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Comment by geddy | Hacker News Reader

What we need is to stop consuming animals and animal products, or we’ll keep having economy destroying pandemics. Not to mention the obvious problem that farming is horrendous for the animals. Animals aren’t some inanimate object.

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We need to be realistic. Reeducating several billion people from something very addictive, culturally engrained and with no direct negative effects for consumers is almost impossible.

The more these discussions progress, the more I wonder if there is really only one solution. We need less people. Trying to convince 8 billion people to do something like never eat meat or fish seems like an impossible goal. We need to raise the standard of living in countries that reproduction rates > 2. We could also remove tax breaks for kids after the second in developed countries to mitigate the incentives for extra children. Maybe if we only had 4 billion people, we might be able to have everything be sustainable. Such a hard problem to solve.

The thing is, fertility rates are going down across the world.

What are you going to do with the current people? They will all want a decent quality of life. Will you sacrifice your life and quality of life to achieve this greater goal you mention? Or do you just want "others" to sacrifice themselves for it?

Overpopulation is a racist myth. Developed countries use far more resources and waste significantly more food than developing nations and wealthy people have a larger footprint than their working class counterparts.

https://wwf.panda.org/knowledge_hub/all_publications/living_...

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/01/chart-of-the-day-thes...

https://theconversation.com/emissions-inequality-there-is-a-...

I'm not sure why you are claiming racism. I'm suggesting we raise the standard of living in poorer countries. That we empower women in these countries. Honestly, how is that racist?

Also, yes, wealthy countries over consume. Collectively we just don't care. We can't even get people to wear a mask. I don't think there is a pragmatic way to convince the west to consume less.

This is one of the question that every such discussion about population management wanted to avoid.

Understandably, it's much harder to ask people to reduce their current way of life.

But technology still is the key here.

US household energy consumption actually dropped, resulting into overall leveled national consumption total [1]

[1] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/homes.php

Fish farming is a disease disaster that can harm wild populations. This gets discussed a lot in relation to Scottish Salmon, for example.

I'm thinking fish farming in urban centers, maybe tied to hyrdoponic greenhouses. I can picture more urban parks, with many fish ponds. The fish pond water used to grow labour intensive cash crops like raspberries (that are hard to pick).

Why on earth would you farm in an urban center with high ambient pollution levels and high land prices?

Salmon is general is a bad fish to farm because it consumes more protein than it produces. There are better fish (in terms of sustainability) that can be famred, and proper regulations (which the US has, compared to other countries) exist to help. In general, I don't believe the US is the problem with overfishing or polution problems caused by fish farming, compared to other countries who don't have or want the ability to keep things in check.

>Salmon is general is a bad fish to farm because it consumes more protein than it produces.

That counts for all animals, no?

Its about using protein that has other uses. E.g. free-range chickens eat bugs; I don't want to eat bugs, but I'll gladly eat chickens.

Yes, but my point stands. Any animal "wastes" protein.

What do farmed salmon eat, and is that better used for something else?

Dunno. Maybe less efficient use of the same feedstock?

Further, now they're putting oil in Salmon feedstock so they have imaginary dietary advantages i.e. Omega-3 fatty acid, which farm-raised salmon don't have much of normally.

So add that cost to raising salmon.

It might make sense, especially for where salmon farms are usually placed, or it might be overly destructive in terms of resources and environment. The analysis needs to be done before we can make a conclusion about it, but I'm sure other parties have already come to the conclusion they want.

Ya. I’m not sure why you are being downvoted but with animals you always get out less than you put in. Plants are the same way, but can grab other inputs (solar, minerals from the ground).

Animal husbandry is a great way of converting inputs unfit for human consumption (animal feed) into something that is (meat) but it’s never very efficient.

> Animal husbandry is a great way of converting inputs unfit for human consumption (animal feed) into something that is (meat) but it’s never very efficient.

