No, this isn’t a dead baby joke. If it were, the title might say something like, “What’s the difference between a truck full of bowling balls and a truck full of dead babies?” (You can’t unload the bowling balls with a pitch fork) Sadly, this is no such joke and perfectly good baby child has perished at the hands of unfit vegan parents.
As the Guardian reports, these French vegans decided to only feed their baby with breast milk for the first 11 months of its life. Unfortunately, these were also the only 11 months of that baby’s life, because drinking vegan breast milk resulted in a woefully malnourished baby.
When the parents finally realized something was wrong, they called an ambulance, but it was too late. By the time the ambulance arrived, the baby had already passed on. Lacking in vitamins A and B12 (both of which come from animal products), the baby was susceptible to disease and although the ultimate cause of death was pneumonia, the sad situation never would have occurred if the baby had a proper diet.
The parents could face up to 30 years in prison for “neglect or food deprivation followed by death.” That’s no small sentence, but I can think of a better punishment for them. How about forcing them to eat nothing but those malnourishing vegan foods they seem to love so much and see how long they last? I’d rather spend 30 years in prison than live like that.
(via The Guardian)
Yes I hope they do…but to blame this on being vegan can only show the ignorance of the people writing this article and the people who actually read it and beleive it….I can understand the writers POV for saying it in such a way as it is Journalism 101 to captivate an audience…but for the reader to beleive this there is no excuse but ignorance…
obviously the baby did not die because of having vegan parents but because the parents were total idiots. feeding an 11 month old baby with only breast milk is not vegan…it is ignorant! anybody with a little bit of inteligence would know that an 11 month old baby needs more than just breast milk! especially if the baby weighs only 5 and a bit kilos.
But from looking at your site I can see that you are nothing but a poor ignorant fool so you really can’t be blamed to post this article and make the comment that you made.
BTW if you continue to eat the way you preach on this site you will be lucky to spend another 30years…anywhere
Obviously they weren’t true vegans, because breast milk is an animal product so the baby really shouldn’t have been allowed to drink that. So you’re right, I can’t blame this on them for being vegan, because they really weren’t.
Also, I may be a poor, ignorant fool, but at least I had parents who kept me alive past my first 11 months.
It’s a well known fact that breastmilk is the main food of an infant’s first year of life. Although rare, a baby can survive on just breastmilk alone… not something most breastfeeders would do. It is especially more important to keep breastfeeding until a child’s diet is well established. I had a son with a lot of food allergies, unlike my eldest who was born healthy, anytime I reduced my breastfeeding in the first two years of his life (and yes, he started real foods at 6.5 months) he would lose one to two pounds. It happened when I went back to work and when I returned to work after a family vacation. Breastmilk is the most nutritious and important food for a baby and anything the mom eats will be present in the milk within 15 minutes. You can keep a baby in better shape that these parents did if the parent’s diet is sufficient. As mentioned in the post, it’s the parent’s diet that is much more important than the fact that this child was solely breastfed.
These parents neglected their child’s well-being with a poorly-planned diet and lifestyle.
Vitamin A doesn’t only come from animal products, and vegan mothers *should* supplement vitamin B12. That this mother didn’t is a result of stupidity and poor nutrition, not a vegan diet.
Let’s not forget that the American Dietary Association accepts and promotes a *well-planned* vegan diet in all stages of life, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood and adolescence.
Unfortunately, Ashley, if your nutritional information is coming from the ADA, you’re probably not as healthy as you think. Vegan diets are in direct conflict with what is known about human dietary requirements. All humans require some form of animal protein in their diets. On the other hand, the human dietary requirement for carbohydrates is ZERO. So even a “well-planned” vegan diet is inappropriate for infants and children (and pretty much everyone else as well, but you know, adults are free to make those choices). Imposing a strict vegan diet on a child is, in my mind, abuse. It lacks the appropriate levels of protein, fat, and is WAY too high in unusable carbohydrates. I submit that a lower-carb lacto-ovo vegetarian diet can be OK for some. But a vegan diet? Never. And for children? Hell no.
This article betrays a certain bias, as you would expect from content found on a site named ‘Unvegan’. Even though you have a specific agenda, I think you should endeavor to present facts and not to bend the truth so flagrantly.
We live in a time where what we eat and the source of our food becomes an ever more pressing issue, population is expanding, the climate is changing due to human activity, of which the keeping of livestock contributes more greenhouse gases than the burning of fossil fuels http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8329612.stm. The land put aside to rear livestock in the UK is 80% of all farm land. Livestock is incredibly demanding on space, requiring large amounts of land to feed it, this land is piled with fertilizes and pesticides which over time destroy the earth, making it barren, and all of which get into the food chain.
There’s a real debate to be had here, whether you like meat or not, I don’t think anyone is disagreeing that meat tastes good, and is convenient to eat, but I question whether it’s sustainable for us to go the way we are.
