The Grand Nudger Wrote:I'll hand you some of that "human edible grain" and see if you'll eat it.Well, it depends on what definition of "edible" we are using. Is wild maize edible? I think wild maize is usually considered edible. And it's even more cellulose-rich than the old varieties of maize that farmed animals eat. You do realize that, back in 18th century, humans were eating those old varieties of maize, just like farmed animals, right? And even if we consider those old varieties of maize to be inedible by humans, that maize still has to be grown somewhere... on a land on which new varieties of maize, which contain little cellulose and which people today usually eat, can be grown.
The Grand Nudger Wrote:The simple explanation is that you can produce beef (or dairy) with -no- human edible anything of any kindWell, grass-fed cows are less of the two evils, but they are still an evil. They emit a lot of methane, and they really require a lot of grass. So much so that grass-fed cows are the biggest reason for deforestation today. And one of the reasons why there is less deforestation now when there are fewer grass-fed cows than a century ago. There are more trees now that we switched from grass-fed to grain-fed cows.
The Grand Nudger Wrote:it would be the single largest contributor to the growth and proliferation of antibiotic resistence.How exactly? That seems to contradict basic biology. How could trace amounts of antibiotics in food lead to antibiotic resistance? Antibiotics do nothing if they are in trace amounts. You need large amounts of antibiotics to kill non-resistant bacteria and to trigger natural selection of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
