Asymmetrical Information

Vegetarian animals don't evolve sharp teeth like canines. Look at your front teeth... you're supposed to be an omnivore, just like a bear or chimp.

All living things have rights, and vegetarians kill plants with abandon. Only fruitarians who only eat fallen fruit are eating ethically.

Meat isn't more expensive than substitutes, once you account for the amount of processing you or another needs to engage in to many items edible.

Vegetarianism merely transfers the methane production from the cow to yourself.

The much greater bulk of food you'll need to eat will counteract any savings in GHG by refraining from eating meat.

Hippies are stupid and can't do their maths right.

Meat is so very, very much more fun to cook. Start there, beautiful. And avoid making your mother cry at all costs.

oh - and that's from someone who's given up meat for the next 40-days-other-than-Sunday. Feel to eat veg for fun, profit, or Jesus. But eating only vegetables for the World? Puh-leeeeze!

Jane,
Here's a thought for future "Waiting for Friday evening drinks" lull:
Pigovian taxes on, er, meat, milk and eggs?

if you are committed to not eating meat then you should remove those teeth that accomplish the task. While you're abpout that business, you may as well remove your large intestine. It isn't clear to me that science has discovered a way to defeat the enzymes that break down meat protiens but I'd say the first two are sufficient, and make for much better conversation than mere body piercing.

I am not convinced about the greenhouse gas part. Plants pull CO2 out of the atmosphere as they grow. The CO2 is returned to the atmosphere when the plants die and decompose. So there is no net effect (except for the very small fraction of dead plants which become fossil fuels). If the plant is eaten by an animal like a cow or a human the CO2 also returns to the atmosphere but no more CO2 than would return anyway when the plant died and decomposed. As for other gasses like methane perhaps there is an increase (although decomposing plants can also release methane) but these gasses are usually considered less worrisome than CO2 because they have a much shorter life time in the atmosphere.

Give up the sun. The sun is responsible for keeping the planet all warm and toasty, so you should immediately avoid all sunlight. After all, those greenhouse gases wouldn't be able to do what people claim they are doing if the sun wasn't there warming everything up in the first place.

"Vegetarian animals don't evolve sharp teeth like canines. Look at your front teeth... you're supposed to be an omnivore, just like a bear or chimp."

And people are naturally supposed to fly through the air in huge air-filled metal tubes, propelled by fluids which they naturally extracted from the earth, naturally refined, etc., yes?

And birth control methods like condoms -- so very natural, eh? Wearing clothes -- isn't that why we're born in khakis?

The "it's natural, therefore you must do it" argument is possibly the single most morally bankrupt argument anti-vegetarians make. Period.

---------------------------------------------

Jane, as someone who was a serious meat-and-potatoes guy for 19 years: it's really not that hard to give up. You can find substitutes for most anything in the chicken, beef (except steak), salmon, and shrimp food groups that are fairly close to the original, and the rest you can learn to live without.

As a chronically skinny person myself (5'10", 125 soaking wet), I can honestly say I never lost weight as a result of being a vegetarian. Just make sure you're getting enough protein and fat (doesn't hurt that I love cooking with butter and/or olive oil) and you'll be fine.

And there's no reason to be an irritating vegetarian at the dinner table. I honestly don't care whether my dinner companions chow down on veal or whatever else: I'm not responsible for their moral decisions. I've been on both sides, and I think I can fairly safely say that people who think vegetarians are irritating dinner companions make much worse dinner companions than most vegetarians do.

"Longtime readers know that I think everyone should make a serious moral committment to reducing their greenhouse footprint"

Then the question is which balance of meat or vegetables has a lower total footprint, which probably depends on where you live. The only easy answer is that anything organic is out of the question( http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article2283928.ece ). Does it concern you that the anti-GW campaign is about eliminating sources of one of the core byproducts of life itself?

First: When you want meat, try to eat fish instead. It lacks a lot of the downsides of other types of meat, is healthier, but is still high protein. Sockeye salmon, which eats algae, is both high in healthy oils and also doesn't bioaccumulate pesticides as much since it's only a first level consumer. And it tastes good! :)

Second: Why not argue against meat subsidies? Why are we as a nation paying people to pack our excess grain into the stomachs of animals?

Oh Good Christ - is there anything left on this fucking planet that I DON'T have to second guess or ascribe some previously untapped guilt?

They're ANIMALS. They're a RESOURCE. They have good points and bad ones. Eat them. Or don't. Save the moral tailspin for things that really matter.

I became a vegetarian this year because of many of the reasons you listed, and it hasn't been too bad.

Other than a quick question on motive and jokes about how yummy the meat is, dinner with strangers hasn't changed. I frequenting Asian restaurants (Thai and Vietnamese) for tofu dishes, and I get bean dishes at Mexican places.

Finally, all new vegetarians should be issued Mollie Katzen cookbooks -- they are amazing.

"everyone should make a serious moral committment to reducing their greenhouse footprint"

"If something is morally right, one is obligated to do it even if it makes no difference to macro outcomes."

"Not accepted: that it won't make an actual difference in global warming."

It would not reduce your greenhouse footprint, much less affect climate change. If you actually have some moral objectives then you must first gain some understanding of the subject. If so, you would not choose to stop eating meat, you would seek out meats that are produced in ways that reduce your greenhouse footprint. Veggies too. Food, fiber and energy in general. etc.

Meat is worth the price of carbon offsets.

http://www.carbonfund.org/

"Only fruitarians who only eat fallen fruit are eating ethically." Yes, but what do you do with the seeds? Do you just throw away the tree's children?

I think that consequences matter in assessing at least this moral question. I don't believe for a second that you would feel an equal moral obligation (all other things being equal) to reduce your carbon footprint if the Earth's orbit were 20 million miles wider, or if we had the technology to turn Calcium Oxide + atmospheric CO2 into Calcium Carbonate at negligible cost and very high volume. I think that it is mainly because you perceive bad consequences arising from CO2 emissions that you see this as a moral question.

That said, consequences can be indirect. Perhaps you will set a good example and through that example encourage others to behave similarly. So, I’m not going to focus on whether the CO2 reduction you’re planning is large enough to make a difference – not even if it’s one 6 billionth of the necessary size to make a difference.

Still, if consequences are at the core of this, it's worth considering whether there are other more convenient ways to achieve the consequences you want (i.e. a particular size CO2 reduction). For example, would you be better off if, instead of abandoning mean, you made a donation to help a factory in the third world increase its energy efficiency (reducing CO2 emissions by a comparable amount, while also making that factory more productive and therefore slightly more likely to generate wealth for its owners and workers). Alternatively, you could make a donation to buy and protect some of the rainforest, which will prevent a reduction the quantity of CO2 which is removed from the atmosphere by trees while preserving a little of the planet's biodiversity.

This type of trade off is at the core of carbon offsets. Why does your carbon contribution need to be personal, even if we take it as given that it needs to be made? Do you value the day to day feel that you’re making a difference, or just the difference itself?

"Longtime readers know that I think everyone should make a serious moral committment to reducing their greenhouse footprint; this seems like an easy place to start."

I'm sure Jane Galt knows all about the "Tragedy of the Commons." The essence of it is that people, though behaving perfectly rationally, can do things that have very bad effects. It isn't that the people are immoral, its that they face incentives that lead them into actions that have undesirable third-party effects. It doesn't do a lot of good to blast fishermen for overfishing--they are just pursuing their own interests like the rest of us. Instead, the government must alter their incentives to reduce the overfishing.

