>From: "Daniel Mitchell" <danmitchell@xxxxxxxx>
>
>Jan Steinman wrote:
>> You may disagree with any of the below, but it is difficult to
>> disagree with ALL of them!
>>
>> 1) kinder to animals (to some, this is irrelevant)
>
> It turns out that even this point is arguable, depending on which animals
>"count" -- see
>http://www.wildlifedamagecontrol.com/animalrights/leastharm.htm
Well, if you like swallowing hamburgers, you'll probably swallow THAT story as
well!
Its four basic arguments all revolve around the fact that plant agriculture
kills animals, by running over them, destroying their habitat, increased
exposure to predation, and use of pesticides.
However, it conveniently ignores the "nose of the camel under the tent:" that
meat production is only about 5 0.000000e+00fficient! This means it takes 20
acres (or hectares) of farmland to produce the same caloric/protein value in
meat as it does to simply consume the plants from ONE acre (or hectare).
Therefore, a reasonable conclusion from this study might be that vegetarianism
would reduce incidental animal farming deaths by 95%.
The author mumbles something about "converting to forage-based animal
agriculture" so it won't disturb critters too much, but did not provide
anything to back up the feasibility of doing so. Current range-fed cattle is a
small minority of the total, and almost non-existent if you exclude range-fed
cattle that are NOT intensively fattened up in feeding pens based on plant
agriculture.
And top the whole thing off by considering the source: the website admittedly
has an anti-animal-rights point of view. Vegetarian websites also have their
point of view. Expect a bias from either source -- you won't be disappointed!
:-)
>it's an interesting point from a
>purely numerical point of view
But it's still just another "yea, but" argument. "Yea, but we could terraform
Mars and move all animal agriculture there, and have ZERO impact or Earth!"
What makes it "interesting?" That the author can pull numbers out of the air
for a situation that does not exist?
I don't mind people holding beliefs that man was granted dominion over animals,
and thus should be free to eat them. But fuzzy math based on assumptions that
will simply never happen (that 500f current agriculture be converted to
non-farmed forage) don't really serve anyone except the meat industry.
--
: Jan Steinman -- nature Transography(TM): <http://www.Bytesmiths.com>
: Bytesmiths -- artists' services: <http://www.Bytesmiths.com/Services>
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