Advocate of veganism changes his mind about meat

[eridani]

We still need to give up factory farming and eat les of it, though.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/sep/06/meat-production-veganism-deforestation

It's the second half – the stuffing of animals with grain to boost meat and milk consumption, mostly in the rich world – which reduces the total food supply. Cut this portion out and you would create an increase in available food which could support 1.3 billion people. Fairlie argues we could afford to use a small amount of grain for feeding livestock, allowing animals to mop up grain surpluses in good years and slaughtering them in lean ones. This would allow us to consume a bit more than half the world's current volume of animal products, which means a good deal less than in the average western diet.

He goes on to butcher a herd of sacred cows. Like many greens I have thoughtlessly repeated the claim that it requires 100,000 litres of water to produce every kilogram of beef. Fairlie shows that this figure is wrong by around three orders of magnitude. It arose from the absurd assumption that every drop of water that falls on a pasture disappears into the animals that graze it, never to re-emerge. A ridiculous amount of fossil water is used to feed cattle on irrigated crops in California, but this is a stark exception.

Similarly daft assumptions underlie the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation's famous claim that livestock are responsible for 18% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, a higher proportion than transport. Fairlie shows that it made a number of basic mistakes. It attributes all deforestation that culminates in cattle ranching in the Amazon to cattle: in reality it is mostly driven by land speculation and logging. It muddles up one-off emissions from deforestation with ongoing pollution. It makes similar boobs in its nitrous oxide and methane accounts, confusing gross and net production. (Conversely, the organisation greatly underestimates fossil fuel consumption by intensive farming: its report seems to have been informed by a powerful bias against extensive livestock keeping.)

[old mark]

1. As a supporter of Meatanism, I recommend this post...thank you

for daring to oppose the viscious, repressive vegans in their campaign to rule the world.


:hi:


mark:redbox:

[SpiralHawk]

3. Mutant Meatans Invade Factory Animal Farms

[old mark]

9. Oh, baby, oh, baby!!!!!.....nt

[quaker bill]

2. A kilogram of beef

contains roughly 0.8 liters of water. Water is not destroyed by cattle because they are not physiologically capable of doing so. Plants on the other hand actually do consume water and break it into its component parts. Cattle, by digesting plants, actually break carbohydrates down into CO2 and water, (they produce water from starches, sugars, and cellulose). Net, cattle produce more water than they consume, through evaporation and elimination, if this were not so, they would blow up like a water balloon. You cannot fit 100,000 kilograms of water into 1 kilo of meat. Water beyond the 800 gram content of the meat itself, is either absorbed into the ground or evaporates to join the water cycle to eventually become precipitation somewhere.

[customerserviceguy]

4. Be careful

Your science is strange and threatening to those who practice this religion...

[county worker]

13. There are always plants on the earth. Comparing plants to animal water consumption

is ridiculous in the extreme.

[quaker bill]

19. Once again

animals do not "consume" water, excepting for that small portion reflected in their water weight. Once grown that water weight is roughly fixed, so the net consumption over time is zero. Animals use water and excrete water in equal proportions, except for the oxidation of carbohydrates, which yeilds water and CO2. It is simple chemistry and mass balance. The fact that you do not see the evaporation does not mean it does not exist. The biochemistry of animals lacks the energetics needed for hydrolysis. There is some enzymatic redox where protons and hydroxyl groups are separated in active transport, but the net ions are always in balance over the entire body, so some water exists in an ionized state, but it none the less remains water in the final analysis.

Only plants, through the much more potent energetics of photosynthesis, have the ability to perform hydolysis, breaking water down into its component atoms and releasing O2 to form carbohydrates (sugars, starches, cellulose), hydrocarbons (oils), and amines (proteins). Water is actually consumed by plants to the extent where it ceases being water. Animals do not and physiologically cannot do this.

Had you taken biochemistry, this would perhaps be obvious.

Animals do not consume water in the way a car consumes gasoline.

The question is not the consumption of water, but the use of clean water which otherwise might be put to other purposes (such as drinking by human animals). It does not "take" 100,000 kilos of water to produce a kilo of meat. If it does then 99,999.2 kilos are excreted, actually given mass balance, probably more like 105,000 kilos are excreted through oxidation of carbohydrates, evaporation, and elimination.

