Do you agree with Richard Dawkins?

[mediamogul]

That last piece is an is-ought gap fallacy.

Nitpick: It's not a fallacy, it's just a gap.

Nitpick of the nitpick: Technically it is a fallacious statement to imply a necessary connection between things that do not have a necessary connection. (thank you David Hume)

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Most livestock are not dependent on "agricultural sources". This is a forced situation. Cattle, just as one example, are ill equipped to eat corn. They eat grass. We cannot eat grass. Unfortunately grass fed cattle take up space that 1st world countries cannot spare (because we can afford nutrients, irrigation, and equipment). Pasture land and farm land are not the same thing, not even close. Which is why so much beef gets imported (and also why imported beef is cheaper, many times they're grazers or mixed grazing feedlot).

Livestock are more reliable because they a orders of magnitude less susceptible to loss by disease or drought or pests. They can survive and provide food for the entire year, and often subsist on marginal soils or from food sources that are not fit for our consumption that can themselves be grown on those marginal soils. The range of byproducts from livestock is also immense (and this includes the nutrients for agriculture). You have the order of dependence in reverse. American? You're probably thinking of the corn industry. Great example of an industry that has taken a marginal crop that can thrive on marginal soils with minimal labor on large tracts of land owned by a very small number of individuals. Concentrate the wealth.

As far as meat goes I'm a big fan of integrated aquaculture. Best use of space, still get the meat. I don't think we should give up on pigs and chickens and cattle, but we should probably focus more on fish. I'm not trying to blow smoke up anyone's ass here, food production (not just livestock) has huge issues. Having production issues does not provide justification for moral or ethical vegetarianism.

(The trouble btw Mogul, is that I'm not telling you what you "ought" to be, you're the only one making such a case. Was I unclear? It is a neutral issue for me.)

Do you mean it's an amoral issue? In the sense that you believe it's neither moral nor immoral to eat meat?

Also, once again, it's not the eating meat part that I think is the ethically objectionable act. It's the killing of the animals part. If meat could be grown I'd be the 1st one to chow down on a piece of bacon or prime rib.