In > on Wed, 19 Mar 2008
15:52:34 +0000, in uk.current-events.bird-flu, 'Oz' wrote:

>>Meat is (I believe) an inefficient use of resources in the production of
>>food. It also has a vast (and compared to decaying plant matter unavoidable)
>>amount of methane as a byproduct.
>
>That depends. If you are talking about most of upland britain, its
>impossible to grow arable crops there so the ONLY resource is grazing by
>livestock. In this case of course its NOT an inefficient use of
>resources.

Yes, that makes a good justification for minor meat consumption. Though
not for the American style gullet stuffing that's threatening to infect
the globe.

>Also to note that all decaying plant matter emits methane, remember the
>fuss when they recently discovered vast amounts were being emitted by
>topsoils worldwide.

I've always figured though that the emissions from decaying vegetable
matter are more easily either controlled, reduced, or harnessed for
burning than those from animals.

Make no mistake, I'm in no way an advocate of humanity turning vegetarian,
I just see both sides of the debate and accept that we're swinging too far
into rain forest destroying hamburger-gulping greed that caries a massive,
almost karmic, future health cost.

Dave J.