So I stumbled across these 2 articles, the first is from The Economist and espouses utter fucking nonsense while eluding to govt “solutions” that mandate less meat eating.
The 2nd is an anecdotal story (somewhat long-winded) but shows the logic of a 10yo that is lacking in most adults.
What cracks me up the most is I’ve known a few vegans and not one of them is healthy, mentally or physically.
Why eating more vegetables is good for the environment
FILET mignon commands a princely sum on many restaurant menus. But bill-payers may not realise its true cost to the planet. Meat provides 17% of global calorific intake, but it requires a disproportionate amount of water and feed. And more land is given over to grazing animals than for any other single purpose. Overall the livestock sector accounts for between 8% and 18% of global emissions—about as much pollution as comes out the tailpipes of the world’s cars. Ruminant livestock, such as cattle and sheep, have stomachs containing bacteria able to digest tough, cellulose-rich plants. But along the way, huge volumes of gases are farted and belched too. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that the world’s domesticated ruminants annually release 100m tonnes of methane—a greenhouse gas 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.
Much research in recent years has looked into meat’s environmental hoofprint. A study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2013 presented findings on the quantities of greenhouse gases associated with producing a kilo of protein from different animals. Chicken proved the greenest meal option at 3.7kg. Pork came second with 24kg. And cattle far behind at 1,000kg. Chicken and pork proved preferable because of the efficiency of factory farming. Reports by Chatham House, a British think-tank, on diet and climate change appeared in both 2014 and 2015. The latter noted the growing share of global crops given over to animal feed and considers the effects on food prices. The desires of rich carnivores often trump the needs of poorer cereal consumers.
So what is a conscious consumer to do? A recent study also published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences calculated the benefits of low-meat and no-meat diets using computer models through to 2050. The former daily regime included eating five portions of fruits and vegetables, less than 50g of sugar, up to 43g of red meat and a total energy content of between 2,200-2,300 calories. A vegetarian diet and a vegan diet were also analysed. Following a modest meat diet, global greenhouse gas emissions were found only to increase 7% by 2050 (compared with an expected increase of 51% according to projections from the status quo). A widespread switch to vegetarianism could curb emissions by nearly two thirds and veganism by 70%. More careful diets would also offer more direct health benefits. Gobbling too much red meat, particularly the processed sort, can increase the risk of heart disease and certain cancers. The study found that more than 5m deaths could be averted over the next three decades or so if meat were consumed modestly around the world. Over 7m could be saved if veggie-eating caught on more widely; 8m would benefit from popular veganism.
Controlling what meat people eat will not appeal to governments anywhere, however. And given the poor nutrition from which millions suffer any campaign against animal protein could appear misguided. According to the UN, 795m people are currently undernourished. In the developing world, richer populations will develop a growing taste for the red stuff. Global meat consumption looks set to rise by more than 75% by 2050. Managing pasture well, selectively breeding creatures and changing what they eat—forage rape and fodder beet can curb methane emissions by a quarter compared with grass and clover according to research conducted in New Zealand—could all help reduce environmental hoofprints. More simply, diners in the rich world could opt for mushroom tarts and leek risottos of their own accord.
Link HERE.
It’s Impossible to be Vegan: Lessons from a 10yr Old Girl
We have a sweet little pond on the farm where my kids enjoy catching frogs and going fishing. They spend hours down there, unsupervised, and find all sorts of creatures, make up games, and do other “kid” things. This is spring break week and the kids are hanging around. My son (age 12) is working in the mornings and my daughter (age 10) is in a cooking “camp” for a few hours each day. The weather has been unusually warm, so the kids have been spending nearly all day outside. It’s been great.
The other morning, my daughter and her friend went down to the pond, buckets in hand to catch some creatures, and were horrified to find a dead sheep. They came running into the kitchen, where I was cooking lunch for the farm crew, to tell me I had to come see it. As we walked out towards the pond, they vividly described how “intestines were all over the grass, the heart was near a rock, and there was an explosion of blood everywhere”. When we finally got to the scene, I had to agree with their depiction. The carcass had been completely gutted, and the organs were gone. There was a lot of blood and wool all over the grass. There were flies all over the body. It was really gross.
