practical vegetarianism

[ichneumon]

this is a thread to debate the practical uses of vegetarianism. it is NOT about how animals are treated, whether they have rights, what people are *supposed* to eat, etc.

points:

1)growing vegetables is more energy efficient. the same amount of land and energy can feed more people if used to grow plants than animals.

2)intensive agriculture is ruinous to the environment. yet sustainable agriculture requires more land and/or energy to produce as much food.

3)factory farming of animals is THE major source of antibiotic resistant bacteria. you could not design a more efficient process for producing incurable diseases. animals in farm conidtions are prime targets for disease, and the majority of our plagues have originated in farm animals. smallpox was originally a disease of cattle which jumped species.

4)fuels produced from corn or sugar are nonpolluting. when burned, they release CO2, but it's the same CO2 they pulled out of the atmosphere to begin with. the net change is zero. and it takes lots of land to grow fuels. using fossil fuels puts CO2 into the air - returning planet to the state when the oil was created, ie, the carboniferous period. as in the whole planet hip deep in water and air you couldn't breathe.

conclusion:

if everyone on earth is to be fed enough, in such a way that the planet retains the ability to support 7billion crazed monkeys, you just can't have meat. there's not enough room or energy. get used to it. it's the exact same thing as driving an SUV. luxury. a disease of the bourgeoisie. people who are hungry eat what they have to. that is not you (most of you).

discuss....

[Cult of Reason]

Originally posted by ichneumon+Apr 26 2006, 03:30 PM--> (ichneumon @ Apr 26 2006, 03:30 PM) this is a thread to debate the practical uses of vegetarianism. it is NOT about how animals are treated, whether they have rights, what people are *supposed* to eat, etc.

points:

1)growing vegetables is more energy efficient. the same amount of land and energy can feed more people if used to grow plants than animals.

2)intensive agriculture is ruinous to the environment. yet sustainable agriculture requires more land and/or energy to produce as much food.

3)factory farming of animals is THE major source of antibiotic resistant bacteria. you could not design a more efficient process for producing incurable diseases. animals in farm conidtions are prime targets for disease, and the majority of our plagues have originated in farm animals. smallpox was originally a disease of cattle which jumped species.

4)fuels produced from corn or sugar are nonpolluting. when burned, they release CO2, but it's the same CO2 they pulled out of the atmosphere to begin with. the net change is zero. and it takes lots of land to grow fuels. using fossil fuels puts CO2 into the air - returning planet to the state when the oil was created, ie, the carboniferous period. as in the whole planet hip deep in water and air you couldn't breathe.

conclusion:

if everyone on earth is to be fed enough, in such a way that the planet retains the ability to support 7billion crazed monkeys, you just can't have meat. there's not enough room or energy. get used to it. it's the exact same thing as driving an SUV. luxury. a disease of the bourgeoisie. people who are hungry eat what they have to. that is not you (most of you).

discuss.... [/b]
At the technocracy.ca forums, in response to my suggestion of genetically engineering plants to grow meat, a member who is a librarian in Serbia posted this:


"Librarian"
"Fifty years hence we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium."

Winston Churchill, 1932.

Believe it or not, honorable ladies and gentlemen, but edible meat is possible and it can be grown up in laboratory! Scientists have already offered technologies of meat cultivation. Nowadays large-scale manufacturing of a beef, the hen, or pork without any participation of animals and birds is only a question of our will. Indeed - chicken without a chicken – isn’t that only a fiction?

Certainly, it was a fiction. In 1969 the American Sci-Fi writer Frank Herbert, the author of famous "Dune", in his book Whipping Star told us about pseudo-meat. And he was not the only one. Other visionaries, for example H. Beam Piper and Larry Niven have had their revelations about it too.

But artificial meat, honorable ladies and gentlemen is not only a fiction any more. It is a reality. Sonorous news arrived from group of scientists under direction of Dr. Jason Matheny from University of Maryland. "

http://www.trengovestudios.com/images/rawmeat.jpg
Raw meat categories

These researchers are offering to us two new methods of creation of projected fabrics which will lead us to large – scale meat manufacturing, meat suitable for human consumption by all parameters.

Experiments for NASA space missions have already shown that small amounts of edible meat can be created in a lab, but the technology that could grow chicken nuggets without the chicken, on a large scale, even today sounds as an absolutely extraordinary idea.

In a paper in the June 29 issue of Tissue engeneering, a team of scientists proposed two new techniques of tissue engineering that may one day lead to affordable production of in vitro - grown meat for human consumption. It is the first peer-reviewed discussion of the prospects for industrial production of cultured meat.