This muddled thinking about "greenhouse footprints" is really disappointing from Jane, who is usually sensible. Government policies like carbon emmsions taxes that would change incentives to reduce pollution make sense--but it makes little sense to brand someone immoral for eating a cheesesteak or a ham sandwich.

If you say global warming caused by humans is a serious problem and do not examine your own activities with a view to limiting your own tiny share of the impact, you have no moral standing when you lecture others. I can't stand celebrities who fly around in their private jets telling the rest of us that we are evil because we merely exist. Stick to your guns but do examine the relative impacts of vegetarianism versus switching your sources of protein.

Before giving up meat, I'd like to see studies that show whether doing so diminishes brain function. I think that eating meat, and fish in particular, is what has allow the development of our higher cognitive abilities and drives our increasing IQs.

Longtime readers know that I think everyone should make a serious moral committment to reducing their greenhouse footprint;

If your goal is to minimize your “greenhouse footprint” – wouldn’t it make more sense to give up a job that requires air travel than give up eating meat?

Pythagoras & Aristotle weren't exactly handicapped by their vegetarian habits nor was Carl Lewis/Ivan Lendl.

"Before giving up meat, I'd like to see studies that show whether doing so diminishes brain function."

<sarcasm>Yes. Becoming a vegetarian has made me less intelligent.</sarcasm>

For crying out loud--where do people come up with this stuff? There's no measurable difference between kids raised vegetarian and those not--their diet for the crucial periods of brain growth being identical anyway.

Are you dating a liberal?

(Not that it's any of my business, but your posts have taken a dramatic turn to the left of late.)

Now, should you stop eating meat? Certainly not for global warming. I don't know if James was referencing the same thing that I read, but I saw a study that showed that about the same CO2 emissions are produced from a field of grass whether cows eat the grass or not.

Also, to one of the earlier commenters. If you feel that you aren't an "irritating vegetarian at the dinner table" and yet hold the smug position that "I'm not responsible for {other's} moral decisions." I'm betting that more than a few of your friends think you are, in fact, an irritating vegetarian.

C'mon! We're going to bring morals into it? The only difference between right-wing, extremist, Bible thumping, Christianists and left-wing, secular, Gaia-nut, tree-huggers is what? The definition of your 'morals'.

Now I really like you Jane, and thought the bloggingheads set was great (you really should do more video/TV), but I want to pass on my usual solution to envirnuts who wonder what they should do. It's the general solution that I wouldn't encourage in your specific case, though I definitely encourage it for the rest of the environuts/lefties!

The only responsible answer to environmental problems is to kill yourself. You outright stop contributing to the problem. It's like VHEMENT but on steroids.

This serves 2 purposes: you reduce the pollution/sprawl/whatever you're concerned about, and makes the world much more pleasant for the rest of us by having one less dirty hippy.

One of the tests of the rationality of any environmental position is to use the dead body comparison. If your new enthusiasm achieves no more than suicide would achieve, then arguably you should seek a new enthusiasm. Almost all 'prohibitionist' enthusiasms fail the dead body test.

If livestock are a leading cause of greenhouse gas emissions, then the only sensible course is to kill them. Leaving them alive will only make the matter worse.

Of course, once they are dead, it would be wasteful not to eat them.

I'm always shocked about how defensive and angry meat eaters get when they even have to think about the existence of vegetarians. Why get so mad? You eat meat, we don't, live and let live, no? Calling people "hippies" and "liberals" b/c of what they choose to leave out of their diet? It is petty. The only thing I can conclude by this kind of reaction is that meat eaters feel deeply threatened by something non-meat eaters do. But what?

"Also, to one of the earlier commenters. If you feel that you aren't an "irritating vegetarian at the dinner table" and yet hold the smug position that "I'm not responsible for {other's} moral decisions." I'm betting that more than a few of your friends think you are, in fact, an irritating vegetarian."

Sorry, but no. I actually don't discuss my vegetarianism much. I've had people (with whom I've eaten any number of times) find out and ask me if it's really true. I'm not responsible for the decisions others make, and I don't believe I have either the responsibility or the right to try to enforce my morals on them. I know it's a rarity in this world, but I honestly believe in live and let live (within reasonable limits, of course ;)).

It's not smug at all (and I apologize if it came out that way--I was typing in between soothing a cranky six-week-old :)), it's disinterest and a respect for other people's choices.

I would think as a libertarian, Jane at least would appreciate the reasoning. :)

-----------------------------------------

"I'm always shocked about how defensive and angry meat eaters get when they even have to think about the existence of vegetarians. Why get so mad?"

I often wonder the same thing.

One more thing:

"The only difference between right-wing, extremist, Bible thumping, Christianists and left-wing, secular, Gaia-nut, tree-huggers is what? The definition of your 'morals'."

I'm sorry, I don't understand the question. Is there one?

Yes, morals are a matter of definition and first principles (at least among reasonable people). So what?

Or are you claiming that all vegetarians -- even ones who initially only posted their comments to provide Jane with a different perspective, from which she could take her own conclusions -- are somehow equivalent to abortion-bombing rightwing nutjobs? And, apparently, whaler-bombing leftwing nutjobs? For the record, I'm neither. I'm just a person who has decided that being a vegetarian makes sense to me, and who is willing to share my experiences if solicited. Jane solicited opinions.

Yes, but what do you do with the seeds? Do you just throw away the tree's children?

You swallow them whole and then scatter your feces broadly across the earth. It's the natural way!

But let's review the final paragraph of Jane's post and see if it's even answerable:

Not accepted: that it won't make an actual difference in global warming. Refraining from stealing won't lower the crime rate appreciably, either; nor does my refusal to illegally download MP3's actually influence outcomes in the music market. If something is morally right, one is obligated to do it even if it makes no difference to macro outcomes.

So...if it's an honestly-held moral position, then what kind of answer is even possible here? "Your morals suck"? That's probably not too convincing. I'm not one of those people who freaks out at the site of an ocassional vengetarian dinner, assuming it was prepared competently. But good luck taking away meat entirely -- I see no cause for that and won't live like that if meat is an option.

Also worth noting that when low-income agrarian societies start to increase their wealth, meat is one of the first luxury goods they begin consuming. The odd wealthy westerner's moral qualms have yet to explain that one.

Jane,

Regarding environmental impact.

I think cattle sink more CO2 then most people realize. Sun + CO2 = Grass,
Grass + Cow = A bigger cow and lots of sunk CO2 (from the grass) during this process.

Furthermore, cattle are a more enviromentally sustainable food source then many vegetables because they can graze in areas that it would be impossible to produce crops in. Since prairie and other ecosystms evolved with ruminant grazing (buffalo, elk, etc) grazing helps maintain the health of the prairies.

Don't neglect the impact of transportation on CO2 impact of particular foodstuffs. Beef can be produced more locally and therefore generates less transportation related CO2. Trucking vegetables from California or flying them from overseas increases CO2 production associated with vegetable consumption.

If you really want to help the environment don't change your diet work harder to end agriculture subsidies and biofuel mandates. Ending subsidies is the most powerful way to increase environmental sustainability of food production. It also has the added benefit of markedly improving the quality of life for residents of third world countries.

Cheers,

TJIT

Regarding ethical issues.

If animal care is the driving issue for a persons dietary decisions the diet that best meets that issue is a vegan diet. Simply because vegans use no animal products.

The second best diet in ethical terms is a vegetarian + beef only diet.

