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Impossible to find any meaningful average of course, but assuming 2 acres to graze a cow, 600 lbs. of useable meat from a market ready steer, an average of 1280 calories per pound of meat, 180 bushels of corn per acre and about 7300 btu's per bushel, you can produce roughly three times more calories with with corn on the same acreage.
Not really that meaningful, but I retract my statement under the conditions listed above.
But which one can someone survive better on, meat...or corn? Fact is, you can't just compare the meat production to corn, because a human being needs far more nutrition that just corn can supply. You'd probably be better off eating a strictly meat diet than a strictly corn diet.
However, the question I pose is whether or not people who object to eating meat because they think it's animal cruelty would eat meat if somehow all the aspects of cruelty were removed. My first thought of how this might work was the typical sci-fi answer of reproducing meat through scientific means rather than having it grow directly on the animal. Since humans can grow sheets of new skin for burn victims from a mere scrap of skin from the donor, the tech to grow actual meat isn't that unrealistic a thought.
Would you return to eating meat if all the overtones of animal cruelty were removed from the process of producing meat? If we could grow animal flesh in a nutrient tank (a la sci-fi tech), so that there was never a live animal involved, would you return to eating meat?
This is a question for those of you who don't eat animal products due to moral opinions, not those of you who refuse it on health grounds.
Im curious too. The Bible says we are not restricted by dietary laws or menu . Personally, I LOVE animals....they taste so good.
I'm what I guess is a flexitarian, left to fish and chicken when I start to fade in the anemic sense of the word. Although red meat would probably be better than the bean/rice combo for a stable protein, sometimes I lapse to fish or chicken to be able to have a little 'boost.' But 85%+ of my meals both at home and at restaurants are veggies only, barring that 15% need to keep from falling face down. And it's entirely brain/images/cruelty driven.
And that disgusting description, which has coursed through my head while eating meat many long years ago, helps me stay clear of meat. Although I do feel these pangs now and then which are almost carnal like I want to run out and chew on a burger. I think that's the low iron count talking though.
I'm a flexitarian now as well although I only eat fish and not chicken. I'm one for moral reasons and if there was a way to 'grow meat' I'd be worried about the health implications then and would stay one for those reasons for that kind of meat. Sounds to creepy for me..eating grown meat would take a lot of chemical alteration of some sort I'd imagine.
Impossible to find any meaningful average of course, but assuming 2 acres to graze a cow, 600 lbs. of useable meat from a market ready steer, an average of 1280 calories per pound of meat, 180 bushels of corn per acre and about 7300 btu's per bushel, you can produce roughly three times more calories with with corn on the same acreage.
Not really that meaningful, but I retract my statement under the conditions listed above.
I've heard that argument so many times before that I could probably recite it by heart. It is a half-truth at best. It is NOT possible to grow row crops on a lot of land where cattle can graze with ease. Not only is operating machinery dangerous on slopes, but row crops would SERIOUSLY increase erosion.
You can tell pretty easily around here where cotton (a row crop) has been grown, because the land has had to be terraced to keep it from sliding into the streams. Much of it cannot be effectively terraced, and yet cattle and goats can thrive on it.
Further, if you can successfully and economically grow corn (to make more high fructose corn syrup which is fueling the fat epidemic and bringing up the cost of gasoline) on rocky hillsides, like those in Vermont where I grew up, bucolic hills where the city dwellers from the entire northeast came to gaze in appreciation at "real" farms, please inform the world.
Further yet, if you can grow corn without irrigation in the dry areas where only scrub grows, then MAYBE the argument will, like that magical land, find some way to hold water.
Corn depletes the soil quickly. Know what the cure for that was in the old days? Graze cattle on it for a year or two and let them poop on it and replenish the soil. The choices to do that today seem to be soybeans or chemical fertilizer.
You may think this is a corny ending, but please put that energy out argument for vegans in the manure pile where it belongs.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by harry chickpea
I've heard that argument so many times before that I could probably recite it by heart. It is a half-truth at best. It is NOT possible to grow row crops on a lot of land where cattle can graze with ease. Not only is operating machinery dangerous on slopes, but row crops would SERIOUSLY increase erosion.
You can tell pretty easily around here where cotton (a row crop) has been grown, because the land has had to be terraced to keep it from sliding into the streams. Much of it cannot be effectively terraced, and yet cattle and goats can thrive on it.
Further, if you can successfully and economically grow corn (to make more high fructose corn syrup which is fueling the fat epidemic and bringing up the cost of gasoline) on rocky hillsides, like those in Vermont where I grew up, bucolic hills where the city dwellers from the entire northeast came to gaze in appreciation at "real" farms, please inform the world.
Further yet, if you can grow corn without irrigation in the dry areas where only scrub grows, then MAYBE the argument will, like that magical land, find some way to hold water.
Corn depletes the soil quickly. Know what the cure for that was in the old days? Graze cattle on it for a year or two and let them poop on it and replenish the soil. The choices to do that today seem to be soybeans or chemical fertilizer.
You may think this is a corny ending, but please put that energy out argument for vegans in the manure pile where it belongs.
I grew up spending my summers working about 250 head on land that wouldn't grow anything else with the possible exception of feral pigs, milo and cypress. I know that belongs in the manure pile, but I couldn't prove it with numbers in 15 minutes.
Sounds to creepy for me..eating grown meat would take a lot of chemical alteration of some sort I'd imagine.
Not really...as previously mentioned, new sheets of human skin can be grown for skin grafts. We've been able to do that for decades now, in fact. If there was any dangerous 'chemical alteration' required to do so, don't you think people would be screaming about how dangerous skin grafts are?
Again, this is all just hypothetical musing anyway. The whole question presupposes that it's possible to do so, and that the product is real meat that looks, tastes, and feels like meat grown on an animal.
Not really...as previously mentioned, new sheets of human skin can be grown for skin grafts. We've been able to do that for decades now, in fact. If there was any dangerous 'chemical alteration' required to do so, don't you think people would be screaming about how dangerous skin grafts are?
Again, this is all just hypothetical musing anyway. The whole question presupposes that it's possible to do so, and that the product is real meat that looks, tastes, and feels like meat grown on an animal.
one is a nessasary risk to some degree and the other is not though
one is a nessasary risk to some degree and the other is not though
But you're making assumptions that are baseless. There is no evidence to say that growing cultured meat in a lab would require anything that was dangerous to humans. I'm not a real fan of wikipedia, but the faceless masses seem to flock to it as a primary source, so here you go:
Test Tube says enough for me! lol I looked up these 'nutrient solutions' they use and the word synthetic came up which to me implies alteration because it's not natural don't you think?
MB - I believe the nutrient solution just feeds the flesh - like formula for a baby or a feeding tube for the sick and so on.
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