Any vegans here?

>vegan goes vegan

dog is not good to eat, so instead I get them cremated and use the ashes as a water filter when they die

No meat is healthy for you.

inb4 you claim dense macronutrients make it healthy

I plan to either eat a lot less meat or go vegetarian someday. So far I have been too weak.

AHM VEEGUN

i love animals.
i also love to eat them.

reconciled. stop pretending you believing your retarded ideology isn't brought about by being a communist faggot.

EVERYONE BE QUIET. here we have a soyboy in his natural habitat - the blue board under protection of janitors who do it for free. be careful or you will scare him. his only natural defense is the report button and going back to plebbit. his testosterone levels are dangerously low and is unable to comprehend conflict and masculinity.

I only eat left over meat. Hot dogs, Bologna, ox tail, neckbones and the like. Animal aren't killed for these cuts and that makes me feel better about my decision to be a carnivore.

>eggs in the morning + ham
>ham sandwich
>split pea soup with ham

Kinda unsurprising actually.

I don't know if I can completely cut out meat, but I've severely lessened the amount I eat

I'm getting a pet pig soon, just seems kind of fucked up to eat bacon while my buddy snuggles up to me

>not using a boltgun or a machete to lop off head quickly
>tiny ass cage instead of general holding pen

Kinda cruel when there’s easier and more efficient methods honestly. Like those piglets. Don’t let leave them on the ground, that’s a waste of good meat.

Right. Most people here eat sugary stuff with their coffee/tea for breakfast, or nothing, not salty stuff.

just in europe
even in murrifat, breakfast sandwiches are popular

I eat mostly vegetarian anyways, but the only sustainable way forward is responsible omnivorism

>europe
Not even everywhere there, I know salt's popular in Germany and the UK.
Maybe it's an anglo thing.

Congratulations, user.

>eggs + potato + tortilla breakfast burrito for breakfast
>some cheese or a turkey sandwich or a bean burrito for lunch
>soup with large amount of veggies paired with small amount of meat or lentils for dinner

every day this is what i do.

>responsible omnivorism
>using omnivorism and sustainable in the same sentence, ever

/thread

Nice try cucks

>love animals
>animals that only exist because people eat them
>stop eating them, guys!
>those animals no longer exist
>love animals but don't want them to exist
vegans are shallow thinkers.
they get right up to the part where they don't eat animals because they love them, but don't ever think past that.

in some abstract part of their brain they probably imagine billions of happy cows roaming the forests and meadows living happy lives even though nobody cares for them, keeps them healthy, wants them, or can make money from them.

sort of like how they imagine cows now being tortured in cages or stalls in sheds they cannot leave, even though this is almost never how cattle are raised.

the whole thing is built on the denial of reality. That's fine, so is any other religion. Just don't expect smart people to go along with you.

there are wild cows, pigs, and chickens you mongrel

ah, you're talking about feral animals. they're invasives, why should they be allowed to destroy native ecosystems?

usually the only reason they exist is because some people still eat them.

Classic thread /an/
Pescatarian master race

>>love animals
>animals that only exist because people eat them

Hold up, who said anything about the farmed animals?

I care about the

WILD animals.

All this industrial infrastructure and waste actually displaces and destroys habitat for wild animals. They are literally declining severely around the world.

WAKE UP

>love animals
>Veganism
>the whole thing is built on the denial of reality.

Gee I thought it was based around concepts of responsibility and compassion

>sort of like how they imagine cows now being tortured in cages or stalls in sheds they cannot leave, even though this is almost never how cattle are raised.

Free range meat is the exception, not the rule cowboy

>who said anything about the farmed animals?
every vegan ever
>I thought it was based around concepts of responsibility and compassion
false dichotomy.
a person can be both compassionate and stupid, it happens all the time.

>Pescatarian master race

You are proud of your choices?

Fishing is the worse kind of agriculture as it is practiced by nearly all industrial nations

Tell me you honor the fish; you support its existence. Or just shut the fuck up.

>lower life forms must be honored before they can be consumed
ah for the good old days when morons that hated food died of starvation.

>Free range meat is the exception, not the rule cowboy
over half of US cattle graze on public lands.

the remaining half graze in private pastures, but that's more difficult to prove since the government doesn't keep records on it.

corn fed cattle are just grass fed cattle that spent the last 2 months of their lives eating corn.

