This might interest you.
I like the cover. I will check it out. Most of the time, such subjects are not covered in sufficient specific detail for a person to actually replicate the techniques from nothing. My favorite is the Foxfire set of books. Of course we have tortured our children by forcing them to make all sorts of things, starting from how to properly search for and identify the raw materials. One year, we did atom bombs. Obviously, we did not build such a thing, but our journey started in Utah, Searching for uranium ore, and spent time in DOE labs in New Mexico and Tennessee, where we have relatives working. I timed it so that we could visit Trinity and the cool parts of White Sands, where we also have family connections. We ended the summer visiting the memorial at Hiroshima. So my daughter can talk intelligently about what the Iranians actually use those centrifuges for, and why that might be a bad idea. They can also turn a live animal into tasty foods and preserve the left over parts. They have not always been enthusiastic about such lessons, but it is good for them. My daughter is actually more enthusiastic about doing things like exploring old mines and ghost towns in the desert than my son is.
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There are lots of other interesting fermented foods made in countries that don’t traditionally use dairy products (as well as in those that do.) And lots of interesting foods made from plants. And there’s a project run by a couple of biohacking makerspaces in the Bay Area to develop genetically-engineered vegan cheese, with all the right proteins, etc.
Lab-grown meat, on the other hand, currently depends on other meat products as a growing medium (or if they have I haven’t seen any of it discussed in the press; all the initial stuff did.) We’re more likely to have good highly-engineered plant-based meats (as opposed to the current ones that are mostly mediocre.)
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A friend of mine who raises chickens for eggs says that the saddest part about it is “soup day”. It’s not just hens that stop laying when they get older, it’s also almost all the roosters. (Well, except that one rooster who was really vicious; she didn’t mind eating him.)
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Because Giles.
Goddamnit, I have to watch Buffy and Angel again.
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Pretty much what happened in Hong Kong. We now how a population of feral bovines and water buffalo. Yes, that Hong Kong.
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I don’t. A lot of them would die off of starvation and disease.
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Of course not, because that isn’t true!
One easily envisioned scenario is that non-humans become recognized as persons, which makes human opinions an instant minority. And citizens may not have a constitution which allows some citizens eating other citizens.
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I’ll take your word for the difficulty of hunting animals, but I think there is more than a set of skills that separates us from our ancestors. There is a level of society that did not exist back then. The fact that you and I can have this conversation is a part of the level of social sophistication that we have achieved. Each one of us can specialize in ways that were never before possible because we can and do depend on one another. This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t learn as much as we can about doing various things, but it does mean that we can afford a certain amount focus that we previously could not achieve because… survival and whatnot. Granted if electricity disappears then so does this conversation, and all these upper level social interactions, plus Wikipedia, and Heaven knows I don’t want do drag the encyclopedia’s out of their dusty old boxes.
EDIT: Maybe society is just one of those skills and you’re right
A part of the problem today is that technology has become so sophisticated because of our specializations, that without a very high level of knowledge in a field, one can barely grasp even the basics. I have my doubts that anyone in the world today could make a smartphone, alone, from scratch, even with the production facilities. It is beyond a single person. As our most simple tools become wired into the internet of things, they become abstract to us, objects that we do not hope to understand. It’s not that we cannot, its that we do not.
Perhaps our interests would be best served by engineering plants that could provide us meat, and be still be survivable. That way even if the modern world came crashing down, we would still have the seeds.
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I have not listed to the podcast yet, but the title and text have different implications:
What Would Happen if We Stopped Eating Meat?
Today we go to a future where animal products are banned.
First there is the distinction between an animal and an animal product. It can easily be argued that animals produce themselves at least as much as humans produce them. If their existence is a product, then human efforts alienate them from the process of their own production.
A bad on animal products is also not the same as a bad on the eating of meat. If I hunt or farm animals who are not marketed, then I am not claiming that they are a product. So this could conceivably eliminate the industry of animal products without ending the eating of meat. For instance if you grow a bacon tree, or a dog eats a rabbit.
