Is it wrong to eat animals that are clever?

[chilango]

"Culturally we..."

Who?

 

[DrRingDing]

"Culturally we..."

Who?

Us as a species, on average, globally (with notable exceptions).

 

[Spymaster]

Are you sure? Most times I've eaten game I've been underwhelmed and I also know that boar taint is a problem that makes much pig meat inedible.Boar taint - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. My asumption is that many of our four-legged friends are rather unpalatable.

I'm positive, Tim.

Do veggies honestly think that meat eaters eat meat for a laugh and it tastes unpleasant to them?

Don't kid yourselves. It's delicious. We love the taste.

You do realise that not all meat is game, right?

 

[chilango]

Us as a species, on average, globally (with notable exceptions).

That's one hell of a generalised contention...

You may be right, but I'd like to see you put some meat on the bones of a claim like that (geddit?)

IME most cultures I've lived within do share a superficially similar view regarding meat consumption being a symbol of status...but beyond that they diverge as far as amount, occasion, participants etc, are concerned. I wouldn't be able to to extrapolate an increase in meat consumption in all of these cultures due to increased availability. Indeed if we look at some of the more prosperous cultures where a range of meat is easily and cheaply available (I'm thinking of here, Italy, some Latin American cultures) meat as status symbol becomes more specalised into type of meat (the animal, the cut, the rearing etc.) rather than quantity.

...but I'm conjecturing wildly based on anecdata!

 

[chilango]

DrRingDing et al regarding "redundant food sources" and global distribution etc. I'd just like to share an experience form Zimbabwe. Some friends of mine who live there survived (and helped others survive) the period of empty shelves in the shops - when food simply wasn't arriving into the country - by raising chickens. I visited the chicken "farm". a patch of land just outside Harare. Food is back on the shelves in the supermarkets, but they've kept raising chickens. Ready for when the next time the shops are empty.

 

[Pickman's model]

DrRingDing et al regarding "redundant food sources" and global distribution etc. I'd just like to share an experience form Zimbabwe. Some friends of mine who live there survived (and helped others survive) the period of empty shelves in the shops - when food simply wasn't arriving into the country - by raising chickens. I visited the chicken "farm". a patch of land just outside Harare. Food is back on the shelves in the supermarkets, but they've kept raising chickens. Ready for when the next time the shops are empty.

yeh. but if the ug99 wipes out the grass what would you feed chickens on?

 

[chilango]

yeh. but if the ug99 wipes out the grass what would you feed chickens on?

They got fed on corn which I guess had been swapped for chickens. Would ug99 wipe out corn? Dunno. But there you go.

 

[Pickman's model]

View attachment 87680 View attachment 87681

They got fed on corn which I guess had been swapped for chickens. Would ug99 wipe out corn? Dunno. But there you go.

it'd be swiftly diverted from chickens to people i suspect

 

[chilango]

it'd be swiftly diverted from chickens to people i suspect

They had some pretty ferocious dogs there to prevent any "swift diversions" happening to chickens or corn.

 

[Skyfallsz]

Feeding 7.125 billion people primarily through mass industrialised food production will be significantly harmful to the environment.

Now, if the alternative is famine, then yeah you have to harm the environment.

However I don't believe for a second that all of the food for all of the 7.125 billion people needs to come from industrial methods or even that that is the most efficient way of doing it.

I reckon if they did it properly they could make enough food for 7bn without harming the environment half as much as they do. The amount of waste through food spoiling, being thrown away, or just the food that people consume not being good for nutrition must be mind blowing globally.
I don't have any science for it, but I don't think that the way that food is mass produced at the moment is a good advert example of industrialization, the percentages of people who aren't getting enough food, even in rich countries is mad

 

[DrRingDing]

That's one hell of a generalised contention...

You may be right, but I'd like to see you put some meat on the bones of a claim like that (geddit?)

IME most cultures I've lived within do share a superficially similar view regarding meat consumption being a symbol of status...but beyond that they diverge as far as amount, occasion, participants etc, are concerned. I wouldn't be able to to extrapolate an increase in meat consumption in all of these cultures due to increased availability. Indeed if we look at some of the more prosperous cultures where a range of meat is easily and cheaply available (I'm thinking of here, Italy, some Latin American cultures) meat as status symbol becomes more specalised into type of meat (the animal, the cut, the rearing etc.) rather than quantity.

...but I'm conjecturing wildly based on anecdata!

I appreciate I'm winging it.

Regarding meat eating you've reference in the developed world. Meat eating does generally increase with a rise of affluence. This is a spreadsheet with a table on meat consumption from 1961 to 2002. You can see the UK has been fairly stable with it meat consumption, which could reinforce your observation that the population is getting more picky rather consuming more. I would argue that shortly before 1961 meat consumption would have been much less, even if you account for shortages during the war.

