vix86 wrote:

Alright, saying "adding more plants to your diet is healthier" is great, I can get behind that. However the unspoken is also that "You can also still eat meat in moderation and it won't ruin you."  Its dishonest though to use it though like: "Plants are a million times better than any meat you stuff in your mouth; so we need to legislate against the consumption of meat."

That is certainly a dishonest statement, but I haven't said anything resembling that so I'm not sure why you're bringing it up. Earlier on this page I talked about how meat is perfectly healthy (in terms of nutrition) in moderation, and I've never said that we need to legislate against meat consumption itself, let alone that we should do so just because plant foods have some superior qualities. Factory farming and over-consumption of meat, more specifically the extreme environmental consequences of these agricultural practices and the high consumer demand for them, is the Voldemort in this equation, not meat itself.

vix86 wrote:

The figure on water use is pretty crazy and tabbing through the FAO article it would seem at least on the surface that there are some majors issues present with water use in animal production. Its an obvious though that animals will use a lot of water (compared to plants), but its not as if water is used and then disappears. It does flow back into the system. The paper mentions there are issues with this plus water pollution, but it also mentions that there are a number of things that can be done to mitigate and improve the situation instead of treating it like "business as usual."

How many factory farms are mitigating and improving the situation? Factory farms are, by their very nature, corporations that use every shortcut physically possible to increase their profits. Making money is their only concern, which is why extremely high stocking densities and hellish living conditions exist for the animals, and floods of antibiotics and pesticides are used. All the shortcuts used to make as much money as possible with as low a cost as possible are what is creating the environmental devastation. Trying to combat the pollution, the deforestation, the species extinctions, the land degradation, the pollution from both the factory farms themselves and from the mass amount of grains used to feed the animals (I believe the statistic is over 50% of grain produced in the U.S. is used to feed livestock, which in turn requires a very high about of pesticides, and pollution from just transporting the feed and running the mills) requires a lot of money, resources, and cutting down on their own business practices. In other words it's completely contrary to the entire purpose of factory farming, which is one again to make money. There may be methods of trying to treat these issues, but the issues still exist and have gone untreated by factory farms, so the mere existence of mitigation techniques is irrelevant.

On the point of global warming though. Could you point me at the place in the article where it says outright that animals contribute more than cars, planes, and human use. Because I've found lines here and there that suggest that really animals on the whole only add a small percentage to the overall carbon footprint. Whether this is reason enough to come down hard on curbing the production of animal produce or not is a separate issue. You could just as easily say your efforts are better focused on trying to cut back on fossil fuel use in cars and what not, or combating a bigger issue in global warming which is poorer countries burnings loads of coal.

There are many environmental problems in the world today, but saying we should focus our efforts instead on things that are mostly out of our control (the fossil fuel use of foreign countries) instead of things entirely in our control (what foods we purchase) is simply sidestepping the issue. Factory farms have horrific effects on the environment, as has been documented in literally thousands of scientific research, documentaries, articles, books, studies, and everything else under the sun. We can actively stop factory farming just through our daily dietary purchases, so what reason is there possible to not? If given the option to improve the well-being of planet, myself, and billions of animals through simple daily choices, I will take that option every single time.

Here's the website of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations itself, with an article summary of that report: http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/200 … index.html   

"....the livestock sector generates more greenhouse gas emissions as measured in CO2 equivalent – 18 percent – than transport. It is also a major source of land and water degradation."

"When emissions from land use and land use change are included, the livestock sector accounts for 9 percent of CO2 deriving from human-related activities, but produces a much larger share of even more harmful greenhouse gases. It generates 65 percent of human-related nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of CO2. Most of this comes from manure.

And it accounts for respectively 37 percent of all human-induced methane (23 times as warming as CO2), which is largely produced by the digestive system of ruminants, and 64 percent of ammonia, which contributes significantly to acid rain."

And on why it's so important we reduce our meat consumption: "But such rapid growth exacts a steep environmental price, according to the FAO report, Livestock’s Long Shadow –Environmental Issues and Options. “The environmental costs per unit of livestock production must be cut by one half, just to avoid the level of damage worsening beyond its present level,” it warns."

And what is that "present level" they're talking about, other than the massive cause of global warming detailed earlier? Let's take a peak.

"At the same time herds cause wide-scale land degradation, with about 20 percent of pastures considered as degraded through overgrazing, compaction and erosion. This figure is even higher in the drylands where inappropriate policies and inadequate livestock management contribute to advancing desertification.

