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Comment by hackerman12345 | Hacker News Reader

Emissions footprint is being improved every day - you might remember an article from a month ago discussing that giving seaweed to cows reduces their emissions by a huge amount.

If everyone went veg, we would need more farms right? How many more field mice/rabbits/snakes/whatever will suffer/get squashed from this? Is this number comparable to the amount of cows that suffer for steak? It seems like smaller creatures treatment never get considered.

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> If everyone went veg, we would need more farms right?

No, cows eat too. Think about it this way: to get 1000 calories worth of energy from a cow, that cow has to consume more than 1000 calories due to maintenance (BMR) alone. Moreover, one acre of land producing soybeans, rice, or legumes much more protein and much more calories per year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edible_protein_per_unit_area_o...

> How many more field mice/rabbits/snakes/whatever will suffer/get squashed from this?

Fewer as shown from the previous point proving that we could feed more people on less acreage of land

> Is this number comparable to the amount of cows that suffer for steak?

No, it's smaller and we get to cut out the cool parts like raping cows to produce milk and then ripping their children away from them.

According to: https://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/pubs/sp/sp_ne153.pdf

it is not smaller. 12 mice per acre average. That's a lot more animal lives being ruined per acre IMO - and that's just the mice.

If you want to convince people of your cause, you need to be willing to be honest about the pros and cons instead of going for an emotional argument.

It's not an emotional argument, if a vegan diet requires 1/10th of the acreage, then it requires 12 dead mice as opposed to the 120 dead mice + _whatever animals you're eating_ of the meat-eating diet.

A meat eating diet inherently requires more acreage due to thermodynamics. It works like this: 20 acres of grain feeds 10 cows which feeds 1 person for a year, therefore 240 dead mice and 10 dead cows. An omnivore's diet inherently requires more acreage, therefore more dead mice and all the cows, chicken, fish, &c. you're eating.

I think the mice can usually run out of a way of a cow slowly grazing along pasture.

it's not just cows grazing on grass--78% of cows in the us are factory farmed, and 97% are grain fed which means they're force fed cheap grain to fatten them up for slaughter. Moreover, only 3% of cattle can be considered grass fed, and, for those cattle, we're deforesting the amazon rainforest--so probably more than your 12 mice.

If you want to throw global warming on top of it, your lifestyle will contribute to the mass Exodus (and most likely death) of millions to billions from the global south.

It's kinda ironic you said I'm arguing from emotion, but all it took for you to be complicit in rape, torture, and slaughter is a smiling cow on the side of a fucking cheese package.

Wait until you read about how animals treat each other, and you'll pretty much think we are angels (obviously factory farms and what not are bad).

And before you say "yea but I choose to not contribute to their suffering", well what does that matter? You're still standing by while innocent creatures have all those things done to them by other creatures.

Aren't they entitled to not be tortured and slaughtered as well? Or does it just not matter if you're not the one doing it?

> If everyone went veg, we would need more farms right?

Fewer, or have some spare to cater for growing population. Farmers currently growing grain for animal feed could grow other things instead. Veg perhaps?

Right, but also instead of a pasture for cows to run around and eat, you get a field with increases the amount of suffering of the little field mice and bunnies.

How much food do you think a cow eats? How much fertile soil is dedicated to grow food for livestock instead of human food? Is it safe to say that a cow eats about 50kg per day? How much do you eat in a week? These are the things that you should be asking to yourself.

Everyone prefers grass fed cows anyway, right?

So 50kg of grass. That is quite a decent amount of land to cover per day man.

My point is that cows don't smash the field mice all day long.

I was shocked to learn a few years ago that the percentage of US grown corn for human consumption is so low that it is basically an afterthought in the farming industry.

That doesn't mean that switching g to 100% vegetarian would have no impact, but does mean that the actual farming area is already sufficient for humans.

Sometimes I wonder what we’re going to do with all that farmland when ethanol and industrial livestock isn’t a thing anymore.

I can use it. We can turn it into food forests for a back-to-the-land lifestyle product. Also carbon sequester.

Basically: turn it back to forests and make it easy for people fleeing dying cities to move there (in the 2040s)

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