 

[seventh bullet]

I reckon if they did it properly they could make enough food for 7bn without harming the environment half as much as they do. The amount of waste through food spoiling, being thrown away, or just the food that people consume not being good for nutrition must be mind blowing globally.
I don't have any science for it, but I don't think that the way that food is mass produced at the moment is a good advert example of industrialization, the percentages of people who aren't getting enough food, even in rich countries is mad

And yet you live in and benefit from living in an industrialised society...

 

[Skyfallsz]

And yet you live in and benefit from living in an industrialised society...

I'm not against living in an industrial society, I just think that the way food is produced is not a good example of it

I bet if you got a load of boffins to organise global food distribution then they could feed everyone using half as much energy (or something)

 

[DrRingDing]

I bet if you got a load of boffins to organise global food distribution then they could feed everyone using half as much energy (or something)

It wouldn't take a boffin. Just individuals like yourself turning en masse to vegetarianism.

 

[Skyfallsz]

It wouldn't take a boffin. Just individuals like yourself turning en masse to vegetarianism.

You'd need boffins to work out how to do that

 

[chilango]

You'd need boffins to work out how to do that

No. They need priests.

 

[DotCommunist]

communism and AI

 

[chilango]

I reckon if they did it properly they could make enough food for 7bn without harming the environment half as much as they do. The amount of waste through food spoiling, being thrown away, or just the food that people consume not being good for nutrition must be mind blowing globally.
I don't have any science for it, but I don't think that the way that food is mass produced at the moment is a good advert example of industrialization, the percentages of people who aren't getting enough food, even in rich countries is mad

I'm pretty sure (again, someone correct me if I'm wrong...) that there's already more than enough food produced and there's a crazy amount of people getting too much food. Distribution is a key problem. But, y'know, capitalism.

 

[chilango]

communism and AI

Al who?

Al Bundy?

 

[DotCommunist]

artificial intelligence. Something smart enough to track the ebb and flow of production and need and allocate accordingly. on a world scale. A system as complex and ever shifting as weather and no computer can map that accuretly yet either. But has to be a communist AI otherwise we get 'pragmatic' decisions about 600 here starving to save 1500 there.

 

[DrRingDing]

Are we really already at the point where we need to say it's capitalism that's the problem, not meat eating per se?

Indeed, rabbits are the future for communism.

 

[DrRingDing]

artificial intelligence. Something smart enough to track the ebb and flow of production and need and allocate accordingly. on a world scale. A system as complex and ever shifting as weather and no computer can map that accuretly yet either. But has to be a communist AI otherwise we get 'pragmatic' decisions about 600 here starving to save 1500 there.

Gotta have someone intelligent and knowledgable enough to know how to do that first before automation. May have a problem there.

 

[fredfelt]

I'm pretty sure (again, someone correct me if I'm wrong...) that there's already more than enough food produced and there's a crazy amount of people getting too much food. Distribution is a key problem. But, y'know, capitalism.

There's a paper referenced in a book called 'The real cost of cheap food'. If I remember the stat correctly it states that if meat consumption increases as projected, based on changing diets in much of the developing world, then by 2050 133% of the current grain production will be required to be fed to livestock.

I'll check this if you are interested.

 

[NoXion]

If it's capable of algebra, I probably shouldn't eat it unless it wants me to.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

There's a paper referenced in a book called 'The real cost of cheap food'. If I remember the stat correctly it states that if meat consumption increases as projected, based on changing diets in much of the developing world, then by 2050 133% of the current grain production will be required to be fed to livestock.

I'll check this if you are interested.

What if the grain was on one side of the river, the people on the other and a KFC on an island in the middle?

 

[irf520]

Perhaps I can interest you in a nice pea protein and linoleic acid "burger" ?

Beyond Meat's burger drips canola oil not blood

 

[tim]

I'm positive, Tim.

Do veggies honestly think that meat eaters eat meat for a laugh and it tastes unpleasant to them?

Don't kid yourselves. It's delicious. We love the taste.

You do realise that not all meat is game, right?

Yes, I eat meat and I'm not stupid.

No, my point was that we eat stuff that tastes good, and that the fauna that we don't eat probably doesn't; which was my experience when eating pheasant and pigeon.

I was querying the last part of your post no the first bit. Your claim that "just about every animal" tastes good.

 

[Combustible]

Present levels of meat consumption are only possible under capitalism.

Why? Why couldn't a hypothetical future socialist society collectively decide to pursue an industrial farming strategy to maintain or even increase the amount of meat eaten.

 

[Skyfallsz]

Why? Why couldn't a hypothetical future socialist society collectively decide to pursue an industrial farming strategy to maintain or even increase the amount of meat eaten.

A hypothetical society could do anything. They could turn Mars into a massive farm with talking cows who play chess and if you win you can eat them

 

[Pickman's model]

Why? Why couldn't a hypothetical future socialist society collectively decide to pursue an industrial farming strategy to maintain or even increase the amount of meat eaten.

Because they're not real