Do You Know Any Vegetarians Who Hunt?

[foob]

Yes, I can. That field -- the one I'm looking at -- has taken exactly no energy from the people who put the cattle on it. They didn't plant the grass (an energy-intensive process). They don't plow it in the spring, consuming petroleum products in order to get the crop into the ground. They don't fertilize it. They don't spray chemicals on it to combat weeds; it's not necessary with a field of grass hay although it's all but required for a field of vegetables consumable by humans. They don't harvest that field using a diesel combine when the crop is ready, another energy-intensive process. They simply put calves out in the spring and slaughter them in the fall once they're big enough to eat.

Oh come on. The world's supply of meat is mainly sustained with animal feed. A small farm that uses naturally grown grass with no human intervention is your justification of zero energy use?

That's like arguing a naturally growing fruit tree with no human intervention doesn't use any additional energy too. See these two examples, one by you and one by me, must mean vegetables and meat are equal.

The reason why animal feed is used is because naturally occurring grass is not sufficient to produce enough quantity of meat to feed the world population. Obviously if the population was smaller we could be more choosy. I prefer a smaller population, that dude in the article doesn't. His main point is climate control, and cows whether grown from naturally occurring grass or animal feed contributes to greenhouse gases through methane production.

You failed to cite your source. My data came from the largest and oldest society founded to support the vegan lifestyle, the one that actually coined the word "vegan." The Vegan Society tells its members that to date, no one has found a reliable, non-commercial source of B12 for vegans. Where did your quote come from?

I'm afraid you still haven't addressed my concerns. We are talking about vegetarians. He is talking about vegans. This is not a B12 argument. Meat is not required and you haven't disproved that with your citation to a vegan website. Why all the misdirection and just plain ignoring of the points?

Lets elaborate.
Art: Meat is required.
Pax: Because you can't get B12 from vegetables.
Me: You can get them from dairy products.
Pax: My source is better than your source.

[hogdogs]

eating cows injected with growth hormones and antibiotics.

First off, I wouldn't eat domestic livestock if it WERE NOT treated with antibiotics to avoid me eating meat that is sickly and fevered.
Secondly, I know and have known literally thousands of farmers and ranchers and none as in ZIP ZILCH NADA has ever injected any type of growth hormone into any specie of livestock or fowl.
Please cite a credible source for this claim as well, you might even post a link to a source for this hormone for sale to farmers and ranchers as none of my farm supply or co-ops sell such a monster!
Brent

[foob]

Please cite a credible source for this claim as well, you might even post a link to a source for this hormone for sale to farmers and ranchers as none of my farm supply or co-ops sell such a monster!

Dude I used google.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_somatotropin
http://www.jstor.org/pss/1244924
http://www.sustainabletable.org/issues/hormones/
http://cofasonline.fas.usda.gov/itp/policy/hormone.html
http://envirocancer.cornell.edu/Fact...7.hormones.cfm

The last link gives the best details in FAQ form about the hormones used.

Confused whether you work in the industry or you just happen to know thousands of farmers. Because to work in the industry and not know about this is quite shocking. To read the newspaper and never hear about the growth hormone dispute between the USA and the EU is even more perplexing.

Even simpler evidence. Go to your supermarket and look at the different eggs for sale. Only one (maybe two) will say from chicken with no growth hormones used. The others will not make that claim. Not proof. Just a small observation.

[pax]

foob ~

I just asked you to cite your source. I cited mine so that you would know where my information came from. Why aren't you citing yours?

Oh, re the vegan vs vegetarian thing, that's a red herring. Dairy production requires the same resources as meat production, whether on a small scale or a large one.

As for the other, I cannot help but think that when you multiply all the grass fields over all the world where someone without other resources could put a cow and then feed a family, it would add up to quite a lot of calories that are currently being produced "locally and sustainably" that could not be produced either locally or sustainably in a full-vegetarian economy such as the author of the original article suggested.

This particular field, for example, is technically arable, but in a marginal climate with a short growing season the energy resources to produce human-nourishing crops would be substantial. Other fields in other locales would have their own limiting factors, factors which very likely explain why they haven't already been converted to such use.

So take my neighbor's field as representative of how meat-eaters are currently feeding their families in many difficult climates. Then consider that each one of those fields would require a lot of energy and resources to convert to other use, not to mention that the impact on the environment for such conversion would be substantial. Right now, that field supports a healthy biodiverse ecology, including field mice, hawks, coyotes, and deer. Convert it to produce a human vegetable crop, and those animals all vanish. Multiply that by a thousand, a million such fields across the country and around the world, and the ecological consequences would be devastating.

pax

[foob]

I can't cite mine because the article I cited doesn't have citations to those studies they claim. So it's pointless to me, I just used it to buttress your claims. You would have to do more research yourself to find studies that are claimed in what I cited. If I admit my citation sucks and you can ignore it, will you stop belaboring this point?

