it wouldn't necessarily be true.
  • hamax 12y ago
    True, but making mayo for 300M Americans will never be small scale.
  • maxerickson 12y ago
    It takes ~2.4 kg of feed to grow ~1 kg of (cooked) eggs. (this is called the feed conversion ratio) Eating vegetarian gives the baseline for comparison, a conversion ratio of ~1:1 (I think it is better to not claim exactly 1, animals eat different things than humans and maybe do better with extracting value from fiber). The details of a given process for making a lower compromise meat replacement would have to be considered to calculate the equivalent measure. I don't think it would even be 2:1, but that's just a guess.