As for eating meat, you cannot be an environmentalist and eat meat. It takes 12,000 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef. Look it up.
You are not entitled to say a word about resource management if you eat meat.
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First off, not everyone can be healthy on a vegetarian diet. There are many of us in the Pagan community that have tried because of our reverence for nature, and failed because our bodies do not like it. I had my doctor and a good nutritionist helping me and still came out of the experience anemic, weak and unable to keep up with my children - twice .
Does that mean that I and other people who consume meat don't care about the environment? Absolutely not. We care, because treating animals humanely is the right thing to do, regardless of whether they are for work or for food.
Organic farming benefits the animals, humans and the environment, which is why I advocate for it. Inflating stats like you're doing does nothing to help the cause and could very well harm it, since no one takes such ridiculous figures seriously. Get informed first, then try to inform other people. Until then, you just hurt your own credibility and the environmentalism movement .
People should eat less meat for multiple reasons, indeed. But if you think "less" is invalid and that only "none" is meaningful, you'll mostly convince people to not change their habits at all.
If it took that much water to produce a ound of beef, nobody would be producing beef - it would drive them out of business. In an ideal world, we would all eat a natural, organic Paleo diet, as that is what our bodies evolved with. But that diet includes animal protein. Eating wayyyyy less meat than the FDA food guidelines state is fine. Eating no meat leads to problems because you can die from that if you don't get supplements.
I've heard this sort of statement before. It depends on your viewpoint. I'm sure many would consider it hypocritical for someone who says they're an environmentalist to also drive a Hummer, even if no one can really be 100% planet friendly.
It does, in fact, take a lot more water to produce dairy and meat than it does to produce grains and produce. http://www.gracelinks.org/blog/1143/beef-the-king-of-the-big-water-footprints
Edit to add: The 12,000 gallon figure comes from David Pimentel, so it's not as if this person just pulled it out of their ass.
"Professor Pimentel explained of his calculations that:
the data we had indicated that a beef animal consumed 100 kg of hay and 4 kg of grain per 1 kg of beef produced. Using the basic rule that it takes about 1,000 liters of water to produce 1 kg of hay and grain, thus about 100,000 liters were required to produce the 1 kg of beef."
'Nother Edit: This comment comes from a discussion about gun control, what?
It takes 12,000 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef. Look it up.
Is that from the same source where the pro-life crowd gets their abortion figures?
Right. And one can't say a word for Christianity unless one is sinless. One can't say a word about air pollution if one uses any method of transport other than one's feet.
You are not entitled to say a word about resource management if you are an a$$hat.
"you cannot be an environmentalist and eat meat"
You are not entitled to say a word about resource management if you eat meat.
Please explain your logic.
@KittyKaboom I don't know about America, but here in the UK, organic farming often does not benefit the animals - because when they get sick, they use homeopathy instead of actual medicine. This really disturbed me when I found out - I'm a vegetarian myself, but I certainly see the difference between the factory-style treatment of animals on one hand, and the "free-range" style of meat/dairy production. But denying animals drugs when they are sick is pretty messed up.
What does the Bible say about eating meat and animal sacrifice? Kosher, that's the Hebrew for 'fitting'.
Besides, humans have teeth and enzymes designed for meat eating and digestion.
That said, I do think that meat production and animal welfare have to work together.
There are far more efficient, humane, and wholesome ways to eat meat than the ways we do it, but quite a few people can't metabolize vegetable protein or assimilate vegetable iron, and we have millions of animals bred for that purpose who probably wouldn't survive if we just dumped them to live on their own, and who, if they succeeded, would wreak such havoc on the ecosystem we would be forced to kill them (in which case we might as well eat them).
Honestly, even if it's an exaggeration, this person has a point. It's overstating its facts and oversimplifying things, but there is a point here. The modern meat industry is terrible for the environment in many ways.
P.S. I did look it up, it's more like 1800-2500, which is still a lot. I've seen certain groups say it's more, but even the crazy that is PETA only go as high as 2400.
"As for eating meat, you cannot be an environmentalist and eat meat. It takes 12,000 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef"
Which is why we in the UK have been eating [i]horses[/i] . [/hyper-sarcasm] [/smartarse]
'Resource Management'? Tell that to Tesco's, Iceland, Aldi, Lidl, and Findus. [/topical]
Sorry, humans are omnivores. Even if we stopped rearing livestock for their meat entirely, we would still eat lab-grown meat cells. It's just our nature.
Yes, it does take 10 times as much energy to produce meat than it does plants. Yes, it is terrible for the environment to do so. But I refuse to be called a hypocrite for eating meat. I acknowledge these problems, and support ways to make them get better. If you can't have a can-do attitude about these things, you won't be convincing anybody.