Worst are diets that remove beef and continue to consume poultry, egg, and dairy products. These products are far more intensive and the animals within them have much less of a chance for natural behaviors.

Most of the animals in beef production are grazing outside in a manner that is very similar to how buffalo and other ruminants in the wild existed. Cattle spend most of their lives exisitng as their ancestors did in the wild. Plus the added benefits of supplemental food during storms and veterinary care when needed.

Cattle will only spend three to four months of their life in feedlot conditions. Even their they have plenty of room to move around and groom themselves and other cattle in the pen with them.

Their death is far more humane then those that wild animals experience.

Furthermore, the meat from one cow can feed many many people. The meat from one chicken can only feed 1-2 people. So you impact far fewer animals by eating beef then you would by eating poultry products.

Eric,

You said

You can find substitutes for most anything in the chicken, beef (except steak), salmon, and shrimp food groups that are fairly close to the original, and the rest you can learn to live without.

If you are going to be a vegetarian be a vegetarian. A vegetarian diet can provide lots of variety and some really good food. Using synthetic products to replace what you are giving up seems to defeat the purpose of a vegetarian diet.

Ryan,

You said,

When you want meat, try to eat fish instead.

I don't follow fishery issues much but regarding environmental issues I know there is an ongoing discussion on.

1. what the capacity of the fisheries are and is it being damaged by increasing fish consumption.
2. The potential negative impact some fishing techniques have on the environment.

So the idea that eating fish will reduce your impact on the environment as opposed to other forms of meat is open to debate.

Ryan,

Don't want to give you too much grief however, you also said

Why not argue against meat subsidies? Why are we as a nation paying people to pack our excess grain into the stomachs of animals?

1. Commodity subsidies for crops like corn, wheat, cotton, etc.

2. Biofuel mandates

Both lead to excess grain production and environmental destruction. They are both designed and driven to take money from taxpayers and give them to farmers and corporations like ADM.

They are not designed and driven as a "meat subsidy" More people recognizing that fact will make it easier to eliminate the ag subsidies.

Cheers,

TJIT

Megan says:

If something is morally right, one is obligated to do it even if it makes no difference to macro outcomes.

So then is it morally right to stop eating meat in order to reduce, for example, rainforest destruction that is done to increase cattle grazing areas?

If you think you have a moral obligation to stop eating meat then you ought to consider the impact of all your activities in that light.

For example, if you think global warming is bad and that CO2 emissions are bad then do you feel it morally right to stop emitting CO2 from fossil fuels burning? If so, you face some big lifestyle decisions. In theory you could move to the country, buy some land, disconnect from the electrical grid, and farm organically. You could put up a wind mill to generate electricity and burn wood for fuel (being careful to plant trees as fast as you chop them down.

I guess my reaction to all this is that if we are causing problems rather than behave as ascetics (which is really no fun) we should instead put our efforts into a search for technological solutions. The vast bulk of the populace of all the countries just do not want to try that hard to be moral. They do not want to define right and wrong in a way that places such a huge burden on them to stop doing wrong.

Your own suffering will have no measurable impact. You have better odds of improving things if you promote the development of lower impact solutions that are cheaper than the current higher impact ways we do things.

"Also worth noting that when low-income agrarian societies start to increase their wealth, meat is one of the first luxury goods they begin consuming. The odd wealthy westerner's moral qualms have yet to explain that one."

Why would they have to explain it? Being wealthier doesn't make you more moral (in anyone's sense of the word), it just makes you more able to afford what you already want.

"You said

You can find substitutes for most anything in the chicken, beef (except steak), salmon, and shrimp food groups that are fairly close to the original, and the rest you can learn to live without.

I have to say this is one thing that really freaks me out about some vegetarians."

Why? There are a lot of existing recipes out there that call for chicken, ground beef, etc. Why should I stop making all the recipes I grew up with just because I don't want animals to suffer in the process?

"If you are going to be a vegetarian be a vegetarian. A vegetarian diet can provide lots of variety and some really good food. Using synthetic products to replace what you are giving up seems to defeat the purpose of a vegetarian diet."

I make plenty of meals with no fake meat. But variety being the spice of life, why shouldn't I use substitutes? What's "defeating the purpose"? The purpose is not to avoid food I like, the purpose is to avoid food that requires an animal's death. Substitutes manage that quite nicely. And taste good, too.

Give up meat...and start getting your protein from beans? You may soon be contributing some greenhouse gases of your own!

But seriously, most vegetarians I see are frail and withered. Not fat, but no lean muscle mass either. It's not really a healthful look and besides, a smart person like you should be able to find more efficient ways to make the world a better place.

Eric,

You wrote (responding to TJIT):

There are a lot of existing recipes out there that call for chicken, ground beef, etc. Why should I stop making all the recipes I grew up with just because I don't want animals to suffer in the process?

Well, see, there are distinctions to be made here. Substitutes for things that go into a recipe and emerge in pretty much indistinguishable form are one thing. Ground beef, as you say, is handy. It would be a nuisance to have to think about where I'd get my protein complement tonight if I've had a massively long day and am just about up to boiling water. Your average non-veg. student in the same position would boil the water, make spaghetti, and top it with canned pasta sauce with either ground beef or tuna added. I ate like that myself for several years, and I still do when I'm exceptionally worn out. Quick, easy, edible, fortifying. It'll do.

But I think TJIT was alluding to the more elaborate veg. productions that do their best actually to look and taste like identifiable meat items — faux turkeys constructed entirely of tofu and the like. I agree with TJIT: that stuff is odd to the point of creepiness. If you stopped eating meat because you disapprove of killing animals, do you really want a, say, Thanksgiving dinner centerpiece carefully crafted to look as much as possible like an animal carcass?

This stuff is, though, as old as vegetarianism (the Western strain, anyway). For your amusement, here's what G.K. Chesterton, writing in the Illustrated London News in early 1910, says was on the menu of a Food Reformer's Christmas Dinner published in a self-described "progressive" periodical, the Christian Commonwealth, in late 1909:

Mock Goose; Mock Fowl; Nut Sausages; Mock Fish Cutlets; Chestnut Savoury; and a Christmas Pudding to be made with nut-suet and with "preparations such as Vegeton, Marmite, Carnos, etc., which are sold by all Health Food Stores."

Ummm . . . do you feel hungry? I don't.

as a counterpoint to eric: way back when i was a vegetarian, i was having serious trouble maintaining my body weight. granted this was a long time ago and way predates that early 30's metabolism change. and yes, it did make my mamma cry.

that being said, (note that i'm hardly an expert,) but wouldn't the greenhouse emissions for livestock net 0? it's not like the animals -create- the nitrogen and carbon, they get it from their feed, which gets its nitrogen & carbon from the atmosphere, right?

and finally, vegetarians aren't necessarily annoying at dinner -- even the palm has salads after all. its just the sanctimonious ones or the people who drag you off to vegetarian restaurants where they try to fake fila dough and such that put me up a tree.

Will ignores the fact that one important greenhouse gas is methane, which is mass-produced by cattle (as belches, not as farts, by the way).

This is particularly important because there's general agreement that humanity could choke off its production of methane a lot more easily than it can choke off its production of CO2. Roger Pielke Sr. takes the position that the majority of man-made global warming IS being produced by methane and soot, rather than by CO2. He's regarded as wildly optimistic on this point by most climatologists; but James Hansen agrees that they may be responsible for up to 30% of it, which definitely indicates that we need to focus hard on this issue.