"pb]The livestock business is among the most damaging sectors to the earth’s increasingly scarce water resources[/b], contributing among other things to water pollution, euthropication and the degeneration of coral reefs. The major polluting agents are animal wastes, antibiotics and hormones, chemicals from tanneries, fertilizers and the pesticides used to spray feed crops. Widespread overgrazing disturbs water cycles, reducing replenishment of above and below ground water resources. Significant amounts of water are withdrawn for the production of feed."

"Meat and dairy animals now account for about 20 percent of all terrestrial animal biomass. Livestock’s presence in vast tracts of land and its demand for feed crops also contribute to biodiversity loss; 15 out of 24 important ecosystem services are assessed as in decline, with livestock identified as a culprit."

"Livestock now use 30 percent of the earth’s entire land surface, mostly permanent pasture but also including 33 percent of the global arable land used to producing feed for livestock, the report notes. As forests are cleared to create new pastures, it is a major driver of deforestation, especially in Latin America where, for example, some 70 percent of former forests in the Amazon have been turned over to grazing. "

Keep in mind that this doesn't even go into the full details of the detrimental impact on the environment by factory farming. And if we were to broaden the discussion to meat as a whole, including seafood, we'd have massive statistics about the tragedy of overfishing to discuss as well.

Nobody wants to feel that their actions are having a negative effect on the world. We all want to think that we do the right thing, that we're making life a better place, so when we're told that every single day we're actually making the planet a worse place simply by deciding to eat at McDonald's, or chow down on a steak instead of tofu, we're naturally going to be defensive about it and not want to believe the reality. But that's not going to make it go away, and as the article discusses the projections are that these issues are going to get significantly worse in the upcoming years. We have the ability to bring an end to things like factory farming and overfishing-two of the most significant problems facing our world-every single day. That itself is pretty spectacular, don't you think? It certainly makes me happy to know that with each bite I can make the world a better place

Last edited by Aijin (2012 February 13, 11:52 am)

Women who were CC reported more hip and wrist fractures, more osteoporosis, and more cataracts than the other groups.[13] They also were on average 4–6 mm shorter than the other women, as well as slightly lighter in weight.[13] In addition, factors such as metabolic traits, socioeconomic status, lifestyle, and fertility were found to be unrelated to the findings, and thus it can be concluded that the lactase persistence benefited the health of these women.

I wonder how much of those differences you can chalk up to calcium intake. Would have been interesting to compare with some group that received adequate supplementation.

btw, do you have any suggestions for milk substitutes to put in cups of tea that don't taste grim?

great thanks!!! i found a brand that's made in the UK and sold in UK supermarkets so i'll give it a go!!

http://www.goodwebsite.co.uk/Good-Hemp-Milk.php

not vanilla flavoured unfortunately though

i couldn't find any almond milk made in the UK with a quick search... fairly unsurprising i guess since the UK doesn't grow almonds as far as i know. I wonder what the carbon footprint of buying almond / rice milk etc is per litre compared to dairy milk made in the UK...

Last edited by IceCream (2012 February 13, 2:45 pm)

Well, that seems rational to believe, but if you're ending up flying every pint of rice milk you drink from, say, japan to britain, the difference between that and feeding a cow from locally produced animal feed may not actually be so great... i'm really not so sure of the numbers then. But yeah, that UK produced Hemp Milk will certainly be better...

Javizy wrote:

Autism and 9/11? Do you need to mention these things to give yourself credibility or something? What I said wasn't extreme enough so you just throw these terms out there to make it seem that way? Maybe I support Sea Shepard and drive a hybrid too. Can't you give it a rest?

They weren't listed to give credibility they were listed to give comparison of the air of nuttiness that your arguments were bordering on, to my ear. The credibility is in the studies and tests done showing stuff won't harm you.

I suggested in my original post that non-organic milk is unhealthy because of all the crap it contains; crap that I could do without. You seem to have no objection to crap whether you can be sure it's going to cause you any problems or not. Basically, you don't believe in the idea that anything as yet undocumented could be a problem. I'm not questioning your faith, and I've already said this is where we differ, and your proof to forcibly convince me to change my mind, which is for some reason necessary, is your opinion and obligatory references to cocaine and superman. Shouldn't you be attacking the whole organic movement anyway? I'm hardly a representative.

