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Clearly Veg reports:
Barbara Hendricks, Germany's environment minister, has banned meat in all official functions and called for only vegetarian food to be served. The ban became clear through an email "to department heads from a senior civil servant in the environment ministry", according to The Telegraph . The e-mail noted that the ministry had a responsibility and should set an example to combat the "negative effects of meat consumption", with a statement by the ministry reading:
"We're not telling anyone what they should eat. But we want to set a good example for climate protection, because vegetarian food is more climate-friendly than meat and fish."
Unsurprisingly, the ban has caused a lot of controversy. Minister of food and agriculture Christian Schmidt, who has previously stated that he will push for a ban on "misleading" vegan labels such as vegan curry sausages, stated that he will not be having this "Veggie Day through the back door", and that "meat and fish are also part of a balanced diet".
[Ed Note: This submission vandalized by cmn32480.]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by TheRaven on Friday February 24 2017, @12:44PM
As a vegetarian, I think this measure is a bit nonsense. It is absolutely true that meat has a higher area land usage impact per calorie than vegetables. Extrapolating from there to meat has a higher environmental impact than any vegetarian alternative is pure nonsense. Meat animals farmed on land that is not suitable for cultivation (because they can eat things that humans can't) and without mass-produced feed has a lower environmental impact than clearing forest land to provide space for growing crops, for example. A lot of meat substitutes are very energy intensive to produce and some have a higher environmental impact than dead animal as a result.
This kind of 'broad category X is always better than broad category Y' thinking very rarely leads to an improvement.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by TheGratefulNet on Friday February 24 2017, @01:15PM
"if people are not supposed to eat animals, how come they're all made of meat??"
;)
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 1, Redundant) by HiThere on Friday February 24 2017, @06:57PM
To rephrase your comment:
If people are not supposed to eat people, how come they're made of meat?
You may have been making a joke, of course, but without tone of voice and expression I can't really tell. It could have been sarcasm or even, for some people, irony.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Informative) by maxwell demon on Friday February 24 2017, @08:38PM
Well, if you look carefully, you'll find that the line with the text is followed by another, in which a semicolon is followed by a closing parenthesis. You really should learn to interpret such character sequences. Not understanding them is similar to not understanding tone of voice and facial expressions in direct communication.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by HiThere on Saturday February 25 2017, @01:11AM
Yeah, so it's some sort of humorous construction. But the difference in meaning in this case between understanding it as a joke, as sarcasm, or as irony is considerable. (Sometimes it hardly matters, but in this case it could even reverse the meaning.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday February 25 2017, @08:46AM
So is the difference between ":)" and ";)".
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by HiThere on Saturday February 25 2017, @06:52PM
OK. I don't follow emoticons, so even now I don't know which was indicated without a google search. Wikipedia reports the meaning as either a wink or a smirk...which leaves me confused, as neither seems to apply to your post.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday February 25 2017, @10:02PM
To my post? I don't have several accounts.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday February 24 2017, @06:53PM
Carrying capacity of U.S. agricultural land: Ten diet scenarios [elementascience.org]
Using a biophysical simulation model we calculated human carrying capacity under ten diet scenarios. The scenarios included two reference diets based on actual consumption and eight “Healthy Diet” scenarios that complied with nutritional recommendations but varied in the level of meat content.
...
Carrying capacity was generally higher for scenarios with less meat and highest for the lacto-vegetarian diet. However, the carrying capacity of the vegan diet was lower than two of the healthy omnivore diet scenarios.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 24 2017, @08:28PM
meat has a higher area land usage impact per calorie than vegetables
Environmental impact seems to absolutely be the focus of the German Environment Ministry.
To land use, add water use.
How Water Intensive Food Choices Impact California’s Drought [ecology.com]
The guys also add the impact of livestock shit on groundwater.
Worried About Water? Mind The Meat [eecosphere.com]
...and on top of that, add livestock farts which are a significant source of greenhouse gases.
Long story short:
They also add
Their link to Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine is paywalled and robots.txt blocks the Wayback Machine. 8-(
If you eat a grain and a legume (e.g. rice and beans), you get all the amino acids that your body needs to build proteins.
The only thing that you get by eating animal products that you don't get with a vegan diet is Vitamin B12.
A once-a-day multi-vitamin pill or a B12 pill will give you that for a lot less than buying meat.
Essentially zero impact on the environment as well.
.
Meat animals farmed on land that is not suitable for cultivation
It now sounds like you're talking about goats.
Do a lot of Soylentils eat goat meat??
...and humans have been doing terraced farming and soil enrichment for millenia.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]