Vegetarianism and veganism

[Laird]

Yes, now, but more particularly the methods of plant-based agriculture we have now that indigenous societies did not (as far as I know) have: in particular, machines which minimise the labour of "working the land" - especially planting and harvesting, and especially of crops like grains and legumes - and industrially mass-produced fertilisers

To this list I forgot to add our transport infrastructure, which allows food from far locations to be transported to places where it would otherwise be unavailable. This certainly did not exist in older indigenous societies.

There's several points in there (not all of course), Laird which I could take issue with. I suppose just one really stands out, that you seem to sincerely believe that if the farming system was completely dismantled we'd still somehow be okay. I regard that as extreme and naive (or extremely niave) but you're not naive, so it must be something of the idealist in you. 

I've never had to live with a shortage of food but my father did (for instance) and millions of others. Idealism goes out the window when you're starving, I can assure you based on what I heard from him alone. I would urge you to be more realistic, Laird, that's all.

[Laird]

Well, I had been a little baffled by that sentiment, tim (that ending animal agriculture would be disastrous and catastrophic for humanity), which you've expressed several times now in this exchange, and which until now I've just let pass by, because you had said that you didn't want to get into a debate - and as I would have required further clarification as to what on Earth you meant, it seemed best just to let it pass by.

However, your reference to "starving" people seems to suggest that you think that the disaster and catastrophe is that there would not be enough food to go around without animal agriculture. I respond to that argument on the page to which I referred earlier under The conversion of inedible vegetation argument.

In summary, in case you don't care to click on that link, data from reports by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations demonstrate that - because many animals are fed cereal in feedlots - globally, by weight, we feed almost three times as much cereal to animals as we gain in meat from them. Ceasing to farm animals altogether would thus result in a net gain in food availability for humans, regardless of any loss of productivity due to no longer grazing otherwise unproductive land (because we could eat that cereal ourselves rather than feeding it to animals and having it reduced in weight by a factor of three as it is converted into meat).

[Laird]

I try to be fair, so I revisited my rebuttal as linked to in my previous post and tried to find a way to refute it. How might the meat industry, in particular, refute it (if possible)?

My thinking was that the best way to attack it would be to argue that the 3:1 ratio I calculated of feedlot cereals to edible meat was a miscalculation because some significant proportion of those feedlot cereals would not be edible to humans anyway.

So, I duly typed "feedlot cereals edibility" into Google, and dug around until I found the hit that looked like it provided the most likely candidate for a refutation, the article FAO sets the record straight–86% of livestock feed is inedible by humans on the CGIAR website (which is new to me, and about which I know effectively nothing).

At first glance, it looks like it is damning of my argument: it seems at first glance to be saying that 86% of the 3 in the 3:1 ratio that I referenced could not be counted as edible to humans - gosh, I sure got that calculation wrong!

But, no, that would be a mistake: that 86% refers to something different. It refers not to that to which I referred - the cereals fed to livestock in feedlots - which I researched to be 843 million tonnes in the 2013/2014 season, but to all of the food that livestock consume everywhere, including when grazing outside of feedlots. The study to which the article refers even confirms (to a close degree of accuracy) the figure that I determined in my research. If you follow through the article's link to the media release for the study in question - More Fuel for the Food/Feed Debate - and then click through to the infographic in the top right of the page, "Global Livestock Feed Intake [click here]", then you will see that it calculates that 14% of global food intake by livestock is edible to humans, and 14% of the total it presents in the title of 6 billion tonnes equates to 840 million tonnes - almost identical to the figure I cited of 843 million tonnnes.

So: nice try, guys, but no cigar.

Well, I had been a little baffled by that sentiment, tim (that ending animal agriculture would be disastrous and catastrophic for humanity), which you've expressed several times now in this exchange, and which until now I've just let pass by, because you had said that you didn't want to get into a debate - and as I would have required further clarification as to what on Earth you meant, it seemed best just to let it pass by.

However, your reference to "starving" people seems to suggest that you think that the disaster and catastrophe is that there would not be enough food to go around without animal agriculture. I respond to that argument on the page to which I referred earlier under The conversion of inedible vegetation argument.

In summary, in case you don't care to click on that link, data from reports by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations demonstrate that - because many animals are fed cereal in feedlots - globally, by weight, we feed almost three times as much cereal to animals as we gain in meat from them. Ceasing to farm animals altogether would thus result in a net gain in food availability for humans, regardless of any loss of productivity due to no longer grazing otherwise unproductive land (because we could eat that cereal ourselves rather than feeding it to animals and having it reduced in weight by a factor of three as it is converted into meat).

Ceasing to farm animals altogether would thus result in a net gain in food availability for humans, regardless of any loss of productivity due to no longer grazing otherwise unproductive land 

Laird, are you seriously advocating that we should go back to some kind of (idealist) 'feudal' system of agriculture that never worked in the first place ? Would we each have a cow in the back garden for our daily milk, to graze on the rich and fertile grass (about one days supply for a cow) that a small garden provides. Or maybe the state would sling us a bale of hay over the front fence once a week ? 

This is a fantasy that will never (likely) be realised, thank goodness. However, cruelty to animals can and should be addressed, I agree.  

Ceasing to farm animals altogether would thus result in a net gain in food availability for humans, regardless of any loss of productivity due to no longer grazing otherwise unproductive land 

Laird, are you seriously advocating that we should go back to some kind of (idealist) 'feudal' system of agriculture that never worked in the first place ? Would we each have a cow in the back garden for our daily milk, to graze on the rich and fertile grass (about one days supply for a cow) that a small garden provides. Or maybe the state would sling us a bale of hay over the front fence once a week ? 