Again you are missing the point. I was rebutting Art's claim that meat is required. That is separate from the point of vegetable energy production vs meat energy production. Now you combine the two and thus call it a red herring. Art only made one claim. Meat is required. I showed it wasn't true. You agree dairy products are feasible sources and dairy isn't meat? Good we move on to the energy production discussion.

You keep making a lot of assumptions and wild guesses. Somehow now you are suggesting that if we place cows in all land worldwide with naturally grown grass, we can feed the entire world population. You really think so? Obviously the people in charge don't think that will work. You are telling me a capitalist corporation will rather waste money growing animal feed than just buying a lot of grassland and free-ranging cows.

I'll try and simplify my claim so you can address it instead of going off point.

A unit of vegetables that provides X energy, grown for human consumption, takes less energy to produce than the animal feed to produce meat that provides X energy. This can be proven and has been proven. By measuring the amount of sunlight required to produce them and human energy expenditure.

Can you dispute this? This claim has nothing to do with land. This claim has nothing to do with cows that eat naturally occurring grass. It's a comparison of human consumable vegetables versus animal feed.

A simple observation you could do. Go to the supermarket. Look at the cans of vegetables. Find the one with lowest cost/calorie. Look at the meats. Find the one with lowest cost/calorie. Or do it with average cost/calorie. Or plot the cost/calorie for all vegetables and meats. See what you get. Cost is an approximation of energy.

I was just trying to dispute this point made earlier:

Not to mention the millions more acres needed to produce enough veg-protein to feed the billions..= major habitat loss = end of huge numbers of the world's wildlife. Senseless, just senseless. Talk to the hand though, you can't convince 'em. They're all mathematically-challenged.
It's impossible to mention vegans without getting at least some bites.

They conveniently ignore that the meat they are eating is produced by growing vegetables. Somehow those land magically disappears if you stop growing animal feed and growing vegetables.

[pax]

foob ~

I concede that if everyone in the world ate nothing but food out of cans or from large-scale agricultural meat production, your assessment would be correct. Everyone could live dependent on big farms and big pharm, if all the food in the world came from the grocery store.

However. The point of the article that started this dustup was that vegetarianism would feed the world, whereas omnivorianism will not. That's just silly. I cited the field next door, which will not support producing human food unless that food comes from and through an animal source, for a reason. That's because there are literally millions of such plots of land all over the world, plots that will not support agriculture but which nevertheless provide excellent, high-quality protein for needy families -- protein that includes trace elements and vitamins that simply don't come easily from vegetable sources. The people who want to outlaw meat can't and won't notice or take into account the reality that a lot of the land currently being used to produce human food from meat sources simply will not support conversion to human-useful vegetable sources.

Even if your unsourced data were correct, "eat seaweed" is not a local and sustainable solution to the problem of B12 and other elements; "eat cows" is. The article which started this thread suggests that humans should live without animal agriculture, but both dairy and meat production are animal agriculture. So these folks have a choice: big farms, big pharm, or both big farms and big pharm.

The problem with the article that started this thread is that it comes from a mindset that ignores the real world and relies instead on pushbutton calculations divorced from the real world. The real world includes my neighbor's field, and millions more like it. But the calculations these folks make ignore those fields, ignore the calories those fields currently and sustainably produce, ignore those families, ignore those climates, and ignore what they would have to do to the environment to convert those fields to human-consumable vegetable production.

pax

[foob]

Ok I agree with your points in your last post. Sometimes I lose my mind arguing on the internet and just start blabbering stuff.

There's a lot of factors we don't consider, and the idea isn't practical obviously. If there was a big pharma pill that you needed to eat only once a day and provided all the energy you needed each day, cost pennies, and saved the world, people still wouldn't want it.

With some of the assumptions he has made I can understand why he thinks vegetarianism has major benefits to the environment if magically implemented worldwide. It's really just a thought experiment, nothing practical.

[Buzzcook]

Pax and Art: B12 can be found in eggs and cheese. Ironically We humans produce B12 but too far down or digestive tract to reabsorb into our systems.

I'm not a fan of the medical/chemical industrial complex, neither am I suggesting a vegan life style. I spent most of my working life cooking beef steak as a broiler chef.
I'm looking at the proposition only as it relates to our carbon foot print as this thread suggests.
I don't think depending on manufactured dietary supplements is the end of the world. We already supplement milk with vitamin D. It certainly is more carbon neutral than factory farms. Speaking of which they depend on big pharm to load up cattle with various wonder substances. So unless you get organically grown beef, to argue against dependence on big pharm dietary supplements is a bit ironic.