>ah for the good old days when morons that hated food died of starvation.

What do you mean by this?

in most parts of the world a vegan even 75 years ago would've died of malnutrition.

>in most parts of the world a vegan even 75 years ago would've died of malnutrition.

How is this an argument? How does this relate to Pescatarianism?

If you assume that agricutlurally-sufficient areas where malnutrition was not a problem, I think you could assume it was possible to have a meat/dairy/egg free diet that was not insufficient. In India this was certainly the case. It could have been possible in places like Scotland, for example, but only if there were provisions for obtaining the essential nutrients (which are available from crops). The fact there might have been local ignorance of nutrition or methods or materials doesn't mean it isn't possible.

it relates very directly to the fallacy that food must be honored in order to be eaten. In reality food must be eaten whether it is honored or not.

>most parts of the world
>India and maybe scottland
choose.

also it was not possible because produce wasn't regularly transported most places in the world. In fact it still isn't, but vegans are free to ignore the fact.

>over half of US cattle graze on public lands.

I really doubt this, You are implying we have ~50 million cattle grazing on public land.

>corn fed cattle are just grass fed cattle that spent the last 2 months of their lives eating corn.

The conditions of this period of life are the ethical question at hand. If they are free range, so much the better. But that is beside the point.

But you have to consider the overall picture. What are the gross population of animal's effects on the common environment? Plenty of free range beef is grown in areas of the Amazon that have been deforested- or areas managed by BLM, etc., that have been overgrazed. I'd argue this is degradation of commonwealth for private gain. The subsidized production, processing, and consumption of meat is, in my view, similarly ethically questionable. Evidence of negative impact to other animals and stakeholders (including taxpayers) has to be considered in your moral calculus.

If people paid the non-subsidized price including the negative externalities that are costs paid by others, I wouldn't have a problem.

But what we have is a subsidized producer, using public land, a subsidized processor (using illegal labor), a subsidized distributor, and a subsidized consumer.

The whole machine is implicated as a device basically designed to feed people animals. To me, its self evident by the damage and waste generated that it is unethical, perhaps moreso than any other function of human society and economy.

So when a person says, I am going to reduce my frootprint, that person strikes me as contientious. When someone says, that vegan is a stupid faggot, they strike me as a fascist who doesn't recognize either the damage to their own interests, or is ignorant enough to believe this state of affairs can continue indefinitely without blowback- or maybe they do understand this but don't care- in which case, you're just trolling

>I really doubt this, You are implying we have ~50 million cattle grazing on public land
I am not implying that all of them are grazing there at once.

>The whole machine is implicated as a device basically designed to feed people animals.
yes, but only because people demanded it.

you seem to pretend there's some evil conspiracy at work when really people just want and need meat.

I'm vegetarian, I cannot bring myself to stop eating cheese but about 90% of the time I eat vegan, mostly vegetarian when I go out of the house to eat

>Bacon and eggs for breakfast
>Roast beef sandwich on lunch
>Steak for dinner

the problem is when people think meat they think a T-bone or Chicken but goes over their heads how much friggin meat they eat

> the fallacy that food must be honored in order to be eaten.

This is absurd. The purpose of animal and land husbandry or agriculture, in general, is the perpetual harvest. For example, increasing tilth in soil instead of diminishing it, increasing a fish run instead of damaging it, etc. The purpose of "grace" or some other honorific form may be bastardized today into various kind of prayers to a diety, or to animistic or to other influences, but its root purpose was the maintenance of a sustainable way of life.

Going to the store, and mindlessly eating tuna out of a can on the other side of the Earth or far from any body of water divorces the relationship between the environment and the person. The economics are plainly destructive in this case, where over 95% of tuna stocks are now completely wiped out. That an economic system efficiently converted these aspects of an ostensible renewable resource to endangered and rare commodity indict that system and with it, the cultural assumptions, namely, a kind of ignorant consumerism, which allowed such a drastic destruction of value to take place.

