On May 30, 2:02 am, "Whining, Crying, Bawl" <bunghole-
> wrote:

> clueless Goo the retarded woman abusing dwarf squealed:
>
> On May 29, 8:58 am, Rudy Canoza > whiffed:
>
> > 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]

'Bullies project their inadequacies, shortcomings, behaviours
etc on to other people to avoid facing up to their inadequacy
and doing something about it (learning about oneself can be
painful), and to distract and divert attention away from
themselves and their inadequacies. Projection is achieved
through blame, criticism and allegation; once you realise this,
every criticism, allegation etc that the bully makes about their
target is actually an admission or revelation about themselves.'

The Socialised Psychopath or Sociopath
http://www.bullyonline.org/workbully/serial.htm

> > >> 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.

Only to you and your ilk, ball. People want [!need!] *food*.

'FEEDING THE WORLD

"The world must create five billions vegans in the next several
decades, or triple its total farm output without using more land."
Dennis Avery, Director of the Centre for Global Food Issues . [1]

WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimates that
around 840 million people are undernourished. That's roughly 14%
of the human population. On average, around 25,000 people die
every day from hunger-related causes. Each year 6 million children
under the age of 5 die as a result of hunger and malnutrition - this
is
roughly equivalent to all the under-5s in France and Italy combined.
[2] With the world's population expected to increase from 6 billion
to 9 billion by 2050, one of the most urgent questions we now face
is how we, as a species, will feed ourselves in the 21st century.

Land availability is one of the main constraints on food production.
The earth has only a limited area of viable agricultural land, so how
this land is used is central to our ability to feed the world. At the
moment, the problem is not lack of food - it is widely agreed that
enough food is produced worldwide to feed a global population of
8-10 billion people - but lack of availability. Poverty,
powerlessness,
war, corruption and greed all conspire to prevent equal access to
food, and there are no simple solutions to the problem. However,
Western lifestyles - and diet in particular - can play a large part in
depriving the world's poor of much needed food.

"In this era of global abundance, why does the word continue to
tolerate the daily hunger and deprivation of more than 800 million
people?" Jacques Diouf, Director-General, UN Food and
Agriculture Organisation. [3]

THE LIVESTOCK CONNECTION

World livestock production exceeds 21 billion animals each year.
The earth's livestock population is more then three and a half times
its human population. [4]

In all, the raising of livestock takes up more than two-thirds of
agricultural land, and one third of the total land area. [5] This is
apparently justifiable because by eating the foods that humans can't
digest and by processing these into meat, milk and eggs, farmed
animals provide us with an extra, much-needed food source. Or so
the livestock industry would like you to believe. In fact, livestock
are
increasingly being fed with grains and cereals that could have been
directly consumed by humans or were grown on land that could have
been used to grow food rather than feed. The developing world's
undernourished millions are now in direct competition with the
developed world's livestock - and they are losing.

In 1900 just over 10% of the total grain grown worldwide was fed to
animals; by 1950 this figure had risen to over 20%; by the late 1990s
it stood at around 45%. Over 60% of US grain is fed to livestock. [6]

This use of the world's grain harvest would be acceptable in terms of
world food production if it were not for the fact that meat and dairy
production is a notoriously inefficient use of energy. All animals use
the energy they get from food to move around, keep warm and
perform their day to day bodily functions. This means that only a
percentage of the energy that farmed animals obtain from plant foods
is converted into meat or dairy products. Estimates of efficiency
levels
vary, but in a recent study [7], Professor Vaclav Smil of the
University
of Manitoba, Canada, calculated that beef cattle raised on feedlots
may convert as little as 2.5% of their gross feed energy into food for
human consumption. Estimated conversion of protein was only a little
more efficient, with less than 5% of the protein in feed being
converted
to edible animal protein. These figures are especially damning since
the
diet of cattle at the feedlot consists largely of human-edible
grains.

Feedlot-raised beef is an extreme example, being the least feed-
efficient
animal product, but even the most efficient - milk - represents a
waste
of precious agricultural land. Prof Smil calculates that the most
efficient
dairy cows convert between 55 and 67% of their gross feed energy into
milk food energy.

