Veganism, Vegeterianism, Omnivorism

[santaman2000]

Upthread some have been mentioning how our recent ancestors kept foods (vegetables and fruits) and ate more or less locally produced food. Even my grandparents (all born between 1888 and 1898) had imported bananas regularly. But they did indeed can or preserve almost all of the veg and fruits they grew as well. By the time the rural South was reliably supplied with electricity (some time in the 1920s) they also began freezing veg extensively.

My favorite preserved fruit was and always will be figs. My paternal grandmother and several of her children all kept fig trees. My maternal grandmother kept aplle trees, pear trees, and apricot trees. And oh! Yeah, pecan trees!

 

[Prophecy]

Veganism is practical for you, but it's impractical for society as a whole because most of society is incapable of obtaining enough vegetables without the environmental impacts of huge industrial monoculture farming. But you's already refused to believe that they are indeed environmentally worse than ranching (the damages I've already discussed)

Again, I posted a study at the start of this thread that showed how veganism would be much better for the environment. But of course you don't do science so I suppose yes just come to your own conclusions.

What you're not addressing is the fact that growing vegetables doesn't have to be a monoculture. What is a monoculture is growing fields full of animal feed which we are currently doing across the world.

Look at the study.

 

[Prophecy]

See below

 

[Prophecy]

I have another question for you Prophecy; if we don't eat meat, what are we supposed to do with the carcasses of all the deer, rabbits, wild hogs, and other assorted critters we have to slaughter every day to keep them out of your vegetables while we grow them?

I've deleted my lazy response. Let me ponder this one and I'll come back to it later with a better answer, because actually it is a good question.

EDIT: How do we protect fields of crops and fodder at the moment?

 

[Prophecy]

I think you are a city dweller. Compost? Are you joking?
I suggest you get a large pot, fill it with nice soil, and start growing potatoes. Establish a small compost and fertilize the potatoes. See how many years it works.

In a modern agrucultyre with high yeald plants you need large amounts of fertilizer, well balanced chemically to the state of the soil and what is expected to grow.
Most farmers fertilize before and during the growing season.

Drive through Holland in summer. Countryside smells of cows manure and pig manure.
As they have many high intensity animal ‘factories’ they have lots of manure.
Mix the solids with a certain % of urine, then water and make a slurry.
Spray it on.
That is how it is done.

My oldest friend in Sweden is an old hippie. Established one of the first Organic farms there, before the word Organic was invented.
Cows are a hugely important part in his oldfashioned organic agriculture.
Main crops - potatoes, peas and cauliflower.
Byproduct - the best beef I ever tasted, the best butter I ever had and the best kefir I ever drank.
Yes he does compost. All the vegetable remains are either ensilaged for the cows winter food, or composted for his family fruit and veg plot.

Have you ever visited an organic farm?

Farming doesn't have to be the way it is. There are more sustainable options out there. There is a smarter way to farm, without animals.

Heres some interesting links for you:

http://millahcayotl.org/five-steps-to-promote-veganic-farming-today/

http://www.goveganic.net/article112.html

 

[The Noble Savage]

Prophecy cites two studies in his posts that he uses as evidence that veganism is better for the environment.

This one--http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/3/034015/meta--actually argues that we could feed more people by moving away from feeding animals for meat and concentrating instead on growing more cereals and legumes for direct human consumption. It does insist that meat production uses more water than farming.

I note, though, that much of the funding for this study comes from the cereal industry.

"This work also benefited from contributions by General Mills, Mosaic, Cargill, Google, PepsiCo, and Kellogg to support stakeholder outreach and public engagement." Does this mean bad science? No, not necessarily.

His second citation--https://www.skepticalscience.com/how-much-meat-contribute-to-gw.html--directly contradicts his claim:

"There are often suggestions that going vegan is the most important step people can take to solve the global warming problem. While reducing meat consumption (particularly beef and lamb) reduces greenhouse gas emissions, this claim is an exaggeration.

An oft-used comparison is that globally, animal agriculture is responsible for a larger proportion of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions (14-18%) than transportation (13.5%). While this is true, transportation is just one of the many sources of human fossil fuel combustion. Electricity and heat generation account for about 25% of global humangreenhouse gas emissions alone.

Moreover, in developed countries where the 'veganism will solve the problem' argument is most frequently made, animal agriculture is responsible for an even smaller share of the global warming problem than fossil fuels. For example, in the USA, fossil fuels are responsible for over 10 times more human-caused greenhouse gas emissions than animal agriculture."

That's a pretty strong caveat.

I think it's important to note, again, that these are his citations, not my own, offered as evidence for his very strong claim.

I leave you gentlemen (and ladies) to decide for yourselves whether he's arguing in good faith.

