Childhood indoctrination

[Forbinator]

While this is from 2011, I offer it to 'round out' and inform those who would like to take the romantic.... "saving the planet for our children" .... path via vegan/vegetarianism. Please remember this is from an Australian perspective and does focus on our own unique landscape/ climate and population

http://theconversation.com/ordering-the-...hands-4659

This article is mostly fraudulent. As littleendian has mentioned, it picks the easy target by comparing the "best" of animal agriculture to the worst of cropping. It also states that 70% of Australia's land is rangeland suitable only for cattle grazing (which is true), but uses deception to suggest that 70% of Australia's beef therefore comes from rangelands. Since rangelands support only very poor quality grass growth stocking densities are in the order of 1-2 animals per square kilometre. Much higher stocking densities are used on arable land in high rainfall areas, meaning more product comes from higher quality land. If you're eating Angus beef, or Porterhouse steak, chances are it has come from arable land that could be used more efficiently in cropping. Low quality rangeland pasture only supports "hardy" breeds (ie Brahman cattle), who produce lower quality meat. Unfortunately these animals are the ones used in our live export market.

Of course, if someone genuinely knows that their beef has come from rangelands, and has not been "finished" on grain in a feedlot, and they've calculated that their choice in diet is actually less damaging than if they ate plants instead, I would have to give them due respect. This would obviously mean they need to boycott almost all other animal products though, including dairy, pig flesh, chicken flesh, eggs etc. as all these animals are fed grain in much higher amounts than the humans eat. If I can corroborate the facts presented about grain (ie. the mice killed) this probably means I will need to stop eating grain-based products (or maybe only wheat), but I hope that this means you will stop eating grain-fed animal products, as you obviously care deeply about the harm done by grain production, since you posted that article. Just bear in mind that they are allowed to label beef as "grass-fed" as long as they spent their first year on grass. Even if they're "finished" in a feedlot, they can still be labelled as grass-fed, so I hope you're getting your beef from local farmers who can confirm that they spent their entire lives on rangeland pasture, otherwise you have no way of knowing.

He also says that two thirds of cattle in Australia are fed solely on pasture, but then cites this link: http://www.mla.com.au/Prices-and-markets...Lotfeeding which actually says that feedlot utilisation is at 67%! So the link tells us the exact opposite of what he said. I guess he doesn't expect people to check his sources? Speaking of which, the sources he provides seem to be opinion pieces posted by his mates, as well as a biased study done by PG Williams, who seems to examine meat composition only according to nutrients that meat is high in (eg protein). He fails to take into account the basic fact that proteins denature when heated to high temperatures (based on high school biology), and in fact tries to claim that cooked meat has a higher protein content because the water content has decreased. This is as silly as suggesting that pouring a cup of water on a steak will reduce its protein content. Why do all these articles use protein content as the baseline? This is another bias, since protein is in no way a limiting nutrient. If we want to be unbiased, we should use total calories, as this is the standard against which other nutrients are measured. We can then talk about protein and vitamins as a percentage of total calories, as is the standard.

And yes, the article you posted makes the ridiculous claim that we would need "more" land degradation to cater to vegans, even though we could just use the land in high rainfall areas currently being squandered on prime beef and dairy production.

I will come back and respond to some of your other claims soon, but in the meantime here is an independent review into different stunning methods, and it can be seen that none of them give consistently reliable stuns, hence the "quick clean kill" idea of yours is mostly fantasy unless you can ensure it yourself: http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/doc/45.pdf Page 9 shows that even the best case scenario (captive bolt stunning) has a 4% failure rate. The other methods (CO2, electrical) are even worse.