Comment by ClumsyPilot | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ClumsyPilot | Hacker News Reader

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This is plainly not accurate - manure from most aninals, especially pig farms, is a hazardous easte to dispose of. Only a small percentage of manure is reused as fertiliser because transporting it is expensive, and messy. Often it needs to be processed before it can be used safely. You can gooogle 'industrial farm US' and see pictures of ani als standing knee deep in their own poop. Also it is illegal to take photos of factory farms in some states.

We feed a lot of grains to aninals as feed. That food coupd be used to feed people. We could certainly downsize meat producting by 70% withiit any adverse impacts -most people eat way too mich meat

PS: There is some strange disbelief below, people think without manure cropping will bot work - this is plainly fanasyland - most of farmland never sees 'natural' fertiliser.

"A recent study by USDA, Economic Research Service identified opportunities for increasing the use of manure as a fertilizer. In 2020, farmers applied manure to less than 8 percent of the 240.9 million acres planted to seven major U.S. field crops."

In uk "In 2019, organic manure was applied to 26% of the area of tillage crops"

This is easilly accessible information.

> manure from most aninals, especially pig farms, is a hazardous easte to dispose of. Only a small percentage of manure is reused as fertiliser because transporting it is expensive, and messy

You'd need to cite some sources for that. And explain where the millions of tons of animal manure go.

Here in Northern Europe 100% of manure from housed animals is used, either spread as manure or, increasingly, used for biomethane

> Here in Northern Europe 100% of manure from housed animals is used,

That's the wrong statistics to look it - 100% of waste coffee is used. They already have it, good management will figure out a way to use it.

But you cannot make an argument that we have to keep drinking coffee because fertiliser industry will collapse without waste coffee.

There are thousands of studies about impacts of intensive animal faming on landscape, economy, health and society in general, they are all negative. This was settled like 40 years ago.

I have no idea why you are taking about coffee.

You said

> Only a small percentage of manure is reused as fertiliser because transporting it is expensive, and messy

That's straight up false, for Northern Europe anyway.

Can confirm. It's the norm up here. Wikipedia says the practice was imported from the US after WW2.

None of our animals' waste is any hazard to you, unless you slip on it!

You are right that it can be done badly, as can many other things. I'd say you are actually arguing against badly regulated animal farming (especially since you mention the US), rather than animal farming per se.

Hydrogen sulfide is a common killer of farmers in Ireland.

Maybe 1 a year. And this is only emitted in dangerous quantities when the manure is being stirred prior to being removed from storage. So somewhat tangential to original point.

Some people can only eat meat due to autoimmune issues exacerbated by vegetables. Are we going to sacrifice them?

Is this an argument made in good faith? The commentator said reduce meat consumption and that most people ate too much. They didn't say "ban it for everyone, let the autoimmune suffer"

I purposefully chose an extreme example to put it onto the radar of everyone pushing veganism everywhere. Also if you really study sustainability, you see that reducing meat production doesn't lead to better sustainability anyway.

If you reduce meat production, you'll hike up prices, likely pricing out those with autoimmune diseases that barely survive already. So technically you are true like in "you can still eat meat in theory", but in practice those folks won't be able. Now where is the good faith in that argument?

This is theoretical and not the case in practice. Meat companies are an Oligarchy in The United States which is the largest world meat producer. There are four massive meat companies and if they existed at the onset of anti-trust they would have been broken up long ago. The miracle of the market to competitively decide on a price relies on competitive market environments which do not exist in the largest meat market in the world, The US.

You're saying a lot of stuff and I'm going to need more evidence to be convinced as to your position. For what reason would meat prices increase if people ate less meat?

"eating less meat" != "sacrifice them"

How about this modus ponens chain: "eating less meat" -> "lowering meat production" -> "hiking up meat prices" -> "autoimmune sufferers unable to buy meat" -> "autoimmune sacrificed"

Deal with meat as with any kind of life saving medication in that case. There's already infrastructure for that.

Good Christ, did the parent comment suggest banning all meat?

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