 

[The Noble Savage]

For an academic, readable, balanced answer to this question, please see:

https://theconversation.com/is-a-ve...vironmentally-friendly-than-eating-meat-71596

Two important points the author makes:

"From this we can say that a vegetarian diet does deliver a decreased carbon footprint. But it also shows us that food miles and global distribution can be the least of our problems. This is because food wastage can be up to 20% of food purchases and food losses across the supply chain can be far greater than this. Food waste in turn increases the carbon footprint which counters the positive gains. And perishable fresh fruit and vegetables are more likely to be thrown away than fresh meat and fish."

"Ultimately, we cannot say that eating a vegan or vegetarian or meat diet is any better for the environment. This is because all can be appropriate if production systems are sustainable, there is no waste and positive health outcomes are achieved. There are clearly trade-offs in choosing foods. Air freighting of green beans from Kenya into the UK was seen as unsustainable because of air miles but it also supports up to 1.5m people and livelihoods in some of the poorest regions of Sub-Saharan Africa. It’s not just meat that increase greenhouse gases. Rice – produced on 163m hectares, around 12% of the global arable area – has one of the greatest plant carbon footprints because it produces a lot of methane. But a fall in production of rice is not only unlikely, it could also disrupt greenhouse gases held in the soil. But there are different ways to do things – draining off paddies at particular times in the growing season, for example. Or using different fertilisers or rice varieties that are less susceptible to the heat."

 

[Prophecy]

"Half of your points are already covered and I've already repeated myself several times."

I totally agree

So then why do you keep asking the same questions to me? Honestly if you look back you'll see that you've asked me the same questions more than once, and I've already replied to them.

 

[Tonyuk]

If vegans, vegetarians, etc.. don't wan't to eat meat then fair enough, but there's no way i would give up eating meat. Both for flavour and the nutrition it gives.

 

[The Noble Savage]

In the interest of fairness, the research I've looked at pretty uniformly points to beef as the most water-intensive source of food. What does that mean exactly--I'm far from sure.

For instance, http://www.pnas.org/content/111/33/11996. The authors disclose no conflict of interest, by the way.

As they note, "Our calculations reveal that the environmental costs per consumed calorie of dairy, poultry, pork, and eggs are mutually comparable (to within a factor of 2), but strikingly lower than the impacts of beef. Beef production requires 28, 11, 5, and 6 times more land, irrigation water, GHG, and Nr, respectively, than the average of the other livestock categories. Preliminary analysis of three staple plant foods shows two- to sixfold lower land, GHG, and Nr requirements than those of the nonbeef animal-derived calories, whereas irrigation requirements are comparable."

In short, staple crops require less land use, and comparable water use, when compared to dairy, poultry, pork, and eggs. Of course, land use needs to be scrutinised carefully, wherever you stand on this issue, because some kinds of livestock like sheep and goats typically graze on land that is not ideal or useful for growing crops (and we must also consider the environmental impact of monocrop farming, whether for direct human consumption or animal feed).

As this study points out-- https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11367-010-0161-x --at least in Australia, "most of the grain and fodder crops used in the three red meat supply chains we studied in Australia are produced by dryland cropping." It's important to note, however, that this study was funded by "Meat and Livestock Australia." Make of that what you will.

It seems that the best environmental choices, from the perspective of water conservation (at least with what we know now and what I've been able to find), are fish, poultry, and pork, followed by beef. But of course, pastured or free-range beef might well figure differently in that analysis. It's not reasonable to measure total rainfall on a pasture and divide by the weight of beef grazing on it, obviously. And apparently, some of the most inflated claims do just that.

George Monbiot, writing for the Guardian, and reviewing Simon Fairlie's Meat: A Benign Extravagance, says, "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."

So even here, the issue is complex, nuanced, and bedevillingly hard to figure out.

 

[Janne]

Prophecy, the latest link you posted:
Do you realize this is the old way of growing crops? It seems almost like they imply that it is a new, unique way...
For people brought up in close ties to farming, this is old, old news......

Yes it can be done like this, but the clip omits one hugely important point: The yield per area is very, very low. There is absolutely no way the available agricultural areas in the world would support even a small fraction of the worlds population if the majority went Vegan.

The tiny number of Vegans today can only exist and be fed due to the vast majority of people being Omnivorans.

Vegan, Organic agriculture? Forget it. Utopia.

As it is today, Britain can not feed itself. Imports huge % of its foodstuff. This with a super intense and scientific agriculture.
You UK guys would be chewing grass if importation stopped. And last a couple of months.

Make a little unscientific project:
For everything you eat, write it up with the country of origin as stated on the packaging . If unsure or no country of origin, clearly marked, check the EU imposed mark and see which letters are at the top.