It’s misleading, and incorrect, to say that B12 ‘comes from animal products’ it doesn’t come from plants or animals, but from bacteria. Animal products only contain it because animals eat food contaminated with it. If we ate like animals, and didn’t clean everything all the time, we’d get it too. That’s why I eat from a trough in my back yard. Ha ha! No but I get it from fermenting stuff and making cheese (out of nuts and soya). In Britain we have a strange habit of eating Yeast Extract, Marmite, which is rammed full of it. (many people find this disgusting)
Yeah so anyway I’ve been a vegan for 2 months, as logically it seemed the best thing to do, to eat at the bottom of the food chain – absorb less pesticides and chemicals, and treat the environment with respect. . At christmas I was chomping down on animals. Now I don’t, and I have to say I’ve got a lot more energy, and I look a lot sexier. Meat causes obesity, heart disease, colon cancer, osteoporosis. In short it makes you fat and smelly … Without it I feel so much better, and have a lot more sex. My skin has an immortal sheen to it. I feel like some kind of Adonis, and my relationship with everything around me is better, as I’m not living purely selfishly, eating stuff just cos it tastes good, cos it’s easy because I WANT WANT WANT it….
Biased? Yes, perhaps a little bit. As you so observantly pointed out, the site is named “Unvegan.”
There are unquestionable concerns about the environment, and have been since people discovered agriculture. These are in no way a problem simply caused by livestock, because it takes a massive amount of space to produce soy, corn and other vegetable products. If the question is simply about sustainability, then any form of agriculture is taking us down an unsustainable path, with or without meat.
I’m happy that you have found your way to veganism, which means one fewer person to compete with over meat. Meat is not simply a delicious obesity/heart disease/colon cancer/osteoporosis catalyst, though, and there are a number of nutritional deficiencies and maladies that can be caused by the vegan lifestyle.
Oh, and I am definitely one sexy-as-hell Adonis.
It does take land to grow these foods, but livestock far outweighs that of vegetables, and you can’t rotate livestock in the same way you can crops, which produces natural fertilisation for the soil.
In the UK that’s 80% of farm land devoted to livestock. So I think you’d have to agree there, obviously there’s a greater impact on the environment. Not only that, livestock, as I said, produces greenhouse gases, more than all the planes, boats, cars in the world. Crops don’t do that, infact they help the situation by absorbing carbon dioxide.
As for the health issues of not eating meat, I’d be interested to know what they are. You haven’t mentioned any. Certainly B12 isn’t one of them, for reasons I mentioned above.
Livestock also creates natural fertilization for the soil and if managed well, those gas byproducts can actually be used as fuel instead of becoming pollution. Farmers may not be implementing such practices, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
I cannot argue about the 80% of farmland in the UK being devoted to livestock. I don’t know your source, but see no reason to refute it. Yes, animals use a lot of land. Especially grazers like sheep, which I assume are a massive contributor to that percentage. Crops don’t move, which makes them easier to maintain in a small place. Regardless, neither form of agriculture is truly sustainable. The production of soy has resulted in the mass destruction of Brazilian rainforests and the production of corn essentially ravaged the entire great plains of the USA. You can make the argument that much of this is used to feed livestock, however, if livestock was fed its natural diet of grass (which humans can’t digest), then this problem wouldn’t exist.
You are right that not every vegan has B12 deficiency, but that doesn’t change the fact that many do; just as not all meat eaters are obese or have heart disease. There’s also a higher risk of colorectal cancer, which is a pretty bad one. Soy consumption also has some crazy hormonal effects. If you are not getting your protein through soy, it’s probably coming from other beans or quinoa. I admit I know little about other beans, but I do know that quinoa consumption is having a terrible impact upon the people of Bolivia and Peru. Not a health issue, I suppose, but certainly a sustainability one.
Hi Long John, Unvegan and the many readers,
Personally, I believe a Vegan diet is geared towards those of the educated idiot persuasion. We can go through the many facts biologically citing all the reasons under the sun for humans being omnivores. Usually, this incites an argument between both parties, with the occasional vegan explaining their luck with this lifestyle. Bully for you if you are one of those. I still think you are wrong and will not go into why. You need to go down this path on your own.
As far as the land being taken up to rear livestock, this is simply supply and demand. If most of the population was vegan, the argument would most probably be reversed.
Really, what the argument above indicates is the use of land. It seems equally ignorant for us as humankind to place our animals inside a concentrated feedlot, and raise their unnatural, typically GM “food” out in the wild, adding in pesticides, antibiotics, and a host of other crap. I would imagine that if we were to take the land used to raise these franken crops to feed our franken animals, and rather, just let the animals at their natural food sources, both sides would be much happier with the result. The only reasons CAFOs seem like they are profitable is only because the government subsidizes the growth of the corn and soy and other grains that are used to feed them.
