RE: Do you agree with Richard Dawkins?
April 22, 2012 at 12:29 pm
(This post was last modified: April 22, 2012 at 12:46 pm by Scabby Joe.)
(April 21, 2012 at 2:05 pm)Rhythm Wrote: So your argument for continuing to cause pain and suffering to livestock seems to come down to the belief that not to consume them would cause more suffering. You still haven’t quantified this or provided a basis for your claim.
In just the US, there are thought to be in the region of 10 billion animals slaughtered each year. This is something quantifiable, you can check the figures. For clarity, I am advocating a vegetarian diet to reduce this unnecessary pain and suffering.
Let’s look at the impact of livestock production more widely and then come back to the fertilizer suggestion you make.
About 26% of all ice-free land is used to graze livestock and feedcrop another 33%. In all, 70% of agricultural land is used for livestock production.
About 70% of deforestation in Latin America is to provide pastures for livestock with the remainder nearly all used for feedcrop. Not only does this have a huge impact on biodiversity but livestock contribute more to global warming than all of transport combined.
Farmers choose mono-cropping methods of farming primarily to achieve economies of scale which they hope will reduce their costs and increase their margins, but in reality this way of growing crops has many detrimental effects on the environment. According to research, monocropping depletes the nutrients in soil 18 times faster than they can be replaced by natural fertilizers.
The waste produced by intensive factory farming is a danger to public health. http://www.nrdc.org/water/pollution/nspills.asp
A study by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has found that meat and dairy consumption causes "a disproportionately large share of environmental impacts."
It’s also not very good for you. A study by the Harvard School of Public Health has found that eating processed meat like bacon, sausage and deli meats was linked to a 42% higher risk of heart disease and a 19% higher risk of type 2 diabetes.
"Animal products, both meat and dairy, in general require more resources and cause higher emissions than plant-based alternatives," according to the report, entitled "Assessing the Environmental Impacts of Consumption and Production."
Crop rotation that includes green manure/cover crops is sustainable. Cover crops do not only give nutrients back to the soil, but they are also vital in protecting the earth from erosion. Thanks in part to their diminished use in the face of monocropping, soil erosion now takes place at an accelerated pace. In the US, for instance, around 10 times as much soil is lost to erosion than can be replaced through natural formation. Given that top soil can take as long as 300 years to form, this loss is effectively irreversible (Cornell).
SO my argument is that not eating animals means not submitting tens of billions of animals to unnecessary suffering each year, not ruining the bio-diversity of the planet, not wrecking the environment through the production of greenhouse gases, not causing pollution from factory farm slurry, not causing land degradation and not heightening the risk to human health. Let’s see what figures and sources you can come up with.
(April 21, 2012 at 6:31 pm)BrotherMagnet Wrote:(April 21, 2012 at 6:20 pm)Scabby Joe Wrote: OK. Please define what you mean by sentient.
Sentience is the ability to feel, perceive or be conscious, or to have subjective experiences. This has nothing to do with the ability to feel pain as I said beforehand. Actually, I thought I had already defined it quite simply. To have an "ego" and be aware of other's "egos".
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