We did it for our son's school project about 12 years ago in UK.
Shocking to see how much travelling food has done. All food.

Organic food does not travel well.

 

[santaman2000]

I've deleted my lazy response. Let me ponder this one and I'll come back to it later with a better answer, because actually it is a good question.

EDIT: How do we protect fields of crops and fodder at the moment?

In fairness, we rarely eat much of the meat from animals killed to protect crops anyway; for various reasons:

-1) Most crops are grown outside hunting season and:
--a) It would be illegal to eat game animals such as deer (vermin such as hogs are perfectly legal year round though)
--b) Again, since crop seasons are outside hunting (autumn/winter) seasons the meat is usually full of parasites.
--c) Many of the animals killed are generally not considered "food" animals anyway (rats, crows, etc.)

-2) The sheer number of some of them makes eating them impossible; particularly feral hogs

Small home gardeners (growing for personal use) kill rabbits, deer, wild hogs, etc. themselves. larger commercial farms hire professionals to kill them in much larger numbers. In turn the professionals sometimes charge recreational hunters to take the actual shot.

 

[Janne]

Apart from Boar, the wild animals do not eat or destroy too much of the crops in Scandinavia. Most farmland is concentrated in areas that are not so much forested.
I think that % they damage is accepted by the farmers, specially if they have hunting rights. Nobody says no to some venison or moose meat!

Sweden too has an open season for Boar. PITA animals.

 

[santaman2000]

Apart from Boar, the wild animals do not eat or destroy too much of the crops in Scandinavia. Most farmland is concentrated in areas that are not so much forested.
I think that % they damage is accepted by the farmers, specially if they have hunting rights. Nobody says no to some venison or moose meat!

Sweden too has an open season for Boar. PITA animals.

My earlier post might have been confusing regarding hunting seasons. Boar (and most other vermin) are legal to hunt year round in almost every state. It's only the game animals that have a "closed" season.

 

[Janne]

No, clear as day. I just wrote we have a similar system.

our wild boar and your pigs cause billions in damage. In Sweden hunters do what they can to cull them, but are losing the battle, the boar are spreading.

My old friend ( the old hippy) is desperate. I spoke to him a couple of years ago, and his main meat intake was from the boar he shot in his fields. He can not sell the meat as it has to be tested against parasites (trikinosis), and the test is expensive.

Wonder what the vegans say about culling of vermin? Boar can devastate a field in a couple of nights.

 

[santaman2000]

Yeah, it can't be sold here either. And yeah on all other points.

 

[Janne]

I do not know how your wild pigs taste, but Boar is awesome.
A couple of farmers in Sweden tried to cultivate a pig/boar hybrid when I lived there, but had problems enclosing the fields where they lived. Pigs are easy to keep in a field, boar virtually impossible. Hybrid difficult.

A Boar Goulash can turn any Vegan Omni, I can promise you that!
With Spatzle, lingonberry sauce on the side.

Man, I am hungry, I just has a Lentil and Calalloo soup for lunch.

 

[Toddy]

No it wouldn't.
Did you know that burnt human flesh smells like bacon ?
That's true incidentally. (Edit, see below, there's a disagreement ! )

I don't usually get involved when folks do the whole Omnivorous vs Vegan debate from a moral standpoint.
I just don't eat meat. I heartily disapprove of something suffering so that humanity can 'farm' it, or trap it and not end it quickly and as painlessly as possible, though.

My background education is science. It's a very broad science background, and the first thing is not 'prove it', but look most carefully at your theories, and understand your own (and that of the data you quote) inherent bias.
So, with that caveat in mind....my tuppence ha'penny worth.

Growing crops to feed animals means less crop food for humans. The crops we grow to feed animals would feed more people than the animal flesh does. That's right across the board, from dairy to beef, from pork to fowl and fish. You cannot get more than you put into a system, except where the power comes from the Sun. The closer you are to the power source, whether that be algae or fruits and seeds, it's still closer than animal flesh or milk, and thus the greater the output.

So, the argument about we couldn't feed us all if we went vegan is nonsensical.

The issue is really that some of humanity like to eat animal flesh. Ah, but, and it's a huge but, they're culturally choosy about what animal flesh they are prepared to eat.
Hunter gatherers, far from being 'omniverous' as in eating anything at all edible, are every bit as choosy as those of us in the so called first world. Humanity is a choosy eater.
We choose what we want, and are prepared to eat. We know of this as being true right through recorded human history. In the West we don't eat humans, now, but there are still isolated pockets of cannibalism in the world, after all, humans are animals too, we are literally meat.
So to take the omiverous argument to a logical conclusion one must accept that if one eats meat, and the issues are human overpopulation, then only cultural norms stop humanity from cannibalism....after all humans taste like pig, and the meat eaters advocate, as Janne does in the post above, that roast pig/ bacon would turn vegans into omnivores.

