gingerlycolors said:

Population needs to be managed [...]
[..]What is going to be needed is a better attitude to animal welfare and a move away from intensive farming of animals, especially pigs and poultry which are often factory farmed.

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or... just go vegetarian/vegan?

andrewmc said:

Pitlamp said:

andrewmc said:

People live in densely populated urban conurbations because life is better in cities than in the country

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Eh? 

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Grotesque oversimplification, I will agree, and many (particularly in richer countries) are much happier away from urban areas. But 55% of the world's population live in urban areas which take up a much smaller fraction of the Earth's surface. This fraction is increasing. Why do people flock to cities? Mostly, I think, because there are jobs - and jobs give you a 'better life' (or at least the hope of one).

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Ah - I see what you're driving at. You're probably right.

I take your point about out reducing the amount of meat in our diets. The basic principle that the shortest food chains need the smallest amount of land produce the most food for humans is difficult to argue with.

But aren't necessarily any better for wildlife - see palm oil plantations & monocultural deserts.

Yep.

Pitlamp said:

andrewmc said:

Pitlamp said:

andrewmc said:

People live in densely populated urban conurbations because life is better in cities than in the country

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Eh? 

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Grotesque oversimplification, I will agree, and many (particularly in richer countries) are much happier away from urban areas. But 55% of the world's population live in urban areas which take up a much smaller fraction of the Earth's surface. This fraction is increasing. Why do people flock to cities? Mostly, I think, because there are jobs - and jobs give you a 'better life' (or at least the hope of one).

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Ah - I see what you're driving at. You're probably right.

I take your point about out reducing the amount of meat in our diets. The basic principle that the shortest food chains need the smallest amount of land produce the most food for humans is difficult to argue with.

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The shortest food chain is is hunter gathering! no chain  everyone should (in my opinion) read food for free. Richard Mabey. if only for entertainment  at  cave entrances waiting for t'others.

Not really, I was using the term "food chain" in it's biological sense (producer > primary consumer > secondary consumer, etc.) Much energy is lost at every step. Therefore if we humans eat plants directly, rather than animals which have eaten plants, we can feed more people from a smaller area of land.

I am most definitely not a vegetarian but the above argument is the one which I find most persuasive to try and reduce my meat intake.

We could all end up like the folk in Isaac Asimov's stories, living in huge artificial caves and eating nothing but yeast...

I sometimes wonder about that as well. But I can go to the farm shop and get a nice bit of lamb from 20 miles away, or I can soy or quinoa or wine flown in from a different continent. Sourcing probably makes a huge difference.

Speleotron said:

I sometimes wonder about that as well. But I can go to the farm shop and get a nice bit of lamb from 20 miles away, or I can soy or quinoa or wine flown in from a different continent. Sourcing probably makes a huge difference.

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Even accounting for transportation of foods, a meat based diet (no matter how locally sourced) is still
a) a less efficient use of land
b) producing higher level of greenhouse gasses

JoshW said:

Speleotron said:

I sometimes wonder about that as well. But I can go to the farm shop and get a nice bit of lamb from 20 miles away, or I can soy or quinoa or wine flown in from a different continent. Sourcing probably makes a huge difference.

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Even accounting for transportation of foods, a meat based diet (no matter how locally sourced) is still
a) a less efficient use of land
b) producing higher level of greenhouse gasses

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This depends on an awful lot assumptions. Last time I checked the vegans were comparing lamb reared on heaverly maintained  pasture that was fertilised with industrial chemicals against planting the same land with trees/crops.

Using sheep reared on marginal land such as the Yorkshire dales gives a very different picture. Also th e Dales would look somewhat different without sheep. Not better or worse but definitely different.

I see the "eat local" ideas as a bit of a middle class myth. We simply don't have the capacity to sustain that and haven't been self sufficient in terms of food for several hundred years. Suspect if everyone are local like that meat consumption would have to drop the levels the veggies and vegans are arguing for anyways

darren said:

JoshW said:

Speleotron said:

I sometimes wonder about that as well. But I can go to the farm shop and get a nice bit of lamb from 20 miles away, or I can soy or quinoa or wine flown in from a different continent. Sourcing probably makes a huge difference.

Click to expand...

Even accounting for transportation of foods, a meat based diet (no matter how locally sourced) is still
a) a less efficient use of land
b) producing higher level of greenhouse gasses

Click to expand...

This depends on an awful lot assumptions. Last time I checked the vegans were comparing lamb reared on heaverly maintained  pasture that was fertilised with industrial chemicals against planting the same land with trees/crops.