Except there's a problem here. You can't prove a negative to a 100%. You are sitting here saying "PROVE that its 100% not going to kill me!" and then when people can't you go "Ah hah! See? So it is toxic!" Reality is the person making the claim that something is toxic needs to provide the irrefutable evidence that, well, it is toxic and shouldn't be getting sold on the market. This argument is like the argument over god; creationists go "Prove God doesn't exist!" and when the other side can't (obviously), so they go "Hah! See, so he MIGHT exist, good enough for me." If this type of argument is good enough for you, then there is nothing to argue here because you are not basing your reasoning on evidence but on your faith that the stuff going in is obviously toxic.

You can say that the absence of the chemicals will obviously guarantee 100% that the food won't kill you (unless the food happens to really be poisonous), but I don't believe I was ever arguing that issue. I was arguing that there are pressures which require us to use chemicals to increase food production so people can affordably eat, and as long as said chemicals do not harm you, then I don't believe there is a problem with this.

If you want to believe that stuff that goes in your food is toxic in the absence of proof (just like God might exist), then that's your prerogative. However I will take issue with anyone taking this opinion and then trying to lobby under it.

There are brands of hemp milk ice cream that are pretty good. Coconut milk ice cream is my favorite for dairy alternatives, but the rice milk ones are nice too. http://www.tastethedream.com/products/rd_frozen.php

I've made pancakes with rice milk, and they tasted fantastic. Vegetable oils and other ingredients have plenty of fat in them to give a rich taste, so the milk fat isn't necessary. But I agree that which milk alternative you use depends on what you're using it for. I wouldn't use rice milk in teas, and would never use coconut milk for cereal. They all have their own unique qualities and are better suited for different things

Aijin wrote:

There are brands of hemp milk ice cream that are pretty good. Coconut milk ice cream is my favorite for dairy alternatives, but the rice milk ones are nice too. http://www.tastethedream.com/products/rd_frozen.php

i'm not keen on carrgeenan (or whatever it's called) as a thickener though...

also, the flavored milks tend to have lots of sugar, but buying the unsweetened ones is pretty bland.

Aijin wrote:

I'm very pessimistic about getting the industry to change its ways. Is it possible? Sure, but despite decades and millions of dollars spent by tons of organizations trying to fight factory farming the industries are still growing.

Theres also an issue of the Overton window as well. To really enact big change you'll need the right issue/media flare to set it off. I agree that the problem will be difficult to change, but I still think you stand a better chance of regulating the business than changing their eating happens. I'll explain that momentarily with the car example.

Though beef production is down by 5% for 2012 in America, so I like to think that shows consumer awareness is spreading and people are changing their eating habits.

What are the chances this is just the result of economic downturn? And how much meat do people actually consume anyway? Even when I was in the states chicken was the meat my family consumed the most. Beef maybe amounted to like 2 1/4lb hamburgers each week if that.

But if when you purchased your car you had two cars as your option, one that produced X amount of greenhouse gases, and another car that produced 3 times as much greenhouse gases, and both are of a similar cost, why choose the one that has such a worse impact on the environment?

Because the two cars aren't equivalent in other factors. You are asking people to choose between gas guzzling Camero or Lexus, and a family Prius. One looks cooler (tastes better) the other isn't as appealing and isn't as cool.

I'm not going to argue that a vegetarian diet tastes better or worse since that is relative to the person. But trying to convince people to cut back heavily on something they like, just to save the environment, is likely to be an uphill battle. Just look at SUV use. Most people eventually learned they were shit for the environment, they cost tons; but everyone used/uses roundabout reasoning to buy one. The only way they really started to curb use was with stricter EPA gas consumption guidelines and the economic downturn which made them less affordable. Consumers are not necessarily rationale, so trying to use facts about the amount of damage something does to the environment won't change their buying habits until you can give them something tangible to get "mad about."

As to why I'll continue to eat meat. 1) Animal rights aren't an issue to me really 2) Accelerationism. I think the environment is probably mucked regardless to what major changes we take. I think you go mitigate some of the damage though through more conservative methods, but boycotting meat won't make that huge of a difference. Get out petition, force for regulation. Now that I'm in Japan I don't eat that much meat. Fish mostly. But based on the 2 points above, my fondness for meat still leads me to consume it.