Oh, but if we were to go to a logical system truer to nature, how would we feed the population? This is numb. So your 1 lb. of hamburg costs you a buck more at the store? Okay, I would gladly pay more for humanely raised, sustainably managed beef than the hidden tax cost, environmental cost, and health cost of the other equation.
And unless you Vegans out there are eating 100% Organic, instead of feeding the beef cattle and chickens out there this food source, all you have done is cut out the middleman. You are still supporting a less than sustainable lifestyle, so drop the holier than thou attitude. We are Omnivores, what you eat is important, and once you accept your status on the food chain, where it comes from becomes the real issue.
And to conclude with a joke I believe the author would at least get a chuckle at: I like Vegans, they taste just like chicken.
Hi, I think you should go into the reasons as to why you think it’s wrong to be a vegan. I’m genuinely interested to know, for the purpose of discussion, which I hope is why we’re here spending time writing. I wont be offended, I don’t see why Vegans get attacked so much, yes, you should be happy, more meat for you.
I think there are 2 issues here, first is the moral prerogative of inflicting pain and suffering on innocent, intelligent creatures (on which you may find this interesting http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti-WcnqUwLM). The second is the environmental impact of mass meat production, which is undoubtedly huge, as I’ve said much greater than the whole enterprise of burning fossil fuels. And then there’s the actual physical destruction of land, forests, and eventually the soil itself, that’s intrinsically part of this mass production of meat.
I’m in no disagreement with you, we are omnivores, in the sense we can eat what we want, and this versatility is undoubtedly linked to our success as a species. There would have been no way to survive colder climates without meat.
But times have changed, as a species we’ve managed to seriously effect the climate of the earth, the ice caps are melting at an unprecedented rate, pollinators are becoming extinct , we are on the verge of environmental catastrophe. We can either face up to this challenge and work out alternatives to overcome it, or we can continue to blindly blunder on, selfishly, in denial”¦
It just seems to me pointless, when actually we don’t need to eat meat, we really don’t, it’s not necessary, and for the destruction it causes, I don’t think it’s such a big deal to forgo it.
Unfortunately this is an idea so horrific for the majority of the population, as we’ve been told for so long how normal and healthy it is to drink milk and eat meat. It’s like when you suggest to a Christian that there may be no God, that you don’t think there is one, they feel under attack, they get defensive.
I tell you, there’s no need to eat meat, you don’t need it, and you’ll feel better without it. But you feel threatened, perhaps because, as with the existence of God, logically your argument is easily defeated by science, and ethics.
Hi Long John,
Okay, although you might now admire the following comment. Studies actually prove that it would have been biologically implausible for humans to evolve such a large brain on a raw, vegan diet. Eating meat was actually a crucial element of human evolution. This might explain why we are having this debate right now… 🙂
Additionally, there exist 20 ‘essential’ amino acids our bodies needs to survive. The body can only produce 10 of them, whereas herbivores can produce all 20. To actually get the amount of the other 10 amino acids, we either have to poison ourselves with soy, which does not actually contain a full ‘usable’ entourage of these, or eat meat. There exists a reason soy was fermented. Plus, I believe our stomach produces hydrochloric acid, not something herbivores can do. Plus our pancreas also produces enzymes capable of breaking down both vegetables as well as meats.
I believe studies done by Weston A. Price would be a good research topic for you to look into. The problem I see is that everyone argues that our history is irrelevant. The fact we flourished consuming meat has all of the sudden become irrelevant because once again, so educated idiot did some study that made other educated idiots do more studies. The problem with studies is that they tend to conclude what you want them to.
And this bull-spit of just because we can, doesn’t mean we should is a load of manure. Really, we have survived for how long eating meat and now we should turn our backs from evolution and eat just vegetables? Really? This is some of the vegan logic that exists. Well, we have this wonderful GMO soy that is almost like protein, except that in 3 generations from now, your testicles will shift and mimic ovaries because this wonderful soy protein messes with your testosterone levels. No, please ignore that the country it comes from only ate it fermented to take these properties out, and don’t worry that Monsanto messed with it, he has your best interest in mind. Oh, but don’t eat that local, grass fed, sustainably raised beef. That shit will kill you. Instead, here is a deep fried spring roll. Feel better now?
Honestly, you can find plenty of crap out there regarding the so called ‘debate’ on either side of this fence. So let me propose a single thought. Most herbivores spend most their waking hours taking in enough calories to survive. So you propose that we consume more vegetables, using the modern day pesticides of course, replace meat and dairy and eggs with soy and the phytoestrogens contained within, turn our backs on our evolutionary history, and we are going to be a radiant, healthful society?
