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Scientists Advocate Replacing Cattle With Insects
rhettb writes "Scientists in the Netherlands have discovered that insects produce significantly less greenhouse gas per kilogram of meat than cattle or pigs. Their study, published in the online journal PLoS, suggests that a move towards insect farming could result in a more sustainable — and affordable — form of meat production."
With the meat being so far outside what's usually considered food ...so far outside of what YOU consider food. There are plenty of people around the world who enjoy insects.
Tastes are entirely cultural: the French enjoy snails, Swedes enjoy rotten fish meat... You may or may not like insects, but they're perfectly valid sources of food.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Eating is a selfish act. Pretty much all of life is a selfish competition.
Either get over it, or take your argument to its logical conclusion and stop living.
I hope you were just trolling.
which is totally what she said
And who gets to implement these rules, and how ? Very few people will ever voluntarily accept to have reproduction so closely monitored and restricted. It would be inhumane, degrading, and hypocritical.
I do agree with the education and empowerement of women, but they will never be able to do this if they have 6+ children.
So how do you reduce familly size in a humane manner ? The answer might surprise you, as it is paradoxal : get rid of infant mortality. This has been proven in every developing country : the FIRST step to reducing population is to completely eliminate infant mortality. Once nearly all children reach adulthood, people have less children, simply because they don't need to have as many. Once this happens, THEN education steps in and teaches people about family planning. Family planning should be tought at an early age, with high school and elementary school kids learning about condoms and safe sex. They will then disseminate this information to their parents.
Quite frankly, you'd eat a lot less McD if you knew what well-prepared food tastes like.
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Then we need to get busy with the cultural imperialism, fast. Only two known methods to being a society's birth rate under replacement, the wealth associated iwth classical capitialism and the horrors of Communist China's One Child policy. So pick one. I think most people would prefer to be free and wealthy vs ground under the heels of Communist oppression.
Seriously, look up the stats, no Free Society with a well functioning, wealth creating (ignore the current recession) economy, is currently growing with the exception of the US and that is due to immigration. Take out the higher birth rates among the 1st generation immigrants and the US birthrate really sucks. The red states are outbreeding the blue states but they ain't exactly exploding anymore. Europe and Japan are on the verge of democide.
So yes a modern society has a higher per capita impact on the environment but there are upsides to balance it out. Not to mention that wealthy countries have the excess wealth to worry about environmental concerns. Note the cleaner air and water in western societies. The US actually has more trees than when the first European set foot here. Yes many are farm trees now, but that just means we can plan ahead and replant when we harvest unlike more lawless countries who just slash em down.
Democrat delenda est
Well, we don't have true democracy anywhere in the world. We vote for leaders, rather than vote on issues. I usually think that I'd much prefer to vote on issues, but considering how ignorant or misinformed people are on scientific issues, it would in fact be a bad idea to let the general public best decide on issues like this.
Thinking that Democracy is the ideal solution in all situations is rather foolish.
which is totally what she said
The easiest way to make food from a grassy hill with poor soil is a grazing animal. Farm equipment requires flat land. Humans can't live on grass. What else would you do, bulldoze the hills and dump on lots of chemicals to make food crops grow?
Now consider the beans you so love. What about the rest of the plant? You're wasting nearly all of the plant if you don't eat it, but you can't really eat it because you're human. Feed that to an animal though, and now you have more food.
They are more efficient partly because of their coldbloodedness according to the article. In places with sufficiently long growing seasons that won't be a problem. But you will have to transport the stuff to places with longer cold seasons, adding inefficiency. Cattle have built in warmers.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
Have you ever compared the meat bought at a random supermarket to the meat bought straight from a small farm where the animal has lived a really good life until it was taken to the butcher? Believe me, there is a MASSIVE difference - without wanting to mimic the vegan "meat tastes of fear!" line, you really can taste if the animal had a good life.
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Yeah, that's the sort of thing they're thinking of doing. Exercise routines. I imagine that the whole thing would look rather horrific, we'll probably replace the whole "watching sausage get made" metaphor with something more general.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Well, we don't have true democracy anywhere in the world. We vote for leaders, rather than vote on issues
Is there some deficiency in how politics is taught in America that causes people to constantly conflate direct democracy with democracy and not realise that democracy and republic are orthogonal issues? Both direct and representative democracy are forms of democracy (rule by the demos - the people). Oh, and before you say we don't have direct democracy 'anywhere in the world', I suggest you visit some of the Swiss cantons.
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Is anyone not ignorant or misinformed? Scientists? Politicians? The People? The whole point of Democracy is not that it provides the "correct" result (that remains undefined, because it's entirely a value judgement), it's that the society you live in broadly reflects the interests and concerns of its citizens.
I require blind trials before I'll accept such a claim, but it does seem plausible. A more active life and slower growth would have some effect on muscle structure and the amount of fat, which may very well result in different taste.
Cattle population wouldn't survive without the help of humans at the current level. The population has exploded along with the humans. On the other hand the milk producing cows of today are the result of selective breeding and they produce milk more than is necessary, just to fulfill human needs. The cattle industry is a prime example of unsustainability. 40% of world food grain goes to feed the cattle.
I don't oppose meat eating, but we are eating it way too much. Meat is available 24/7 without much effort.