"Expert" my curvacious backside!!!

[Bubblingbrooks]

Given the rate of contamination of the food supply that is currently practiced in the US, increasing longevity isn't going to be a problem much longer...

That and the push for flu shots. Stats show that they cause more deaths then they save

 

[Farmfresh]

Given the rate of contamination of the food supply that is currently practiced in the US, increasing longevity isn't going to be a problem much longer...

Not to mention the connection between GMO soy and lack of fertility in lab animals. No, I think the problem will be pretty well solved.

 

[Wifezilla]

Yeah but, WZ, the vast majority of meat consumed by Westerners IS IN REALITY grain-fed. And I am under the impression that there is quite-clearly insufficient grassland available to feed the world's population the amount of meat they eat NOW, let alone if they ate the amount of meat you yourself eat and promote.

"we've been using the wrong comparison to judge the efficiency of meat production. Instead of citing a simple conversion rate of feed into meat, we should be comparing the amount of land required to grow meat with the land needed to grow plant products of the same nutritional value to humans. The results are radically different.

If pigs are fed on residues and waste, and cattle on straw, stovers and grass from fallows and rangelands food for which humans don't compete meat becomes a very efficient means of food production. Even though it is tilted by the profligate use of grain in rich countries, the global average conversion ratio of useful plant food to useful meat is not the 5:1 or 10:1 cited by almost everyone, but less than 2:1. If we stopped feeding edible grain to animals, we could still produce around half the current global meat supply with no loss to human nutrition: in fact it's a significant net gain.

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.)

Overall, Fairlie estimates that farmed animals produce about 10% of the world's emissions: still too much, but a good deal less than transport. He also shows that many vegetable oils have a bigger footprint than animal fats, and reminds us that even vegan farming necessitates the large-scale killing or ecological exclusion of animals: in this case pests. On the other hand, he slaughters the claims made by some livestock farmers about the soil carbon they can lock away.

The meat-producing system Fairlie advocates differs sharply from the one now practised in the rich world: low energy, low waste, just, diverse, small-scale."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/sep/06/meat-production-veganism-deforestation

Another thing to keep in mind, you don't have to have a nice, flat plowed stretch of land that can have huge machinery run over it in straight rows to grow pasture. Hilly, rocky land totally unsuitable for growing wheat easily grows the grass the cows would rather be eating in the first place.

Monoculture and factory farming IS unsustainable. Meat production when used as part of an integrated system is not only sustainable, but beneficial to animals and people.

"It is a claim that could put a dent in the green credentials of vegetarians: Meat-free diets can be bad for the planet. Environmental activists and vegetarians have long taken pleasure in telling those who enjoy a steak that livestock farming is a major source of harmful greenhouse gases.

But research has shown that giving up meat may not be as green as it seems. The Cranfield University study found that switching from British-bred beef and lamb to meat substitutes imported from abroad such as tofu and Quorn would increase the amount of land cultivated, raising the risk of forests being destroyed.

Production methods for meat substitutes can be energy intensive and the final products tend to be highly processed, the report, which was commissioned by the environmental group WWF, found. The researchers concluded: A switch from beef and milk to highly refined livestock product analogues such as tofu could actually increase the quantity of arable land needed to supply the UK."
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/a...rm-environment-eating-meat.html#ixzz1EcmSaF5s

 

[Wifezilla]

Also, what does "grain" have to do with "vegan"

I should have been more specific. I tend to mentally add soy in the category with wheat, corn, and other stuff that gets gooberment subsidies and tends to make people sick.

 

[FarmerChick]

I always hate statements like this about the flu shots and other vaccines.....no one knows the "true" stats on how many are spared to not be hospitalized and how many the shot does help from becoming that "deathly" ill from the flu. I doubt the shots kill more people than it saves. When one lives thru severe flu or doesn't get it bad enough to be hosptialized, it sure doesn't make a statistic list.

also flu "related" deaths are almost never categorized as flu death...the complications become the death certificate.

if the flu shot KILLED MORE PEOPLE than it might possible save, I doubt it would be on the market truly

 

[lwheelr]

also flu "related" deaths are almost never categorized as flu death...the complications become the death certificate.

Actually, the opposite is true. If a person has the flu, and dies of pneumonia, stroke, or other illness that is actually a secondary or accompanying illness following a hospitalization for flu, they are counted in the flu statistics.

They didn't used to count them in the statistics, but they now do.

 

[FarmerChick]

I read govt stats just a bit ago and they said the opposite, that flu related ---the complications were listed as primary cause LOL

ok, great wide web so many conflicting sites lol

 

[lwheelr]

Most reports outside of those listings include all flu related deaths. Statistics quoted by vaccine companies always include all flu related deaths, and a few more besides.

There's a huge difference between the risks of flu in healthy populations, and the risk of flu within the elderly, immune compromised, respiratory compromised populations.

A lot of times, the statistics quoted are skewed. They'll leave out one group, in either direction, depending on the point they want to try to "prove", and they'll state it in a way that is misleading.

That said, there is increasing evidence that flu shots do not significantly improve outcomes for children under the age of 5, or for the elderly (vaccines have a far lower response rate among the elderly, even with much higher doses). There were also higher than average deaths and negative reactions this year as a direct result of flu shots in the very young, so it is not a stretch for some sources to claim that the deaths outweigh the lives saved - this is the conclusion they came to based on those two reports.

 

[patandchickens]

By no means is all "meat" beef. How much grass-fed poultry or pork is there on the market? Basically none.

Even with just talking at beef, yes, obviously cattle graze *before* they are put on grain but my impression is that that adds significantly to the weight of meat and if you didn't do it you wouldn't get as much meat offa them.

And even with the current system, there is by no means any way to feed all of 6 billion people, or whatever the current (let alone 40-years-hence!) world population is, on a WZ style high-meat diet.

WZ, most of the vegans I know don't eat all that much soy either -- other legumes, yes, and nuts, but not huge amounts of soy -- and they are mostly pretty particular about WHOSE soy they eat and HOW.

They are not all uneducated grain-and-soy-snorkin'-back nitwits.

I'm not agreeing with the study quoted in the article; I'm just not agreeing with YOU either LOL I think the sensible and realistic thing is an in-between path.

JMHO,

Pat

 

[Neko-chan]

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