I propose we get ride of most all grains, let the cattle eat grass and turn something we can’t eat into something we can, and grow vegetables without the heavy use of pesticides and GM crap. It is not that we eat meat, but that we eat too much of everything. I happen to practice intermittent fasting. I have a cup of coffee in the AM and drink water, but do not actually eat until dinnertime. I eat a nice healthy meal typically a black and blue piece of beef and a huge salad with plenty of organic vegetables. I will have a little potato or a little rice if necessary, mostly so I can have something with my rooster sauce. Or I make a nice, chicken soup with all sorts of vegetables and kelp and garlic. See, carbs is what they push on you vegans. Carbs, bad oils, and processed foods are what is actually causing all the issues with health. I have a high quality yogurt for dessert. I will have raw milk, eggs from neighbors who raise their chickens (the good I ate bugs and critters orange yolk stuff, not the watercolor washed out barely yellow crap cause i was raised on grains.) If I do have bread, there exists more raw butter than bread. I eat bacon (the only supermarket bought meat, because I rarely eat it.) I eat fermented food all the time. I use palm oil and coconut oil and olive oil, when i do not eat butter. I am in my mid-thirties and in perfect health – just had all my tests done. Oh, cholesterol was actually on the lower side of the healthy range, given my diet, it should be through the roof, right?
Every time I see a vegan explaining how their holier than diet is better because of this reason or that, while their hungry eyes search the room looking for their next prey, I just want to offer them a nice, rare, grass fed Ribeye steak, bloody rare. And really, I feel it is what they truly want too.
Sure, go Vegan – for a cleanse. It won’t hurt. But spend your money on supporting what will actually make the most difference, you local raised meat and vegetables. Not the supermarket processed food, pesticide laden vegetables, or cafo animal raised products brought up on GMO food sources.
Or, to better support the planet, found a Vegan cult and jump into a volcano to save the earth. Either way, do something intelligent.
John
Oh, and Long John. I gave you a name to research and have not heard back from you. Either you gave up the “debate”, or maybe read something that caused a change of heart? Here is a great article to read:
http://www.westonaprice.org/vegetarianism-and-plant-foods/myths-of-vegetarianism
I am providing this link to both sides of this “debate” to perhaps better educate each side. Yes, one can “survive” perhaps on a Vegan lifestyle, even with the known deficiencies. But I don’t want to just survive, I want to thrive. The above link not only explains the concerns of the vegan lifestyle, but also recommends how we as human beings can properly raise both plants and animals humanely and with the utmost regard to our Earth, which has provided us so much.
Thank you,
John
Not at all John, just been quite busy of late.
The problem is on both sides of the argument there is, of course, huge bias. I’ve just read the article you sent, thank you for it, but I don’t think it’s very good, in that so much of his information I know to be incorrect. Especially when he talks about B12 (please see above). Also it’s patently absurd to talk about a couple having trouble conceiving, and then trying to pin it all on their diet. Plenty of omnivore couples have difficulty conceiving. Overal I felt it to be a very unscientific article, written by someone with a clear agenda, to justify their own lust for flesh.
As far as the impact upon land and environment, the most neutral study I’ve seen is by the UK Government. One really good thing about the UK is that it does strive for impartiality. I refer you again to this article http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8329612.stm.
Please find fault with it, criticise it, it seems very balanced to me, but perhaps you don’t think so? If not why?
Also I can’t find any evidence of nutritional deficiencies caused from not eating meat.
While I agree that meat-eating has enabled the human race to spread further afield, to survive harsher, colder climates, the fur, fat, and protein we got from animals being crucial for survival in these climes.
I think it’s worth baring in mind that we were only able to do this once we’d developed the tools of slaughter, spears, axes, knifes etc. Unlike carnivores, we don’t have the claws or teeth to kill naturally. So we have to accept that at one, Palaeolithic time, we did not consume meat, and we were fine.
Chemically I can’t see a basis for these deficiencies existing. There are actually 22 Amino acids of which 9 are essential. Almost all foods contain all these acids but in varying proportions.
Now, of course eating further up the food chain has the advantage that the animals you eat will have spent their entire lives munching away consuming the acids and building protein, which you can quite easily consume in a steak, preventing you from doing all the munching yourself. Most of the cows in North America will be fed on Soy (I wonder how much oestrogen is left in the meat? Referring to your earlier comments about testicles etc.!)
So you’re basically filtering your Amino Acids through a cow first, it concentrates them, and adds flavour (but also it would seem a large number of pollutants also accumulate in the cow, which you’re then eating).
Now, it only seem logical to me that you can bypass the ‘cow stage’ and just go straight to the source, (thus avoiding a lot of pollutants, and saving a lot of time). It seems more efficient to cut out the middle man – the cow, the sheep, the chicken.
I’m 3 months into this, and I really do feel I have a lot more energy than I used to. I feel so much better, it’s quite odd. Of course this is a very subjective comment, I can’t qualify it. But if it’s so bad for you, why do I feel so good? Also why aren’t vegans dropping down dead everywhere?