"There would be a lot of benefits from cultured meat," says Dr. Matheny, who studies agricultural economics and public health. "For one thing, you could control the nutrients. For example, most meats are high in the fatty acid Omega 6, which can cause high cholesterol and other health problems. With in vitro meat, you could replace that with Omega 3, which is a healthy fat. Cultured meat could also reduce the pollution that results from raising livestock, and you wouldn't need the drugs that are used on animals raised for meat."

The idea of culturing meat is to create an edible product that tastes like cuts of beef, poultry, pork, lamb or fish and has the nutrients and texture of meat.

Scientists know that a single muscle cell from a cow or chicken can be isolated and divided into thousands of new muscle cells. Experiments with fish tissue have created small amounts of in vitro meat in NASA experiments researching potential food products for long-term space travel, where storage is a problem.

"But that was a single experiment and was geared toward a special situation - space travel," says Matheny. "We need a different approach for large scale production."

Matheny's team developed ideas for two techniques that have potential for large scale meat production. One is to grow the cells in large flat sheets on thin membranes. The sheets of meat would be grown and stretched, then removed from the membranes and stacked on top of one another to increase thickness.

The other method would be to grow the muscle cells on small three-dimensional beads that stretch with small changes in temperature. The mature cells could then be harvested and turned into a processed meat, like nuggets or hamburgers.

To grow meat on a large scale, cells from several different kinds of tissue, including muscle and fat, would be needed to give the meat the texture to appeal to the human palate.

http://www.membrana.ru/images/articles/1120754977-1.jpeg
Meat production

"The challenge is getting the texture right," says Matheny. "We have to figure out how to 'exercise' the muscle cells. For the right texture, you have to stretch the tissue, like a live animal would."

And, the authors agree, it might take work to convince consumers to eat cultured muscle meat, a product not yet associated with being produced artificially.

"On the other hand, cultured meat could appeal to people concerned about food safety, the environment, and animal welfare and people who want to tailor food to their individual tastes," says Matheny. The paper even suggests that meat makers may one day sit next to bread makers on the kitchen counter.

"The benefits could be enormous," Matheny says. "The demand for meat is increasing world wide -- China’s meat demand is doubling every ten years. Poultry consumption in India has doubled in the last five years.
"With a single cell, you could theoretically produce the world's annual meat supply. And you could do it in a way that's better for the environment and human health. In the long term, this is a very feasible idea."

Matheny saw so many advantages in the idea that he joined several other scientists in starting a nonprofit organization, New Harvest to advance the technology. One of these scientists, Hank Hageman, Professor of Meat Science at Utrecht University, received a grant from the Dutch government to produce cultured meat, as part of a national initiative to reduce the environmental impact of food production.
Other authors of the paper are Pieter Edelman of Wageningen University, Netherlands, Douglas McFarland, South Dakota university; and Vladimir Mironov, from Medical University of South Carolina.

You can read the Tissue Engineering paper at following address:

http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1089/ten.2005.11.659
(Attention: large PDF file!)

And for more information on cultured meat, please visit the New Harvest website

http://www.new-harvest.org/default.php

I wish you pleasant and fruitful research! :wink:

At the time, and now, I still find it fascinating.

I hope that interests you.

[apathy maybe]

Damn corpse eaters ...

There are so many recipes and types of food that do not require corpses or parts of corpses. Beans, eggs, milk, grains, and others are all things that include usable protein.

Anyway, I will attempt to add more later.

[Dark Exodus]

Originally posted by apathy [email protected] 28 2006, 02:54 AM
Damn corpse eaters ...

There are so many recipes and types of food that do not require corpses or parts of corpses. Beans, eggs, milk, grains, and others are all things that include usable protein.

Anyway, I will attempt to add more later.
Some of those require plant corpses! How horrid!

[ichneumon]

the point about pseudomeat:

why? we can grow algae cultures now. more nutrition. add some bacon flavor. the problem with meat is that it is *wasteful*. growing it in vitro is not going to help. besides, this is food - there's a huge yuck factor. the freakin' astronauts can eat soy paste. it's a space station, not club med.

it comes down to this - why do people eat meat? if it's so inefficient, why do we bother? there's a simple answer....

[patrickbeverley]

Originally posted by [email protected] 28 2006, 05:44 PM
the problem with meat is that it is *wasteful*. growing it in vitro is not going to help.
Uh, yes it is:


With a single cell, you could theoretically produce the world's annual meat supply.

See - less wasteful!

[LSD]

it comes down to this - why do people eat meat? if it's so inefficient, why do we bother? there's a simple answer....

