Morality from the ground up

[bennyboy]

It's a highly efficient use of perishable or unavailable calories, of marginal lands, of skills, of infrastructure, and of funds.  I suppose that if you only consider it from the point of view of the end consumer that might not be immediately visible - but those are the things that actually go into the decision to run a cattle operation, not the musings on caloric efficiency or density of a vegetarian.

Yeah, I think you could especially make that case for pigs; I was thinking mainly of grazing cattle vs. grain-fed cattle.

As I've said, I don't think that being vegetarian DOES give one a moral free pass, since the amount of grain required to feed a human very likely makes you indirectly responsible for the deaths of animals in the field.  It seems to me that if a family ate one or two cows per year, and they were exclusively grazing animals, this might actual reduce the net deaths and suffering of the system.

The ideal, though, is a controlled vegetarian source-- big silos of texturable algae with superior nutritive properties, for example.  Or, of course, there's