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Comment by CapitalistCartr | Hacker News Reader

Meat in the USA is made in the Farm Industrial Complex, sure. But so is all the mass market food; becoming a vegetarian doesn't change that. And I am a vegetarian.

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Meat in a wold with 6-billion+ will come from the FIC, in the USA or elsewhere. Heard about the horsemeat swap in the EU, or the tainted (with industrial chemicals and or cardboard) meat in China?

It's not a US or EU or CN thing. It's a feeding 6-billion+ people on-the-cheap thing.

Meat persists not because it's "cheap", but because it's an ingrained part of society. Consider the feed conversion ratio. [1] There's an high cost to feeding livestock in the form of wasted food calories that could be avoided if humans consumed that "feed" directly.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio

Right, but to ignore that as people have more purchasing power they tend to buy more meats is to ignore a large part of the issue. It's really beside the point. People want meat and they want it cheaply. If you could steer (no pun) them away from meats, that'd help a lot, but in the mean time, there is a demand. Given the large demand, the only way to satisfy it is the FIC.

If the world consisted of 100 million people, and everyone one wanted to eat half a kilo of meat per day, there would be little problem satisfying that need without a FIC.

"FIC" is a very broad term, encompassing a range of greater and lesser evils.

there are 2 aspects: 1) health 2) compassion

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