Yeah, it tastes fucking great! :lol:

But then that's the reason why we do most voluntary things in life, because we enjoy them.

I can sure as fuck tell you that I'd take a nice plate of baby back ribs over a fucking salad any goddamn day of the week.

Sure, it'd be more "economical" to just eat fucking letuce, but it'd also be more "economical" to never smoke, drink, do drugs, or have sex.

You'll forgive me if I am somewhat "put off" by such an idea! :D

But I suppose that that kind of neopuritanistic moralism fits just fine into your antihumanist "vegan power" superstition. Your apocalypse is slightly more concrete than the typical "rapture"-peddler's, but its no less a matter of "faith".

By your nonsensical reckoning, in order to "save the planet", we all need to become perfectly efficient little drones, going to work every morning and coming home at night to our nice little pile of "mixed greens".

Well, let me tell you, the bosses would love such a world! After all, "efficiency" is their watchword as well! :o

That's why modern bourgeois governments have suddenly gotten so interested in the "health of their citizens". You know, "fat taxes", smoking bans, drug prohibition, etc... There's a lot of profit to me made off of "fit" and "efficient" workers; the type who "care about their jobs" and "work for the greater good" (the "earth" or the "economy", it's all the same idealist crap).

The only really revolutionary worker is the sovereign worker. The one who stands up for himself and rejects all "masters", whether they wear a white collar or a fucking greenpeace shirt.

The revolution is not going to be for "vegan power", it's going to be for proletarian power and the society that it will create will be a humanistic one.

All you who worship at the Cult of Newkirk can frankly fuck off. There are real environmental issues that need to be dealt with; but we deal with them from a rational perspective in a collective democratic fasion.

p.s., ELF/ALF/PETA type lunatics are not invited! :angry:

[apathy maybe]

So much for that ...

Being a vegetarian/vegan is about reducing cruelty. While some people have this superiority complex and feel that humans are some how better then other animals, most vegetarians/vegans either do not feel this, or think that we don't have a right to treat other animals anyway we want.

There are many different ways of eating vegetable based foods. People who complain about salads and limp "mixed greens" are ignorant, either malicely to try and discredit vegetarianism or through just not knowing. It would be like vegetarians saying that corpse eaters only eat roasts.

Intensive farming is damaging to the environment. Monocrops are damaging to the environment. Just because some people don't believe that humans have contributed to global warming, doesn't make it less true.

Growing grain to feed to animals then eat the animals is wasteful. Sure we might not care about a little bit of waste, but on the scale that it is happening, we should care.

And if caring about animals means a person is "anti-human" then put me in that box.

[LSD]

Being a vegetarian/vegan is about reducing cruelty.

I thought we weren't going to discuss your little backwards "morality" in this thread? Oh well, I guess sticking to rational discourse exactly doesn't work for you folks.

I guess the only question left now is are you going to post the gruesom pictures before or after you make fun of the holocaust victims. :lol:


While some people have this superiority complex and feel that humans are some how better then other animals, most vegetarians/vegans either do not feel this

Well, they can "feel" whatever the fuck they want; it doesn't make them correct.

Humans are not "superior" to animals in some sort of universalist externalistic sense. But we are more important to animals relative to human society. And that is, after all, all that we are talking about here.

There is no "morality" outside of human society; we invented the thing. Wolves do not feel "regret" or "empathy" after they slaughter an animal, they just eat it! Animals simply do not exist within a moral framework and the idea of some sort of "commonality of species" is just pure postmodern liberal superstition.

Human society has an obligation to benefit its members and nothing more. Now, that means minimizing animal suffering as much as possible, since it's distressing to most people and wholly unnescessary, but not to the degree that it would significantly harm human beings.

If someday we perfect artificial meat growing, then we'll do that. It'd probably be less resource intensive anyways. But don't delude yourself into imagining that that would somehow lead to a "harmony" of "animals".

The day that people stop eating natural meat is the day that you will see the biggest mass slaughter of animals in history.

If PETA ever had its way, it would lead to more animal deaths than has occured in every seal hunt, fur factory, and farm since the animal rights movement began.

The world is not disney fantasy-land and we are never going to live in "harmony" with "nature". Anti-humanist "vegetarianism" is simply reactionary superanturalism and is practically no better than primativism.

And, frankly, I'm damn sick of it masquerading as being "leftist". :angry:


There are many different ways of eating vegetable based foods.

Really? Is one of those ways baby back ribs? Because if not, I'm really not interested.


Growing grain to feed to animals then eat the animals is wasteful.

So's fermenting grain to make alchohol.

