FB Discussions - Against Industial Meat Eating.

Aparna Krishnan - I thought that the modern industrial process caused far greater devastation than meat eating. And that vegetarians (like myself !) were simply using it as a holier-than-thou platform instead of looking at the whole picture, and themselves, and correcting. Is meat eating a reasonably devastating process for earth also, comparatively speaking. I will leave ethics aside, as that is a private path each of us walks on alone.

Sunny Narang - In the Great Cycle of Things everything adds up. In the Day of Judgement , every consumption gramme of everything matters . Soon all of it will have to be listed . And each one of us will have to make our total resource footprint choices .

We humans are a very funny race . We rarely join the dots . As a rule we are dumb fools wanting everything without seeing what we desire , how it affects things around us .

We have hysteria about Climate Change and at the same time get hyper about Meat-Eating Rights !

Bhai can't you see the connect ? Are you blind ?

Managed consumption is the ONLY ROUTE to SUSTAINABILTY .

And I don't care how the sustainability cat is caught , rationing or religion . Something will be done . By state-fiat or religious-law . That I have no doubt of . Just as our energy consumption will be managed soon .

And the fact that there are more vegetarians in India than the rest of the world together , should be an Ecological Celebration worthy of the Right Livelihood Prize , not derision by its elites and the media around the world . It is downright pathetic and intellectually dishonest .

That is why I stopped hanging around politically-correct people years ago. They are hypocritical and irrelevant . Give me a soldier and a trader any day .

The fact is that large urban populations with rising incomes world over eat more meat . And among meats Beef takes the Beef per kg of any meat of all natural resources like land, water , feed , energy.

Beef requires 28 times more land to produce than pork or chicken, 11 times more water and results in five times more climate-warming emissions. When compared to staples like potatoes, wheat, and rice, the impact of beef per calorie is even more extreme, requiring 160 times more land and producing 11 times more greenhouse gases.

Brazil is now the world’s largest beef exporter. Clearing rainforest for this multi-billion dollar industry is now responsible for 80 percent of forest loss in the Brazilian Amazon (or about 14% of the world’s total annual deforestation, making it world's largest single driver of deforestation.)

Imagine if billions more start eating Beef . All the World's forests will be cut to make your Hamburger .

Maybe that is what we want , be the Beef Patty between our obsession of the Cloud and the Car .

So if you want high animal proteins have crickets , almost 80% of it can be eaten (only 40% of cattle can !) ! Insects is the way out for your meat addiction .

In 2011, an estimated 58 TRILLION chickens were slaughtered around the world - that's compared to roughly 1.4 trillion pigs and 300 million cattle.

German public policy group Heinrich Boell Foundation and Friends of the Earth have an annual publication Meat Atlas, which illustrates food trends around the world.

"In the rich North we already have high meat consumption. Now the poor South is catching up," Barbara Unmuessig, the foundation's president, told BBC. "Catering for this growing demand means industrialized farming methods: Animals are pumped full of growth hormones. This has terrible consequences on how animals are treated and on the health of consumers."

Poultry is the fastest growing segment of globalized livestock. By 2020, China's poultry production will increase 37%, Brazil's will increase 28%, and U.S. production will increase 16% due to growing consumption around the globe. In India, poultry consumption is expected to rise nearly tenfold to just below 10 million tons a year in 2050.

Only a small percentage of the population in the U.S. and Europe describe themselves as vegetarians or vegans. It's much more popular in India since Buddhism and Hinduism share beliefs about rebirth and the importance nonviolence that leads people to reject the consumption of meat due to the slaughter of animals.

Aparna Krishnan So meat is as significant as industries and cars in the overall damage ?

Mark Johnston I'm afraid so. In general people feeding meat to a large pet dog have a bigger negative environmental impact than the large four wheel drive car they drive around in. That is not to say that the impact of subsistence farmers or gatherer hunter societies is not tiny compared to that of a wealthy, high consumption, vegetarian or vegan.

Aparna Krishnan i see. thanks. had not understood this perspective.

Mark Johnston Perhaps, in terms of the growing factory farming, it should be defined as an industrial process.

... "I prefer to eat vegetarian food as my body and mind are more comfortable with it. I don't defend non-vegetarian food but defend the right of people to make their food-choices. Yes it is cruelty to kill a cow to eat its flesh, but that argument is ridiculous when it is OK for the same people if it comes to slaughtering goats, chicken pigs or fish. I have worked among a community that eats dogs and I don't frown when I see dog meat in their markets. It is their choice and practice, who am I to question them?

Even plants are life forms and recent research in plant behaviour shows that plants can sense threats to them from animals and humans. Should we stop eating at all and drop dead, or do I wait for plants to shed their grains and fruit before eating them . Oops eating fallen grains and fruit is also as cruel as abortion!

Should we also convert carnivorous animals through a campaign and ask cats not to catch mice, or force dogs to eat sambhar rice? Oops ok, we can't afford to eat sambhar ourselves now that toor (arhar) dal prices are facing Achchedin. Where the eff do I get my proteins from?

My mind is simple and does not delve into higher planes of philosophical or existential questions too often and to my simple mind the arguments against animal slaughter are not convincing. Perhaps animal slaughter methods can change. Recently Germany became the first country to ban 'chick shredding' and that is welcome.

Will listen to arguments from all sides more but meanwhile I will stick to slaughtered plants for my food and slaughtered animals and fishes for my family members and neighbours as they prefer. Most definitely I refuse to accept that cows and dogs cannot be food while goats, chicken, pigs or fish can. It is an individual choice to me and yes if you don't want to eat cows or pigs you have a right not to eat those."