“Looks like a coyote got to this one.” I said. “These things happen on a farm sometimes. We do our best to protect them with fencing and the dogs, but sometimes the coyotes figure it out.” The two girls were quiet as we walked back to the house for lunch. I thought to myself that this might be one of those traumatic scenes from childhood that sticks with them unless I somehow diffuse it. “Um, does anybody need to talk about this? Are you guys feeling ok about what you saw?”
“It was the grossest thing I’ve ever seen!” said my daughter’s friend. My daughter just kept her head down and didn’t say much.
Earlier that day, Julie Mayfield sent me and Robb a group text with a link to this story, about how a farmer was trying to defend his rights to kill and consume a cow on his own farm. A group of activists trying to “save” this cow from being killed were trying to stop him. The guy is a farmer. He’s raising a cow. Humans are omnivores. People are trying to tell him he can’t eat his own cow? Are you kidding me? Anyway, I texted them back an image of what the girls found on the farm, saying how THIS is what happens when something dies “naturally”. I’ll spare you the image.
Robb’s reply was this:
After lunch, I was sitting at my computer working. The girls were playing when I heard Phoebe say to her friend, “Hang on, I have to go tell my mom something”. She came running to me and hugged me and broke down crying. I know how upset she was. I can only imagine being a 10yr old girl, happily looking forward to catching some good frogs, and being jolted by that massacre. It must have been pretty chilling.
“It’s totally normal for you to have been surprised by what you saw. Nature can be pretty cruel sometimes. This is how things often die in nature. When we raise animals here on the farm, we try to make sure they die in the least stressful way possible. When they get processed, it’s quick. Out in the real world, when a prey animal dies, it can be pretty drawn out and painful. Coyotes need to eat, too.” I immediate recalled a recent blog post by Caroline Watson about the morals of eating meat. She referenced a video of a live wildebeest being eaten/disemboweled by a hyena. It perfectly illustrates how important it is not to have any sort of delusions about “natural death” being peaceful.
As someone who is involved in raising and killing animals, how they die is something that, contrary to what many vegans think, responsible producers really care about. I actually helped to produce this short video about the a woman who works at a humane slaughterhouse, and how she views her important job to help take these animals into the next phase of their existence.
Nature is sometimes gruesome. Us humans are so far removed from the cycles of life and death that when we see death, we find it terrifying. The fact is, death is a completely normal part of life. You simply cannot have life without death.
Now I had to drop off Phoebe’s friend and tell the mom what the girls saw and hope that she wouldn’t sue me. Luckily, the mom is a member of the farm CSA, has my books, and I was relieved when she wasn’t furious with me. I felt really bad for what her daughter had seen. Not many suburban kids see situations like that on playdates. Phew!
That evening, when my husband and I were tucking in Phoebe for bed, she starting crying again. She needed to further process what she saw. I was glad Andrew was there with me. He’s a really incredible dad and does a great job of explaining complicated things in an easy way to the kids. Most kids think he’s a superhero. He told Phoebe how the sheep lived a good life, had fed the coyote, and he how he buried the rest of the sheep’s body in the compost and it’s going into the soil to feed the vegetables.
“Soil is a living thing. There are tiny organisms in the soil that need the nutrients in that sheep. Those bones in the sheep will turn into calcium to grow better kale. Everything dies and comes back again.” he said.
Phoebe sat right up. Something clicked, “Wait a minute, you’re telling me that those bones turn into vegetables? Can you TASTE them? I’m eating BONES when I eat vegetables?”
“No, you can’t taste them, but you are eating bones and blood and lots of other things when you eat vegetables,” he explained.
“So, then it’s impossible to be a vegan! If soil is living, and everything dead comes back to life, then you can’t possibly eat without eating something that has died.” she exclaimed.
