Any Vegetarians/Vegans here?

[Aractus]

However, including milk-calves in the kill count only makes sense if those calves aren't part of the normal meat-consumption circle: i.e. if there were no cows being used for milk, would there be fewer calves brought into the world? I doubt it-- we don't drink pig milk, but reproduction is limited only by demand.

That's why I didn't count them, I mentioned them only in passing because the way hardcore vegans count animal deaths is that that will count all calves, meaning they're not counting the death of the animal twice. Same with leather and fur. Same with mince. So let's take mince into account.

The average cow in the USA over its life produces:

48,936 litres of milk
294 kg of mince
Plus of course leather

The average hamburger beef patty, as on a Big Mac, is 45g (and a big mac has two). So we'll say the average serving size for mince is 125g. Now here's the thing, most of us eat other meats much more than mince - steaks, chicken, fish, pork, etc. So I'm going to estimate that the average meat-eating person would only have one serving of mince per week, and this would total 6.76 kg per year. So 294kg of mince is enough meat to feed 45 people per year.

We know already from my previous calculations that the 48,936 litres of milk is enough for 125 people for a year - 1.07 litres per person per day (that sounds about right).

Thus, if you're a vegetarian and you eat dairy then you play a 1 in 170 part. So if you managed to live for 170 years your vegetarian diet would have eventually cost the life of one single dairy cow.

The reason why I'm not considering leather is that it's too difficult to calculate, leather is not consumed it's a durable item and a leather jacket or a leather chair could last you many decades, leather shoes and boots also last for a number of years, so it's a very efficient product that lasts way longer than a single year.

Great job on your post, though. Graphs and numbers = win.

Thanks!