Jane,

I question the hypothesis that meat-eating contributes to global warming. Should humanity, en masse, switch to vegetarianism, would we not produce greater amounts of methane (just have the anecdotal evidence of myself consuming grain cereals).

Some ask why some meat-eaters denigrate vegetarians. Of the vegetarians I have known (quite a number), a significant fraction of them are smug and condescending when confronted with people eating meat while dining with them. I suspect that many meat-eaters have similar experiences and are incorrectly assuming most vegetarians behave this way.

As for myself, I tried vegetarianism for about a month when I was in graduate school and found the experience wanting. Meat is tasty. A truly healthy human diet should probably include some, though we consume far more meat and vegetables than for which we were designed.

Jane:

I won't debate your concern with AGW. You are an intelligent and well-read person. That you and I disagree on the persuasiveness of the evidence does not offend me. Because I respect your opinion, your concern is a call for me to reexamine my position. What does offend is the way many on your side of the argument (not you, Jane) equate disagreement with lack of intelligence and morality. Arguing that skeptics of AGW are the equivalents of Holocaust deniers is a good way to end debate, but not change opinions.

What does that have to with a vegetarian diet? Very little, except that, by analogy, it helps answer the question many of your posters asked: Why do meat eaters seem so sensitive to discussions of a meatless diet? The answer is that too many vegans have lectured us in the past on our moral failings. PETA equates eating chicken with the Holocaust. Somehow, we find being scolded for eating meat -- for doing what we deem natural and appropriate -- less than desirable. It's difficult to separate the topic from this larger cultural context.

It's one thing to say you don't like the taste of meat and would prefer something else. No one takes offense at such a declaration anymore than you would take offense at my saying I don't like watermelon. However, if you couch your reluctance to eat meat on concerns for the treatment of the poor creatures who are raised and killed so people can eat them, it's all but impossible to not take some offense. "If we were as kind and as sensitive as you, we'd not meat, too", is the subtext of your declaration.

While you did not perform your moral calculus to derive a rule of universal applicability, that is what you ended up with. If it's bad for you, Jane Galt, to eat meat, it's wrong for the rest of us, too. That shouldn't keep you from trying to develop moral rules. We all need to develop such rules. Some of them would apply only to us; others, by their nature, are more broadly applicable. Just don't lecture me on eating meat as we are about to sit down to the table. It doesn't aid the digestion.

I'm a vegetarian for about a decade though I loved cooking meats before.

I guess I don't get the global warming argument: yes, but from what one understands via this web site I'm stunned the crappy treatment of farm animals isn't a much much more serious issue for you (whether or not it makes you vegetarian is a different issue).

The idea that the vegetarian has to be annoying at the dinner table is just wrong: I'm one of a few vegetarians I know with happy marriages to non-vegetarians, so, hell, that works.

Arguments about canines and large intestines are silly: that's why vegetarianism is a moral choice. Certainly there isn't a physical necessity for meat, as people have pointed out above citing examples of obviously physically/mentally fit vegetarians. Just means you have a choice. In fact, the attributes you are citing really make it easier to think of the other way: you have the choice to eat meat, if you want, and if those particular moral issues don't bother you enough to dissuade.

"Animals in industrial farms suffer when they are killed" -

Do they suffer more from those deaths than they would have suffered from a natural death? I once heard Temple Grandin (perhaps the world's best cattle-chute designer, who is also autistic) asked if she felt bad about designing chutes to lead cattle to their slaughter. She pointed out that death in a well run slaughter house was quite a bit more humane than starving to death, a slow lingering illness or being attacked by a predator and watching it eat your innards while you were still alive (she was pretty graphic about that last possibility).

She used to (and perhaps still does) rank slaughter houses for McDonalds, to make sure that they treated the animals well. On an NPR show, I heard someone from McDonalds talk about the difference Temple Grandin made. For years, they had had activists come in saying "be more nice to the animals when you kill them", but that gave them nothing useful to act on. Grandin came up with a numerical way to rate the slaughter houses (she's found that the sounds the animals make are the best guide), so that McDonalds would have usable standards from which to make decisions.

Thus, if TJIT is right, cattle don't necessarily suffer a lot either during their lives or at the end, certainly less than they would 'naturally' suffer. And of course many would never live at all if we didn't eat meat. So I'm not sure that concern for the cows should stop us from eating beef.

So I'm not sure that concern for the cows should stop us from eating beef. - Ann

...I'm stunned the crappy treatment of farm animals isn't a much much more serious issue for you.... you have the choice to eat meat, if you want, and if those particular moral issues don't bother you enough to dissuade. - Sanjay

Ann, it's really quite simple. If you were as sensitive to such issues as Sanjay, you wouldn't eat meat. It is a moral choice, and you (and I) have made the wrong one. The fact that most farmers and ranchers like their animals and try to treat them humanely (or that McDonalds and others try the same) is of no import. Sanjay and others, who have made the right moral choice, know in their hearts what animals think and feel. Based on this knowledge, they know that eating meat is wrong.

Fortunately for us and his spouse, Sanjay is rather tolerant of our moral short comings. Many of his friends are not as tolerant and are doing their best to save our souls by outlawing farming methods their hearts tell them are cruel. Others worried about the plight of animals break into laboratories and set the animals free.

Honestly, I don't see enough incentive for individuals to become vegetarians. It doesn't necessarily make you thinner, happier, or healthier. A lot of vegetarians are excessively focused on reasons that just don't convince the average person to adopt the lifestyle.

Personally I think a lot of current agricultural practices are damaging regardless of whether or not they involve animals. Vegetarianism typically peaks at a pretty low % of population unless it involves religion or some other coersion. The damage is still going to happen.

But if meat eaters shift their demand to eating less meat, but more expensively produced high quality and low-impact meat at that...I think that could make a big difference. I'd rather preach the joys of an occasional grass-fed steak than a diet that often involves trying to make people forever forgo a type of food they love.

TJIT - To me this defeats the purpose of a vegetarian diet. If you are vegetarian for ethical reasons eating an animal that was killed by putting a hook in it and then "drowning" is not going to reduce the amount of cruelty in your diet.

Well, is the pain of all animals equal? Is the pain of a fly or a bacterium equal to, say, a monkey?

And 'cruelty' wasn't the only reason Jane gave for vegetarianism.

1. what the capacity of the fisheries are and is it being damaged by increasing fish consumption.
2. The potential negative impact some fishing techniques have on the environment.

yes, but... compared to what?

So the idea that eating fish will reduce your impact on the environment as opposed to other forms of meat is open to debate.

Alright. I'm up for that debate.

The only problem with your statement is that there are no meat subsidies.

Then I've misread something here...

http://www.ewg.org/farm/progdetail.php?fips=56000&progcode=sheep

P.S. - There's more than one "Ryan" on this board. I'll start labeling my posts as Ryan W. I Shoulda seen it coming...

"Of the vegetarians I have known (quite a number), a significant fraction of them are smug and condescending when confronted with people eating meat while dining with them. I suspect that many meat-eaters have similar experiences and are incorrectly assuming most vegetarians behave this way."

Of the meat-eaters I've known who have known I'm a vegetarian (quite a number), a significant fraction of them think it's hilarious to tease me or are downright hostile about trying to "trick me" into either catch me in an unintended hypocrisy or into actually eating meat. Yet somehow I'm not assuming that all meat-eaters are total jerks.

Assigning a particular attribute, exhibited by some members of a class, to all members of a class, preemptively, has a name.

