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Comment by kaikai | Hacker News Reader

Your original point was that breeding animals and shooting them was incredibly depraved behavior that should make anyone with a conscience sick.

I don’t agree- I think there are ways that raising animals for meat can be an ethical choice. I offered up my own experience of living closely with my animals, relating to them with respect while still using them for meat and fiber.

We are in agreement on the horrors of modern industrial farming. I’m not making any kind of argument in support of factory farming, because I DO find it morally abhorrent.

I hoped by sharing my own experience with my animals, I could add some nuance to the conversation. I now see that that’s unlikely.

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Overall getting protein from meat is something like 10x less efficient resource-wise so if you pull back and look at the numbers, it's better to eat plants. One can think of meat eaters as greedily using 10x what they need in a world where resources are scarce.

Note that this is only true for modern agricultural practices. The norm for much of human history was to graze cows and sheep on grass, which humans can't consume at all, and which has evolved in concert with grazing animals. Pigs would often be fed on leftovers and also plenty of non-edible foodstuffs. Chicken were more of an exception, but then again their eggs were eaten much more often than sacrificing the chicken itself.

There is nothing preventing us from going back to more traditional agricultural practices in this area, just as we need to do for most crop harvests to avoid depleting the soils everywhere. Of course, this will require meat to become more expensive, seasonal, and a less common food overall. But there is no reason a 0-emission world would require the whole humam population to be vegan.

This is still the norm. They graze in pastures or free range (small and large ranches) even in places like Nevada and Arizona.

They are then shipped to the large processing cages you see several days before and are fed large sums of grain.

That's just not true, at scale. I did some googling and all signs point to single percentage points of beef being handled that way. That's US beef, you think the last 20 years of Argentinian beef has coexisted with the Amazon?

>grass, which humans can't consume at all

wheat, rice, maize (corn), barley and millet are all grasses

Neither wheat, rice, maize, barley, nor millet grow on mountain pastures where many sheep and cows are traditionally grazed. In addition, humans can only process the seeds of those plants, while grazing animals can eat the entirety of the plant (and in fact typically don't digest the seeds, instead spreading them in their feces).

most humans do not live on mountains. most livestock are not grazed on mountains. those who do eat goat. even if that were true, out of the many cultivars available, there will be some hardy enough for mountain growth. additionally, neither of your statements refute the fact that cereals and grains are grasses

> One can think of meat eaters as greedily using 10x what they need in a world where resources are scarce.

Go ahead and try to replace the protein that meat gives. Cows feed so many people.

So, sure let's replace that ranchland with farmland, what's so hard about that?

That huge amount of natural grassland the cows usually roam on is going to need to be tilled, planted, and fertilized (synthetic via oil or animal based).

You're going to need a lot of water and a lot of fertilizer and resources (labor, machinery, etc.)

Man those cows in Arizona and Nevada really put up with some harsh conditions.

Looks like we need like... a lot water, and a lot more fertilizer...

You know what is scarce, fresh water! California knows this.

Water isn't really that scarce in California, we just give it all to almond farmers who export it to China.

Protein from beef is the least efficient way (2%) to farm protein. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/protein-efficiency-of-mea... (last chart).

It’s trivial to get protein from plants which are far more efficient source to farm.

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