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Comment by gregwebs | Hacker News Reader

I think you could actually be doing more harm then good if you are focusing on "meat or no meat". This really still re-enforces factory farmed meat because it acts like the only meat choice is factory farmed. If the choice is between the environmentally destructive technique- grain fed factory meat or sustainably raised grass-fed meat, that would actually make the meat situation better.

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Grass-fed meat is often worse for the environment. See e.g. http://blogs.reuters.com/environment/2010/04/08/grass-fed-be...

In any case, consider an analogy: suppose you wanted to end human slavery. Would supporting "sustainable" slavery end it more quickly, or not supporting any slavery at all?

I realize that slavery is not the moral equivalent of eating meat, but in terms of the effectiveness of boycotts, they are pretty similar. I can't really imagine a way in which the boycott to buy only "sustainably" slave-made goods would hasten the end of slavery more quickly.

none of the "science" (or blogs in your case) people quote about pastured meat is close to correct. This blogger assumes that all methane from cows will be released into the atmosphere like in the factory model when it is in a big pile by itself. This assumption does not hold when the cow manure is spread out and worked into the soil by nature. Methane is probably the least of our concerns in such a comparison anyways- there is a much greater damage done to find and burn all the fossil fuel for the fertilizer to grow the grains with and other energy used in this process- by some estimates a calorie of factory farmed meat comes from 10 calories of oil. Compare this to grass fed meat where most of the energy input is solar to grow the grass, and the topsoil actually grows instead of being slowly degraded while growing grains.

I am really not going to bother debating a ridiculous comparison of eating meat with slavery. It is essential for our health and we don't need to feel bad about it when we aren't destroying the environment or torturing animals.

actually, I remember now that most methane emissions from cattle are from burping. But I still have never seen someone analyze the whole system- equally important is how much methane is absorbed back from the atmosphere in a pasture.

Reminds me of something Slavoj Zizek once said:

"The worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it."

I don't. I focus on the ecology of animals and people and environment and trying to make it better. There are dozens and dozens of considerations.

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