pearl wrote:
> On May 25, 7:50 pm, Rudy Canoza > wrote:
>> Some "vegans", in a desperate attempt to find some club
>> with which to beat on meat eaters, given that the limp
>
> [snip bullshit psychobabble - all lesley has]
>
>> reed of so-called "ethical" vegetarianism is entirely
>> ineffectual, have seized on the supposed "inefficiency"
>> of producing meat as a reason to decry meat
>> *consumption*.
>>
>> The "vegan" pseudo-argument on "inefficiency" is that
>> the resources used to produce a given amount of meat
>> could produce a much greater amount of vegetable food
>> for direct human consumption, due to the loss of energy
>> that results from feeding grain and other feeds to
>> livestock.
>
> "Right now, in addition to producing grains, vegetable
> and fruits for direct human consumption, farmers also
> raise livestock, and millions of acres are planted in
> feed crops for livestock. The theoretical question at
> hand is, what if Americans suddenly stopped raising any
> livestock at all - how would we feed ourselves?
>
> The answer is trivially simple. All of the resources
> going into raising livestock, PLUS all of the resources
> going into raising crops as livestock feed, would no
> longer be needed for that purpose. To make up the food
> deficit for humans, a fraction of those resources would
> be needed to grow additional human-edible crops. That
> fraction would be quite small, due to the fact that
> livestock consume more calories and protein than we get
> back out of them: the feed-conversion ratio for all of
> them is substantially above 1:1." - "Rudy Canoza" 1/Apr/05

Yes, a true statement - but irrelevant. It dealt with
another issue. The fact is, raising livestock is not
inefficient. It is a use of resources consistent with
consumer demand.

Calling livestock production "inefficient" is the same
as calling automobiles "inefficient" because we all
could use bicycles. People want meat. As long as the
meat is produced using the lowest price resource
combination, it is efficient in the only meaning that
matters.


>> In order to examine the efficiency of some process,
>> there must be agreement on what the end product is
>> whose efficiency of production you are examining. If
>> you're looking at the production of consumer
>> electronics, for example, then the output is
>> televisions, stereo receivers, DVD players, etc.
>> Rather obviously, you need to get specific. No
>> sensible person is going to suggest that we ought to
>> discontinue the production of television sets, because
>> they require more resources to produce (which they do),
>> and produce more DVD players instead. (For the
>> cave-dwellers, an extremely high quality DVD player may
>> be bought for under US$100, while a comparable quality
>> television set is going to cost several hundred
>> dollars. $500 for a DVD player is astronomical - I'm
>> not even sure there are any that expensive - while you
>> can easily pay $8000 or more for large plasma TV
>> monitor, which will require a separate TV receiver.)
>
> 'Livestock a major threat to environment
> [snip bullshit that isn't about efficiency]
>
>> What are the "vegans" doing with their misuse of
>> "inefficiency"? They're clearly saying that the end
>> product whose efficiency of production we want to
>> consider is "food", i.e., undifferentiated food
>> calories. Just as clearly, they are wrong. Humans
>> don't consider all foods equal, and hence equally
>> substitutable.
>
> 'Dietary Risk Factors for Colon Cancer in a Low-risk Population
>
>[snip study lesley never read, and that isn't about efficiency]
>
>> As in debunking so much of "veganism",
>> we can see this easily - laughably easily - by
>> restricting our view to a strictly vegetarian diet,
>> without introducing meat into the discussion at all.
>> If "vegans" REALLY were interested in food production
>> efficiency, they would be advocating the production of
>> only a very small number of vegetable crops, as it is
>> obvious that some crops are more efficient to produce -
>> use less resources per nutritional unit of output -
>> than others.
>
> 'Cornell Ph.D. student works the land by hand at Bison Ridge
> Farming in harmony with nature
>
> [snip self-congratulatory bullshit that has nothing to do with efficiency]
>
>> But how do "vegans" actually behave? Why, they buy
>> some fruits and vegetables that are resource-efficient,
>> and they buy some fruits and vegetables that are
>> relatively resource-INefficient. You know this by
>> looking at retail prices: higher priced goods ARE
>> higher priced because they use more resources to
>> produce.
>
> Is horticultural produce subsidized like feed-grain, flesh, etc.?
>
>> If "vegans" REALLY were interested in food
>> production efficiency, they would only be buying the
>> absolutely cheapest fruit or vegetable for any given
>> nutritional requirement. This would necessarily mean
>> there would be ONLY one kind of leafy green vegetable,
>> one kind of grain, one variety of fruit, and so on.
>
> 'Analyses of data from the China
>
>[snip bullshit that has nothing to do with efficiency]
>
>> If "vegans" were to extend this misuse of "efficiency"
>> into other consumer goods, say clothing, then there
>> would be only one kind of shoe produced (and thus only
>> one brand). The same would hold for every conceivable
>> garment. A button-front shirt with collars costs more
>> to produce - uses more resources - than does a T-shirt,
>> so everyone "ought" to wear only T-shirts, if we're
>> going to focus on the efficiency of shirt production.
>> You don't "need" any button front shirts, just as you
>> don't "need" meat. But look in any "vegan's" wardrobe,
>> and you'll see a variety of different kinds of clothing
>> (all natural fiber, of course.) "vegans" aren't
>> advocating that only the most "efficient" clothing be
>> produced, as their own behavior clearly indicates.
>>
>> The correct way to analyze efficiency of production is
>> to focus as narrowly as possible on the end product,
>> then see if that product can be produced using fewer
>> resources. It is important to note that the consumer's
>> view of products as distinct things is crucial. A
>> radio can be produced far more "efficiently", in terms
>> of resource use, than a television; but consumers don't
>> view radios and televisions as generic entertainment
>> devices.
>>
>> The critical mistake, the UNBELIEVABLY stupid mistake,
>> that "vegans" who misconceive of "inefficiency" are
>> making, is to see "food" as some undifferentiated lump
>> of calories and other nutritional requirements. Once
>> one realizes that this is not how ANYONE, including the
>> "vegans" themselves, views food, then the
>> "inefficiency" argument against using resources for
>> meat production falls to the ground.
>>
>> I hope this helps.
>
> "Isn't man an amazing animal?

Yes.