Dizchu said:
I'm not sure what you're getting at here? I mean I'd prefer if someone who has no concerns for the environment was up-front about it, but that doesn't mean that I think that attitude is a good one. They're internally consistent and I find that in part admirable even if I don't find their actual beliefs admirable.
Well then, you certainly win this round of the internal consistency portion of our discussion.
You can look at this in one of two ways. First, that the density and intensity of the farming means maximum efficiency and maximum output. Second, that such density and intensity is the result of rampant capitalism.
When someone says "rampant capitalism", they are just saying "blatant supply and demand" which means that people asking for and paying for a product that someone else is supplying. The alternative is to say that people aren't asking for something or aren't being supplied when asking for something. It's just as ridiculous to complain about consumers getting what they pay for as it is for people to claim that something is just "socialism" which isn't inherently good or bad but was certainly put on the naughty list back in our early school days.
People are given more and more and more, far beyond what they actually need (or want, actually. A lot of produce goes to waste). It's pure excess.
There is waste in every system, it is not a function of capitalism. In fact, in communist economies on the other end of the spectrum showed far more significant problems with inefficiency, waste and corruption as primary complaints about the system. The only difference here is scale. Communist environments stayed relatively small due to those problems and frequently had want issues (people starving even), whereas capitalist markets thrived due to the personal motivation being higher. While you may see more tonnage of waste in a capitalist system, the actual proportion of waste to food produced is far lower because of waste meaning higher costs and lost revenue. The industrial complex means efficiency in long term food storage as well as transportation to areas of demand. I mean, if you want to levy a political complaint against capitalism then that's one thing, but it's actually off base to complain about waste in the system.
I'll also point out to you that waste is not unique to the meat industry. In fact, food items which are not in meat and fish categories are FAR more likely to go to waste and account for a vast majority of waste and vegetables are the single worst offenders of waste.
The worst part is that worldwide the major problem is spoilage whereas in the West most of the waste is just what we throw away. But please keep in mind that nearly everything you will ever buy will end up thrown away anyways. But what's the number one common food item that goes to waste? Potatoes.
http://www.ifr.ac.uk/waste/Reports/WRAP%20The%20Food%20We%20Waste.pdf (This study is UK but it was done right down to the average expiration date of food items thrown into the garbage and the practice has been found consistent with other nations)
The vast majority of meat that gets thrown away are actually TV Dinners and ready meals rather than all that meat you see in the butcher area of a grocery. These "mixed meals" are number 4 in tonnage of avoidable food waste, below Potatoes, sliced bread, and apples. You don't get to a standard meat in the listed until number 34 which is "chicken portions" and only accounts for 00.9% of all avoidable food waste. Sausages and Pork are numbers 38 and 39 at 00.8% each. Ham is number 44 at 00.6%. Eggs fish and beef portions are 50, 51 and 52 at 00.5% each.
For all waste by weight (unsold, avoidable waste, unavoidable waste, etc), meat and fish comes in at fifth place (see table 22 in the UK link above, it's page 42). Below bakery items, vegetables, mixed foods, and fruit. All meat and fish is at 8.4% of weight in waste, vegetables are at 25.8%, more than three times wasted than that of all meat and fish categories.
So when we want to talk about waste, you've got to do some SERIOUS soul checking here when vegetables are the worst offenders of waste. 1,730,000 tons of veggies (not counting fruit or bread) compared to 560,000 tons of meat? Whoa.
This seems to be a fallacious argument, an appeal to tradition to be specific.
Nope, we are biologically evolved to want and appreciate meat. That's not tradition, that's instinctual. This would be like saying that a man liking a woman because he's heterosexual is just an appeal to tradition.
This is a bit of a bait-and-switch. You were talking about hunting for survival, "necessary suffering" of one species to sustain another. Comparing us to other carnivores and other omnivorous species. But those species have adapt to their ecosystems, there is a balance. I'd even argue that with people like the Inuit (who rely heavily on fishing), there's more of a balance than with enormous factory farms.
I was using hunting for survival because our discussion was on the slaughter of animals and I consider hunting to have been significantly more "harmful" to animals, especially before efficient killing machines like guns were invented. What you are advocating for is something like a deer getting shot near but not in a kill spot and then limping around the forest for an hour rather than a bullet to the back of a brain. Big industry means significant less suffering at the time of death.
Every species needs energy to survive. Does that mean that fracking is good because hey, it's just us getting a supply of energy? We're not adapting to the environment, we're changing the environment to suit us.
Sure, but if eating chicken has a better environmental impact than eating tomatoes or broccoli while also providing ready source of protein then what's your point?
Actually there is criticism of the excessive consumption of foreign fruits and vegetables that aren't in season. But about your point about farmland... extensive farming does not have the same densities of animals as intensive farming. It's like saying that the Kowloon Walled City was environmentally friendly because it occupied such little land.