Andrew and I both looked at each other and our eyes popped out of our head. Wow, she made that leap pretty swiftly. I have to say I was thrilled at how quickly those little wheels in her brain cranked. The kid is sharp. She slept without any nightmares of sheep blood. She hasn’t brought it up since. The subject is closed for now. She gets it, and she got the big picture on her own without me having to make all the associations for her. I wish all kids (and adults) had the chance to learn about life and death by roaming freely outside and making the connection that it’s impossible to be a vegan.
Link HERE.
Sometimes writers do their work in order to inform and open the world to others by sharing knowledge. Other times they do it in order to deceive and mislead so that they can implement an agenda, to push a narrative.
The first piece is calumny of the first order. It shares tidbits of information that may be factual, but it deliberately leaves out details that are not only germane to the subject, but central.
The second piece demonstrates the effects of a visceral response to a new and unexpected experience in a person’s life based on their isolation from the Natural world and their awakening to reality based on a lucid and factual explanation by an experienced and honest person that helps them to integrate that truth into their own life.
The writer of the first article was given an assignment to turn people away from consuming red meat and to encourage them to eat a plant and cereal based diet. Clearly there was research done because certain details could only be known by someone who has informed themselves- however it is what they deliberately chose to conceal and omit that demonstrates their intent.
Let’s start with this-
“And more land is given over to grazing animals than for any other single purpose.”
Absolutely false. Not even close to the truth. 1/3 or the land mass of the planet is desert. 20% is covered by ice. Over 30% is covered in forests and jungle. Only 20% of the land mass on our planet is left for all human development including grasslands and prairies- I sourced all of this information from the National Geographic Society and I question the overlap because the totals came out to more than 100%, but I trust that they are as close to accurate as I am able to get via publicly available research.
When the author writes “given over to grazing animals” it makes it seem as if grasslands are a feeding trough rather than a living ecosystem responsible for the production of more oxygen than all the forests combined, it filters more fresh water than any other ecosystem, it preserves massive quantities of soil from erosion and is one of the most diverse vegetative systems on the planet. It SUPPORTS grazing, but it doesn’t even begin to approximate being “given over to grazing animals” as the author attempts to imply. The wastes produced from these foraging animals add soil to the Earth’s surface, a fact that he never mentioned. He makes it seem like grazing animals are a form of edible automobile that spew gas and add nothing more to the environment than pricey cuts of beef and CO2. Hyperbole at it’s finest.
Allowing journalists and politicians to explain the Natural processes of the planet is like having farmers write articles on Security State infrastructure- it is outside of their bailiwick and it comes across that way. The first author wouldn’t know a milk cow from a beef cow. He may write terms like “forage rape” and “fodder beet” but I would bet everything I own that he wouldn’t know the difference between the two, nor the benefits or detriments of each in relation to the nourishment of herbivores. He filled his article with triggering phrases like “The desires of rich carnivores often trump the needs of poorer cereal consumers” that clearly are designed to agitate and inflame divisions between people rather than expound on the theme of the piece in any way. Vegetarians are “eating five portions a day” while meat eaters are “Gobbling too much red meat”.
Scurrilous and defamatory and rooted in falsehoods and prevarications from the first sentence to the last.
Why does everyone seem intent on controlling everyone else’s lifestyle and habits?
“Why does everyone seem intent on controlling everyone else’s lifestyle and habits?”
I know, weird, huh?
I think the vampire tales are a way of explaining the thirst for power to people who don’t have it. There are people who simply live to exercise control over other humans and desire it the way a starving man longs for bread. People who don’t care about it can’t even conceptualize that desperate need to hold sway over the minds and bodies of others. Your very thoughts are an affront to their entire belief system.
IMO, there is only one solution to all that ails humanity.
STOP HAVING CHILDREN.
HF- The construct must react to the collective thought wave. If we are not happy eating our spinach and sprouts as a whole, then a food that fills the requirement of the joy of eating would be provided. TVP can fill the gap if real meat production is curtailed in the future, but I am sure that the elites will have their prime rib.
Any process that you have on your farm using water will come to a halt in the not too distant future even if you have a well or a spring, they now own all of the water. If your house is within a certain distance to a lake, pond, river etc. they also control/own that under Agenda 21.Water is the new oil/gold.
