In reply to bpmclimb:
> Human beings don't have an absolute nutritional requirement for animal products, so we're fortunate enough to have a choice in the matter. The vegan diet is an entirely practical proposition, and there are various excellent reasons for adopting it. However, if you choose to eat animals, for reasons of preference, taste, habit, whatever; then just get on with it: no-one can force you not to. If you feel uncomfortable about it, then don't. But trying to sell everyone the idea that eating animals is just as humane as not eating them, by resorting to some facile "pushing of the killing" argument, is plain daft. If you go microscopic enough, we're all "killing", all the time. We've heard this tack from you before, and it's no more convincing this time around.
Your first sentence *might* be true, but I remain to be convinced having seen several stories of infants of fanatical vegans dying from malnutrition.
On your other point, you misunderstand as I am not "trying to sell everyone the idea that eating animals is just as humane as not eating them".
A cropped field is an industrial landscape. Are you seriously making the argument that pesticides, fungicides and herbicides are not used on crops and benign? Monocropping facilitates 'swarming' of 'pests' and there is only one way large scale growing can be kept bug free.
Now, if you are killing bugs you are not only introducing poison in to the food chain of things that feed on those bugs (birds, hedgehogs), but you are also reducing the food source for those dependents with a consequent knock-on effect.
Also, when you harvest a field and expose its soil you get create a few problems - the soil is exposed and leached of its nutrients (so you now need to manually reintroduce nutrients), but you also get run off in to the water course; not only is silt pushed in to the water system but also any chemicals you have sprayed on to the land - which can kill aquatic life. At the least you get eutrophication. You'll be aware of desertification in both the Fertile Crescent and the US grain belts.
Lots of small mammals are killed in the jaws of agricultural machinery and in Australia for example, large grain fields have led to plagues of mice which have to be controlled by lethal means.
So yes, go veg*n if you are uncomfortable with animal suffering - but don't assume that your veg*n food comes from a responsible source, don't ignore the cost of your food miles, and, don't assume animals have not suffered and died due to your diet.
Alternatively, eat meat but eschew factory farms as a way of reducing suffering. Try to source meat from a local source that is pasture raised. A pastoral farm can host indigenous species, the land can be shared with a whole host of wildlife both flora and fauna (pastoral farming does not compete with other species at the base of the food chain, unlike arable farming), it will be fertilized by cow manure, there is no need for antibiotics (unless to cure sickness), and no need for aggressive pesticides etc... on the land. There will be no problem with run off nor soil erosion. The will still be suffering, but after a 'good life' the cow/pig/hen/sheep will be swiftly dispatched.
(Those in Sheffield should try produce from realmeat-sheffield.co.uk)
Post edited at 09:14