Is something you're saying here dismissing the fact that fruits and veggies can have a higher carbon footprint per calorie than some meats? You might be explaining part of the "why" of it, but not dismissing the fact of it. You brought up the environmental factors as an argument. If one is the same or better for the environment than the other then this would logically take your argument and levy it against the vegetable market more than the meat market in nearly all cases other than beef and goat.
Even in the chart you posted, meats trend towards the top of the list. The only fruit on the list are tomatoes. The only vegetables are potatoes and broccoli. There's no mention of bread or grains. Even the article you linked agrees with my point, "my take on meat is that we should eat less of it, pay more for it, use all of it, and know where it's from."
Here, this was released this year:
http://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2015/december/diet-and-environment.html
Lettuce, for example, produces three times the greenhouse gases as bacon. If we as a nation actually followed the dietary recommendations of the agricultural department (less meat, more veggies/fruits), It would result in
"a 38 percent increase in energy use, 10 percent bump in water use and a 6 percent increase in greenhouse gas emissions." That's only if we reduced caloric intake as well, if we ate the same number of calories but adjusted our food proportions to match the recommendations then the greenhouse impact is higher across all categories (43% increase in energy use, 16% increase in water footprint, and 11% in greenhouse gas emissions).
If everyone just replaced meat altogether with veggies and other things, you'd be talking far higher numbers.
The big problem that a lot of other articles are running into is that they continue to compare emissions by weight rather than by calorie which still doesn't make sense when we eat according to calories, not weight. Which side of this equation an article falls on depends on whether weight or calorie is being used.
Now that you have been made aware of why emission per calorie is the true quantifier then you should be better informed when reading these resources.
Deer, Canadian geese and wild pigs do active damage where they are (especially when overpopulated for the first two), eat one of those and you actually have a net-positive on the environment.
By this logic humans should eradicate themselves. Now I don't think human intervention with the environment is inherently bad, I just think it's an interesting observation.
I mean, the single greatest thing you or anyone can do for the environment is not have any children. That's like, miles above any efforts what your diet consists of can do regarding your carbon footprint. To be internally consistent most vegetarians who are such on the lines of environmentalism should not reproduce.
Ohh... oops...
Yep.
You are missing one crucial thing here... the possibility of reducing consumption. You assume that there's only one way of doing things. Basically the equivalent of saying "which do you value more, human civilisation or a reduction in fossil fuel consumption?" Can't we have both?
Why don't you start eating chicken or bacon instead of leafy salads if you want to do your part? If you really are invested in lower environmental impact then doing this would be internally consistent.
Eating less would "decreases energy use, blue water footprint, and GHG emissions by around 9 %". While that's a positive direction it isn't as big a difference as having a heavier chicken or pork diet than a vegetarian diet.
I have no problem with a reduction in overall consumption. But the issue still remains that how you consume whatever calories you do eat still has the biggest impact on the environment.
So Vegans and Vegetarians frequently end up with veggies that might be a lot higher than normal. Kind of depressing.
http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/food-carbon-footprint-diet (infographic link)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_carbon_diet (check the sources for further reading)
These numbers don't jive with the actual studies produced (this is not a study, this is a blogger interpretation of other data). There is something wrong with it. It might be that they only limited it to the US produced items while the average diets come from all over the world or it may be due to the emission numbers per item aren't correct. For example, there is a discrepancy between emission of beef in her article as compared to her emission calculator. There are also other weird places where her numbers are off that harm her goals. Like near the beginning when she says that food production could account for nearly a quarter of human emissions whereas the numbers I'm showing put it at closer to half. How did she get that wrong when "half" is shocking and a "quarter" is trivial considering it is feeding the entire top of the food chain on the planet as well as all animals we feed. If I plug in the same values from the 2015 study that shows lettuce as having three times the emissions of bacon, the chart gets flipped.
So something is out of whack here. The majority of numbers show vegetables as the single biggest contribution to greenhouse gases in the US where food is concerned with meat being 25% like I established above. Perhaps they've underestimated the amount of waste produced by vegetables whereas beef goes to waste far less frequently? Not sure.
I think we should stick to the actual studies not blogger's interpretation of data. Something is askew with her math that does not match any of the other data you or I have provided.
All that aside, she is describing four classical distributions. High meat, average meat, no meat, no animal products. There are alternate combinations that would be better that include poultry and pork more than some veggies and such. You could actually get far lower than a Vegan and still eat meat if you optimized your diet around emissions rather than type of food.
In the article there are references to studies that indicate that CAFO systems produce more CO2 emissions than grazing, so even the claim that intensive livestock farming is more environmentally friendly is highly debatable at best.
I'm sorry, but you found a non-peer reviewed resource. I would request you go back to the drawing board and find an actual study like I have been contributing to discussion. Let's get our facts from experts and not from websites solely devoted to attack meat.