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"However, if you couch your reluctance to eat meat on concerns for the treatment of the poor creatures who are raised and killed so people can eat them, it's all but impossible to not take some offense. "If we were as kind and as sensitive as you, we'd not meat, too", is the subtext of your declaration."

I have no doubt that that's how some people perceive the subtext, for whatever reason. If that makes them feel guilty, I fail to see how it's my problem. Some people only use recycled paper, too, but I don't see you accusing them of secretly hating you for murdering trees.

"Just don't lecture me on eating meat as we are about to sit down to the table. It doesn't aid the digestion."

I find it equally distasteful to be lectured on not eating meat in the same situation. And I have been, numerous times, for reasons I still cannot understand. Many meat-eaters really do come off as having an amazingly guilty conscience.

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"I'd rather preach the joys of an occasional grass-fed steak than a diet that often involves trying to make people forever forgo a type of food they love."

Please, quote a single vegetarian on this page who has tried to convince Jane to stop eating meat. Just point out one.

Offering advice and personal perspectives, sure. I'm failing to see these evangelical vegetarians you're claiming are all over the place, though.

That's the other thing that irritates me about this debate; there are a million and one straw men that get set up, and none of them accurate. Most vegetarians--certainly all the ones I know--are just trying to live their lives according to their own moral decisions.

Yeah, PETA uses pretty fiery rhetoric (find me an NGO that doesn't). Actual vegetarians just don't behave that way, at least until/unless confronted by people who are reacting exactly the way several of the posters in this thread are behaving.

Also, I really dislike the "vegetarians are sallow, undernourished shells of people" straw man. Yeah, I'm a skinny guy (as mentioned). But I'm heavier than I was when I ate meat. And if I lined all my friends up in a row, you'd never be able to pick out the vegetarians based on physical characteristics.

Being a vegetarian is no different than not; you have to eat a balanced diet. Once you've been one for a year or so, you know exactly how to get the proteins and fats you need.

Why would they have to explain it? Being wealthier doesn't make you more moral (in anyone's sense of the word), it just makes you more able to afford what you already want.

Point being, humans are evidently hardwired to enjoy meat as part of a balanced diet, exceptional personal choices notwithstanding.

That being the case, it's going to be an uphill battle to pick one's morals (which, if they are morals and not simple personal preferences, ought to have a defense capable of being addressed to others) on the basis of opposing a universal preference.

Someone already pointed to the obvious -- Ms. McArdle has a job that requires a lot of air travel. If she really believes in AGW as a moral problem, as opposed to a simple "oh, crap! Let's start doing things" problem, she can massively reduce her carbon footprint tomorrow morning by switching to a job that keeps her local.

I don't expect her to do it and highly doubt she will; IMO it's a ridiculous proposition. But if the position is truly moral and not simply preferencial, the absence of such action hints of hypocrisy.

Go vegetarian, Jane. That leaves more meat for me! :)

Eric,

That is quite a chip you have on your shoulder. You may have missed it, but I was actually mostly agreeing with you.

Actually Yancey, I don't see any indication that you were agreeing with Eric at all in your post- how is bringing up the tired anecdotal "smug" vegetarians agreeing with him? What exactly were you agreeing with him about? And how is it a chip on one's shoulder to point out logical fallacies and the over reliance on strawman arguments? Why is it when someone demonstrates passion and conviction in an argument you accuse them of being over emotional?

Oh NOES, not cattle methane.

Hey, just thank your lucky stars that the pioneers in the Wild West were eco-minded enough to kill all the Buffalo they did back then, rather than letting that methane be unneccesarily expelled into the atmosphere.

Otherwise, we'd be much much worse off today; right? Somehow I don't recall it being taught this way in history class, but we probably just didn't understand how environmentally friendly our ancestors were when they killed off hundreds of thousands of buffalo.

It was the environment they were saving... right?

Ok, surely this is nonsensical, but switching to vegetarian to avoid possible cow methane environmental warming reactions is much less certain a calculation than figuring the global warming reduction from my ancestor on the wagon train shooting buffalo, isn't it?

"Since 1750, methane concentrations in the atmosphere have increased by more than 140 %. The primary sources for the additional methane added to the atmosphere (in order of importance) are: rice cultivation, domestic grazing animals, termites, landfills, coal mining, and oil and gas extraction."

http://sparce.evac.ou.edu/q_and_a/global_warming.htm

So, we have rice farming being worse than cattle. And right behind cattle? Termintes. Damn those evil coporations and their termite farms....

So after we tell the Chinese not to buy any more cars, we'll also tell them to stop eating rice.

Ann,

I stated that a fraction of vegetarians I know are smug and condescending towards meat consumers, and that this may be why some non-vegetarians denigrate vegetarians in general, and do so incorrectly as I pointed out.

Now, it may be true that Eric feels persecuted by some meat-eaters, but I have never observed such behavior in person, just anonymous comments I read here and elsewhere from some non-vegetarians. I have witnessed some non-vegetarians display curiosity and bewilderment about vegetarianism, but never direct hostility and maliciousness. Unfortunately, I can't say I have never seen the reverse.

Vegetarianism only lasts insofar as the practitioner is already disinterested or disgusted with meat, in addition to any ethical qualms he may have.

It's a lot easier to not eat something when you don't find it appetizing.

Since I love animal flesh, my foray into vegetarianism lasted only about a week before I broke down for some homemade fried chicken at Sunday Dinner. Halfway into devouring a drumstick someone said, "aren't you vegetarian?" I realized what I was doing and shrugged, "I guess not."

Can we just skip all the foreplay and go right to the logical conclusion? If you really, truly, seriously, once-and-for-all want to minimize your ecological footprint, then go f*cking kill yourself (preferably after you have walked yourself out into the woods, naked, and using a non-toxic method to do yourself in). And hey, if you want to minimize other people's ecological footprint, then go f*cking kill them, too. It's best if you lure them out into the woods first, though.

Jane, I recall reading recently an article about meat being grown in the laboratory using porcine stem cells, and fish flesh being grown in the lab using some kind of fish cells. I understand it's still quite a distance from being ready for prime time, but eventually we'll be able to have animal meat without animals.

Just wondering what that implies for vegetarianism.

Stuart,

An interesting point. Yes, it will probably be possible to commercialize such a process at some point (I have no idea when).

Such a development would remove the moral consideration of the animal treatment from the equation. I can't say what moral considerations would rise due to the process itself. If none, then vegetarianism would rest solely on the health benefits and simple personal taste.

Lord, David Walser is sort of a dink. I mean, yeah: the way animals are treated bothers me. It might not bother you as much. That it bothers me is -- I don't think anyone can argue with this -- a moral issue and I make a moral choice. It doesn't bother my wife as badly (although it bothers her plenty, so she buys halal meat I think usually). That doesn't make her immoral or below my standing somehow, it just means, we're sensitive to different things. There are people who would say I'm morally inferior because I don't worship Jesus. I don't think they're "wrong," I just don't think they're right either. What Walser is doing is exactly what Eric says he does!

Ann's point is a bit off. I do appreciate efforts to make more humane slaughterhouses (although they appear to be much outnumbered at the moment by terrible ones. I've actually as part of some research been through a slaughterhouse btw) but that's one of many places where, frankly, animals are being treated horridly in large scale (and many small scale) farms.

They have things like protein from spirulina, though that's not exactly the same. The big difference is that there's a lot more DNA per ounce of protein, and too many nucleotides in your diet (from DNA) ain't healthy.