As I said before, the producer (actually the gatherer, in this case- nothing is cultivated), processor, and consumer all being subsidized and costs passed to the future (as debt and impoverishment) really indicates the massive and glaring disadvantages of the system- which didn't start with any sustainable ethos, certainly not honoring, anything resembling a benefit of the species in question, or even the children of a generation which promulgated such vast wanton destruction.

Conventional "Grace" is a religious cult practice carried on by certain apocalyptic death cults which treat the natural world as irrelevant and discount the future heavily. Original "grace" was a promise to honor the cycles of nature and inheritance of values, knowledge, and wisdom to perpetuate and pass on to future generations.

Do you intuitively understand that?

>Do you intuitively understand that?
of course.
I also recognize that "sustainable" does not equal "honored" in the English language.

I fertilize my lawn, I don't honor it. I eat sustainable beef, I don't honor it. It's either stupid or disingenuous to conflate a causal mechanism with a religious experience.

>you seem to pretend there's some evil conspiracy at work when really people just want and need meat.

I don't dispute that they want it; but "need" is easy to refute. Even if you got all your protein from meat you'd only need a tiny proportion of the average amount of meat a typical first worlder consumes.

In fact, about 0.9-1.6g/kg bodywieght.

And in fact there is no amino acids that are exclusive to animal meats.

The "need" part is precisely the ethical consideration here.

As for the "evil conspiracy" you are the one who said "evil" (Which is the fallacy of poisoning the well.)

If you study the state of the agricultural industry, there is no way, I think, you can come away believing this is anywhere lose to optimal for anyone, anywhere, at any time. Meat and otherwise. Its a completely wasteful shit show top to bottom.

That is delivers Quarter Pounders on a reliable basis at $2.99 has nothing to do its ethical justifiability. And it is damning when you consider the total realized costs in terms of all it externalities.

>"need" is easy to refute
refuting it on the individual level does not refute it on the group level.

fallacy of composition.

>I also recognize that "sustainable" does not equal "honored" in the English language.

If something is not sustainable then is it subject to progressive degradation by definition. This is evidently the opposite of honoring something (to degrade it)

For example, an "unsustainble" soil practice results in degraded soil tilth. It may be hyperbolic to say the soil was dishonored, but that should be reasonably translated as equivalent between different hierarchical belief structures. In this case, the ancient and the modern.

I'm pretty confident that, just based on the results of modern farming effects on land-bases, that earlier generations of farmers who depended on continuous annual methods of tilth and production would be horrified to learn that modern methods pretty much treat land as a short term resource of little value

>I fertilize my lawn, I don't honor it.

But do you recognize that your practices with your lawn are a distant echo of a more fundamental set of practices whose purposes are more or less completely at odds with your current practice (watering a lawn)?

>I eat sustainable beef, I don't honor it. It's either stupid or disingenuous to conflate a causal mechanism with a religious experience.

Honor is a virtue that has nothing to do with religion. I mention religion practice ("grace") as an example to make a point, in an argument about why certain social practices exist, where they came from, and the original cause and, I believe, effect of the practice (a sort of vertical knowledge transfer- orally, and on paper (in the form of Almanacks).

You eat sustainable beef, great. How do you honor the beef? Or maybe you don't honor the beef? Maybe you have selfish reasons (better tasting, belief it is better for you)? My point is, I don't modern people think much about it. But they should.

what do you mean by responsible omnivorism? because sustainable and omnivore just don't compute for me

>is it subject to progressive degradation by definition. This is evidently the opposite of honoring something (to degrade it)
different meanings of the word, "degrade."

> In this case, the ancient and the modern.
ancient cultures didn't honor food any more than we do. you're comparing is a meme to reality not an ancient system to a modern one.

ancient agriculture was sustainable because of population sizes and nothing more. It has ceased to be sustainable because populations are much larger.

>Honor is a virtue
again, different use of "honor." learn English first, then argue.

>being a soyboy
>having your organism being pumped full of estrogen
enjoy having feminine features, you can be vegan and eat no soy like a real mean

> (You)
>>"need" is easy to refute
>refuting it on the individual level does not refute it on the group level.
>fallacy of composition.

>0.9-1.6g/kg body weight is the statistically factual proportion of protein required from the diet as revealed by research science. (In fact I got this straight out of a 1980s textbook on Exercise Physiology.