HSF says:
“The second piece demonstrates the effects of a visceral response to a new and unexpected experience in a person’s life based on their isolation from the Natural world and their awakening to reality based on a lucid and factual explanation by an experienced and honest person that helps them to integrate that truth into their own life.”
my response to reading that:
No. Have children. Love them. Experience an entirely new world with them. Teach them to make something useful and beautiful. Instill in them the ability to think for themselves and to husband their freedom. Then teach them to defend themselves and their liberty using rhetoric, decisive action, and force of arms.
And what, replace grazing with grain production? Growing grains devastates the environment in many ways. A Vegetarian or Vegan lifestyle can actually case gene mutations which raise the risk of stroke and cancer.
http://content.alsearsmd.com/?y9UJbbdQtf3F8hZFOnnGVnru9t87Zfw2y
Let them eat kale.
And oh, BTW, the more kale you eat, the more farts you emit, thus contributing to methane gas and global warming BS.
Vegetarian and Vegan idiots are fools that believe their farts are less destructive to the environment than a frigging cow’s fart. Go figure.
Harry P- I laughed out loud at that one.
And having children, especially ones that can be cared for properly, taught to be honorable and strong, and brought up with equal measures of love and discipline are exactly the kind of adults we will need in this world if we have any chance of surviving. Good luck reasoning the left hand side of the Bell Curve out of fornicating for fun and profit. Maybe their new and improved vegan diet will weaken them to the point of sterility. Probably not.
HSF: Maybe their new and improved vegan diet will weaken them to the point of sterility.
One can only hope.
I am wondering if the planners against meat are vegans
themselves, or are just members of the PC BS club?
“I am wondering if the planners against meat are vegans
themselves, or are just members of the PC BS club?”
What’s your best guess?
FWIW, this morning I took a long walk around the farm with the dogs- it had rained nice and soft for the past 24 hours- and as I went I stopped and ate curly dock and stitchwort, trout lily leaves, linden leaves and violets. I probably sampled about as many different plants as an urban dwelling vegan will encounter in a month, all of it fresh-picked, delicious, nutritious and seasonal. Later today we’re going to pick fiddle head ferns for dinner and see if we can’t catch a couple of trout to go with it.
Overpopulation isn’t causing our problems? That and technology are the driving forces of governments to want more and more control. More control = less freedom.
Your children do not belong to you my friends.
Everything you need to know about vegans ….. of which my libtard seester and her libtard hubby partake …
Inconvenient fact #241 dat confuses da fuck outta a vegan ….
The ECONOMIST is a rag tag hash of pretend journalism designed to help convince a class of fairly well educated but actually basically and deliberately reality unclued but still self satisfied elitists that they really do float far above the planet’s simple folkies.
I have seen it myself. With aquaintances.. Friendly. Kind hearted. But confused.
Thus, they feed on what comes out of the backend of the cow and the bull, that is not in gaseous form . Sometimes liquid . Sometimes solid. But always guaranteed to falsify life’s reality.
If the pages of the ECONOMIST were not so shiny, they could be efficiently employed on our own backends. S–t to s–t.
stucky,
those teeth are just part of our evil meat-eating past, lol. i bet if you pressed a vegan really hard about those “evil” teeth they might have them pulled out.
i’ll regularly rip on vegans but ultimately i thinks it fine. how many truly strong tough and smart vegans are there? when things get bad and their lack of logic hurts them, its one less group to worry about being over run by.
https://authoritynutrition.com/top-5-reasons-why-vegan-diets-are-a-terrible-idea/
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/99legacy/6-14-1999a.html
http://www.foxnews.com/story/2008/09/15/vegetable-only-diet-ups-risk-for-brain-shrinkage.html
http://www.womenshealthmag.com/food/side-effects-of-vegetarianism
http://www.msn.com/en-us/foodanddrink/foodculture/new-study-argues-vegetarianism-isn%E2%80%99t-as-earth-friendly-as-people-think/ar-BBnDwkT?li=BBnb7Kw&ocid=iehp
http://www.science20.com/news_articles/vegetarians_found_to_have_more_cancer_allergies_and_mental_health_disorders-133332
https://munchies.vice.com/articles/new-research-says-vegetarian-diets-could-actually-be-worse-for-the-planet
http://www.refinery29.com/2016/04/108536/vegetarian-diet-changing-genetic-mutation-study
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3515293/Vegetarian-diet-raises-risk-heart-disease-cancer.html
How do you know someone is a vegan? Don’t worry they’ll fucking tell you.
