Comment by csmeder | Hacker News Reader

Comment by csmeder | Hacker News Reader

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On a some what similar topic: the amount of killing and hunting (rabbits, moles, mice and other small mammals) that happens when we grow produce. Add to that the destruction of a previously thriving eco system of small mammals, insects and lizards that is caused by the vast mono crop method used by most conventional farmers. And you end up with questions about the ethics of a plant based diet (at least one that is based on our conventional methods of large scale farming).

On the surface it would seem that a diet that includes meat from free range (non feed lot) cattle would result in less death (by numbers) and less destruction of natural habitat than a 100% plant based diet (even a small organic farm practices eco system destruction to plant its non mono crops and I assume practices animal trapping/hunting?). Which maybe is fine with some vegans but I think a large percentage don’t consider this. In particular the amount of poison and traps that are used to kill small mammals to produce each pound of carrots, broccoli or other plant life.

Most of the grain grown in the USA is fed to livestock. If you are concerned about the impact of agriculture on the environment the single best thing you can do is eat lower on the food chain.

The number of small animals killed to feed one person a carnivore diet is far far more than it takes to feed that person a plant based diet.

I agree, a conventionally raised cow is given corn to the point that it would die from this diet with a few weeks by the time its slaughtered.

And corn might be the worst mono crop we have (causing the most destruction to eco systems).

I intentionally said free range (non feed lot cows) for this reason.

As far as methane, I wonder if we could focus on eating small free range mammals, such as rabbits instead. I’m not knowledgeable in what each animal out puts from a methane stand point per pound of food. But it seems it’s clear, from my limited knowledge, if we switched back to more farms leaving the eco system as is and raising free range cattle we would be killing much less animals than a plant based diet.

Free range cattle wouldn't come anywhere close to meeting the current demand for meat. People would have to get used to eating meat a lot less often and paying a lot more for it.

It takes around 7-10kg of feed to produce 1kg of meat. Eliminate that waste and we can easily feed everyone a healthy plant based diet instead.

Grass fed beef addresses both. You don't need to be so brash.

Another factor to consider with cows is large scale cattle farming, grass fed or not, releases huge amounts of methane gas into the atmosphere. Methane gas is estimated to be 28[1] times worse for climate change than C02.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane

Grass fed is good and probably even healthier. But it is also considerably more expensive, and our ultimate capacity for production of grass fed is much lower than corn fed. So grass fed cannot really fully replace corn fed.

There are non polluting ways of farming vegetables, and mono crop planting could be substituted with multi crop planting.

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