A statistic is not a fallacy. That is just scientifically true. Its biochemistry, dude. There are no biologically normal exceptions to this rule for human populations. If there are exceptions, they prove the rule. It is absolutely reasonable to assume 99.5% of all people fall within the bounds of this metric and totally unreasonble to assume otherwise (if you want to argue against the research I'd be happy to provide a citation)

Or, just look at USDA guidelines. 3 oz. of meat is a "serving". Americans eat way more than this on a regular basis. Hence I am arguing that it is the "need" part of your argument that has no basis in fact. If you want to argue a psychological or cultural basis of need, I'd allow that. But biochemistry has the final word, I'm sorry.

yeah because nestle and tyson raise their animals in a free range scenario, most people don't go to the butcher for grass fed old school rancher's cattle, they go to fucking walmart to eat the factory farmed meat

>A statistic is not a fallacy.
holy shit you're retarded.

just because one person can survive without meat does not imply that billions as a group can.

>they go to fucking walmart to eat the factory farmed meat
Walmart doesn't factory farm their meat, they buy the exact same cattle from the exact same ranchers everyone in the US does.

the reason our cattle are fed on grass is because it's the cheapest way to raise them. Factory farming costs far more, and is usually just used to fatten cattle for the last month or two of their lives.

nigger until the last century normal people ate meat as a luxury and on special occasions at most they ate fish because that shit is easy to get but no one was having prime rib for an ordinary tuesday dinner

tell that to mesoamericans whose diet consisted of Corn, Beans and Chile for the most part

meat is more commonly eaten today because of wealth and availability, but that doesn't make ancient people vegans.

even ancient agriculture was built around the raising or hunting of animals. Animal bones are the most common and profuse part of ancient people's middens.

>mesoamericans
you mean the people that invented man-corn and farmed dogs as food? they ate as much meat as they could find or raise. The fact that most of it was probably human or dog meat just shows ancient cultures weren't any more sustainable than ours.

I know they weren't vegans, that line of thought is why most vegans are retarded, but they sure as hell didn't eat as much meat as we eat today, I don't mind meat in general as long as it isn't from a factory farming company, my dad raises cattle for a living but even he knows that we are fucking up everything by eating so much meat and how subzidized the industry and heavily approves of my vegetarian diet (cheese is too fucking good for me to give up)

>is it subject to progressive degradation by definition. This is evidently the opposite of honoring something (to degrade it)
>different meanings of the word, "degrade."

I quick look for an antonym for "honor" came up with "degradation". You are quibbling.

>> In this case, the ancient and the modern.
>ancient cultures didn't honor food any more than we do.

The honored agricultural practices which reliably produced food. Examples aren't hard to find. Do your own research if you don't want to believe me.

>ancient agriculture was sustainable because of population sizes and nothing more. It has ceased to be sustainable because populations are much larger.

Sustainability is a balance of demands and resources, ultimately. But not simply dependent on population metrics. Agricultures were sustainable that came out ahead, year over year, and produced surpluses. This is obvious. My point is there were agricultural- as well cultural- practices which overall produced a sustainable balance for enduring populations. I view Veganism as simply a modern version of a cultural practice in this mode.

Second, populations and demand, or surplus are rather arbitrary. Suffice it to say that when a Vegan says, if everyone ate less animal protein, we could better sustain the population (and directly increase the sustainability of resources) they are unequivocally correct. I don't think anyone can seriously argue against this form of simple conservation. Every externality, every impact, that can be measured, scales down by an somewhere near an order of magnitude as far as I know, in the difference between the Veganism and Non-Veganism. This is collecting a lot of research and statistics to make a simple point, that you can in fact have a drastically smaller impact and footprint by not eating meat. This is objectively true and uncontroversial.

Walmart went "cage free" only two years ago in the theoretical official policy, and by them still selling Tyson and Cargill brand meat they are supporting unsustainable factory farming

>I quick look for an antonym for "honor" came up with "degradation".
>a word can have only one meaning
again, you're retarded.
>My point is there were agricultural- as well cultural- practices which overall produced a sustainable balance for enduring populations
those populations were decimated every other year by famine, drought, disease, depredation, etc.

you're glorifying a myth.

>Walmart went "cage free" only two years ago
you're confusing beef with other animals.

