The ethics of eating red meat have been grilled recently by critics who question its consequences for environmental health and animal welfare, but if you want to minimise animal suffering and promote more sustainable agriculture, adopting a vegetarian diet might be the worst possible thing you could do.

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Published figures from CSIRO and other sources in relation to Australia suggest that producing wheat and other grains to service a vegetarian/vegan diet results in at least 25 times more sentient animals being killed per kilogram of useable protein, more environmental damage and a great deal more animal cruelty.

Full Paper - https://doi.org/10.7882/AZ.2011.051

TLDR: Meat results in 25x less death per kg of protein vs plant based protein sources.

  • adhocfungus@midwest.socialEnglish
    5·
    7 days ago

    This is a good argument for large graze-fed animals on semi-arid land. It would allow for maximizing calorie extraction per square meter.

    But beyond that the paper doesn’t really hold up. They’re using a few tricks to prop it up:

    • Comparing protein of wheat to beef instead of calories, or instead of a more protein-dense plant.
    • They are basing their numbers only on Australian land that works for ungulate grazing but would require terraforming to be usable for planting. There are other areas like this (grazing goats in parts of Mexico significantly reduces emissions compared to crop irrigation and growing), but in the US the vast majority of beef is grain fed.
    • The paper acknowledges that grain-finishing alters their numbers, but doesn’t actually tell us how much. The paper is very skimpy on data to begin with, and seems to be intentionally avoiding it when it would hurt the thesis.
    • A lot of the heavy lifting is done by the mouse plagues. Again, this is Australia-specific. Any grain fed animal farming still poisons mice to keep them out of the feed. If you take the mouse plagues out of the equation it seems like the numbers would not be persuasive, but again their math isn’t laid out well enough to figure it out.

    The paper doesn’t really advertise that the conclusion is Australia-specific, which makes it easy for those in other regions to pick it without reading it. It’s a good conclusion in specific circumstances, but for any grain fed animals it’s intentionally misleading.

    • jet@hackertalks.comOPMEnglish
      31·
      6 days ago

      Great thoughts! Thanks for sharing them. Your right! There are lots of holes here.

      Comparing protein of wheat to beef instead of calories, or instead of a more protein-dense plant.

      Humans don’t run on calories, we run on substrates (fat, protein, carbohydrates) and then bioavailability is important. Part of the whole CICO fiasco is focusing on calories when we need to acknowledge we are hormonal machines and we live in a era of abundant calories and people are under consuming protein.

      In my food weight comparison post last week : https://midwest.social/post/47382176 my best effort estimate of total daily food weight on a nutritionally adequate whole food plant based diet came in at 2.3kg a day. That isn’t taking into account bioavailability even (which would increase the weight).

      That gives us a weight comparison of 350g vs 2,300g per day. We can plug in any vertebrate death estimates per unit of g of food we like, but it’s hard to beat one death per year per adult (cow).

      They are basing their numbers only on Australian land that works for ungulate grazing but would require terraforming to be usable for planting.

      There is a 3:1 of pastoral land (land that only works for grazing) vs cropland in the world. Yes, even in the USA.

      in the US the vast majority of beef is grain fed.

      Any grain fed animal farming still poisons mice to keep them out of the feed.

      any grain fed animals it’s intentionally misleading.

      I think you will find every carnivore here prefers grass feed ruminants and doesn’t want grain fed. We want to improve the food system to get away from industrialization and move to natural biocycles. Ruminants should not be fed grain!

  • silly_goose@lemmy.todayEnglish
    2·
    6 days ago

    The practical aspects of protein sources can be shocking sometimes like this paper. We need to improve agricultural practices to minimize cruelty.

    As the human population increases I think we probably have to turn to some algal or single cell protein to produce good quality nutrients on scale.

    • jet@hackertalks.comOPMEnglish
      3·
      6 days ago

      We need to improve agricultural practices to minimize cruelty.

      Agreed, get back to regenerative methods that are in sync with natural biocycles without external inputs.

      we probably have to turn to some algal or single cell protein to produce good quality nutrients on scale.

      As long as it is demonstrably (rct) a strictly positive replacement for natural whole food sources without any downsides (such as miss-shaped sterols, lectins, etc)

      • psud@aussie.zoneMEnglish
        3·
        2 days ago

        What worries me even with regenerative agriculture is that we will be pulling biomass out of it and not returning it until or unless we work out how to make our waste safe and return it to the land.

        Energy is a free input from sunlight, and some nitrogen is captured from air, but anything we take out at the moment is very slow to return

        • jet@hackertalks.comOPMEnglish
          3·
          2 days ago

          That is true! I think the more sophisticated waste processing plants do send the solids out as fertilizer

      • xepMEnglish
        3·
        6 days ago

        Bioavailability should be considered too, when weighing the costs.

  • psud@aussie.zoneMEnglish
    31·
    7 days ago

    This has been my favourite argument against the ethics argument for veganism, it’s nice to have numbers now

  • jet@hackertalks.comOPMEnglish
    3·
    7 days ago

    This is much more drastic then the napkin figures I did last week! the externalities fan out exponentially!

    https://hackertalks.com/post/26934762/15567269

    For a 3kg/day whole food well balanced plant based diet it’s one vertebrae death per 2-9 months. Depending on which published estimate you use.

    Add in more for logistics fossil fuel, shipping plants around the globe, etc.

    If you include invertebrates it’s every 5 days.

    Using this paper’s figures instead it would one vertebrae death every 20 days (0.6 months)

    This paper doesn’t take into account bioavailability, they are using crude protein (which favors pbf)