I found this to be an interesting perspective on the whole vegan vs. vegetarian vs. omnivore thing

[miss_mimsy]

Nobody's hands are free from the blood of other animals, not even vegetarians, he concluded. Millions of animals are killed every year, Davis says, to prepare land for growing crops, "like corn, soybean, wheat and barley, the staples of a vegan diet."

I found this article via the Ohlone Psych Blog, maintained by Sheldon Helms.

Comments

[plymouth]

Hmm, interesting. I think that vegan outreach guy is wrong about animals only dying once to get land for farming - those little critters are going to be building new borrows and getting run over by new plowing on a yearly basis.

Of course if you eat a cow you kill both the cow AND all the little critters run over in plowing to make grain for the cow's diet.

I know of some very good reasons to become vegetarian (or at least to minimize meat consumption, which I try to do). I never thought "think of the cute fuzzy animals!" was one of them.

[maestrodog]

Norris is mistaken about farmland only removing a habitat once...more animals will move in to the farmland during the off-season and be killed once plowing time comes again

[capnkjb]

MAN I really do wish reasonable portions were served, and not just at fancy places where they have no problem charging you nearly sixty dollars a fish. The giant plates I see at places like Olive Garden or (ugh) Cheesecake Factory not only bug me because of the food I end up wasting (I cannot finish a plate there) but because of the people I know who can finish a plate there, and feel almost required to (in part because of their upbringing). It is doing their bodies and lifespans a disservice in so many ways.

[urox]

I want reasonable portions just so I can enjoy different things with my meal rather than get filled up on one item.

That said, anytime my husband and I go to Cheesecake Factory, we either split one dish or get two dishes with two meals for tomorrow in our leftovers.

I hardly ever waste leftovers. They're the easy thing to heat in the microwave with a crying baby needing attention rather than cooking an entire meal.

Had to remind husband last night about that "finishing the plate" syndrome I also have to fight. I stopped eating a breadstick 3/4 of the way through. He asked, "Don't you want the rest of it?" I told him no. He then said, "But there's only a little bit left." GRR.

[terpsichoros]

Restaurants serve large portions because of a psychological illusion. At a $20 restaurant, your food costs between $1 and $3; the fixed costs and labor cost $16 to $18. People want to see value for money, so, especially when a restaurant raises prices, they tend to make up for it by increasing portions, since doing so is cheap.

People who go to $60 restaurants *know* that at that price, the restaurant is selling ambience, and so aren't disappointed when the portions are reasonable.

[bayareajenn]

Hm. I never even thought of that. I'm not a vegetarian, of course, but if I were, my reason wouldn't be to prevent animal deaths. It would be conservation of energy.

[elfwreck]

Anything non-organic uses "pesticides"... which translates to "killer of very small animals." And animals are killed every year during ploughing, and occasionally during the growing season.

Vegetarianism doesn't "save animals." It just saves more of the ones that are big and pretty. It kills plenty millions of bugs, and thousands of rodents and small birds. (Birds that nest in orchards or corn fields? Dead by machine harvesting.)

Large-scale agriculture is one of the least eco-safe practices we have; it's destroyed probably more land than all our toxic waste dumps. The great Lebanese cedars? Hanging gardens of Babylon? The Sahara forest? Victims of human agricultural practices. More recently: the Kansas dust bowl.

Vegetarians require a lot more acreage than omnivores. Veg'ism (either form) is not eco-friendly and not sustainable; they're rich white people lifestyles that grew out of year-round farming and distribution industries.

[terpsichoros]

"Vegetarians require a lot more acreage than omnivores. "

Not entirely true. Cattle can be raised on land which isn't worth farming, like most of California's hills. Corn-fed beef is, on the other hand, much more land-intensive, because it takes a lot of corn to feed that cow, and people would eat less than that much corn as a substitute for the beef. Chickens can be raised in very confined spaces and/or small "waste spaces", but unless they can forage wild feed somewhere where we wouldn't farm, the same substitution problem comes up.

On the other hand, organic ag *is* hugely wasteful, and not sustainable if you want to actually feed everyone.

[elfwreck]

Chickens are not vegetarians. They're omnivores (of a sort).

Cows could be raised in unfarmable land, but they mostly are not, because unfarmable tends to be uncomfortable to hang out in for various reasons; it's easier to tend animals on flat fields.

It occurs to me that I'm not sure I can think of omnivorous herd mammals, unless goats count as omnivores, which I don't think they do. I believe that, pound-for-pound, an herbivore needs more land than an omnivore, but herding behavior can mitigate this. (10 herbivores may need less space than 10 omnivores.) ::tries to avoid thinking of the possible advantages of commercial bear raising::

I agree 100% about organic ag; it can work on a small scale (backyard garden w/compost heap) but the methods don't scale up without insane environmental costs.

[plymouth]

I agree 100% about organic ag; it can work on a small scale (backyard garden w/compost heap) but the methods don't scale up without insane environmental costs.

Scaled farming IN GENERAL has huge environmental costs. With conventional farming you pull oil out of the ground, process it at chemical plants that generate waste, destroy native species, reduce genetic diversity. And those last two are true of any large scale farming.

[chrisfs]

It comes across as a rather suspect argument of a 'you think you are so good, so there!' type. The small animals aren't being intentionally bred and then killed. It makes no difference to a farmer if he doesn't kill a single animal while ploughing his field, whereas raising animals for food, leads to killing them.