I'm arguing that US beef is almost entirely free range.

pigs and poultry not so much.

> (You)
>>A statistic is not a fallacy.
>holy shit you're retarded.
>just because one person can survive without meat does not imply that billions as a group can.

I like arguing this topic with you in particular because I've studied every aspect of the topic plus actual sentential and propositional logic.

You throw the word fallacy around with little apparent understanding of its application or comprehension of its use. I'd suggest becoming educated in formal logic.

As to your argument, I'm afraid that it is in fact reasonable to assume that if one person can survive without meat, many others can also survive without it. There is a formal name for the fallacy you've made, but I don't think I need to be formal here. What you are claiming simply doesn't make sense. I could mention the Indian subcontinent, with over a billion people, and a preponderance of vegetarians, but that would be being led astray. The fact remains there is no proof humans need meat. Not for the protein or any other reason. You can do your own research.

oh, my bad then thought you talked about animals in general

bad moment of reading and comprehension

Cooking was the turning point. We were most likely scavengers for the most part only able to kill smaller game, where larger game required much more mature tactics to prevent being trampled and gored. That level of sophistication escaped us for, no doubt, a huge length of time. People seem to project modern man onto our primitive ancestors but I have a feeling we mostly scavenged from deceased animals and many of the marks paleontologists find are from extraction of the remainders.

Biologically speaking though, we're maladapted for the consumption of meat on a constant basis, and even moreso for hunting relative to much more specifically programmed animals. Our stomach is a huge point in this, it is far less acidic and intricate relative to a canid for example. The rate of excretion for a human is far slower, too than that of a canid, allowing meat to during processing. Symbiotic bacteria is another factor, as is encumbering bacteria as well as another subset of more intricate mechanisms which have been indicated as concerning factors in the recently distributed WHO report.

Even without the historical basis of human consumption of meat the logical conclusion is that despite the fact it is relatively healthy to eat meat the variety of more friendly food, capable of providing all the same nutrients, is a more logical choice to pursue. The amount of time, work, and food put into livestock alone is the crux of the problem, especially when you consider the amount of lost energy in the process. As indicated we've done the exact opposite, and to be fair the neurological reaction is driving this. We're essentially programmed to enjoy meat, but there are again plenty of alternatives and with our grasp on material science and biology it's well within the realm of possibility to create foodstuffs that closely emulate meat, and we have in fact done this. It's now a cultural thing.

(You)
>I quick look for an antonym for "honor" came up with "degradation".
>a word can have only one meaning
again, you're retarded.

What informs this claim?

>>My point is there were agricultural- as well cultural- practices which overall produced a sustainable balance for enduring populations
>those populations were decimated every other year by famine, drought, disease, depredation, etc.

To be specific, populations I have in mind are ones that there is a very comprehensive set of knowledge about. America in the 19th century, for example. Even up to the 1940s in places. But that is just one obvious example. Archaeology has a gigantic body of evidence showing the existence of enduring civilizations with practices of honoring their subsistence and its practice. Cultures and societies thrived because such practices were commonplace and widespread. Populations were sustainable and evidence remains. Its speculation on my part but maybe the reason there isn't much evidence of cultures without these practices of honoring (ie., not degrading) their agriculture, is precisely because without a cultural method of preserving the knowledge and practice of sustainability, populations were beset by the problems you mention and were destroyed.

Mesoamerican cultural decline, in particular is attributed to the degradation of its agricultural practices.

The real problem is that if anything history teaches us that, when cultures ignore a practice that honors the land, guess what? They go extinct. Maybe that is not all there is to it, you also have to cultivate some kind of social and cultural practice where you don't also overpopulate- but that goes back to the sustainability equation.

>you're glorifying a myth.

Which myth is that?

>You throw the word fallacy around with little apparent understanding of its application or comprehension of its use.
when you assume that because on human can survive without meat then all humans can
you are committing the fallacy of composition
just because something is true for a part of a thing doesn't necessarily make it true for the whole.

>I'm afraid that it is in fact reasonable to assume that if one person can survive without meat, many others can also survive without it
this is equivocation.
"many" does not mean "all."

in reality not all people can become vegans sustainably because we can't afford to produce and distribute that much plant food, and there is no place on the planet where all of it can be grown at once.

