Someone’s dietary choices are a private matter, but I’m moved to comment when things start to get preachy.
I don’t quite get it. Do laying hens and dairy cows not count?
-How many (male) chicks are slaughtered in the production of laying hens? Millions.
-Almost all laying hens are slaughtered well before their natural lifespan (usually about 1 year old).
-Ditto dairy cows.
The slaughter happens in exactly the same facilities as those which process the animals for meat. You don’t happen to eat the resulting muscle and fat tissue, but the process nonetheless continues to make your food.
Again, I assume you eat eggs and milk which is the ‘middle bit’. If we all went vegetarian there would be no-one eating the spent hens and cows, which would be a tremendous waste.
Eggs are nutritionally different from wheat, and both form part of a balanced diet. Meat is nutritionally different from grass, the major diet of all ruminants. I would concede that farming has got a little obsessed with grain feeding cattle in recent times. We should switch over to more grass-reared stock, since grass is extremely easy to grow, and requires hardly any fossil fuel input compared to cereal crops.
Issues of poor welfare and sustainability are not necessary parts of meat production (which is the same as dairy/egg production, but the meat is not consumed). It can be improved rather than just stopped.
It’s unlikely I’ll change your world views, of course, but you both subscribe the the same industry that you’re arguing against. Animals are reared and slaughtered for your dinner; you simply ‘don’t inhale’. That is no basis for sanctimony.
I remember, as a teenager, going out to shut up the fowl one evening. A friend was with me.
Some of the batams would spend the night outside, and some in barns. Their choice.
My friend who was with me exclaimed (when seeing the birds up the trees), "But how do we get them down?!?"
I'm not sure if he had considered that they KFC box was actually from a bird, that might actually be able to fly.
For you to base your justification on "spent animals" is somewhat dishonest, as we both know very well that ex battery hens do not end up in the human food chain.
The comment attaining to there not being enough arable land to supply the food industry without the inefficient energy transfer to meat first shows a lack of understanding of very basic physics.
My initial comment was not intended to convert people to a plant based diet, but to highlight the reasons for lack of interest in environmental consciousness.
Again, I wasn't looking for a row, but considering the flurry of posts you have just made on the subject that, you yourself, rather ironically I might add, open by stating as a "private matter" (its in the very text I've just quoted from you) it does rather look to me as if you are, indeed, looking for some sort of debate on the matter.
I'm not sure I want to get involved to be honest. You've made statement that you know to be untrue, and you've made statement that any GCSE level physics student knows to be incorrect (others have already pulled you up on this).
Remember I've been dealing with people like you and their ignorant and / or intentionally dishonest comments almost my entire life. A sensible debate can sometimes still be interesting, but I somewhat fear that you're not at that level, especially in light of the contradiction in your very own text.
I honestly think I'd just be running through the same tedium with you, so I'll leave it to an enthusiastic teenager instead.