Efficiency can also be measured in terms of the land required per
calorie of food obtained. When Gerbens-Leenes et al. [8] examined
land use for all food eaten in the Netherlands, they found that beef
required the most land per kilogram and vegetables required the least.
The figures they obtained can be easily converted to land required for
one person's energy needs for a year by multiplying 3000 kcal (a day's
energy) by 365 days to obtain annual calorie needs (1,095,000 kcal)
and dividing this by the calories per kilogram. The figures obtained
are summarised in table 1:

Food Land per kg (m2) Calories per kilogram Land per person per

year (m2)
Beef 20.9
2800 8173
Pork 8.9
3760 2592
Eggs 3.5
1600 2395
Milk 1.2
640 2053
Fruit 0.5
400 1369
Vegetables 0.3
250 1314
Potatoes 0.2
800 274

On the basis of these figures, a vegan diet can meet calorie and
protein needs from just 300 square metres using mainly potatoes.
A more varied diet with plenty of fruit and vegetables, grains and
legumes would take about 700 square metres. Replacing a third
of the calories in this diet with calories from milk and eggs would
double the land requirements and a typical European omnivorous
diet would require five times the amount of land required for a
varied vegan diet.

In looking at land use for animal products this research makes
the very favourable assumption that by-products of plant food
production used in animal agriculture do not require any land.
For example, soybean land is assigned 100% to human soy oil
consumption with no land use attributed to the oil cakes used
for meat and dairy production. This stacks the odds in favour
of animal foods, so the figures in this paper are all the more
compelling as to the higher land demands of animal farming.

GHOST ACRES

Most of the land wasted on growing feed for livestock is in
developing countries, where food is most scarce. Europe, for
example, imports 70% of its protein for animal feed, causing a
European Parliament report to state that 'Europe can feed its
people but not its [farm] animals.'

[9] Friends of the Earth have calculated that the UK imported
4.1 million hectares of other people's land in 1996 [10].

"In Brazil alone, the equivalent of 5.6 million acres of land is used
to grow soya beans for animals in Europe. These 'ghost acres'
belie the so-called efficiency of hi-tech agriculture..." Tim Lang of
the Centre for Food Policy. [11]

This land contributes to developing world malnutrition by driving
impoverished populations to grow cash crops for animal feed, rather
than food for themselves. Intensive monoculture crop production
causes soils to suffer nutrient depletion and thus pushes economically
vulnerable populations further away from sustainable agricultural
systems. All so that the world's wealthy can indulge their unhealthy
taste for animal flesh.

PUT OUT TO PASTURE

Although grain-dependent industrial agriculture is the fastest growing
type of animal production, not all farmed animals are raised in this
way. Much of the world's livestock is still raised on pasture.
Worldwide, livestock use roughly 3.4 billion hectares of grazing land.

Proponents of animal agriculture point out that most pastureland is
wholly unsuitable for growing grain to feed for humans. They argue
that by converting grass, and other plants that are indigestible to
humans, into energy and protein for human consumption, livestock
provide a valuable addition to our food resources. The reality is that
land currently used to graze cattle and other ruminants is almost
invariably suitable for growing trees - such a use would not only
provide a good source of land-efficient, health-giving fruit and nuts,
but would also have many environmental benefits.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Quite simply, we do not have enough land to feed everyone on an
animal-based diet. So while 840 million people do not have enough
food to live normal lives, we continue to waste two-thirds of
agricultural land by obtaining only a small fraction of its potential
calorific value.

Obviously access to food is an extremely complex issue and there
are no easy answers. However, the fact remains that the world's
population is increasing and viable agricultural land is diminishing.
If we are to avoid future global food scarcity we must find
sustainable ways of using our natural resource base. Industrial
livestock production is unsustainable and unjustifiable.

Related Items
.. Biodiversity
.. Deforestation
.. Impact of Soya
.. The Wasteland

http://www.vegansociety.com/html/environment/land/

> You are truly an idiot Goo.

"Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge the wing whereby
we fly to Heaven." - Shakespeare, Henry VI., iv. 7.

He's Mammon's minion.

'12. No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate
the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one and
despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. And
the Pharisees also, who were covetous, heard all these things,
and they derided him.
13. And he said unto them, Ye are they which justify yourselves
before men; but God knoweth your hearts: for that which is
highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God.
....'
http://reluctant-messenger.com/essene/gospel_3.htm

>
Meat is inefficient as a food source when compared to plants.
>
>
End of argument.
>
>
Now shut up.
>