Compulsory Voting

[The Grand Nudger]

What source do you have for that? As far as I can see, cow's milk and chicken's meat are fairly similar in their efficiency. It takes around 2 kg of human-edible grain to produce 1 kg of chicken's meat, and it also takes around 2 kg of human-edible grain to produce 1 litre of cow's milk. If you are talking about milk. If you are talking about beef, then beef and efficiency should not be in the same sentence.

Firstly, lol...I'll hand you some of that "human edible grain" and see if you'll eat it.  Just like livestock, grain is bred to purpose.  The simple explanation is that you can produce beef (or dairy) with -no- human edible anything of any kind, whereas chickens can only source about 20% of their diet from forage, and at that number you would see excess mortality and underweight birds.  

I am not talking about the danger of eating trace amounts of antibiotics with animal products. I am talking about the danger of antibiotics given to farmed animals giving a chance for superbacteria to develop. Whether small amounts of antibiotics are present in meat or milk or eggs is entirely irrelevant.

You're not talking about it because you don't realize that trace antibiotics in food (and feedstock) would be an even larger problem than antibiotics in living animals, which is why there are strong regulations regarding antibiotic use and processing windows.  You consider it irrelevant, but ofc it would not be, it would be the single largest contributor to the growth and proliferation of antibiotic resistence.

That's simply not true. Egg industry is the biggest offender. By far. Most antibiotics these days are given to chicken. Estimates vary, some are as high as 90%, but there is no doubt it's more than 50%.

Sure, healthy animals are both happier, and produce more and higher quality product, and as their use is a necessity in the conventional model, you'll see alot of application.  Thing is, as above, there is strict control regarding their use and processing windows - and while this is also the case with plant products, it's just a fact of testing that plant products return with more contamination.  I could speculate as to why.  I could suggest that this is because there's generally not going to be a compliance officer or employee at your average tomato farm - as is the standard industry practice in poultry processing.  I could suggest that there are more, and relatively poorer, veggie producers who feel that the regulations only serve to decrease their profits.  I could come up with a million explanations for why more plant based products fail trace than meat in the us - but the truth is, no ones really made a study about it...so I don't know.

It's not regulated in the way that makes sense epidemiologically and with regard to animal rights.

Yes, it is.  It's regulated in a way that acknowledges the benefits to animal wellbeing and producer profit, without allowing that practice to form a reservoir of antibiotic resistance in finished product - which has been identified as an area of great concern, despite your belief in it's irrelevence.  That's why they tested all that dairy.  They do the same with poultry and eggs time to time.  

What do you mean? It would end factory farming as we know it. Factory farming is made possible by preventative use of antibiotics.

Pastured poultry sees the same chief benefit to producer from antibiotic use that factory farming does - increased growth rates.  OFC, pastured poultry doesn't necessarily need us to apply antibiotic, they find it when they forage.  That's how producers figured out that antibiotics increased growth rates in the first place.  The first factory farms, in fact the beginnings of the chicken industry in the us, needed no applied antibiotics.  They don't make it possible, they make it more profitable, and less horrendous for the animals involved. That's why it's the conventional model.

Production models take into account a variety of constraining factors, many of which would seem arcane or boring or beside the point to a person with an ideological disagreement with raising meat - but this doesn't make them irrelevant, it makes said objector uninformed. Bringing this aaaaalllll the way back to the initial moral objection..... If you could show me a way to raise poultry more humanely than I do within an acceptable roi, I'm down for that. That is literally what I do - I collect data and test novel models and advocate for the ones that work. I treat my animals like pets. They have more floor space and more outdoor run space than even PETA recommends, and their recomendations are rather obviously created to end the practice of raising poultry at all (checkmate peta, you'll have to make it even more ridiculous!). They eat certified organic feed (for no good godamned reason...) which is antiobiotic free, supplemented with treats like mealworms and scratch grains (yet again certified organic...)...and I use physical quarantine protocols and a strong breeding program rather than preemptive antibiotic application. In the three or four years I've been a part of this particular program, with a flock up to 500 birds at a pop (using two acres, with 2500ft2 facility), I have never once had to apply antibiotics or medicines of any kind. I lose out on some money, but then I don't raise cornish cross or use the cage layer model, as a heritage breeder that focused on birds designated as threatened, so it's pointless for me to even -try- to compete in that market. I volunteer my time setting other producers up, and networking between producers to form a community of like minded individuals in local ag. People who won't buy or sell unsustainable or inhumane products. This is, obviously, a description of the life of a very, very evil man. Or, you're an ignorant clown. 50/50

Seems simple to me - the only reason you need not to eat meat, is that you don't want to. Nothing more needs be said to make that case, and it's certainly not required (or true) that people who raise meat are in any sense evil, nor would their being evil actually be a case not to eat meat anyway.