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Comment by doomrobo | Hacker News Reader

The author claims that veggies aren't cruelty free because among other things: "In New South Wales, Australia, over a five-year period up to 2013, rice farmers killed nearly 200,000 native ducks to protect their rice crops from the birds."

Very brave, though the author forgets to compare to literally any other numbers. A quick check reveals that Australia slaughtered ~1.5M chickens PER DAY in 2013. Currently it's ~2M per day [0].

So the author argues not to avoid cruelty because it only reduces cruelty by 99.9932%. This is garbage.

[0] https://www.chicken.org.au/facts-and-figures/#Production

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Meat comes from animals, you say? There is a big difference between killing farm animals bred for the purpose, and killing wild animals. Most egregious is the killing of endangered orangutans and monkeys [0][1]. Also, most people are aware that meat comes from animals, but few are aware of how many animals and their habitats are destroyed to grow crops.

And did you know that fires set by the agriculture industry in Indonesia puts out more CO2 than America, some days? [2] And that's just Indonesia.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-45146581 https://savetheorangutan.org/threats/palm-oil/ https://news.mongabay.com/2019/11/indonesia-fires-amazon-car...

Yeah it's not like you don't need to cultivate feed for farm animals and kill wild animals for that too you know.

Yet most crops are grown to feed farmed animals. Remove the farmed animals inefficiency coefficient from the equation and suddenly the world is overwhelmed with an abundance of food, most of which is healthier anyway.

Animal feed is usually not suitable for human consumption, so while technically there would be an abundance of food, it would not be edible by humans.

Farm areas that can grow human edible food tend to not be used for animal feed. Animal feed is also created by the by-product of human edible food, which if we didn't give it to animals it would just be made into compost. The efficiency coefficient of food turned into compost is not that great with a lot of it turning into methane, get eaten by bacteria, and runoff into the oceans and water supplies.

For corn for example, 7% of the harvest is suited for human consumption. The efficiency coefficient is pretty terrible if we throw away the remaining 93%. Wheat and rice has similar problemsd. Vegetarian oil create a lot of by-product, much which goes to animal feed.

> Farm areas that can grow human edible food tend to not be used for animal feed.

This (crop monoculture) is a consequence of animal agriculture, not justification for it. If anything, we could stop cutting down all the rainforests to make room for cattle and their soybeans.

> Animal feed is usually not suitable for human consumption, so while technically there would be an abundance of food, it would not be edible by humans.

> For corn for example, 7% of the harvest is suited for human consumption. The efficiency coefficient is pretty terrible if we throw away the remaining 93%.

We don't need to produce those 93% of corn at all. We can reforest fields/pastures used for meat production and store a busload of CO2 in the process - https://climatehealers.org/the-science/animal-agriculture-po...

> Farm areas that can grow human edible food tend to not be used for animal feed.

I don't know ... 75% of fields are used for animal agriculture, so one can easily get to that conclusion, but in my experience, those areas are intermixed (is it a word?). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_p...

> The efficiency coefficient of food turned into compost is not that great with a lot of it turning into methane, get eaten by bacteria, and runoff into the oceans and water supplies.

How much methane does composting produce depends on composting method, aerobic composting is significantly better in this regard and in the end, composting is better than putting the food/organic materials into landfills.

Feeding the soil bacteria and enhancing the soil profile (with compost) is a good thing. We need more of those little critters.

Not so sure about the runoff - I think that argument applies to pesticides/herbicides, where it's a big problem. Compost is an organic matter, a soil in the end - but soil erosion is a problem, so I tend to agree :)

https://www.compostmagazine.com/compost-benefits/

> Vegetarian oil create a lot of by-product, much which goes to animal feed.

Seed oils are not healthy, not for us, not for animals, not for people eating those animals - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kGnfXXIKZM

>So the author argues not to avoid cruelty because it only reduces cruelty by 99.9932%. This is garbage.

Where is this argued at all? It does include this bit:

>This isn’t a call to forks for you to head to your nearest all-you-can-eat steakhouse. Buxton would like to see everyone reduce consumption of meat from industrial farming and transition towards more sustainably raised meat, “which will likely mean consuming less”.

It seems like the purpose of the article is to point out that veganism is not a magic solution, despite it being advertised that way. But nowhere does it claim that we should "not avoid cruelty".

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