Not happening.
Is it ?

My personal view is that if meat is cheap, then something suffered for it. I won't be responsible for something suffering so that I can have dinner. Not in a time of enormous surplus. Not when it's entirely unnecessary for my life. So, there's my bias, and my issue.
I do eat honey, I do eat cheese. I find I am becoming reluctant to eat cheese because the dairy industry has to keep the cow in regular calving to keep her in milk, and we're told that half of those calves are male and are generally slaughtered as infants.
Reality is though that most are reared on as beef cattle and slaughtered 'humanely'. I am also heartened by articles like this one.
https://thefarmuponthehill.com/2017...eally-happens-to-male-calves-on-a-dairy-farm/
and that I actually know both farmers and folks who hunt, shoot and fish. They are all people who care enough to make it clean and quick at the end.

It is possible to bias the fertilising rates to 90% female calves. That makes a huge difference to the numbers, doesn't it ? and even when unbiased the numbers are actually 60/40 female to male calves.
A calf is not a disposible item in a dairy farmers accounting. It's a potential asset to be grown on, at cost in feed and care, to be come part of the beef industry. They are not routinely dispatched or brutally reared, since they are wanted to thrive to produce as good a carcase as possible.

Death comes to every living thing.

We killed off the wolves and other predators in these islands, there's only us. The euphemistically named, "natural attrition' of the herds has been stopped. The land wouldn't naturally support the numbers that would very quickly manage to breed and live even if we did all turn vegan overnight. (60,000 too many deer on the Scottish hills as it is)
On the other hand we wouldn't be breeding millions of hens either, so that would slowly wind back. The boar is back though, and it's as much a pest as the deer are and the rabbits were. Do we introduce the wolf packs again ? I know that would not go down well.

My choice is to be vegetarian. I find meat repugnant, I cook it, and serve it, but not in the pots, pans, dishes, cutlery, utensils, etc., that I use for anything else. Meat is seperate, in my fridge and freezer too. Even at camp. "Which frying pan, Toddy ?", "If it's deid it's the big one with the red bit on the handle, if it's veggie any of the other pots". Pretty simple really.

I am very close to living vegan, only honey and cheese are left.
I lived entirely dairy free for several years. Dairy free cheese is like gluten free bread. You can eat it, you can thrive on it, it's perfectly healthy and if you had nothing else, it'd do.
It's not very good though. I think if I had grown up not knowing good bread, and good cheese and honey, then yes, I could happily be vegan.

I will not be called immoral for my dietary choices. I do consider carefully the ramifications of my choices....and that's true whether it's animal, fish, fowl, insect or the horrendous effects of agricultural industries. I am a very practical lady even if my choices do not suit you.

I dislike the thought of where the leather that we use comes from; if I think too hard on it, I go barefooted though because plastic shoes are truly dire, and even here I cannot live in wellies. Here's a thing though; I don't like the smell of leather any more than I like the smell of meat. I walk carefully on this one. I can see no excuses for 'fur' as a fashion statement though. I don't live in the arctic, I don't live in the meso or neolithic, I don't need fur. I really wish there were better leather substitutes.

At the end of the day, think about your choices, make the choices you can live with that destroy or hurt some other creature as little as you can.

After all, it's only dinner, and humanity is not only the cooking ape, but the thinking, and emotional/anthropomorphising one too, and a little courtesy goes a long way in helping folks think about things you'd like to see changed.

M

 

[santaman2000]

Janne we don't have wild "pigs." We have "feral" hogs. They've been in the wild for between 100 and 400 years and have reverted to the wild boars they were originally bred from. As to their taste, it's wildly variable. Lie any meat the taste is dependent upon what the animal was mainly eating when killed. Hogs are omnivorous and spread throughout many environments (they're an infestation in every state) Add to that the different food sources for them as seasons change.

As a result of all that the taste varies wildly. General tendencies are:
-Sows are better and more tender than boars (less testosterone and lighter muscle)
-Animals killed in fall or winter taste better than other seasons because of the mast crop (the same tendency applies to domesticated hogs as well)
-Younger animals are better than older ones

Toddy, the only thing I'd disagree with in your post is the smell of burned human flesh. I've smelled my own on several occasions as well as that of others (including two aircrewmen burning to death at a crash early in my career) Burned human flesh smells much like burning leather. I suppose my experience vs yours could be the difference of smelling the human outer layer (skin) burning vs the underlying swine flesh (bacon)

 

[Janne]

Young sows. Old sows are ok but tough. Mature boars are uneatable.

I have read too that pig flesh smells similar to human flesh when burned, but my experience from cutting through human skin, muscle and fat with laser and electrotomes is that the smell is different.