How about restricting yourself to free range meat and dairy? More expensive and harder to find, but not impossible. I have an advantage here as I hunt and have a local source of free range eggs which more urban areas will find much more difficult. http://www.eatwellguide.org/ has a searchable list of restaurants and food producers that should help with this.

Debbie

Unless one believes animals have souls, or soul-like entities (soulets?) of infinite value, there is no morally categorical imperative to be a complete vegetarian. This isn't meant to demean such a belief, just to highlight that without it categorical vegetarianism (ie, no meat ever) doesn't make sense.

The reason is that the metric of utility changes (all ethics is utilitarian at heart - people simply use different measures). Imagine 5 people who eat meat every day. Convert one to vegetarianism, there is one more good, saved person on the earth. Get 2 out of the 5 to trade in a few days of Beef Stroganoff for a bean burrito? No souls saved. There are still 5 people who are hurting animals - committing an act of infinite negativeness - every single week.

But if you don't count animal's lives having infinite value, ie, they don't have souls, but there is some other positive metric of not eating meat (CO2 production say), it is better to get 2 out of 5 people to go meatless 4 days a week, than it it get one of those 5 people to become completely vegetarian. (27 meat days a week versus 28.)

Really, if you don't look at your chicken McNugget and see a soul, there isn't a categorical (of kind rather than of degree) reason not to eat it once in a blue moon. Just like there isn't a morally categorical reason not to go on a nice Sunday afternoon drive along the seashore with the top down (decreases fuel efficiency!).

Someone should come up with a new word for this - a balancist. When friends ask you, you can say "If I was at home I'd nuke some red lentils and put them over rice with spinach but since I'm out at a restaurant with my friends, give me leg of that succulent lamb, baby."

Here is a quote that typifies there attitude: above all a worship of power and a disdain for reason and truth.

"The victor will never be asked if he told the truth."
Adolf Hitler

ANyway, my main point is that Naziism shows what can happen when people throw off the constraints that reason puts on us. Once we move away from absolutes then, as Dostoievski warned, "all is permitted." It is no longer possible to condemn eeven the most appalling barbarism.

"By what standard," the Nazis would ask you, "do you judge us, when you have yourself admitted that there are no standards." Relativism leads down a dark and dangerous road.

Sanjay,

Yep, that's me. Some sort of a dink, but only the nicest sort.

Look, you are the one who defines the decision to eat meat as a moral question, not a dietary question. I don't look down on you because you prefer a different diet. You, however, do look down on me because I eat meat. At least to that extent, you consider yourself my moral better. I realize you did not make your choice with the idea of looking down on the rest of the meat eating world, but that is part and parcel of your choice. It is this fact that I think most meat eaters react to when a vegetarian explains their choice in terms of morality: I care about the animals (and you don't). That's an invitation to a debate. Many meat eaters will take up that invitation. Don't want a debate? Fine. Explain your diet (if you need mention it at all) in terms of taste or dietary need. Saying you don't like the taste of meat does not invite debate. Nor does saying you are trying to keep your cholesterol down.

Similarly, saying you don't believe in Jesus is not an insult to those who do believe, unless you explain your unbelief with "I don't need such a mental crutch to get me through the day", or "I'm too smart believe in such nonsense." Calling believers weak minded or stupid enough to believe nonsense is apt to provoke a reaction a little stronger than, "Oh, that's nice."

Sanjay, none of us can make moral choices without determining that many (if not most) of our compatriots have made the wrong choice. That doesn't mean we need to wear our choice on your sleeve as a challenge to all we meet.

But if you don't count animal's lives having infinite value, ie, they don't have souls

Beliving that animals have souls doesn't have to mean that you believe that their lives have infinite value. In Judiasm, it's believed that animals have a different kind of soul (and it is explicitly agnostic about the animal afterlife), and there are certain duties mandated in relation to animals, including painless slaughter. But while vegetarianism has been called "the highest form of Judiasm" because it represents a respect for all life, it's still not considered mandatory under the religion.

Just out of curiosity if anyone else know more...I know it seems more efficient to use the same amount of feed we use for cattle to feed more humans than the meat would. But they can digest 1-4 beta bonds that we can't, as well as food we won't eat like distillers grain, so those plants might not be better used for human consumption.

Thanks for the clarification Yancey, though...

"I have witnessed some non-vegetarians display curiosity and bewilderment about vegetarianism, but never direct hostility and maliciousness. Unfortunately, I can't say I have never seen the reverse."

I don't understand why your anecdotal hostile people are a stronger basis for an argument than Eric's anecdotal hostile people (except, of course, on an experiential level for you).

So I guess I'll just say you seem to have a chip on your shoulder and we'll call it a draw?

Melissa - Would distiller's grain grow in areas where other grains wouldn't? I never quite understood why certain grains were grown for livestock. Are they more disease resistant? Or do they keep better without spoiling? Horse corn seems pretty dry, so I'm guessing it stores better?

Sanjay,

You said

That it bothers me is -- I don't think anyone can argue with this -- a moral issue and I make a moral choice. It doesn't bother my wife as badly (although it bothers her plenty, so she buys halal meat I think usually).

In all other cases federal law require that the animal be unconscious and insensate to pain before being killed.

I don't know how the urban legend that Halal meat is more humane then other meat got started. It is incorrect and is another unfortunate example of well meaning people switching to products that cause more animal suffering then the product they stopped consuming.

Regards,

TJIT

The much greater bulk of food you'll need to eat will counteract any savings in GHG by refraining from eating meat.

Um... no. The general rule is that the reduction in biomass as you go up the food chain is by about a factor of 10. So 1000 lbs of corn can support 100 lbs of cow can support 10 lbs of human. Or 1000 lbs of corn can support 100 lbs of human.

This ignores the processing required for vegetables and meat, of course, which I can't do off the top of my head.

The smug vegetarian who views the rest of benighted humanity from on high is a very rare creature, but they do exist. I spent a few months playing in a gigging string quartet with two such, and it was dispiriting. If the hosts at a wedding have put out a spread for the musicians that's largely (though certainly not all) meat, bolstered with a vast tureen of minestrone, it's a bummer when the second violinist admonishes the waiter that she doesn't touch "flesh," while her boyfriend the cellist inquires into the possible "animal products" in the soup.

That's all reasonable. I mean, if you're trying to avoid eating something, you have every right to know whether what has been set out for you contains it or not. What was not reasonable was the subsequent spirited verbal depiction of floating bovine blood corpuscules directed towards the two of us who did actually want the soup, and were eating it at the time.

But, as I said, people like that are extraordinarily rare, and it's just my lousy luck that I spent a good fraction of a year in constant professional contact with these two. I'm now in Marin County, CA, Veggie Central, and I don't see this sort of thing happening. The vegetarians I know are civil people who just don't eat some things.

Ryan W,

It strikes me that you have a sincere concern for the environment. I would like to hear your thoughts on biodiesel and other biomass alternatives to petroleum fuels.

Thanks,

Tony

Ryan,

You posted part of one of my responses and a question for me in a post above. My statement you posted was

"To me this defeats the purpose of a vegetarian diet. If you are vegetarian for ethical reasons eating an animal that was killed by putting a hook in it and then "drowning" is not going to reduce the amount of cruelty in your diet."

Your reply was

Well, is the pain of all animals equal? Is the pain of a fly or a bacterium equal to, say, a monkey?

Comparing a trout or a monkey which are sentinent animals with a well developed central nervous systems and the associated ability to feel pain, to a single cell bacteria that has no nervous system misses the point completely.

