3D-printed steak - GIF

[Skun Knuckles]

The biggest problem with using domesticated animals for food is that the scale of modern operations makes them huge polluters. Remember, we didn't generally eat meat in the quantities we do these days, so a few farmyard animals could keep a family fed, and small scale farms could feed a large number of people 50 years ago or so, when meat consumption was half what it is now. Today, most meat production is on an industrial scale with correspondingly industrial levels of pollution of the land, water, and air. Add to that, the wholesale destruction of rainforests for pasture land, the amount of fertilizer and water inputs it takes to grow feed crops, and the amount of fuel expended in all the processes, and you have an industry that's not sustainable in the long term the way it operates today. The devolution that occured wasn't moving away from conventional meat sources, but the attempt at scaling small farms to industrial sizes to try to both benefit from economies of scale and meet demands for product.

I don’t know where you get your information from or what your life experiences are but they seem to be a lot different to mine. The company my father did his apprenticeship with as a butcher in the 1930’s had a huge multi story processing plant that was established in the late 1800’s, the meat they processed came from various abattoirs on the outskirts of the city of which there where many, there have been many large scale meat processing operations globally for centuries and they are well documented. All that has little to do with my original question, but your diatribe has raised another question, if grown for meat livestock are taken out of the equation and a huge amount of resources such as fuel, fertiliser etc are channeled into growing and processing alternative food sources will it be any less polluting than growing and processing livestock feed?
There are many mouths to feed on this planet, and there are many problems associated with doing so, if more time was spent on improving existing practices rather than trying to reinvent what has taken thousands of years to achieve I think we would arrive at a better outcome sooner.

[nova_robotics]

All that has little to do with my original question, but your diatribe has raised another question, if grown for meat livestock are taken out of the equation and a huge amount of resources such as fuel, fertiliser etc are channeled into growing and processing alternative food sources will it be any less polluting than growing and processing livestock feed?
There are many mouths to feed on this planet, and there are many problems associated with doing so, if more time was spent on improving existing practices rather than trying to reinvent what has taken thousands of years to achieve I think we would arrive at a better outcome sooner.

Beef has one of the worst feed conversion ratios around. To get one unit of food energy from beef, that cow has to eat around 15 units of plant energy. Chicken is much better at around 3-to-1. So if you had farmland and were growing a crop, lets say that crop could directly feed 100 mouths. If you were to take that crop and use it to feed chickens, your land could now feed 33 people. If you were raising cows, with that same farmland you could now feed 7 people. If food becomes scarce, you would be starving 93 of the original 100 people by raising cows. You're throwing away over 90% of the food energy. So yes, it's extremely polluting.

[schuylergrace]

I don’t know where you get your information from or what your life experiences are but they seem to be a lot different to mine. The company my father did his apprenticeship with as a butcher in the 1930’s had a huge multi story processing plant that was established in the late 1800’s, the meat they processed came from various abattoirs on the outskirts of the city of which there where many, there have been many large scale meat processing operations globally for centuries and they are well documented. All that has little to do with my original question, but your diatribe has raised another question, if grown for meat livestock are taken out of the equation and a huge amount of resources such as fuel, fertiliser etc are channeled into growing and processing alternative food sources will it be any less polluting than growing and processing livestock feed?
There are many mouths to feed on this planet, and there are many problems associated with doing so, if more time was spent on improving existing practices rather than trying to reinvent what has taken thousands of years to achieve I think we would arrive at a better outcome sooner.

I'm sorry you thought of my response as a diatribe. It wasn't intended that way. And I grew up on our family farm, where we grew most of what we ate, as well as more to sell, and I have many connections to various parts of the farming industry. I wasn't saying industrial farming is new. Ever since man first started farming and raising livestock, he has tried to find ways to make the process more efficient, to the point where we are today. The issue isn't farming, but the scale we do it on now and the way we accomplish that scale. And raising animals for meat is generally a very inefficient proposition, considering the amount of inputs that are needed to raise one pound of meat versus one pound of beans, for example. That doesn't mean I'm giving up meat anytime soon, though. We just need to find better ways to produce it, and the original post was showing one possible option. And it wouldn't hurt any of us to eat more vegetables while foregoing some of the meat we consume.