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Not exactly. Even if you extend the premise to include pets not eating meat also, dogs can get along decently enough on rice and veggies and, I assume, some sort of protein supplement (and vitamins). It’s not ideal and will give them big stinky poops, but they can get by on it.
Cats, though, cats are obligate carnivores. If you cut the meat out of a cat’s diet, you don’t have a cat for much longer. …Or they’ll eat you in your sleep, because cats. And rightly so.
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I was going to argue, but I saw your edit. Although your point is valid as well. I do sometimes speak to people who actually think that they are ever so much more clever than people who lived hundreds or thousands of years ago. But it is all learned behavior. And accumulated. And the skill of our ancestors were often pretty complicated. for instance, people used to make lots of these:
I have been making stone projectiles for 30 years, and I was trained by some pretty accomplished people. I will never manage to make one of these. But the skill of making these was largely discarded in the Old world when the use of copper, then bronze prevailed. In the new World, complex metallurgy never happened, so they kept building upon flint knapping skills, and went to this sort of thing:
These things are the products of sophisticated technology, and complicated learned techniques.
Once we get into my area of expertise, I tend to go on.
MB
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You left out a word, and the word is “chips.” Kale CHIPS are inedible.
Kale any other way is wonderful.
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Foxhounds weren’t fed that way because it was proper nutrition for them; they were fed that way because it was cheap and filling. Your description of their food is identical to the food served in 19th century soup kitchens.
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Minus the foxes.
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cows and pigs and sheep are not owned by ‘society’ you are to understand. Farmers, (and their BANKS) own almost all of them, the very same people/landowners who would have to completely reinvest their time, money, and labour into growing vegetables. farmers being supremely pragmatic, they would, pretty much over night, collectively line up almost all the worlds livestock ( which the stupid pie-in-the-sky idealism of the non-thinking vegies had just rendered almost totally worthless ) in some part of their farms they can waste the use of and beat them to death with mallets.
it would have to be so, because, and this isn’t obvious to stupid city dwelling people, stock COSTS almost its full wholesale value to raise every year. the farm costs must be paid for, as do bullets, or slaughterhouse workers.
stupid idealists will be the death of the human race yet.
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domestic sheep and cows survive just fine, released into the wild. cattle were released on the sub-antarctic Auckland Islands in 1865, sheep and goats at later date, still pre 1900. they were not eradicated until the New Zealand government had spent many millions and thousands of man hours. if they throve there, they will thrive anywhere.
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I guess we would spend a lot of time listening to vegetarians complain about how after passing the law we killed all the livestock as not being useful anymore.
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The suffering argument is a non starter. The idea, or here belief, that farmed animals endlessly suffer is total biased nonsense. Non farmed animals suffer and Im assuming often suffer more. Death comes to us all. A healthy life with a sudden death is what we should all hope to experience. The idea that the animal cares about when it dies is nonsense.
The point of life including animals is to reproduce not not suffer. Farmed animals do a better job of reproducing than non farmed animals.
The massive second failure in this here discussion is that the arguments point to complete cessation of meat production and consumption. This is absolutely not true . The environmental argument is only to reduce the amount we consume! Again the idea we should wipe out meat eating is ideology based not logically based at all.
All the vegetarians I know, maybe 30% of my friends, have been fussy eaters who searched for ideological reasons to justify their habits. This isn’t a reason to not be a vegetarian but it is a strong argument to question the ethical motivation of this belief system.
All the healthy vegetarians I know have to spend a lot of time preparing food and eat and lot and often. They also spend way more than me on food. The alternative meat meals I make and like take way more time and effort to make. There’s no way this approach will ever be mainstream. Most of my vegetarian friends are either unhealthy , living on mass produced crap, or temporary veggies where I doubt they’ll make it for long. Ive known so many young kids who dont even like most vegetables become veggies and get super unhealthy, with anaemia etc . Really sad.
Im happy to eat lab meat but doubt it’ll happen in my lifetime. We all get used to whatever we eat. Im all for sustainable living but this argument goes way beyond food production.
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