Interesting that you say ‘Sure, go Vegan – for a cleanse’
This implies that you think eating meat/dairy is dirty?
If not, why not eat steak ‘for a cleanse’?
Also I just wanted to say that I appreciate you having this discussion with me. I’m not trying to lord it over anyone with a “˜holier than thou’ attitude. I’ve eaten dogs, I’ve stollen legs of lamb, I don’t believe in God or being holy, I get more from Plato than I do the Bible, I believe discourse can illuminate truth, while blind faith cannot.
I take your points about soy being not so great on the environment, although crucially, most Soy is grown to feed lifestock, so I don’t feel it’s such a great argument.
Also your points about Quinoa, I had no idea the problems surrounding it. Although I think these are different issues, those of politics, not of the environment and health.
Long John,
I will work my way up on your comments. Yes, I think some meat is dirty. I also think some vegetables and fruits are dirty as well. I believe a vegan diet can offer the body a cleanse. To allow it a rest for a longer period of time while trying to feed it very little ‘food’ but high in vitamins. I have done juice fasting. I now practice intermittent fasting, where I allow my body a break from breakfast and lunch most days, and eat a very high quality dinner. Very little sugar and grains, very many vegetables and protein from meat. Lots of fat.
I started this form of eating 4 years ago, and added two days of week of exercise. I came off the Standard American Diet “SAD”, as we will call it. I lost 50 pounds within the first 18 months. I have kept that weight off. I have great energy and great stats from blood work.
You have done this Vegan diet for 3 months and claim high energy. I believe your claim. I also believe this will most probably end. The article does explain this, I believe. If it does not, one of the articles below that it links to does. The body is a marvelous thing. It can survive on McDonald’s and microwave dinners as well. Survive is the key word, not thrive, but survive. Why do so many people start this lifestyle, and switch away from it after some time has passed? I would imagine that if it were sustainable, many more people would have become a part of it.
So your logic says I can bypass the “cow stage” and go straight to the source. I am assuming you are confused that I eat CAFO cow meat versus meat from naturally grass grazing cows? Because last time I checked, that is not the sort of grass us as humans can digest, right? Not a lot of estrogen if my cows aren’t fed soy, but rather fed what they are intended to eat, right?
I’ll write more, gotta go…
Long John,
To you and other Vegans. Please watch this video. I think it makes perfect sense of why to eat cared for livestock.
http://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world_s_deserts_and_reverse_climate_change.html
Let me know what your thoughts are after.
Hi John,
Thanks for that video, it’s encouraging, I guess obvious in some sense that getting a lot of animals to trample and shit on the ground is going to fertilise it and lock the moisture back in. But I was very interested by his work, I hadn’t heard of him before.
However while he offers a cure, there is still the cause itself which needs to be addressed, which is mankind’s huge and especially North Americas, insatiable demand for meat, which causes mass deforestation, turning rain forest into desert.
It takes a long time for the rainforest to grow back.
The fact remains that the ‘American diet’ is completely unsustainable. I’m sure Mr. Savory would agree with me, that the cause needs to be addressed as well, he is simply repairing the harm that the human lust for meat causes. But it’s like trying to fix holes in a big water tank, while you have a crowd of people shooting holes in it, as soon as you fix one, 5 more appear.
You must agree, people need to eat less meat?
No, I do not wholly agree that we need to eat less meat. The problem I see is that you would only like to blame our meat eating on the environmental issues of today. The rainforests are disappearing for many reasons: http://kids.mongabay.com/elementary/501.html
Agriculture as well as grazing land are given as examples, amongst many others. So even though grazing land would be considered a part of agriculture, agriculture is both vegetables and livestock. Eat less meat, agriculture changes to producing more vegetables. Simple economics of supply and demand.
It is not eating meat or eating vegetables that is the problem. It is the way in which we are producing it that is.
Although your stand is honorable, I believe it is misguided. You are only focusing on one part of the equation, and not taking a step back to look at it as a whole. You are just as likely to be contributing to the same issues of rainforest destruction eating vegetables as you are meat. Making the argument that you only eat Organic or local vegetables, which I doubt you eat over 50%, can be made right back at you for my meat consumption. I just picked up a side of beef for a local farm, raised by an actual farmer on actual grass (not the 60s kind – lol). I put it in my deep freezer and ate a wonderful rib eye steak last night, cooked in locally made butter and salted with Redmond’s RealSalt cooked on my cast iron pan. I followed it up with an organic, locally raised salad with homemade dressing and cracked peppercorn. I give blood 3-4 times per year to keep my iron levels in check because I use a Cast Iron pan.
So please explain to me where I have to cut back to save the environment?
What truly has to happen is that we as a species need to be intelligent as to where our sources of food come from, whether it be vegetables or meat. We need to stop using chemicals and pesticides on and in our foods, heaving dosing of antibiotics, monoculture and CAFOs. We need to follow the examples of people that can regain our deserts and turn them into grasslands so our reliance on Rainforests can subside. If we can turn deserts into grasslands, then we can turn some of our grasslands back into forests.