I hate to go all scientific on you, but I actually am a scientist.

[petronius]

20. Again, nobody claims that water is permanently used up - you are using the

wrong definition of 'consumed.' The science that matters here is hydrology, not biochemistry...

[petronius]

18. The point of that statistic is not that water is destroyed, but that the large amount

of water used for livestock is thus unavailable for other downstream uses (environment, urban, industrial, other ag, energy). And, when much of that water returns to the flow, it contains pollutants that cause problems downstream. In the big picture water is renewable (as you point out), but at any given place and time it is a finite resource - and the allocation of that resource is a serious issue. In some places, there may be not other uses for the available water supply and livestock may be highly appropriate. In other places, there may be far more beneficial uses of the available runoff.

I've never heard anyone claim that a cow actually contains that huge amount of water, or that the huge amount of necessary water is destroyed...

[xchrom]

5. Recommend

[Dogmudgeon]

6. When does the popcorn concession open?

These early-AM fire hazards always catch me unprepared.

I mean, c'mon, Junior Mints at a DU Flame Rally? You do realize that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Welch,_Jr.">Robert Welch invented the Junior Mint, right?

--d!

[izquierdista]

7. The trick is feeding them NON-human foods

A diet of pokeberries, grass, slugs, grasshoppers, and weeds sounds positively North Korean, but chickens will thrive on it. Similarly, there's not much for people to eat in a field overrun with kudzu, but a flock of goats will be very happy. Animal husbandry developed to turn scavenged unpalatable and inedible foods into high-protein food. Unfortunately, factory farming has never figured out how to mechanize scavenging and turn it into a process, so they operate on grain as the input.

If you want to eat better, more natural meats, look for animals that are on natural pastures.

[Javaman]

11. +1 nt

[qb]

8. As a former vegan for digestive health reasons, I can appreciate this.

When my young son chose the omnivorous lifestyle, I followed so as not to waste his leftovers ;-)
I found I can tolerate meat just fine in moderation. Keep that damn lactose away, though.

[Ron Green]

10. Of course meat is not the problem. Big Corn and Big Soy are the problem, and

our overeating of meat comes from that.

[Javaman]

12. Exactly right. nt

[JohnyCanuck]

14. Different strokes for different folks.

The Dark Side of the China Study Story Supporting Vegetarianism…
By Dr. Mercola

snip

Dr. Eades is another nutritional physician. He and I have never met and do not personally know each other.

However, we both started our medical practices about the same time and were both passionate about helping people with nutritional interventions and helping them with alternatives to drugs and surgery.

We had no predisposition to the outcome and were impartial observers to the results of our nutritional interventions. We were both busy clinicians and never had the luxury to take months out of our lives to publish our observations in the medical literature. Nevertheless the lack of publications does not make the observations any less valid.

Interestingly we both observed the same results, namely that large numbers of sick people failed to improve when they implemented vegetarian or vegan diets.

This shocked us as we were compelled by many of the arguments that Campbell makes and believed that all our patients should have improved on this regimen. Initially I questioned their compliance and believed many of them were “cheating.” But after this started happening to more and more people, it became clear my approach was flawed.

Many of these patients significantly worsened and nearly died. Many even left our practices because they lost faith in our ability to use diet as a tool to help them regain their health. What we both realized after these well-intentioned efforts is that . . .

There is No Perfect Diet that Works for Everyone

Most of the confusion in this debate results from this reality. Vegetarian diets described by Campbell do work for large numbers of people. From my observations, perhaps about one third of the population would benefit from it. These people thrive on these foods and have spectacular health. The problem is that there is an equally large, or even larger, population whose health is devastated by restricting animal protein and fats.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/09/08/china-study.aspx

[bobbolink]

17. Send that to David Sirota, pleeeez. His preaching has turned off many!

:applause:

Thanks for the article...

Vegetarian: Primitive word for lousy hunter.

[superduperfarleft]

23. What is a "primitive" word? n/t

[superduperfarleft]

22. Dr Mercola?

Lulz.

[Matariki]

15. I like this non either/or approach

[Lilith Velkor]

16. Animals: a renewable resource.

[kenny blankenship]

21. "I believe the children are our future"

Sage advice from the past.