Haha Hemp really is an amazing crop. The seeds are incredibly healthy, and very rich in essential fatty acids, the milk is great, and you can use the rest of it as straw for tons of stuff. Then of course there are the leaves.

I hear it makes great paper too.

found this on google plus:
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/ … n-a-salad/

i don't really agree with the food pyramid but yeah, where are my fruit and vegetable subsidies?!

Eikyu wrote:

I'm just going to say that you have it easy as a Japanese, because Japanese food includes no dairy products and the only ones that Japanese seem to consume are those small yogourts, as well as some milk.

Japanese love bread, and consider it a part of their diet almost. I'm pretty sure they usually include milk in the dough. So that's another thing with milk. Oh and gelato. I'm pretty sure Japanese consumer far less dairy than Americans do though; due to the lactase deficiency. I'd also be curious to know if they use growth hormone to up diary production as well.

Hey now, I went to an Italian restaurant in Tokyo that had fantastic bread.

vix86 wrote:

To really enact big change you'll need the right issue/media flare to set it off. I agree that the problem will be difficult to change, but I still think you stand a better chance of regulating the business than changing their eating happens. I'll explain that momentarily with the car example.

It's not a question of regulation versus cutting back consumption; both are necessary solutions to the environmental catastrophes of the meat industry, and we should do all we can to work towards both.

What are the chances this is just the result of economic downturn? And how much meat do people actually consume anyway? Even when I was in the states chicken was the meat my family consumed the most. Beef maybe amounted to like 2 1/4lb hamburgers each week if that.

A lot; in 2010 26.4 billion pounds of beef were consumed. In the U.S. poultry consumption is higher than beef by itself, but red meat as a whole overtakes poultry and accounts for over 50% of meat consumption.

The only way they really started to curb use was with stricter EPA gas consumption guidelines and the economic downturn which made them less affordable. Consumers are not necessarily rationale, so trying to use facts about the amount of damage something does to the environment won't change their buying habits until you can give them something tangible to get "mad about."

Just to be clear, I'm not writing these posts with any illusion that readers will have an epiphany because of the environmental facts and immediately stop supporting factory farming. Heck, I'd be overjoyed if just a single person out of the 2000+ views this thread has makes a single change, like switching to rice milk, or cutting back their meat consumption a bit. We live in a culture where most people want to be able to do whatever they want, whenever they want to, and don't care much about the consequences of their actions so long as they don't have to personally feel them. But there are still millions of people that aren't like that, and only support things like the meat industry because they haven't learned the truth.

Over the summer I leafleted at various campuses across California with some friends for an outreach organization, and you'd be surprised by how many people were sincerely shocked at the information, and made vows to change their habits on the spot.

As for something tangible to get "mad about," what about the meat industry isn't there to get mad about? Having a castrophic impact on our environment, screwing over consumer health, and subjecting nearly 10 billion animals each year--many of which are mammals, such as cows and pigs, that are both highly intelligent and have complex emotions due to their strongly developed central nervous systems--to living conditions that are like something out of a SAW franchise horror movie, is definitely something to get mad about for me.

As to why I'll continue to eat meat. 1) Animal rights aren't an issue to me really 2) Accelerationism. I think the environment is probably mucked regardless to what major changes we take. I think you go mitigate some of the damage though through more conservative methods, but boycotting meat won't make that huge of a difference. Get out petition, force for regulation. Now that I'm in Japan I don't eat that much meat. Fish mostly. But based on the 2 points above, my fondness for meat still leads me to consume it.

Why do you believe the environment is irreparably damaged to the point that changing our actions can't possibly help it? Our world is still a beautiful, incredible place, and our actions can have a profound impact. We have done a lot of damage to the environment, and continue to do so, but it's never too late to change for the better. We must be the change we want to see.

When I was younger I used to see people protesting on the streets for animal welfare in factory farming conditions, or for environmental change, and think they were freaks. After all, I was raised in a social environment where those issues never entered the equation; my family ate meat, my friends ate meat, I ate meat. Society as a whole ate meat, and it was as normal as breathing. The thought that there was something wrong with the whole situation never crossed my mind, and whenever I heard of vegetarians I thought they were just weirdos. Flash forward a decade, to where I've learned the reasons why those people were on the sidewalks protesting, and understood all the truths about the meat industry and its horrors, and I am now one of those people standing on the sidewalks.

Being informed makes all the difference in life

Last edited by Aijin (2012 February 17, 10:41 pm)