Ideally, yes. In practice, we feed animals mostly things that we ourselves could eat ourselves - like corn, soy, and grains. Sure, you can find cute examples of cattle eating grass on rocky soil... but around 99% of animals are not grown that way... they are grown in factory farms where they're fed soy, corn, and grains.

Soy isn't very appetizing to humans in large quantities, so if it wasn't for animal feed, we wouldn't' grow nearly as much as it. Likewise for corn, which is a not so great staple for humans, and often just used as a sugar substitute. Yes, we can live on animal feed, but we can't really thrive on it, and a lot of land is only suited to such.

Meat is still a useful medium for converting what humans can't consume very well to something they can. Especially pigs, which in much of the world are used as recyclers (not in the west anymore, due to safety issues, and probably not for long in the undeveloped world, but they have bigger problems to worry about).

> but they have bigger problems to worry about

The undeveloped world or the pigs?

And we're not some magical creature free from biological needs.

Eating other animals is what got us here. Until we can print actual, chemically identical meat on a conveyor belt, our reliance on animals will continue.

> And we're not some magical creature free from biological needs.

Am I? I became 100% vegetarian a year ago. No one around me was vegetarian. I saved money. I never ate so well and I'm in my best physical form ever. What is magical?

You need supplements to grow healthily as a vegetarian. For example, it's difficult to get Omega 3, 6 and 9 from plants. You need supplements for that.

Also you've only been vegetarian a year. Being a vegetarian from birth to death without supplements would be much more difficult to do without major deficiencies.

Also vegetarians today have the option of buying food from all over the world, but that wasn't the case for the vast majority of human history.

You only need to look at cultures like in India, Taiwan and elsewhere that have large vegetarian population to see that your statement doesn’t hold water.

The myth of the Indian vegetarian nation

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-43581122

You shouldn't point toward us as an example.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6540890

https://m.economictimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/malnutr...

Guess where do you get folic acid, b12, etc from?

As a side note, OTC supplements are not as effective. You need prescription supplements if anyone is considering going vegetarian.

Guess where animals get their B12 from, supplemented to their feed

It's possible to have a large population with deficiencies, which may be the case in India for example [1].

Another factor is, the number of insects that accidentally get into the food supply provide some protein. I remember reading about how a more primitive lifestyle leads to more insects being in the food supply, which provides some of the necessary protein for humans to thrive. But I can't find the link at the moment.

1: https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/80-india...

And the distillates and supplements still aren't universally as "good" (bioavailability, cost, associated nutrients) as the real thing.

I'm all for lab produced everything, but it's not good enough yet for me to feel comfortable trying to outsmart nature.

You are spreading misinformation.

Everyone needs Omega 3/6/9. You can get it from nuts and algae. IF you want to be inefficient and introduce a middleman, you can get it from fish.

B12 is needed by everyone. The meat you eat has it supplemented. Again, you can cut out the middleman and get it directly as a supplement rather than having a cow killed.

Growing 1lb of almonds requires ~1900 gallons of water.

Beef is ~1800lbs.

Not particularly efficient is it

Practical experience of trying to go vegetarian/vegan. I gave up after a while. I just felt constantly hungry. Maybe because I started working out and going vegan at the same time.

fwiw - "vegetarian" doesn't count for animal well-being. Egg laying chickens and milk cows are treated really badly and their agony is rather prolonged for the duration of their "productive life".

aren't there lab-grown meat researches going on?

There are and I look forward to them. Cheap, USDA prime grade steak for everyone one will be excellent

Humans don't require animal products to live (or thrive). And your "what got us here" comment is a Naturalistic Fallacy.

400-500 million people in India are vegetarian [1]. Are these all magical creatures?

[1] http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/the-food-habits-of-a-na...

India is incredibly agriculturally productive, with amounts of arable land other countries can only dream of. Try doing the same diet just a few paces up in more arid and mountainous Central Asia and it would be famine.

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