This is a fantasy that will never (likely) be realised, thank goodness. However, cruelty to animals can and should be addressed, I agree.  

I don’t think you’d have a cow for milk if you were vegan Tim, unless I’m mistaken. A friend of mine won’t eat honey either. I realise I’m late to the discussion on this. 

I suspect that if many people saw how meat arrived on our plates, we’d forego it. We moved away from red meat some time ago and we do use products that imitate it. I do eat chicken and seafood and whilst there’s a part of me that understands the creatures have suffered in some greater or lesser way, which I think most people would see as wrong, I seem to able to partition it off mentally. I do sometimes consider  the suffering of the animal but for some reason it isn’t stopping me. I suspect it’s partly due to the conditioning of my palate and mind over the course of my life.

[Laird]

Laird, are you seriously advocating that we should go back to some kind of (idealist) 'feudal' system of agriculture that never worked in the first place ?

Not as far as I understand what you mean, tim. I'm simply saying this based on my research, which you are free to contest if you can find sources which dispute it:

If we ended all animal agriculture in an instant, we would, from that point onwards, increase by a factor of three the weight of food that we had previously obtained as meat from the animals we would no longer be farming. That is to say that ending animal farming would increase our food supply, not decrease it.

Would we each have a cow in the back garden for our daily milk, to graze on the rich and fertile grass (about one days supply for a cow) that a small garden provides

Not in my vision, no. We would not confine cows at all, any more than we confine humans - unless those humans have committed dangerous acts for which we deem they need, at least for a time, to be imprisoned: a system of criminal justice whose merits we might reasonably question!

Or maybe the state would sling us a bale of hay over the front fence once a week ?

State food for the animal prisoners, in other words? No, just stop imprisoning animals.

However, cruelty to animals can and should be addressed, I agree.

I think that these sort of affirmations in your posts are truly the ones to which I ought most heartily to respond, yet I tend towards addressing the most contentious points. I have acknowledged as much privately to a friend who pointed out something like it, so I may as well acknowledge as much publicly, and directly to you, tim.

This is the most important part of your response, I think, tim: the part on which we explicitly agree, and through which we can potentially find more and more ways to agree, without arguing back and forth in ways in which our egos are going to set us up in win-lose scenarios, which I admit is a tendency of my own ego.

So, even though I have spent the bulk of this post on more contentious issues, and really have no right to hope for this: hopefully we can, going forward, contemplate together the cruelty according to which (the vast majority of farmed) animals are currently treated, and honestly consider what we can do together to avert it.

[Laird]

I seem to able to partition it off mentally. [...] I suspect it’s partly due to the conditioning of my palate and mind over the course of my life.

I've probably said it before, and probably even referenced/embedded this specific video on PQ before (maybe even in this thread), but I consider Melanie Joy's take on this sort of thing to be utterly insightful. Witness "the three Ns" with respect to eating meat: that our culture teaches us that eating meat is n..., n..., and n.... See if you can guess what those three words are before you see them enumerated in the video, just as Melanie asks of her audience - who, of course, guess them correctly...

Melanie Joy - Carnism: The Psychology of Eating Meat

I don’t think you’d have a cow for milk if you were vegan Tim, unless I’m mistaken. A friend of mine won’t eat honey either. I realise I’m late to the discussion on this. 

I suspect that if many people saw how meat arrived on our plates, we’d forego it. We moved away from red meat some time ago and we do use products that imitate it. I do eat chicken and seafood and whilst there’s a part of me that understands the creatures have suffered in some greater or lesser way, which I think most people would see as wrong, I seem to able to partition it off mentally. I do sometimes consider  the suffering of the animal but for some reason it isn’t stopping me. I suspect it’s partly due to the conditioning of my palate and mind over the course of my life.

Of course, Obiwan but I wasn't aware that vegans comprised the largest  consumer group in the UK last time I looked. I know how meat arrives on tables, not only have I worked on a farm when I was younger, I've seen the callus treatment of the factory farming system.

Edit: Just curious, what's the problem with eating honey ?

Well, I had been a little baffled by that sentiment, tim (that ending animal agriculture would be disastrous and catastrophic for humanity), which you've expressed several times now in this exchange, and which until now I've just let pass by, because you had said that you didn't want to get into a debate - and as I would have required further clarification as to what on Earth you meant, it seemed best just to let it pass by.

However, your reference to "starving" people seems to suggest that you think that the disaster and catastrophe is that there would not be enough food to go around without animal agriculture. I respond to that argument on the page to which I referred earlier under The conversion of inedible vegetation argument.

In summary, in case you don't care to click on that link, data from reports by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations demonstrate that - because many animals are fed cereal in feedlots - globally, by weight, we feed almost three times as much cereal to animals as we gain in meat from them. Ceasing to farm animals altogether would thus result in a net gain in food availability for humans, regardless of any loss of productivity due to no longer grazing otherwise unproductive land (because we could eat that cereal ourselves rather than feeding it to animals and having it reduced in weight by a factor of three as it is converted into meat).

I`m curious. I understand the argument, but the practicalities are critical to whether it could work without quick onset of mass starvation and massive resistance in the populace. What are the common grains actually used for cattle in feed lots, and pigs, and chickens  in factory farms? If it is mostly soybeans and corn, could we really make most of humanity subsist on such a diet which is very unbalanced and also not particularly palatable?

Presumably, millions of farmers would have to convert their farms from soybean and corn production to other more palatable grains like wheat and rice, and also legumes like beans and peas in order to have a proper balance of protein amino acids. How practical would that be? I don't know, but certainly their would be a long transition period of deprivation and  build up of massive resistance to this fundamental change in way of life. How could this be successfully "sold" politically?