My point was that if you are a vegetarian for ethical reasons you defeat your goals and desires when you start consuming a product whose production causes more animal suffering as a replacement for a product whose production causes less animal suffering.

I would argue that given the number of sentinent animals required to feed one person and the way the animals live and are killed eating fish instead of beef clearly causes more animal suffering not less.

You also said

And 'cruelty' wasn't the only reason Jane gave for vegetarianism.

Ryan W,

I had said that there were no meat subsidies you replied with a link to a website that showed that there was Sheep meat subsidy Thanks for finding that link for me I was not aware that there was such a subsidy.

I did dig out some details, from your link. The first important details was that this subsidy did not start until fiscal year 2000. The other crop subsidies have been around since the 1930s so I think it is understandable that I was not aware of this brand new subsidy.

The most interesting thing I found was the total amount of farm subsidy payments over the 1995 to 2005 fiscal year period your link covered. This was $164,709,485,104
or ballpark 165 billion dollars. On the same page I also found the total lamb meat payments were $86,188,052 ballpark 86 million dollars. Please correct my math if I get my calculations wrong in what follows. Math errors happen but here we go.

If you divide the lamb meat payments by the total payments to get how much the lamb meat payments contributed to the total ($86,188,052 lamb meat payments) /($164,709,485,104 total farm subsidies) you get 0.00052 percent. Looking at only corn subsidies which amounted to $51,261,278,801 compared to sheep meat subsidies of $86,188,052 you find that the sheep meat subsidy is 0.000157 percent of the corn subsidies.

So the meat subsidy you found amount to five one hundreths of one percent of the total farm subsidies and 1 one hundreth of one percent of the corn subsidies.

I am gobsmacked at how much money the federal government hemorhage on farm subsidies and what a tiny portion of it the meat subsidies are. Given the actual figures from the website you helpfully provided I think it is abundantly clear that sheep meat subsidies have zero impact on grain production.

By the way are you on a vegan / dairy free diet? Because dairy payments in the same time period were $2,129,365,049.

Ryan W,

You said

Melissa - Would distiller's grain grow in areas where other grains wouldn't?

"distiller's grains are what is left after the mashing process at brewery / distillery. This is one of the steps in the process the brewer / distiller uses to convert grain to booze / beer. There is no such species of plant as "distiller's grain"

You also said

I never quite understood why certain grains were grown for livestock.

Livestock merely provide a convenient way to save the federal government money by helping to get rid of all of the surplus grain the farmers produce in order to get bigger subsidy payments.

The factors you mentioned

Are they more disease resistant? Or do they keep better without spoiling? Horse corn seems pretty dry, so I'm guessing it stores better?

Sorry about the snark, I just could not help myself.

Cheers,

TJIT

Ryan W,

You said

The general rule is that the reduction in biomass as you go up the food chain is by about a factor of 10. So 1000 lbs of corn can support 100 lbs of cow can support 10 lbs of human. Or 1000 lbs of corn can support 100 lbs of human.

One way of looking at it (using round numbers to make the math easy) is 100 pounds of cow = 400 quarter pound (meal size) portions. Assuming each person weighs a 150 pounds we get 60,000 pounds of people supported by 100 pounds of cow. (400 meals X 150 pound of people fed by each portion)

Your reply also ignores the fact Melissa and others have made. Cattle can digest grasses and other forage humans can't. During this process cows sustain ecosystem health, sink CO2 and generate usable food for humans. Something that is completely ignored in the rule of thumb you provided.

One example of the ten to one rule.
TJIT -
http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/4e.htm

I've read this from a few biology textbooks regarding the energy pyramid. It refers to the ratio of producers to consumers in a natural ecosystem. In other words, it's referring to populations sustained over time in a natural ecosystem rather than on a farm.

Here's another source, which I just skimmed and may be biased, but at least provides specific numbers regarding actual agricultural products;

Tracking food animal production from the feed trough to the dinner table, Pimentel found broiler chickens to be the most efficient use of fossil energy, and beef, the least. Chicken meat production consumes energy in a 4:1 ratio to protein output; beef cattle production requires an energy input to protein output ratio of 54:1. (Lamb meat production is nearly as inefficient at 50:1, according to the ecologist's analysis of U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics. Other ratios range from 13:1 for turkey meat and 14:1 for milk protein to 17:1 for pork and 26:1 for eggs.)

Your reply also ignores the fact Melissa and others have made. Cattle can digest grasses and other forage humans can't.

The marginal cost of a pound of beef would probably be measured in land that could be used for other purposes. Or perhaps I missing some nuance of the agriculture industry here.

I have a good friend whose grandfather runs a cattle ranch out in Colarado, not too far from Vale. (In South Park, actually) The aquifers there are being drained faster than they can be replaced. So cattle farming, at least in that part of Colorado, isn't really sustainable. There's not enough water. At least not when the tourist industry also keeps growing. I don't know how well this applies to other locations.

I'm not sure how cows 'sink CO2' though, or how the rule of thumb ignores cows sustaining ecosystem health.

It strikes me that you have a sincere concern for the environment. I would like to hear your thoughts on biodiesel and other biomass alternatives to petroleum fuels.

Thanks. :)
I haven't really looked into biodiesel for about 8 or 9 years, though. Back then, it seemed like biodiesel would be economically preferable if gas ever got above ~$3 a gallon, pre-tax, and stayed there. I'm sure they've made some advances since then, but unfortunately I haven't had the time to figure out what would be the new economic tipping point. Sorry if that's not too helpful.

A lot of farm equipment could economically be converted to alternative power. Slow moving electric vehicles with a range of 20 miles would work fine on a farm. There've been some promising USDA feasibility studies suggesting that agriculture would be one of the more cost effective industries to convert to alternative energy and I've seen it used to good effect, at least as a suplimental energy source (for wells, etc.) in places where it'd be hard to connect directly to the grid.

The other crop subsidies have been around since the 1930s so I think it is understandable that I was not aware of this brand new subsidy.

Certainly. I'm not accusing you of anything.

By the way are you on a vegan / dairy free diet?

I eat tons of fish (sockeye salmon mostly) and a little chicken. Very little milk, but that's for health reasons as much as anything. I tried going vegetarian, but I need a lot of protein to function so a veggie diet is rough.

Thanks for the clarification on "distiller's grain." I'd never heard of it before so I was a little in the dark.

Regarding corn for animals; I know they grow 'horse corn' etc. which humans don't eat, but that may just be corn that's left in the field a little longer rather than an actual different cultivar. I wasn't sure. Figured I'd ask.

Ann,

I don't have a chip on my shoulder. I am neither offended by vegetarians in general, nor vegetarians who "wear their choice on their sleeves", to borrow David Walser's phrase. I was simply attempting to explain some non-vegetarian's reactions. I find it more likely that most of these nonvegetarians are reacting in response to some vegetarian's moral preaching on the matter (this is my own personal observations). Unfortunately, the response is usually indiscriminate.

Ryan,

Regarding your questions on 'horse corn' and other matters. There are two types of corn grown in the US, sweet corn and field corn. Sweet corn it the kind of corn that you might eat as corn on the cob or, cut from the cob, as a side dish. Field corn -- which makes up most of the corn grown -- is used as feed for animals, but it is also the corn from which corn meal (and all the products made from corn meal) is made. Polenta, corn chips, and corn flakes, are just a few of the "human foods" made from field corn. Field corn is left in the field until it is fully mature. I think what you refer to as 'horse corn' is field corn.