@ Sonic: Ain’t THAT the fuckin truth. For real.
Sonic,
That is absolutely true. Its also true for people who do crossfit which is fitting because both it and veganism are injury inducing health destroying cults.
I deal with vegans/vegetarians fairly often. I always listen patiently to their power point presentations of why THEY ARE SUPERIOR HUMAN BEINGS THAT LOVE ALL ANIMALS before I start asking them questions like, do you grow your own food? Do you know how soil is made? Where do they get their daily allowance of carnosine, B12, D3, creatine and DHA?
Lots of blank stares.
I love talking about food, where it comes from, how it affects us, side benefits of raising livestock, etc. because I know what I’m talking about. Most vegans/vegetarians do not. The really well informed ones do and they always sheepishly admit to taking supplements that are sourced from animal proteins because if it comes in a pill it is more palatable (if not completely hypocritical) than eating the meat/eggs/dairy from which it is derived.
I say it every time, all living things require the death of other living things in order to survive. Period. You want to get all speciest on me, be my guest, but you can’t deny the fundamental truth underlying all diets. You must cause death in order to live. That’s where it is easiest to get past their emotion based life choices and point out the flaw in their logic. At this point most conversations turn to other things and that’s fine by me. I don’t try and convert anyone to carnism, but I won’t allow them to try and tell me that they have a superior set of values.
Which does nothing at all to discredit most of their legitimate views on the horror of big AG meat production. Which to my mind is the major positive that comes from veganism and the mentality behind it. Mass producing animals has little to recommend it and very little in common with husbandry.
I also think they generally are right about one other thing. When they leave behind the mass produced meat heavy diet they generally feel better. Part of this, I think, it the feeling they are doing a good thing. What did ol’ Billy Shakespere say, “Nothing is either good nor bad that thinking makes it so”? I also think many of them for the first time step away from the hormones, pesticides, and processed chemicals to eat fresh, organic produce. They may be really paying attention to what they are eating for the first time and that change is a highly positive one. In the short term they likely would feel much better, healthier, and morally decisive. Moreover it is a hard row to hoe, so they would be proud of doing the work to stay on that diet. And considering how hard it is to eat well in today’s society (unless you grow it yourself HSF style), they should be proud of their success.
The problem is the disconnect between eating vegetables and killing things. Eating is inseparable from death. Living is inseparable from death. Consider a simple example. My wife and I took the kids camping at a the Merlefest Music Festival in Wilkesboro NC last weekend. This was just simple car camping, so we had all of the toys with us. Air mattress, big tent, pop up tent over the cooking area, a camp ktichen, etc. Hell I even had a battery powered fan I keep in my tool kit for working in hot attics. It is a far, far cry from roughing it, but hey this was for a music festival. Getting to the point we purchased a bundle of firewood for s’mores, and made a little camp fire. That single act of building a small fire resulted in numerous animal deaths. From chopping the tree down, cutting it up, transporting it, and handing it to me animals were displaced and crushed. Once in my hands and on the fire I saw numerous insects trying to escape a flaming death from their hiding places within the wood, and that was despite my active effort to knock them off or scoop them out. I don’t like killing things when I don’t have to, so saving a spider from immolation may be ridiculous; however, it isn’t any more ridiculous than watching it burn to death to no purpose. For each one saved, many were not. Plus I saved them to a grassy field where they were previously in a forest. It may not have been much of a boon in the end.
The point (however ponderously achieved) is that even a simple act of living creates dying. I like the Buddhist approach to the problem: “I aspire to harm no other creatures”. They or you will never succeed in that aspiration, but the act of aspiring will limit the unnecessary carnage somewhat. To my mind that is a good thing.