Also, stop buying imported paper and stop buying rainforest wood for your decks. Oddly enough, the best lumber to use is the new pressure treated, as it is a green product, saves our rainforests, isn’t plastic (which is an OIL product, using more oil to melt and shape it), and the forests in the US are managed extremely well and making money – so they will not disappear.
I believe you are swinging at something because somehow, it is something that touched your heart, but I believe taking a step back to analyze the facts may change your conclusion. If you don’t want to eat meat, this is your choice. But it is not up to you to tell me that people need to eat less meat when I know I am doing my best to protect the environment by voting with how I invest with my money after doing enough research to understand the pros and cons.
We are humans, we are going to have an impact on this earth regardless of what we do. But how can we balance our needs in harmony with all that we have been gifted in our lives? This I believe each and everyone needs to explore. We can balance our impact on this planet intelligently, but it requires taking a step back from the petty, like the concept that “I don’t eat meat, therefore, I am acting environmentally responsible” is exactly the problem we have.
People need to be less disconnected from where their food comes from and how it was grown and raised. That nice apple you are eating in the middle of winter, probably came from an orchard in South America that used to be a rainforest. But thanks for not eating meat, you saved our earth. You just starting shooting more holes in the vegetable water tank versus the meat water tank. Good luck.
John,
The frustrating thing about this exchange is that, although I read/watch the sources you provide, you don’t acknowledge anything I direct you to, namely the recent enquiry by Lord Stern, who concludes ‘a diet that relies heavily on meat production results in higher emissions than a typical vegetarian diet.’
The point is meat requires substantially more land to raise, than do plants. And livestock is the greatest contributor to greenhouse gases.
The fact is, a vegetarian diet is not only the most efficient way to use land, in real terms, you can feed more people per square foot of land on veg, than you can on meat. But it also significantly reduces greenhouse omissions, by cutting the demand meat, and therefore reducing the strain of livestock on the environment. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNHpA4uCm7g)
You seem to be in complete denial of the facts, ‘global meat production has tripled in the last 3 decades and is set to double by 2050’ (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100316101703.htm). I think it’s a no-brainer that we need to seriously reduce our reliance upon meat.
I respect that this is not such a black and white issue, which is why I’m prepared to discus it with you, however you seem to feel under attack and take it quite personally. I’m not telling you to do anything, we’re just talking, weighing the information.
It seems that you are a very conscientious person, sourcing local produce etc. And sure, what more can you do? I take my hat off to you. But I live in the middle of London, there are no local sources. I’m surrounded by meat that’s been reared in the most horrendous conditions imaginable, that you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. (please see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTifP6idBPs watch it, if you dare!)
Again I realise that my stance isn’t 100% airtight, ‘By keeping out of the debate over how livestock should be kept, those of us who have advocated veganism have allowed the champions of cruel, destructive, famine-inducing meat farming to prevail. It’s time we got stuck in.’ (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/sep/06/meat-production-veganism-deforestation (I think you’ll enjoy this article))
On a final note I’d be interested if you took the time to watch this film, and tell me what you think…. http://earthlings.com/?page_id=32 just to try and put things in perspective, in terms of the animals being sentient creatures…. (aside from environmental issues stated above)
Cheers
Long John,
Valid point. I have not done a good job at looking through the data you have provided and commenting on that. I will try to look through all the links above. This being said, I would not hang my hat on Lord Stern, however. Let me get you a little more data, if you would like, regarding his viewpoint. This one starts to give you a little of what I have been reading: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1223671/Giving-meat-save-planet-daftest-idea-Ive-heard.html
In the interim, here is an article, written oddly enough by a vegetarian, that goes through a few things.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/31/opinion/31niman.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&sq=the%20carnivore%92s%20dilemma&st=cse&scp=1&
And another thing to consider is that blindly saying that land raising vegetables produces more than land producing meat is not wholly accurate from what my research has indicated. And certainly not necessarily comparable when ti comes to nutrients. Here is a neat article while I view all your links.
http://www.honestmeat.com/honest_meat/2012/09/ramblings-on-mark-bittman-and-meat-vs-produce.html
BTW, not hostile, just passionate.
Another site that is good for no CAFOs, google query “the meatrix”. If you come back around to eating meat, it will never be CAFO again…
As far as your first article goes, I’d take it with a pinch of salt, The Daily Mail is the blight of this country, loathed by anyone with a glimmer of enlightenment http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eBT6OSr1TI
Yes I think much I’m reading collaborates that the problem is in the vast quantity of meat produced, and how it’s farmed. Unfortunately most of it isn’t farmed in the quaint, old fashioned way, which is harmless to the environment. With a demand so great, how else can such a demand be satisfied? Yes a good article in the New York times, similar to the one I sent you in the Guardian.
