Key word being "pasture grazed", which is not how anywhere near close to the majority of meat is produced.

Most vegans I know don't have an issue with cows raised in these kinds of scenarios, but most cows are fed corn which has the same animal killing effect as harvesting soy, but for every 1 point of beef you need over ten pounds of corn.

well that's true and untrue. most beef is raised in a hybrid grazing system or a pure grazing system (less common). they get a big trough of corn and other plants to supplement their diet, but need to graze for most of their food (if not all of it).

you're probably confusing beef with milk cows. milk cows don't graze as commonly. but beef cows mostly graze, remember the bundy case base on beef grazing lands?

not to mention the tons of farts this beast produce while ignoring numbers.

Grazing systems supply approximately 9 percent of the world's production of beef, according to Food and Agriculture Organization statistics.

Prolonged heavy grazing undoubtedly contributes to the disappearance of palatable species and the subsequent dominance by other, less palatable, herbaceous plants or bushes. Such loss of plant and, in consequence, animal biodiversity can require a long regenerative cycle (30 years in savannas, 100 years in rainforests [think Brazil]). Excessive livestock grazing also causes soil compaction and erosion, decreased soil fertility and water infiltration, and a loss in organic matter content and water storage capacity.

This post was edited by inkanddagger on May 22 2018 12:40pm

I won't say I'm particularly well versed, but it still seems to be tipped heavily in favor of harvesting soy.

I know that if we eliminated meat production we could reduce farmed land by a substantial amount because 90% of the corn grown in the U.S. is for animal feed.



My biggest issue with vegans, and usually my go-to, is that nature blows. Killing an animal out in a field isn't really bad, because they were probably going to die from exposure, starvation, or getting ripped apart by a hawk anyway. We're just hastening the death that was already going to happen and may be even saving them some brutality by making it quick.

Humans die every day. Let's fucking kill them.

I would assume that means 9% are pure grassfed, like i said less common. but the remaining 91% are still by-and-large kept in a field and grazed for a large portion of their diet. I don't know of many, if any, beef operations that are entirely indoor operations. And i don't know of many, but a few, dairy operations that have grazing at all. the 3rd largest dairy in the state is a mile from my house, and the cows there are like mining ponies, they live their whole life in that building once they clear the calf houses.

as to livestock displacing animals tho, crop fields aren't natural habitats. thus piles of dead animals in them come harvest time.



i want to see a realistic study on how much more we'd need to plant to offset all that meat going away. surely less, but it would be neat to read up on.

i want to see a model of indoor sustainable soy growing as well

This post was edited by thesnipa on May 22 2018 12:46pm

What?

We're talking about grazing lands displacing rainforests via clearcutting.

As for insects and field mice - yes, many vegans are aware and do what they can to reduce suffering and death. This is more an issue of large-scale agriculture in general and not really diet, though. Less field mice and insects would die by eliminating factory farming for animal feed than every vegan in the world swapping over to only eating food from their personal gardens.

Edit: also, pastured cows are usually fed farmed alfalfa or grains even if they do graze. In the case of alfalfa, this allows the beef to be marketed as grass fed as well.

This post was edited by inkanddagger on May 22 2018 12:59pm

You said:



which can apply just as easily to lands cleared for fields growing anything from coffee, to bananas. Simply pointing out that both animal and plant based agriculture displaced wildlife on a massive scale.

as i said in my past post tho i'm open to more concentrated indoor growing techniques to reduce that effect, which i admit is only possible really for plant agriculture and stuff like crickets. compact larger animal growing is cruel and not my cup of tea.



i've found most are largely unaware of mammal killoff in fields, but its purely anecdotal. this was a run in in a long line of runins with that brand of vegan.

This post was edited by thesnipa on May 22 2018 12:58pm

Just because they don't know about it doesn't mean they won't care about it once they are told about it. There are legitimate ways to reduce suffering in fields; one, as I pointed out, is simply not farming that land for animal feed in the first place. When you eat a burger, you are eating however many cows plus contributing to the deaths of insects and field mice and rabbits and birds. A vegan is only contributing to the field deaths, and on an incredibly smaller scale. If they buy from local, smaller operations, the number goes down even more. If they buy organic, it goes down more again. The point of veganism is to reduce suffering in general, eliminate animal slavery, protect the environment, and promote healthy, ethical choices (unless you do nothing but eat Oreos all day, I guess, but that's an outlier). All of that is served through the dietary change even if you can't avoid causing suffering 100%. Even in the case of eating a tomato from my own back yard, I'm sure many aphids died (because I moved an ant bed to my tomato garden to let them farm the aphids so I don't have to use chemical pesticides of any type).

Edit: I should mention, I've been veg*an since 1997. I used to be of the XEarth CrisisX school of thought, i.e. purge the earth of animal-eating humans through violence if necessary. People get older and their perspectives become more mature. I forgive the young passionate vegans just like I forgive obnoxious newly saved Christians.

This post was edited by inkanddagger on May 22 2018 01:09pm