http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/sb973/sb973.pdfMaster of the Skies said:And let's see you cite the information that the 'vast majority' of agriculturalists and biologists claim there is no moral justification for it. Ignoring the fact that whether there is or is not a moral justification for it isn't even in the domain of their field because I'm curious enough to see if you even have a shred of evidence for your claim to ignore that fact that it is being used as an appeal to authority.
"According to the USDA, growing crops for farm animals requires nearly half of the U.S. water supply and 80% of its agricultural land. Animals raised for food in the U.S. consume 90% of the soy crop, 80% of the corn crop, and 70% of its grain."
"In tracking food animal production from the feed through to the dinner table, the inefficiencies of meat, milk and egg production range from a 4:1 energy input to protein output ratio up to 54:1."
The leader of the Centre for Global Food Issues as well as the last three heads of the USDA have recommended vegetarian diets as an important step towards a sustainable future.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/02/un-report-meat-free-diet
Also the fucking UN.
It's not an appeal to authority, it's an appeal to facts that are so obvious that figures in authority can't deny them. And as my field is economics, I can certainly tell you that the economic impact of meat trading is universally considered negative by neo-classicalists and Keynesians and all that alike.
Care to refute the evidence, or are you just going to make ad hominem attacks?
EDIT: Also I resent the implication that an expert in the field doesn't have the right to make a judgment on the moral value of an action. Biologists who understand how pigs or cows operate on a physiological level are absolutely the most qualified to tell you whether or not killing them and eating their dead bodies is a moral action (and people such as Peter Singer, Neal Barnard, Dean Ornish, T. Colin Campbell, and a shit ton of others, have made that judgement rightfully so, all of whom I might add do so with essentially no criticism from others in their fields). Sure, ethical philosophers and PETA idiots can spout all they want, but in the end, who is more qualified to say whether or not it's reasonable to kill and eat animals than one whose entire life is devoted to the study of those animals or the effects of those actions on the body?