Long John,
Once again, one source that seems to throw statistics and numbers around for their own edification seems rather frustrating.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100023540/lord-sterns-dodgy-dossier-exposed/
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/01/lord-sterns-spokesperson-responds.html
I think at least I wouldn’t hang my hat on numbers and statistics all the time.
The concern I see out there is how to wade through all the politics, lies, rhetoric, and money studies to actually find truth…
I will respond a few times, to keep each shorter, and so I can reference each point above easier…
The Guardian article was interesting, btw. The one problem I see with it is the connection now between what Allan Savory and other like him are presenting coupled with an interesting statistic. Earth is covered in approx. 71% water. This leaves 29% of total land on earth. So of that 29%, 1/3 is desert. Of course, definition of desert includes Antarctica, etc. But this is still quite a large percent of earth. If we follow what Allan Savory presents, we can utilize desert instead of rainforest for livestock, produce more cattle, sequester more carbon in the land and eat meat. Now also figure that not all land can be used for vegetables. But there is evidence that raising vegetables uses lots of other stuff that are not good, but necessary for the plants to grow.
Add in that there is substantial amount of land used to raise feed for livestock. This was once good land to grow great vegetables – side note, puslane is something you should look into, btw.
Now this land is stripped of nutrients. Plant grass, rotate cattle onto this land to rebuild it. Once enough of the good kind of bullshit has rebuilt the land, rotate vegetables back into it.
Also, not all land is suitable for growing vegetables. But livestock, yep. Perhaps some innovative ways to raise different livestock, like a yak/beef combo where the yak is hearty, a little smaller, can forage for edible food easier as it will eat more variety than the common cow, and can survive worse conditions. Great for mountainous regions. I think the U.K. has a few of these…
I guess what is debatable in our back and forth, and maybe we are arguing over very little, is the amount of meat that should be eaten. I believe we can produce more, naturally than what you believe. But we don’t get to test this out until we can stop the misuse of our earth.
What I think we both agree on, and maybe the real point of where we are getting to, is that our current model sucks in so many ways, and the further we go, the worse it will get. It is not changing the minds of those whose eyes are open, like you or I, it is changing the minds of the blind.
As the article in Science Daily says, “People aren’t going to stop eating meat, but I am always hopeful that as people learn more, they do change their behavior. If they are informed that they do have choices to help build a more sustainable and equitable world, they can make better choices.”
Does this mean cut back on meat, or does this mean raise it right? Maybe the former, certainly the latter.
Most statistics are taken from grain feed beef, btw. The youtube video, horrible, I have seen plenty others. This is unethical, inhumane, and wrong. It makes me sad that we treat our animals this way – they suffer the moment they are born until their death, and hopefully it is quick. The same could be said for our mother earth and the overuse of agrochemicals, gmo, fertilizers, and such to raise our vegetables. I believe we can take the necessary steps to have our vegetables and eat our meat too. We can do this humanely, providing quality of life to both the animals and our mother earth.
But one thing is for sure, being a Vegan is not solving the problem either. Opening more eyes and voting with the almighty buck (or quid) helps.
Two more sites of interest:
http://www.realfooduniversity.com/paleoprimal-lifestyle-sustainable-meat-production/
http://www.explorebeef.org/environment.aspx
I rather favor the thought of mixing it up, allowing sheep to graze with beef cattle, and then perhaps have the chickens and turkeys follow up after. It seems more fluid.
Doing this sort of management requires time, but because it is done in this way, I would imagine that it takes care of using the land effectively, fertilizing it appropriately, and taking care of the potential problems of the land with this sort of rotational grazing, using the birds to provide pest control and nitrogen enriched poop.
Thanks,
John
Some more thoughts on this issue, as I, I expect differently to you am sprouting some wheat, in order to ferment and create bacteria that will break down, culture, the proteins in cashew nuts, in order to make cheese (a perfect source of B12).
This is an aside, but it occurs to me that we are in complete agreement concerning the importance of animals in the world. They play a vital part in contributing to the health of the earth of the planet which we share with them.
It all boils down to the same issue infact, the fundamental issue which inspired me in the first place to become vegan. While we both agree animals are important in the world, you feel comfortable killing and eating them. You feel that morally this is right. I’d rather live amongst them, enjoy them, but not eat them.
I know this might sound absurdly utopian, it reminds me of a cover I saw on one of those absurd ‘Watch House’ magazines, a fundamental Christian publication that used to exist, probably still does, in the UK. Where a family are sitting in bliss amongst lions and wild animals. An infantile conception of heaven I suppose.
Ok it’s naive to think we can still live amongst animals in a utopian way, we can’t be safe when we let them run wild. In London there was a recent case of a small baby being taken from its cot and mauled by an animal, which people suspect to have been a fox. The fact is the world of nature is ‘dog eat dog’ (the film Grizzly Man springs to mind). Nature is heartless, it acts without sentiment, driven by higher laws of genetic survival.