"You cannot be an environmentalist if you contribute to global warming. Since farts contain hothouse gasses, you cannot be an environmentalist if you fart..."
Some people do not comprehend the difference between necessity and wastage. Eating meat is a necessity, but eating as much as is done in some countries with the production means amployed is wastage.
Vegetarians, unless it is solely and utterly for health reasons, need to get the fuck over it.
Eating meat isn't the problem, it's the inhumane conditions.
by this argument, cannibalism is good practice, if we go by this idiocy (call it resource management, if you wish).
It seems to me that if you're discussing resource management, i.e. "how do we raise the standard of living given X, Y, and Z natural resources and processes", then you're going to end up trading resources for utility and/or pleasure. That's the whole point of the system; resources are meant to be expended for some purpose. By this logic you couldn't be an environmentalist and support biodiesel, which after all requires valuable food crops be converted to fuel*.
Also, [citation needed] in the extreme.
Hm. I wonder how much water organic farming practices consume?
* Unless they finally figured out how to process switchgrass into biofuel, which I know has been in the works for some time. I'd have to look it up.
Water consumed by animals remains part of the water cycle. If it didn't, the Earth would have run out of water long before we showed up.
You might have a legitimate point if you starting arguing against the meat industry, but your goal seems to be to just get lefties to shut up. Which is kind of counterproductive.
We should certainly eat less meat on average than we do, and less beef in particular.
But pork and chicken are far more efficient than beef.
So this "You are not entitled to say a word about resource management if you eat meat." is nonsense, even skipping the principle that everyone is entitled to say whatever they want about anything (but not to be taken seriously or to have attention paid to them or to not be challenged for saying things that are wrong).
Because, apparently, all meat is beef, and chickens, sheep, and goats don't exist.
Sorry, no. While it IS possible to survive on vegetable matter and grains alone, it requires some degree of careful balancing. Humans evolved to survive on both animal protein AND plants, and (with some cultural exceptions) we've done so for the entirety of our recorded history as a species. It is quite literally hardwired into our genes, and while there is much room for improvement in our methods of production, our treatment of the animals we raise for food and our dietary habits, it won't be stopping, now or ever, until all of us are dead.
So no, wrong answer. Try again.
Those 12000 gallons (US or UK gallons, btw) go back into the hydrologic cycle. It isn't destroyed in the process, you know.
Ignorant as a bag of hammers, but what's fundie about this?
So because I enjoy a steak occasionally and eat chicken often I should stop recycling, conserving power and water, taking the bus when I can, and every other thing I do to try and make some kind of contribution to help the planet?
You can't pretend you care about the environment when you possess an all or nothing mentality.
Yes, eating meat is fairly bad for the environment in most cases, you are correct. But you can still be an environmentalist if you eat meat. Take me for example: If they could ever make easily accessible artificially grown meat, I'd switch to that in a heartbeat, and I'm sure most other meat-eating environmentalists would too (assuming you couldn't tell the difference in terms of taste, of course).
@Deep Search -
Even if Pimentel's numbers are correct, they're irrelevant. Any living mammal is going to use up similar/proportional amounts of water through food and water consumption in its lifetime, regardless of whether that animal is ultimately destined to slaughter for food or simply dies a natural death - so whether the meat is eaten or left to rot doesn't matter. Those numbers would only support what it takes to keep an animal alive, not what it takes to produce beef specifically. For that matter, similar numbers could be devised for what it takes to sustain a human being in its lifetime. So by expat's fundie logic, you are not entitled to say a word about resource management if you're a live human being.
@#1505030: vegans in general? No, though like anybody with a strong/strict/demanding ideology or belief they're probably somewhat more likely to slide into fundamentalism. Vegans like expat who don't let little things like facts, reason or reality get in the way of their ideology, want to impose said ideology on everybody, have no problem "lying for Christ" to that end and decry everybody who isn't quite as extreme as them as "sinners" and false believers? You can bet your ass these ones qualify as fundies!
Adrian: To be fair, if you valued an animal's life the same as a human, or even sufficiently high as to make meat immoral, you'd be angry as well. Like anti-abortion types who think that embryos are people. If they actually sat down and thought about what value they think chickens and cows have, maybe they would think differently, but it can be a consistent ethical system.
I find, personally, it difficult to comprehend why people would have issues with eating chickens and fish, but I can see why people balk at eating mammals.
No, the animal we get our beef from drinks 1,200 gallons of water before the age at which it is slaughtered for consumption. If not slaughtered, it will eat, drink, and crap considerably more.
How do you like them apples?
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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