Chart on page three: https://www.aphis.usda.gov/animal_health/nahms/dairy/downloads/dairy07/Dairy07_is_ReprodPrac.pdf
Please refer to the Wikipedia entry for “Dog” – they’re not obligate carnivores
Which is why I didn’t refer to them as obligate carnivores, but hey, thanks for trying.
10 Likes
What difference does the weight of the steak make?
FYI, we kill three cows each year, sometimes two. Actually, we deliver them to a little processing plant an hour away. it is a dreaded childhood ritual to watch the whole process a couple of times, to appreciate the reality of it.
But anyway, three or sometimes two cows provide the whole extended family with all the beef we need. Usually we also kill a couple of elk as well. But the cows and the elk cohabitate in a lush little river valley, without much intervention from us. There is a larger herd of cattle that get moved up to summer pasture in the mountains every spring, then back down in the fall. Otherwise, they mostly amuse themselves. Even the big herd is only about 40 animals, which have no negative effect on the land, which is many thousands of acres. In the spring, we separate two or three weaned calves to live closer to the house. we give them sweet feed daily, which keeps them close, because eating is pretty much their only hobby. All of the cows share the habitat of many hundreds of elk, and lots of other critters. Most of our veggies come from the gardens of members of the extended family. So I feel pretty good about our place in the world, and confident that the kids are not going to get gigantism or early onset puberty from some weird additive or hormone treatment given to the cows. My wife has been making a lot of cheese lately, usually from goat’s milk that some hippie neighbors give us. Same source for eggs.
7 Likes
Dairy farming is a whole different thing than what we do.
2 Likes
Well… the unethical part of meat is the suffering involved. I once saw an artist’s rendering of a humane farm for meat where headless cows were connected to machines that dealt with nutrient intake and outflow. They were on racks, one above the other, being electrically stimulated to maintain muscle mass. It looked terrifying, but you know what is even more terrifying? An actual slaughterhouse. Granted, the machines would have to do more than just feed them, since the brain maintains so many bodily systems. In fact I suspect many of the systems that create the potential for suffering, are also necessary for the body to function. However, function means something different when the animal is no longer walking around or dealing with the problems that cows deal with.
As for what happens to regular cows… they could… maybe survive… for a while, but they would be free… kinda. At worst, they go extinct, at best future generations evolve to cope with the new environment, but in both cases, their existence is no longer damnation, with the purpose of their life being to ultimately suffer and die so that the majority of their carcass can rot in plastic bags piled up in a landfill. So much meat goes uneaten.
1 Like
Kale is inedible.
Period.
1 Like
Soylent.
Hmm!
< fart >
In prehistory, domestication of animals was a fairly important step. There may come a time in the future, when canned goods and refrigeration are hard to come by. I don’t want to predict what circumstances those might be, but when such a situation happens, I don’t really want my descendants having to search around for an Auroch or Tarpan, and have to spend several thousand years trying to domesticate them. Plus, Aurochs are pretty rare, and Tarpans nonexistant. Likewise, teosinte is pretty unappealing to me. I am not a paleo diet fan.
3 Likes
Shut up… They’ll catch on to the plan.
2 Likes
Well.
All of this emphasizes my immense need for a gob of protein, right now.
I’m getting that 6-hour headache, that can’t be from caffeine deprivation.
There’s kabob, in my immediate future.
2 Likes
Just have one HUGE Texas BBQ first.
You know, to remember when.
3 Likes
There may also come a time in the future where CRISPR allows genetic engineering to help us surpass disease. I’m opting for the more idealist future, but I understand where you’re coming from, there could be a solar flare or something that knocks out electrical grids. Now, there are things we can do to prevent this, like insulating sensitive power equipment with Faraday cages. If all that fails, and we still have a problem, there are ‘wild’ reliable sources of meat, such as deer, rabbits, and other animals that have adapted to living around human populations. In my area at least, which is probably not typical, deer are everywhere, and IIRC they can reproduce up to three times a year, tripling their numbers. There isn’t as much meat on a deer as a cow, I’ll give you that, and if demand were higher, then issues could arise.
We keep advancing in spite of the possibility that our technology will fail, and so far that advancement has brought us a lot of wealth (quality of life/ not money necessarily). I don’t see enough of a possibility of total failure, to not curb practices which induce suffering and harm the environment.
Most of the farm animals will die. Even if companies wished to pay to keep them alive, selective breeding has left them incapable of doing so in the wild. Many of their wild forebears are extinct as well. Their are no aurochs left. And no place left for them if they did still exist. Have you seen modern sheep that don’t get sheared?
11 Likes
You can try to make a dog vegetarian. But one side effect will be no squirrels and your neighbors chicken will go missing.
4 Likes
Of course, the behavior of suburban deer are pretty different from wild animals. I am assuming that you are suburban. Correct me if I am mistaken. I also have a doe that keeps hanging out near our house, I do not know why. Most wild deer are a little more timid than that. And animals like elk tremendously much more so. Trying to get within 500 feet of a herd of wild elk is a real challenge. Cows, on the other hand, will not flee by jumping over a fence, and can be hunted with a hammer or rock.Rabbits are pretty common until they sense a threat, then they become scarce. But if you decide to subsist on wild animals, you are pretty quickly going to find yourself living a nomadic lifestyle.
Of course we are talking about personal optimism and perspective. I have spent most of my life studying technological history, and for me the most worrying thing about modern life is the wholesale rejection and permanent loss of life skills that have developed incrementally over tens of thousands of years.Not that I mean that modern innovations and knowledge are bad, quite the opposite. But our grandparents, for the most part,carried sets of skills that had been improved upon very slowly since prehistory, and many of those are essentially gone. When you see a modern person attempt to cook a meal on a coal or wood stove, it is a sad thing. And the idea that they could manufacture that stove from found, natural materials is almost absurd as asking them to make a cell phone from sticks and dirt. At the very core of the issue, the only thing that separates you and I from a family cowering in an ice-age cave in Southern Europe is an accumulated set of skills. We are not any more naturally intelligent than he was. And that chain of accumulated knowledge is very fragile.
I guess I have gone far enough off of the topic for now.
5 Likes
Pet food made with vegetables and grain is cheaper than that made with meat. And Hill’s has been very active in training veterinarians, providing food to vets, even publishing articles. I wonder if there’s really no conflict of interest. The following is from Hill’s website:
“Hill’s scientists author more than 50 research papers and textbook chapters each year and teach at leading schools of veterinary medicine all over the world so we can put our knowledge and expertise into every Hill’s® pet food for you.”
5 Likes
Try making it in mash potatoes. Oh! Or put some oil and garlic salt on them and back them till crispy!
3 Likes
Actually, pretty much implies just that (for varying definitions of imply)
It’s known that once one reaches situational minimums of vitamins and amino acids the only advantage to eating more is to slightly reduce metabolic costs in some cases. There’s not some ‘magic food molecule’ that is present in animals and not otherwise available and obtainable.
All other components of thriving aren’t nutrition related.
2 Likes