As for the point that Melissa and others made that cattle can use feed that humans cannot, much of the land in this country is not suitable for growing corn or other food crops. The ground may be too soft to allow for heavy tractors or the hillside may be too steep to cultivate. In the Western US, the soils in the mountains are too shallow and too poor to grow crops well. Instead, cattle may use the mountain meadows every other season or so without harming the land. Ranching families, who've been using the land for four generations or more, understand this and are very sensitive to the need to maintain the land.

Even where conditions allow for the land to be cultivated, sometimes food crops cannot be grown as efficiently as can fodder for animals. Some soil's chemistry is such that it would require a lot of soil amendments before food crops could be grown. Sometimes, alfalfa (which fixes its own nitrogen from the air into the soil, and helps build the soil) will grow just fine in such soils -- without the need for expensive amendments. Other times, the expense of getting water to the land makes it uneconomical for the land to be cultivated. Or, the land it too far from distribution networks to make it efficient to use the land for food crops. (Food crops need to be harvested and delivered to market at the "peak of freshness". Animal feed is frequently harvested and stored on the land itself.) For all these reasons and many more, frequently the best use of the land is for animal feed.

>>The general rule is that the reduction in biomass as you go up the food chain is by about a factor of 10. So 1000 lbs of corn can support 100 lbs of cow can support 10 lbs of human. Or 1000 lbs of corn can support 100 lbs of human.

>Got cite? I don't doubt you but I would like to see where you figures came from.

http://www.beef.org.nz/research/newsletters/feedconveff.asp

Skip down to feed conversion ratios.

They quote 7-10:1 for beef, which is significantly better than it used to be. Thirty years ago, it was 16 to 1.

There is one mistake in that article though. They quote a 2:1 number for pigs. I believe that low number is dependent on supplementing the pig's diet with waste products - garbage and food waste from other industries etc. The number for pigs fed only "feed" would be more like 3.5:1.

Sorry, David -- your reply really did put me in my place and I am sorry. Although I think the judgement you impute, ain't there. My wife, for example, is a plenty sensitve person. It just doesn't bug her as much as me (in part probably because of a different philosophical idea about how animals "rank" if you will -- but, not being privy to God's value system, I don;t know which one of us that makes better.) And I don't wear my vegetarianism on my sleeve -- I'm a vegetarian, that's all.

TJIT -- I disagree. Halal and Kosher meat -- yeah, one cut, knife to the throat, animal's dead. No downer animals. Automated processing: sometimes the knockout shot misses. Sometimes the kill shot misses and the animal is dragged through much of the processing alive. Again, I've been to a slaughterhouse. It's way nasty. I know there are animal welfare activists on both sides of the "Is halal better or worse?" question: I think there are more on my side.

I used to like buying chickens in Chinatown. The farmer had an interest in making sure the bird looked healthy and active -- and had things like, oh, a beak -- then he'd pick it up, grab a cleaver, and WHACK, nice and quick: much much much better than the automated way and while it was a bit hard for me to watch at first (and I had to learn about things like aging the meat a little), I figure, if you can't stand to watch the process, shouldn't be buying the meat. I still think that.

David Walser says so long as we don't wear our choice on our sleeves we are fine and I'm inclined to agree in general but given Jane invited the debate I guess its different in this instance. Hitler was a vegetarian painter and we all know how concerned he was about a certain subset of his fellow beings but that doesn't negate Kant/Gandhi- 'Its hard to say when the flip occurs' as Eddie Izzard said. I can't pretend my vegetarianism is for ethical/moral reasons not just because of the shoes I wear (even if the economics/science/ethics of global warming were to prove eating animals is environmentally friendly I still wouldnt be able to eat dead animals) but most vegetarians like me are probably born into such families and never had to make a conscious choice about what to eat and just go with ancestral habits- its like religion. It's intensely personal and has so much cultural connotations that's its admirable people are even willing to debate it & put up their eating habits up for grabs so to speak.

How about a really contrarian proposal about methane as a greenhouse gas (one that I'm not sure I'm really serious about)?

Unlike CO2, methane doesn't last long in the atmosphere. (It oxidizes to CO2 + 2*H2O, but these are much less potent greenhouse gases than the methane was.) You can't just shut off any of the other sources of greenhouse gases and see an effect in less than decades, but cow-produced methane will clear out pretty fast once the cows are gone.

So for now, when there is neither enough data to be sure that warming is caused by human activity rather than by whatever natural process caused the medieval warm period and the little ice age, nor much evidence that warming is a problem rather than an overall improvement, we should encourage lots of cows burping lots of methane. When and if it turns out that global warming is clearly a big problem, then cut back on production of feeder calves. In two years, the cow population is down and a few months later the excess methane is gone.

Your only problem is dealing with the resulting steak riots. I don't think that any of the beefeaters will go so far as to hunt down environmentalists and carve them up for the larder...

Sri - Hitler was not a vegetarian. That was a propaganda myth propagated by Goebels (just like the myth, repeated by Jung, that Hitler was celibate). Hitler sometimes adhered to a vegetarian diet for health reasons, but never for ethical reasons. And never consistently or for long. His favorite dish was pork liver dumplings.

Ryan W,

Thanks for being a good sport.

Farming has caused massive amounts of ecological damage. Most of this farming has been driven by the pursuit of farm subsidies. It is an iron law of economics, you want more of something subsidize it.

The most direct way to reduce the environmental impact of farming would be to end farm subsidies. This would move farming in a more economically rational, ecologically sustainable direction.

Until that is done farming practices will not change. If somebody was to wave a magic wand and make all of the cattle go away farmers would plant and raise the same amount of corn they always have. The government pays them to do that and they will do it because that is how they make their money.

The only difference would be instead of cattle eating all of the surplus corn, it would be used to power the boilers in power plants and to fire cement kilns.

Ag product subsidies and mandates always cause unintended consequences. Biofuel policy is another example of this problem

Root cause analysis is a useful tool. Farm subsidies are the root cause of many of the worst environmental problems and practices in farming. These problems will never be fixed until the root cause of them is fixed.

Cheers,

TJIT

Sanjay,

Your statments are in blockquotes

I disagree. Halal and Kosher meat -- yeah, one cut, knife to the throat, animal's dead.

No downer animals.

Automated processing: sometimes the knockout shot misses.

Sometimes the kill shot misses and the animal is dragged through much of the processing alive.

I know there are animal welfare activists on both sides of the "Is halal better or worse?" question: I think there are more on my side.

No animal welfare person who understands pain physiology and the slaughter process would ever say ritual slaughter is more humane then non ritual slaughter.

If you are concerned about the ethical treatment of animals please stop propogating the misguided myth that ritual slaughter is more humane then non-ritual slaughter.

TJIT The most direct way to reduce the environmental impact of farming would be to end farm subsidies. - I'll agree with that. I never understood why we still had them anyways, aside from outright government corruption.

Sri - My apologies. The "Hitler/Vegetarian" issue would have been better phrased as a "matter of debate."

Ryan - No need for apologies - I just googled and saw how many dispute his vegetarianism - interesting

Yancey -

At first I thought that you had confused me with someone else, but looking back, I find that someone made several posts just using "Ann", and it wasn't me. It's a common name, after all.

Anyway, I've been posting now and then for months (years?), and wanted to say that the quibbling over whether you have a chip on your shoulder didn't come from me. When I get a chance, I'll think over whether I need to use a more specific name on my comments.

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