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posted by chromas on Tuesday November 27 2018, @11:23PM   Printer-friendly
from the beat-it,-don't-eat-it dept.

Phys.org:

Dr. Helen Harwatt, farmed animal law and policy fellow at Harvard Law School, advises that getting protein from plant sources instead of animal sources would drastically help in meeting climate targets and reduce the risk of overshooting temperature goals.

For the first time, Dr. Harwatt proposes a three-step strategy to gradually replace animal proteins with plant-sourced proteins, as part of the commitment to mitigate climate change. These are:

1) Acknowledging that current numbers of livestock are at their peak and will need to decline ('peak livestock').

2) Set targets to transition away from livestock products starting with foods linked with the highest greenhouse gas emissions such as beef, then cow's milk and pig meat ('worst-first' approach).

3) Assessing suitable replacement products against a range of criteria including greenhouse gas emission targets, land usage, and public health benefits ('best available food' approach).

Harwatt further elaborates that recent evidence shows, in comparison with the current food system, switching from animals to plants proteins, could potentially feed an additional 350 million people in the US alone.

You can eat plants or insects, but not meat.


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  • (Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Wednesday November 28 2018, @12:53PM (7 children)

    by bobthecimmerian (6834) on Wednesday November 28 2018, @12:53PM (#767284)

    Raising animals takes many pounds of grain or other feed for every one pound of meat that comes out of the slaughtered carcass. So you can feed even an obese person double portion of their daily recommended calorie intake from vegan foods and still reduce the net environmental impact by a large amount.

    ...and fat people don't typically eat that much more than thin people. A pound of fat is 3500 calories and takes 1-3 calories per day to maintain. The person 100 pounds heavier than you has a lifetime average of 15% higher calorie intake per day than you do. Maybe less.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 28 2018, @03:58PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 28 2018, @03:58PM (#767328)

    Raising animals takes many pounds of grain or other feed for every one pound of meat that comes out of the slaughtered carcass.

    It is called grazing, and its a totally natural part of the cycle of life. Cows eat grass, cows crap, new grass grows using nutrients from the crap.

    Framing it as some sort of resources being used up is just wrong. That said, don't buy crappy factory farmed meat.

    • (Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Wednesday November 28 2018, @08:26PM (2 children)

      by bobthecimmerian (6834) on Wednesday November 28 2018, @08:26PM (#767469)

      The majority of meat used in the world today is factory farmed meat.

      To add nuance to my original post: there are places where foods like grass suited for pigs, cows, and chickens will grow and plant foods suitable for direct consumption by humans will not. And there are byproducts of normal food production like corn husks and roots and leaves of some of the plants humans eat that are suitable for animals but not people. And using those two sources for animals and then slaughtering those animals for meat is fine.

      But huge portions of meat production, well more than half, come from animals raised on purpose grown crops for animal consumption on land that supports growing potatoes, wheat, beans, rice, apples, carrots, onions, and so forth. Reducing that is a worthwhile thing.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 28 2018, @08:56PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 28 2018, @08:56PM (#767484)

        Wikipedia says its closer to 40%:

        Intensive production of livestock and poultry is widespread in developed nations. For 2002-2003, FAO estimates of industrial production as a percentage of global production were 7 percent for beef and veal, 0.8 percent for sheep and goat meat, 42 percent for pork, and 67 percent for poultry meat. Industrial production was estimated to account for 39 percent of the sum of global production of these meats and 50 percent of total egg production.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 28 2018, @04:47PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 28 2018, @04:47PM (#767350)

    My animals never touch grain. They eat grass on land that's not suitable for agriculture.

    Grazing animals convert non-digestible carbohydrates into energy - meat. Maybe learn the basics first.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 28 2018, @06:38PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 28 2018, @06:38PM (#767404)

      You beat me to it. Our goats browse land that is not suitable for plowing, eating the native plants that are not edible for humans since we are not ruminants. Meat is the only human food our farm can produce sustainably. The soils too shallow for trees and plowing just adds more top soil to the creek.

      The problem is the meat, it's how agribusiness produces it.

    • (Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Wednesday November 28 2018, @08:28PM

      by bobthecimmerian (6834) on Wednesday November 28 2018, @08:28PM (#767471)

      See my response at https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=28790&cid=767469 [soylentnews.org]