Oops, there goes beer. :o

You know, I just can&#39;t wait to live in your neopuritanistic "vegan power" utopia. Sounds like it&#39;s going to be real fun... <_<


And if caring about animals means a person is "anti-human" then put me in that box.

Done. :rolleyes:

[Red Axis]

Quite frankly, I am no vegetarian my good sir. It is people, not animals that have rights. I fear that the embracing of animal rights and the New Left is giving communism a bad name. I say we move back to our roots.

[apathy maybe]

Practical vegetarianism ...
The reason why some vegetarians say that grain being feed to animals is a waste, is that there is enough food being produced in the world to feed everyone. But it is being feed to animals in rich countries and then the animals are getting eaten by people in those countries (generally not poor people).

LSD, do you think that everyone should be able to drive an SUV if they have the money and want to?

Fish stocks are being depleted as well; do people think we should hunt varieties of fish to extinction because they taste good? Oh wait, we could just farm them like we &#39;farm&#39; animals on land.

There are a variety of foods that contain no animal products or no corpse parts at least, and they taste quite nice. So if you are a vegetarian, or if you are thinking of becoming one, there are plenty of foods that will make up for the fact that you won&#39;t be eating meat any more.

[Comrada J]

Originally posted by Red [email protected] 30 2006, 11:50 PM
I fear that the embracing of animal rights and the New Left is giving communism a bad name. I say we move back to our roots.
Communism already has a bad name. What exactly are our “roots” any way?

[LSD]

The reason why some vegetarians say that grain being feed to animals is a waste, is that there is enough food being produced in the world to feed everyone. But it is being feed to animals in rich countries and then the animals are getting eaten by people in those countries (generally not poor people).

What exactly do you think would happen if the first world stopped eating meat? do you honestly believe that that excess grain would be shipped to the third world?

Much more realistically, it would just stop being grown.

If the first world no longer wanted meat, it would want something else instead and all the resources currently going to feeding livestock would go into that instead. That&#39;s how capitalism works; it satisfies paying consumers.

Accordingly, our dietary preference in the first world is not going to seriouslyt affect the food supply of the third. The only way that we can increase resources in underdeveloped countries is to end imperialism.

Political problems have political solutions; lifetylism is worse than useless.


LSD, do you think that everyone should be able to drive an SUV if they have the money and want to?

That&#39;s a moot qustion.

There are simply not enough resources for everyone to drive an SUV, nor is petroleum extraction sufficiently rapid to accomadate such a massive rise in demand.

In terms of "having the money", well that&#39;s an economic question, not a political or environmental one. And seeing as I reject the inherenty hierarchy of money-based economics, no I don&#39;t think that rich people should have access to any special privaleges. Not that that has anything to do with the meat industry... :rolleyes:


Oh wait, we could just farm them like we &#39;farm&#39; animals on land.

Excellent idea&#33; :)


There are a variety of foods that contain no animal products or no corpse parts at least

Perhaps, but variety being the spice of life and all, I&#39;d prefer to eat as wide a possible range of foods as possible.

I love pasta and cheese, but I also love ribs; and no amount of verbal gymnastics is going to change that.

[Dark Exodus]

here are a variety of foods that contain no animal products or no corpse parts at least

Bit of a tit aren&#39;t you?


As I said, a corpse is a corpse. It was alive, now its dead. Just because it had a face and some blood doesen&#39;t make it any more corpsey, unles you want to argue semantics.

[ichneumon]

With a single cell, you could theoretically produce the world&#39;s annual meat supply.

you know less than nothing about biology. meat is heterotrophic. animal cells do NOT just grow. they must eat. they eat materials produced from plants. this quote should read "...given an infinite supply of sugar and proteins".

plants turn sunlight and CO2 into sugar. animals do NOT. animals eat plant sugar, and 20% of that energy is lost for each step in the food web. ecology 101.


Political problems have political solutions; lifetylism is worse than useless.

*shudder* like the workers&#39; paradise in the PRC. but not germane to this thread.


What exactly do you think would happen if the first world stopped eating meat? do you honestly believe that that excess grain would be shipped to the third world?

Much more realistically, it would just stop being grown.


we would convert it into ethanol and biofuels. NONPOLLUTING fuels. when you burn these fuels, they produce CO2 - the same CO2 they sucked out of the atmosphere to begin with. zero net CO2 change.




it comes down to this - why do people eat meat? if it&#39;s so inefficient, why do we bother? there&#39;s a simple answer....



Yeah, it tastes fucking great&#33;

But then that&#39;s the reason why we do most voluntary things in life, because we enjoy them.


eating meat is physically addictive. you can&#39;t stop. you are a junkie. try it. you will jones. consumerism is also addictive. one directly leads to the other. figure it out.


