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Energy efficiency is interesting, but it is important to see the whole picture. Maybe we should be using a land efficiency rating instead?

Take reindeer meat as an extreme case. Their energy efficiency from converting lichens to meat is not going to be 100%, but the alternative use for artic land are quite few.

Applying the same line of thought, we can find examples also for beef. There are cattle farms here in Sweden that use highland cattle to graze forest areas, including protected forests. They keep down bushes and other plants which results in an increased bio diversity. A win win situation for everyone involved.

Typical cows in the US gain 50% of their meat mass at the feedlot, mostly from eating corn. Also, large parts of our natural environment are degraded by running too many cows on it, including a lot of "protected" areas.

So sure, you can find whatever example you want.

The typical car is diesel and the typical power plant is coal. A lot of typical cases is the worst case scenario or close to it when it come to the environment, because they prioritize the cost aspect over everything else.

Here is a nice policy theory for you. Lets imagine that with magic we could removed all the cost associated with slaughterhouse for the farmer. We could change the whole meat production in Sweden to operate exclusively on land not suitable for any other food production, and that without changing meat prices. The difference between the economics for a highland cattle farm and a cattle farm using feed from farms is by my understanding significant less than the cut that the slaughterhouse take.

It might not be very applicable to the US since large part of Sweden is forests, but it is not hard to find areas in the US which are not suitable for farming. From a land efficiency perspective, I suspect a lot could be done which isn't currently done because of the economics involved.

With reindeers it is probably highly dependent on region. For example in Lapland of Finland there are way too many reindeers than the environment can support, so they are largely kept in pens during winter and fed protein feed, hay, collected lichen, dried feafy branches etc.

Plus Finland produces about 2 million kilos of reindeer meat per year, so it is really miniscule part of the diet.

Very interesting, I did not know that. When people here in Sweden talk about it it is exclusively in the context of the indigenous population in the north of Sweden, where reindeers are presented as free roaming in an area that is about 30% of the whole of Sweden. In raw numbers that is about 200 000 reindeers in the area of around 100 000 km2. I do not know if in practice this still mean that they feed them protein feed and hay.

I do know personally a farmer that operated highland cattle in a nature protected forest. They do need hay during the winter months, but that is about it. For the rest of the year it is water, salt/minerals, and some shelter in case of really bad weather like large thunderstorms. The benefit for the forest is significant and directly noticeable, and looks like a really very well managed open forest. In contrast spruce forests which is the norm in the south part of Sweden tend to be extremely overgrown, which is currently recognize as an major threat to bio diversity. Several species has gone almost extinct because of it. There are a few other nature reservation that also use highland cattle with similar setup.

Technically highland cattle could survive the winter months without hay but it would not be legal.

> Even there an argument could be made that humane husbandry is positive-utility rather than the neutral of lab-grown, while also coming out ahead environmentally.

Can that be true? Animals from U.S. factory farms generate >1 million tons of manure per day (open-air lagoons of animal waste are a special treat) and are responsible for an impressive percentage of methane emissions.

There was a recent freakonomics podcast [1] from which I learned that greenhouse gas emissions mostly come from cattle breathing, not their manure (I guess the manure imagery that often goes along with describing livestock environmental impact is just used because it's evocative?). Also that livestock farming in the US only contributes 3% of the nation's greenhouse gas emissions [2], which I wouldn't call a particularly "impressive percentage".

[1]: http://freakonomics.com/podcast/meat/

[2]: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...

> Also that livestock farming in the US only contributes 3% of the nation's greenhouse gas emissions

"Worldwide, livestock accounts for between 14.5 percent and 18 percent of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions. The percentage is lower in the United States in part because our overall greenhouse gas emissions are so much higher than other countries"

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/25/climate/cows-global-warmi...

True, but CharlesW's parent comment was specifically about "U.S. factory farms".

And even 14.5% is significantly lower than what I would have guessed before listening to the episode.

Didn't the poster above say humane animal husbandry? What you describe it not humane animal husbandry.

Please describe sustainable humane animal husbandry at this scale.

We should develop an extremely potent and long lasting opioid that's destroyed by cooking (maybe some peptide could work). It needs to be powerful enough that we can keep the animals constantly high for their entire lives. Alternatively, figure out a practical "wireheading" brain implant with the same effect. Animals do not have any ambitions or desire for self-actualization that would be thwarted by this, and we already assume they have no right to life, so the arguments used against doing this to humans do not apply. With enough drugs/brain stimulation they could be perfectly happy in a factory farm.

Or we could create a meat tax, stop subsidies, create task forces who actually care about animal welfare and do randomized tests regularly so animal abuse can be limited. It would also help, if governments would actively work on making vegetarian/vegan options more lucrative. All of this is a process that could work out well in 15-20 years.