>What informs this claim?
you can't seem to understand that words may have more than one meaning.

this failure in an adult indicates mental retardation.

>if anything history teaches us that, when cultures ignore a practice that honors the land, guess what? They go extinct.
bullshit.
there is no evidence most ancient people honored the land

That aquard moment you try to ezplain how you care for meat animals like pets, then one day eat them. The meat rabbits i have know love.

>when you assume that because on human can survive without meat then all humans can

Dude, be reasonable. Of course in some places, for some people, meat may be necessary. But that isn't true in any biochemical sense for 99.995% of people without some metabolic or genetic defect.

>just because something is true for a part of a thing doesn't necessarily make it true for the whole.

I'm not arguing that (((because))) the vast majority of people objectively don't need meat, (((therefore))) that all people everywhere objectively don't need meat.

It is just a statistical and biochemical FACT.

As for the (hypothetical) human that MUST eat animal meat (or die) .... again, the "exception proves the rule." For biologically normal human beings, amino acids or the fats or the carbohydrates, or the mineral content of meat is unnecessary.

The fallacy of composition is something like an argument of the form: A wheel is round. A wheel is a part of a car. Therefore a Car is round.

In this case I am arguing: Humans need 0.9-1.6g/kg of protein on the diet per day. None of this protein is unique to meat. Therefore no humans necessarily need meat from protein.

That is not a fallacy because my conclusion is derived from my premises. My premises are facts (true). Make your own judgement on my conclusion. (which is also true) (exceptions for those rare unicorns with defects I mentioned above). This is a valid argument form (which happens to be supported by facts derived from deductive reasoning (research) and you can assess their validity with research on your part.)

For the Wheel/car argument form, it argues from the True (Wheels are round) to the False (Cars are round). That is an invalid argument form.

>this is equivocation.
"many" does not mean "all."

Quibbling again. By the way, quibbling is equivocation. The crux of my argument does not in any way depend on ambiguous semantics.

Just for kicks i imagined this in morgan freedmans voice.

>The crux of my argument does not in any way depend on ambiguous semantics.
I haven't been reading your arguments because you haven't been reading mine.

I argued that it was impossible until very recently to be a vegan in most places because of transportation problems.

your argument that humans can be vegans says nothing about that.

Nice noble savage narrative but it's bullshit. Amazonian tribes built the Amazon through terra preta and slash & burn. Mississippian culture slashed & burned. Australian Aborigines slashed & burned. Primitive peoples were and always are far and away from "honoring the land" which is why they collapsed whenever the temperature took a dive for the worse or when communicable disease reared its ugly head. Man before agronomics was playing a fucking guessing game with the land. Sometimes it worked out, sometimes it led to ecological disaster.

Cervical dislocation, kills pretty much instantly if done right. That's how I have killed feeder rats in the past.

I've fed chicken to my chickens (I've also seen them kill a flock-mate), pigs will rush out to drink the blood of a pen-mate that was just killed..............

I just don't like animals dying for me. I can live fine without them dying for me. Why waste lives?

The guinea hens that clean the bugs out of my garden and give me eggs sit on my lap when i'm smoking in the backyard and get their toes rubbed, they sleep there content. They have color bands representing the year they hatched, the older ones are used in slowcooker recipies. Raising your own meat animals is fine. I cull them well. Why not? They know comfort, I feed them what grows on my land. I eat them.

>in reality not all people can become vegans sustainably because we can't afford to produce and distribute that much plant food, and there is no place on the planet where all of it can be grown at once.

I feel I have to address this. Currently the world produces and distributes far more food than it can consume. In addition, it produces and distributes things it can't consume.

Given the demonstrated capacity for both production and distribution, and the orders of magnitude of resource intensity of meat vs. plant matter production, you can only conclude that NOT ONLY is there enough production and distribution capacity to do the job, but even a FRACTION of the capacity could fulfill this task.

Something like 800 million people spend all day long every day looking for something to eat or water to drink. There is both the production and capacity to deliver the necessary nutrients.