Even if we do decide to forgo supplements to meat consumption or using an ovo-lacto alternative; how much meat do we have to eat to get the RDA of B12 and other aminos? I'd suggest that we could safely cut average US meat consumption by half and still get what we need.

OK so I.m adding this about RDA for B12.
http://dietary-supplements.info.nih....vitaminb12.asp

The adult RDA for B12 is 2.4 mcg the DV is 6.0 mcg.
The two highest listed sources for B12 are Beef liver and clams at 800% and 570% of the daily value per serving. They don't say how many ounces of liver, it's 3oz for the clams. So a cup of clam chowder a day is more than you need. Unfortunately canned clam chowder has a truck load of sodium so it has its has other issues.

Just as a side note clams were a very large part of the coastal colonial diet in America. The founders were loaded with B12.

Beef steak meets the RDA at 3oz.

Here's a handy chart on American meat consumption.
http://www.usda.gov/factbook/tables/ch2table21.jpg

We average about 8oz of meat a day if you do the math 195.2 x 16 / 365 = 8.55

So if we do away with those nasty carbon spewing factory farms and depend on getting our meat from Pax's neighbor's carbon friendly grass feed beef, the price of beef will go up. But because we don't "need" as much meat in our diet the resultant lowering of beef consumption will not cause a dietary disaster in America.
A side benefit is that with an increase in the cost of commercial meat, hunting becomes more cost effective. Hopefully this would lead to an increase in hunting. An increase in hunting would mean Americans would be eating more venison, which contains "good" cholesterol and helps lower "bad" cholesterol. This of course saves the world from communism and the encroaching evil of the golden arches.

[MTT TL]

Now you combine the two and thus call it a red herring. Art only made one claim. Meat is required. I showed it wasn't true. You agree dairy products are feasible sources and dairy isn't meat?

In the end dairy is meat. Unless you are suggesting we just throw the cow/goat away when we are done with it.

[Playboypenguin]

My aunt is vegetarian and hunts. She is quite a good hunter too. She does not eat what she kills but the rest of her family does. They live in the middle of a large game reserve in WV and are occasionally asked to kill extra deer during harsh weather to control populations. The ones they do not butcher they donate to a local food program.

PS: One thing that all these vegetarians forget to mention in their studies is that we would have to pretty much wipe out all large mammals that compete with us for food is we wanted to produce enough food to feed the entire world. We would have to create so much more farm land that we would have to level forests and prairies also. In the end we would all end up having to eat some high protein bean curd because it would be all we could grow enough of that still met dietary requirements.

[foob]

In the end dairy is meat. Unless you are suggesting we just throw the cow/goat away when we are done with it.

I thought cats could be milked.

[pax]

I thought cats could be milked.

About as efficiently as a bad joke can...

(Thanks for the good discussion, btw. Much enjoyed it.)

pax

[foob]

Oh I'm milking it.

[castnblast]

they all hunt...Just don't want to admit it!!!

Vegetarian - OLD INDIAN WORD FOR BAD HUNTER!!!

[gungho]

A buddy of mine was a vegetarian and while he never hunted he'd help his family gut and process the deer and other animals they hunted.

Now he's a meat eater and is hunting with us this year.

[Art Eatman]

I stand by my comment about needing livestock from the view that the anti-meat folks generally want to get rid of livestock: Ergo, no milk/cheese/eggs.

Lotsa land suitable for ranching without doing the feedlot thing. Feedlots are merely more efficient for dealing with large populations in a just-in-time supply system. Most ranchland ain't worth a hoot for any sort of farming without irrigation. The early folks in Kansas, for instance, discovered this the hard way.

Trouble is, you can mine an aquifer just like an oil well or a gold/iron mine. At some point, the water table gets low enough that the pumping cost makes the whole effort uneconomical. Search for "Ogalalla Formation"; the Ogalalla underlies the Great Plains of the U.S. and the recharge rate is very low.

Might's well use it for ranching. Irrigate in the higher-recharge areas.

Trouble with irrigation is that the ground eventually gets too salty. Ain't that neat?

I haven't kept up with the growth hormone deal since Stilbestrol was outlawed, some years back. My personal opinion is that for flavor without condiments, a four-year-old grass-fed steer, grained for maybe a month before butchering, is the best. I occasionally can find that over in Mexico, but that's pre-WW II for the U.S.

FWIW, the best guesstimate for organic food production is that the world can support a population of some 3.4 billion. Trouble is that we're now at approximately 6.7 billion. Oops. Hope oil stays cheap and limitless...