We can, of course, also put animals on drugs so they're high while they live their miserable lives, sure.

Why would they be miserable? Embarrassed by the respectable high-class animals looking down on them for being junkies? Full of regret that they were too high to write that novel, or to travel to a foreign country? Both our plans have the same result: improved quality of life for animals, while still killing them against their wishes. Why not go with the cheaper option?

I want to lessen and limit suffering. If that is what you want as well I doubt your idea here is going to work as it seems like you have a very naive concept of drugs. People who are high, especially when they use drugs frequently, are not constantly enjoying that high or somehow consciously removed from their miserable situation.

Apart from that, I think a key fact about industry farming isn't that we are not able to figure out ways to lessen the suffering of animals. Even relatively cheap options like giving them more room to live is something that is dismissed by the industry after all. I think, the general problem here is a cultural ignorance towards the plight for a multitude of reasons. I think, it's worth more changing this with grand incentives and causing a shift to happen than to find creative solutions that reward greed over suffering.

The question - and this is where we seem to differ - is if we want to live in a world where we accept concepts like gestation crates and want to work around that or where we think that this is beneath us and our values.

Since you seem to have a very simplistic darwinistic approach to life as a "high-class" animal, I'm not really sure we could ever meet anywhere in the middle here.

Farm animals don't have long lives. It's likely possible to continuously escalate the dose such that they'd never have to suffer. If not, wireheading can bypass problems with tolerance.

It looks like our real disagreement is "perfect is the enemy of good". If you don't want animals to be killed for food, then animal suffering is actually a good thing, because animal suffering helps convince people not to farm them. I'm working on the assumption that humans are going to continue killing animals like they've always done, and therefore it's better to reduce suffering with the most effective methods available. If animals are going to be farmed anyway, I'd rather they have access to an unlimited supply of recreational drugs (or equivalent brain modification technology). Animals don't care about the top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

I was not arguing for prolonging the suffering of animals as some method to make people turn away from animal products. I'm not really sure where you seem to have read that in my comment. I don't think that's a fruitful strategy at all and I've never advocated for that.

Some farm animals are killed after a few months, others like dairy cows are used for multiple years. Also, the animal psyche is not that simplistic. Yes, they might not care about the the upper levels of Maslow's model, but they're not stuck on the first one either. Therefore, throwing mind altering drugs at the problem seems like a naive and hardly effective substitute for me for the reasons I've stated earlier.

I think, there are cheap solutions that can improve the lives of these animals today, e.g. more space. But as I argued in my initial comment, I think a cultural shift is necessary (similar to smoking) and this is why I think factory farming needs to be forbidden in the long-term, meat taxes need to be introduced, meat prices need to be raised, government incentives for alternative food products need to be given, etc.

That's a really big question, I think the simplest way to answer is to say, "(Mostly)Let animals be themselves, kill them quickly".

With regard to cows which I know the most about that means letting them eat grass and only providing input when necessary to protect the health of the herd from an unexpected insult, e.g. unexpected drought, or to promote the health of the land. Because I've not tried this on a nationwide scale I can't guarantee that it could be done, but based on the thought I've given to it and my own experience I believe the majority of beef production _could_ be done humanely with the caveat that it would likely be unprofitable to do so given our current economic and cultural landscape.

I don't think dairy can be done humanely at scale for our current consumer price point.

> Can that be true? Animals from U.S. factory farms generate >1 million tons of manure per day

Factory farms probably don't count as "humane husbandry".

I've heard of desertifying areas in the Sahel being made greener again by having goats graze there periodically.

> So a best case scenario is factor of 3 improvement

Isn't the best case scenario that we replace cow-grown beef with lab-grown beef - that is, improved energy efficiency of 50/3 = 17 times?

>Dairy jerseys and laying hens are both ~12%, with meat chickens ~15%.

Does the efficiency for chickens include processing and sanitation? 15% sounds really high. Labs ought to have a much easier time dealing with no feces or feathers. And the price of chicken at present in the US is reputed to depend on undocumented immigrants working for below-market wages, which hopefully isn't an issue with technomeat.

As for dairy/eggs, those alone aren't enough of a meat substitute or we'd all be vegetarian already.

You forgot about antibiotics use - unlike with traditional approach you can grow cell culture in sterile conditions.

Antibiotics are a small enough improvement that they could be phased out without much impact to consumers. If demand were there or externalities accounted for, it would be an easy transition. http://www.sandersonfarms.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ABF...

How do plants compare?

Do you happen to know the efficiency basis for insects?

The usual comparisons are easy to misinterpret since insect productivity is often quoted on a dry weight basis and the data is less robust. But it appears to be as efficient as chicken, or possibly slightly better.