We are running out of drinkable water, ecosystem services, wild animal populations and habitats, space and range, etc. We are not running out of food production. For example, the US produces so much food we have trouble giving it away. Food is destroyed on an epic scale here. The subsidized system of agriculture is the primary culprit. We maintain surplus production for no other reasons but a marginal political and economic benefit. In fact I would argue there are NO benefits if cost externalities are taken into account (they never are for political reasons).

Draw your own ethical, moral, or rational conclusions. These are the facts.

i love reading vegan threads because all it shows is that both sides have no idea how agriculture works

>Currently the world produces and distributes far more food than it can consume
yes, because of meat.
without meat we produce and distribute far less food than we can consume.
>the orders of magnitude of resource intensity of meat vs. plant matter production
the mistake here is in assuming that meat production decreases plant food production, when in reality it usually does not.

in the rare cases where meat animals are fed pant food that humans can consume, it is because we have an excess of plant foods and it's cheaper to feed them to cattle on-site than to ship them to starving people in Africa.

there are variables you're not aware of.

>the US produces so much food we have trouble giving it away
the US is not the world.

it's not even representative of the world.

using it as evidence that the rest of the world is overfed is wrong for reasons any normal human should understand immediately.

Aw, sweet thing. No.

Where do you live? It may help us understand.

I live in Colorado, Where much of the beef you don't eat is raised.

I've worked on sheep and cattle ranches and I've worked with the BLM and Forest Service on land used for grazing cattle and sheep.

I suspect I knew more about ranching and farming when I was 8 than you'll know in your whole life.

>Nice noble savage narrative but it's bullshit. Amazonian tribes built the Amazon through terra preta and slash & burn. Mississippian culture slashed & burned. Australian Aborigines slashed & burned. Primitive peoples were and always are far and away from "honoring the land" which is why they collapsed whenever the temperature took a dive for the worse or when communicable disease reared its ugly head. Man before agronomics was playing a fucking guessing game with the land. Sometimes it worked out, sometimes it led to ecological disaster.

"Agronomics" has a history going back over 8,000 years.

Many cultures sustained, relying on (apparently) useful and sophisticated cultural and agricultural practices which, by measuring the sheer duration of their existence, lends support to the idea that it was not accidental. And there is evidence of decline in some of these civilizations because of the failure of these institutions.

You've picked a few less sophisticated examples is just cherry picking. Yes, many cultures failed to learn and by applying bad practices, killed themselves off.

America was an agricultural state up to the 19th century since its inception. The vast majority of its free people and economy were premised on very sophisticated agricultural "agronomics" that, because of the printing press, there is a lot of evidence. In other places and earlier times, some of this evidence was carved on more durable materials and lasted thousands of years. But in general it was a body of practical knowledge.

I'd wager that if you were to bring one of these yeoman farmers into the future and ask him what he thought of vast monocrops sprayed with poison, he'd marvel at the technology but have no frame of reference to find the massive levels of, say, soil erosion, practically useful. Until you explained the money and politics that drives it. Then he'd understand, and probably tell you you were evil and debased.

>Yes, many cultures failed to learn and by applying bad practices, killed themselves off.
not him but it is a fact that both types of culture are now extinct.

those that practiced more sustainable agriculture are just as extinct as those that practiced less.

sustainability is relative and depends as much on the weather as anything else.

Here on the east coast fruit and veggie farms let large portions of their stuff rot in the feild because of food aesthetic standards (peaches, pears especially ). tax breaks equal good supply to foodbanks, but massive waste still occurs from overstocking grocery stores (they plan on throwing at least a third away) in fresh produce that local food banks dont bother with. To keep prices up fruit, veggies are not reduced price for any reason. Just thrown away.

I dont belive you.

>>The crux of my argument does not in any way depend on ambiguous semantics.
>I haven't been reading your arguments because you haven't been reading mine.

Do you think I copy and paste quote your comments in my responses without comprehension?

>I argued that it was impossible until very recently to be a vegan in most places because of transportation problems.

What am I missing here? If you can import the meat you say is so necessary how is it you cannot import the vegetable matter? I'm struggling to come up with any example in history where any population that had access to meat didn't have access to plant matter. Perhaps you mean prior to the domestication of grains, or the evolution of economic systems of trade and production that accompanied static and non-migratory human tribes (in which case you are talking about very small population numbers).

Cultivation of plants and establishment of population centers go hand in hand.