That&#39;s why modern bourgeois governments have suddenly gotten so interested in the "health of their citizens". You know, "fat taxes", smoking bans, drug prohibition, etc... There&#39;s a lot of profit to me made off of "fit" and "efficient" workers; the type who "care about their jobs" and "work for the greater good" (the "earth" or the "economy", it&#39;s all the same idealist crap).

The only really revolutionary worker is the sovereign worker. The one who stands up for himself and rejects all "masters", whether they wear a white collar or a fucking greenpeace shirt.

the capatilist states of the world depend on consumer addiction. they depend on the DESIRE for money. the addiction to food is the fundamental addiction. when you break it, you can be free - very little meat, no junk food. no cigarettes. very little alcohol.

you can all the pot, E, LSD, shrooms that you want.

but at the moment, you are a slave to your addictions. you are not free. free yourself. free your body, free your mind.

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by ichneumon
Eating meat is physically addictive.

Yep.

So what?

Where is it written that ADDICTION TO PLEASURE IS BAD?

Well, mostly in "holy books". :lol:


Consumerism is also addictive.

Depends, I think.

What are you consuming and why?

Do you enjoy shopping?

I don&#39;t.


The addiction to food is the fundamental addiction. When you break it, you can be free - very little meat, no junk food. No cigarettes. Very little alcohol.

Yeah, we&#39;ll all just sit around and suck rocks. :lol:


But at the moment, you are a slave to your addictions. You are not free. Free yourself. Free your body, free your mind.

Buddhist bullshit&#33;

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[Dyst]

the capatilist states of the world depend on consumer addiction. they depend on the DESIRE for money.

It is easy to call it addiction, but it is impossible not to be a consumer.

Even though we may be addicted as consumers, that is simply how the system works. Even if we were no longer "addicted" we would still need to buy things, in order to survive.

So capitalism would not fall if we stopped being addicted to things, so you can&#39;t say it depends on it.

[ichneumon]

i&#39;m interested, redstar, that you understand that meat is addictive.

why addiction is bad - "bad" is a value judgement. for us, now, it&#39;s just dangerous. i am honestly free from addiction - i don&#39;t shop, look at porn, eat junk, nothing. i&#39;ve never been so happy. it would take torture to get me back into that lifestyle. i&#39;m so free now - but what i DO, is mostly work to make the world a better place. that&#39;s all that&#39;s left. with that freedom, you have so much joy, it&#39;s almost like being on X. neurochemically, it&#39;s just because you can feel the serotonin shifts and peaks now, which used to be overridden with the dopamine peaks and lows of addiction. i feel *loved* all the time. (and no, serotonin is not addictive, it doesn&#39;t work like that)

the *useful* thing is that i don&#39;t really need THINGS to make me happy now. i enjoy being alive. i don&#39;t have to buy stuff or want stuff. i get what i need, and sometimes a bit of stuff for art or school, and that&#39;s it. i don&#39;t live like an american. i don&#39;t take more than i need.

consumerism and capitalism are very closely linked - our technology might be able to produce the neccesities of life for almost nothing, now - (well, not in a sustainable way, but bear with me), so we have to have consumer-addiction to run the economic machine.

[adz170]

intresting topic . i think the ideology that people are forgetting is that we already have gm plants so what would be the diffrence if we had GM meat... , i mean it might seem weird for a while but everyone would learn to adapt.. i mean cmon who doesnt like hamburgers but people only like hamburgers because of theyre exposure to hamburgers . for example if you was brought up by hippies ( i dont know another term) and they ate salads and other nuriousing foods then you would be exposed to that kind of food . simple as that , we eat meat because we are adapted to eat meat . we can survive without it , but who doesnt like a kfc or mc donalds every now and then? , and although i like meat and like to cook alot of vegeterian dishes not to be a revolutionary just because they taste good... kapesh lol , peace :D :D

[dr_depravo]

Technically, neither serotonin or dopamine are addictive, what is addictive is the frequency of pulses taht are passed through the brain some of which use both serotonin and dopamine as carriers.

You can get "addicted" to anything and quite frankly ichneumon, it sounds like you&#39;ve addicted yourself to your lifestyle very well, kudos to you. Addiction isn&#39;t am problem when it fits with your ethics and lifestye, addiction is a problem when it doesn&#39;t fit.

Addiction isn&#39;t an end run on an argument, if you&#39;re going to be claiming taht sommeones addiction is problematic, you have to show them why it is non compatible with their ethics and lifestyle.