However, it simply isn’t necessary to eat meat, this is a fact, look at the athletes who are vegan, the Hollywood movie stars even, it’s a big list. They’re not dying, infact they look pretty damn good. So do I, since I quit meat, which is the cause of a lot of chronic illness.
It boils down to, do you feel comfortable inflicting pain upon another sentient creature. Well do you? I just feel with all the knowledge we as a race have accumulated untenable all of the arts, empathy we’ve created, I feel it’s an untenable position to take.
To paraphrase Dawkins, who does eat meat, he feels that it’s similar to the postion society took on slavery 150 years ago. It was just accepted that it was right, everyone did it. No one questioned it. But if you subject it to any scrutiny, morally it doesn’t stand up.
To be honest I don’t really care if you’re killing animals, eating them, and you’re not destroying the world which I have to share with you. Fine, go ahead, I don’t agree with it, but then I don’t agree with the majority of people on this planet who put their faith in God, and any number of infantile, pathetic beliefs.
But for me, I feel much better without it, and there’s no way I’m going back.
I’ll leave you with this conversation between Dawkins and Singer, on the morality of eating meat.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xxdMUuZXUY
And finally a ranting American vegan activist. Perhaps you’ve seen this, I don’t know, but you should watch it as this man is responsible for converting huge numbers of people to veganism.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es6U00LMmC4
See what you think.
Sorry this is more to the point in the Singer/Dawkins discussion, where they talk about vegan, vegetarians
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti-WcnqUwLM
Long John,
I will watch that video later, no speakers here.
No, I do not have a problem killing an animal that was raised in an appreciable, harmonized way. Life sustains itself on other life. Whether that life be plant or animal, you and I both kill to survive. I view veganism an an extreme, as I view CAFOs and similar minded practices. A vegetarian can equally respect life as much as a vegan and sustain, in my opinion, a much more balanced lifestyle. Yes, arguably there exist Vegans who are seemingly healthful. However, to compare these few who are cognizant of their diet to everyone else is misleading. You can find plenty of people who eat animals or who are vegetarian that are healthful and radiant as well.
There are plenty of those that went vegan and returned because they were not healthy. There are plenty of omnivores that went vegan because they were not healthy as well. My argument is that I believe a person who pays attention to what they eat and educate themselves will come out healthier anyways. Research the athletes and Hollywood stars who went Vegan and turned back.
Vegan, the beginning and ending of veg etari an, has very little data regarding its long term impact on quality of life. Our history has defined us through generations that eating meat has allowed us to sustain, grow, and be healthy. You can not compare eating meat to slavery. This is a shock value statement, and not a legitimate argument. You cannot drop a statement that all who consume meat are ignorant.
Morally speaking, I am at peace that the animal which was raised for me was birthed in the first place, taken good care of, and locally raised on a pasture it was free to roam. I also sleep at night knowing that the vegetables I consume are raised in a similar way, along with the milk products I consume and the eggs I cook.
Here is an article to ponder. http://www.policymic.com/articles/7700/why-vegetarians-are-killing-the-environment-as-much-as-anyone-else
Honestly, the one unspeakable truth in all of this is not whether we as a society can sustain on vegetables or meat. This turns away from the concern that the part of the equation that is most harmful in our food chain, is us. We have as a society, chosen money over morality, to allow the pesticides and GMOs to take over our vegetables and the CAFOs to take over our meats. This is the part of the equation that is wrong.
Idiots don’t get that the human population is about 7 billion and livestock population (land) is about 60 billion (killed every year)
Most of these are big animals that consume more grain, corn and everything than humans ever could.
If people were plant-based, we’d need way way way lesser land and water. We just wouldn’t need pesticides or any gmo shit.
We’d almost get rid of 60-70 of CO2 and Methane emissions. We’d get rid of Shit filled rivers and polluted skies.
Jughead,
Please do yourself a favor. Read through the above article links and comments, as clearly you have not.
Additionally, before you decide to throw out BS statistics, I would recommend a little research. Approx. 90% +/- of the 60 billion is meat chickens. Turkeys and egg laying chickens make up approx. 7% +/-. If we consider pigs and cattle together into one category, adding it other misc., albeit, tasty animals, these “big animals” make up approx. 2%.
Even though Long John and I disagree on certain topics, I am sure we both agree that a little self-education is needed before throwing random stats out there and hoping others blindly agree. If that’s what you enjoy doing, I am sure you could apply for a position as a US politician.
And I also believe it naive to claim that if we didn’t have livestock to feed, the use of pesticides and GMO would just miraculously disappear, like Monsanto would just pack up his shit and leave the party.
I suppose the blue pill is probably vegan friendly.
Thanks – John