>your argument that humans can be vegans says nothing about that.

Are you referring to, for instance, some isolated bands of humans in some part of the world? Like Eskimos, or Easter Islanders? Hunter-gatherers didn't need to raise crops to feed livestock- and they subsisted on meat, mostly. I'm arguing from the facts of biochemistry that for all normal human beings, eating meat isn't necessary. Not only that but in the absence of any other kind of food then it is necessary, but not because of biochemical reasons.

Eskimos in particular have certain genetics that were selected for that give them some additional abilities to metabolically process some kind of protein or fat that was extremely high for their limited diet.

When you've worked meat all your life everything looks like hamburgers huh? I don't think you understand the scale of waste on the fruit and veggie side.

I'm not saying that the US doesn't waste food. We both know it does.

I'm saying it's not economical to distribute it to places that need it so the argument doesn't matter.

saying we WON'T ship food where it's needed is the same as saying we CAN'T.
>I dont belive you.
what a fucking retard.

>Do you think I copy and paste quote your comments in my responses without comprehension?
yes.
>If you can import the meat you say is so necessary how is it you cannot import the vegetable matter?
I'm talking about times and places where neither are imported.

just because you can doesn't mean anyone does.

>>Currently the world produces and distributes far more food than it can consume
>yes, because of meat.

Is there some additional application of the hamburger patty I'm unaware of in the logistics systems of the global economy?

>without meat we produce and distribute far less food than we can consume.

Nearest I can come to making a coherent argument out of what you've written here is the claim that, without the manure (nitrogen and carbon) from animals we would be unable to fertilize a sufficient amount of land to grow the plant matter we'd need to subsist on. And while the standard economics of this arrangement in conventional agriculture seems widespread, based on what I know, it doesn't have to be. Practices do exist to maintain fertility that do not rely on animal waste.

>>the orders of magnitude of resource intensity of meat vs. plant matter production
>the mistake here is in assuming that meat production decreases plant food production, when in reality it usually does not.

I am just stating empirical facts to support my argument that for the necessary calorie requirements of humanity, it would require about 10x less land, 10x less water, 10x less energy. Roughly speaking: an order of magnitude.

You could in fact feed people the calories, if not the same food, that are used to feed the animals.

>in the rare cases where meat animals are fed plant food that humans can consume, it is because we have an excess of plant foods and it's cheaper to feed them to cattle on-site than to ship them to starving people in Africa.

We have large surpluses in America that are stored and kept off the market in order to keep prices stabilized. We airdrop some of this surplus sometimes on various populations for political reasons and sometimes, humanitarian ones. Its a giant subsidy system set up to profit everyone who participates at the expense of the taxpayer.

>there are variables you're not aware of.

Am I missing anything?

> (You)
>>the US produces so much food we have trouble giving it away
>the US is not the world.
>it's not even representative of the world.

The point was that modern agricultural systems aren't designed with the simple purpose of feeding people. Its a corporate/government machine for making money. A lot of money, but really quite a pitiful amount in terms of the whole economy- which is why it is so obscene in its illogical and counterproductive sense of being the institution which produces, for instance, most of the chemical and biological pollution, and the most extensive disruption of natural landscapes.

I use America as an example, because I know it. It's fairly transparent if you want to research and has extensive libraries of statistical data. America's agriculture is a mere fraction of the economy and yet exports all over the world. It is probably the world's most important agricultural producer, certainly nearly every facet of "modern" agriculture evolved in America. And much of "the worlds" agriculture is adopting these practices and methods.

Furthermore, on the consumption side, the world is adopting America's basic palette and appetites. American food companies are in every corner of the globe and are highly influential. So the exception you are striving for might exist but, again, exceptions prove the rule. Agriculture anywhere is being transformed by these methods.

>using it as evidence that the rest of the world is overfed

When did I say the rest of the world was overfed?

>Am I missing anything?
that beef is primarily made of grass which humans cannot consume.

that meat is hundreds of times more calorie-dense than most plants.

and that meat can be raised pretty much anywhere, which isn't true of plant foods at all.

and that meat can be transported great distances alive without spoiling, which plant foods generally cannot.

and that even with surplus food in the world there are still millions of starving people.

aside from these obvious facts, no.