In regards to eating meat

[Bring4th_Austin]

Inflict suffering or pain, probably not. To take its life, it might not be okay, but necessary for survival.

This is what we keep coming back to. For the vast majority of humans, it's not necessary to eat animals.

I would strongly disagree with the "vast majority." The vast majority of humans don't have access to the wide range of foods we have available.

Well we can't just eat sand and air, so we eat what nourishes us.

Plants nourish us. Even in excess, plants just keep making us healthier. There's no such thing as eating too many veggies!

Animal products, on the other hand, cause disease. That's well documented.

Eaten in excess. I've yet to see any study based on humanely raised, pasture-based, naturally produced moderate meat coupled with everything else that is good and healthy. These studies all seem to be based off of American diets, eating meat 2 or 3 times a day, rather than 2 or 3 times a week, which is really all that is necessary for protein input.

2. A sustainable/permaculture approach can be accomplished by utilizing cows and chickens for milk and eggs. They don't have to be killed for meat.

I've never addressed this so I guess now is as good a time as ever. There's more to milk and egg production than just raising chickens for eggs and milking the cows/goats every day, and I don't think you'll be particularly happy to hear this information.

Egg laying chickens lay for 2-3 years, and may live for more than 10. In a system which is maximizing efficiency of food production (or simply a farm in general), it would make no sense to continue to feed and raise a chicken for 5 times longer than it lays eggs for. From the standpoint of a farm business, every bit of revenue that chicken helped create would disappear incredibly fast. From the standpoint of a hungry village trying to sustain, the food which is fed to the chicken could either be used to feed another chicken which produces eggs or a person. From a general sustainability/permaculture standpoint, while the chicken may be adding to your ecosystem, the role that chicken plays could be filled by a chicken which IS producing eggs, adding nutritional output to the system. Egg laying hens are generally processed and eaten at 2 years of age and replaced. It just isn't feasible for any system, business, village, or sustainable/permaculture system, to feed a hen for 8 years after it stops outputting food. To a vegetarian, this may seem like a vain loss, but to hungry people, this hen could make stew and feed a family for a week.

As far as milk production goes, whatever animal is being milked must be bred and produce babies in order to continue producing milk. Most dairy breeds sit at around 1 year for this requirement. At first glance this seems like an okay deal...more cows/goats, more milk, right? Well, only the females produce milk (obviously) and you can't use every single male you get to breed (to maintain strong genetics), so what do you do with the other males? You could feed them and maintain them in your ecosystem, like the chicken who doesn't lay eggs, but from a realistic and efficient standpoint, this is illogical. Again, the food or area required to keep the animal in a natural state could be used to keep an animal which produced nutrient output. Even further, once your system reaches an equilibrium, you can't just keep adding cows or goats to it. It's totally possible to maintain an ecosystem and feed these animals completely on pasture without any inputs, but only if you practice diligent balanced stewardship. Then, what to do with all these new animals? Again, to a vegetarian, this seems to be a vain situation, however, to a hungry family (or simply someone trying to maximize sustainable efficient food production), the cows which can't be kept within the system could provide an amazing amount of food and nourishment (compare how much meat American's eat to the amount required for healthy inputs of protein, iron, vitamins, etc.)
So keeping animals for eggs/milk in a sustainable system is only logical if there is culling and consumption of livestock. Otherwise, the system will cease to be productive.

3. Based on what you've taught me about sustainable agriculture, I agree that a vegan diet might not work long-term for the whole planet. I can see the need for some animals. Thus, I'd say that a plant-based diet, with moderate milk products and eggs, is the ideal.

It may be ideal if it would work. But like I just pointed out, even for vegetarians these systems would not work.

On top of that, without soy, a vegetarian diet is nearly impossible.

I don't understand. Are you basing this on the assumption that most vegetarians rely heavily on soy for their protein needs? If so, that's a myth. Yes, many do, but it's certainly not necessary. I rarely eat soy. I enjoy occasional tofu dishes but could live without it, easily.

Or is there some other purpose of soy that I'm missing?

There's a couple things. Of the foods which vegetarians can eat for protein, soy (tofu especially) is one of the most efficient, and it still is harmful to produce in such large quantities. What it would take to get the world the amount of protein needed in other foods would require more cultivation of land for single-system use (for example, row crop farms), rather than integrated sustainable systems, which could use the same amount of land (less, even) to produce not only protein through meats, but all other nutrients one may need which the single-systems will not provide.





I'll get around to responding to other discussions in this thread when I find time.

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A question for the meat-eaters:

What if you found a dog on the side of the road, who had just been hit by a car, and was injured, bleeding and in pain? Would you feel compassion for the dog? Would you try to help relieve the pain and take the dog to the vet? Or would you leave it by the side of the road to die a slow, agonizing death?

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