Using sheep reared on marginal land such as the Yorkshire dales gives a very different picture. Also th e Dales would look somewhat different without sheep. Not better or worse but definitely different.

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Point "a" doesn't depend on any assumptions; the shorter the food chain, the more efficient it is at getting food from producer (plant) to final consumer (hopefully human beings). The most efficient food chains will always be those involving just one transfer of energy when humans eat plant based products directly.

Considerations such as "food miles", greenhouse emissions (e.g. re transport), use of fertilisers in intensive farming, etc, are all separate from the above. This isn't to say they're unimportant of course.

This post may look as if I'm arguing for vegetarian diets; I'm not. I'm merely flagging up one issue (of several) which is worth bearing in mind when considering the amount of animal-based food in one's diet.

The numbers seem to make it pretty clear how significant transportation is for the environmental impact of the food we eat. Although no numbers are certain, I think those published in Science are probably about as good as we can get.

I'd eat more offal if you could get it, but think a lot of it gets rammed into dog food cans, and pigs heads, tails and trotters are shipped off to china in their hundreds as a delicacy. (had a job interview at a pig abattoir 18 months ago, so had the full tour).

So even if the stuff your eating is reared down the road, doesn't mean that all of the animal stays within your local area.

I would eat more Quorn, but when I sized up a pack of mince with a pack of minced quorn, there was no price difference. I guess the only convenience there would be that you can flake the frozen quorn straight into the meal, whereas if you froze the mince, then you would have to defrost it in your predefined chunks before cooking.

Quorn's been around for quite a while, but I don't think there's enough competition in the market to drive down the price, maybe the current crisis will create some "micro-mycoprotein" production sites. with raised terraced beds on the side of the building growing veg on the sunny side and greenhouses on top.

One can live in a dream world for one minute.  :blink:

There's always the synthetic flesh to consider:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u468xY1T8fw

Not to be confused with:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HImkVAiivXQ

Not all none meat products are good.

Looking at Quorn, it is made from a mycoprotein

"The process for making Quorn involves adding oxygen, nitrogen, glucose and minerals to a fungus called Fusarium venenatum. All this is done in 40m high fermenters, under controlled temperature, pH, nutrient concentration and oxygen conditions to achieve the optimum growth rate." 

"Although scarce, the results of life cycle analyses of mycoprotein agree that this meat substitute causes an environmental impact similar to chicken and pork."  from this article  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6757021/

"Mycoprotein, the novel ingredient in Quorn-brand frozen meat substitutes that's made from processed mold (Fusarium venenatum), can cause serious and (possibly, even fatal) allergic and other reactions. ... The chunks of imitation meat are nutritious, but the prepared foods in which they are used may be high in fat or salt"

And yes I have picked small bits of information out of 3 articles.  What I am saying is there are 'fors ' and 'against' on all subjects.  There are many shades of black & white.  What we have to work out is what we, ourselves, are comfortable with and are happy to do & stand up & justify if needs be.

P.S please can the pedants tell me what the correct punctuation is in the last paragraph 

The Quorn allergy thing is mostly a result of a smear campaign by American vegetarian food manufacturers when they tried to expand to the US. Although Quorn did get in trouble in the UK for saying it was made of mushrooms.

Personally I don't see why eating the extracted protein of a vat-grown fungus is viewed so negatively in comparison to eating the muscle, blood and convective tissue of a previously living and intelligent animal. They are both tasty, after all (properly prepared and seasoned, of course).

And you won't get the next pandemic virus jumping the species barrier from vat to farmer...

MarkS: the chart you presented certainly shows that greenhouse emissions from food transport are a very small part of the total. That did surprise me, but I don?t doubt it is true, given the source of the data.

The shocking thing is the mass of CO2 equivalent generated to produce 1kg of beef.

But carnivores need not feel they must forever hang their heads in shame.

Using a bit of my free time, plus some figures from Google, I think I have come up with a way in which the environmentally aware meat eater can make amends for that 250g rump steak.

Simply holding their breath for a little over 3 weeks will do it.

OK but if we're going down the road of 'greener than thou' and hanging our heads in shame then how many of us fly around the world on caving expeditions? We all have huge carbon footprints that we don't need.

It's a slippery slope...

Speleotron said:

OK but if we're going down the road of hanging our heads in shame then how many of us fly around the world on caving expeditions? It's a slippery slope...

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There seems to be a fair amount of virtue signalling in this thread.

Just do your best and don't stress.