The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith

Ludi Ludi wrote:
It might be safe to hunt them with bow and arrow. 

Thought of that... but concerned about not killing the deer with the first shot and have it end up in someone else's yard (one acre lots makes that quite likely).

Kathleen

Kathleen Sanderson wrote:
So many get hit and killed that I'm amazed that the population stays pretty stable.  What a horrid waste of meat....

Get some pigs and start a highway cleanup business! No need for the meat to go to waste.....

velacreations wrote:
Get some pigs and start a highway cleanup business! No need for the meat to go to waste.....

Unfortunately, in Oregon it's against the law to touch road-killed animals.  I wish that it was required to salvage the meat, instead, like in Alaska and several other states, but it's pretty backwards here.

Kathleen

Unfortunately, in Oregon it's against the law to touch road-killed animals.  I wish that it was required to salvage the meat, instead, like in Alaska and several other states, but it's pretty backwards here.

What do they do with them? Landfills?

christhamrin wrote:
sure we can be part of the balancing process, but we are nearly the whole part of the imbalancing process!

Right you are.  All the more need to properly manage wildlife.  We have a Dept. of Environmental Conservation that has just been decimated by layoffs and budget cuts.  Going to be a tough situation here in the coming years.

Kathleen Sanderson wrote:
The deer are a serious problem here (mule deer).  I'm practically having to fortify my stack of alfalfa hay to keep them out.  Can't afford to buy hay for a herd of twenty or so deer, who will each eat more than one of my goats.  There are people out here who feed them, or so I've been told, which I think is absolutely stupid.  The deer are safe, though, because the houses are too close together to hunt here.  Well, they are safe except out on the road.  So many get hit and killed that I'm amazed that the population stays pretty stable.  What a horrid waste of meat....

Kathleen

Hi Kathleen,

In NY, feeding deer was outlawed about 7 years ago due to a disease similar to mad cow, if I remember correctly.  Deer congregating over a feed pile or mechanical feeder were though to share the disease more easily.   

We've had many deer/car accidents over the years during the rut.  Got a free deer like that from someone colliding with one right in front of me on the road behind my house.  No wasted meat on that one.  Got another wen a State trooper shot one on my brothers lawn that was hit by a car.  I have no problem with fresh roadkill.

Man and beast in close proximity spells disaster in one form or another.  The key is to limit personal interaction with each other, provide woodlands for shelter and food, and manage overpopulation.  Easier said than done.


Al

velacreations wrote:
The number one thing folks have done in favor of deer overpopulation was the mass killing of their natural predators.  Something needs to fill that role, and if we can't have puma and wolves running around, we need to cull the populations.

Hi Velacreations,  could be they are catching on in our state of NY.  They have been introducing Puma for quite a while on the sly.

My son saw a roadkill Puma on the highway and I thought he was crazy.  I reported it to an internet publication because they were interested in sightings.  They sent a letter to the state which in turn denied there are cougars in NY state.  A couple years later a friend of mine sent me some photos of a Puma on a woman's deck at night, taken through the patio door.  The publication forwarded the pics to the state and the s**t hit the fan.  The state admitted releasing them as predators because this was their natural range, but no one had been able to supply good photos, so the plausible deniability continued for years.  They said they did not want to cause a panic by publically announcing releases.

As I remember, they sent me a very nice letter of appreciation, and all the internet sighting blogs and forums pretty much dried up after that.  That was in 2004.

velacreations wrote:
What do they do with them? Landfills?

Unless they are right in town (which does happen) they lay alongside the road until there's nothing left but hair and bones, and then eventually even that disappears (a year or so later).

Kathleen

OK, Kathleen, don't tattle on me--I threw a roadkill skunk in the woods because I got tired of steering around it, oops

very interesting thread!

I like the permaculture model of livestock as part of a whole cycle of life--just like in the wild. Years ago MILLIONS of buffalo did their thing on the Plains, and since their removal the Plains have suffered in health. Animals are part of the way the land works, plain and simple. Cattle can be managed to simulate buffalo(or other grazing wildlife) interaction with the land. The Dustbowl happened because of extreme tilling AND no buffalo.

On the other side, what humans have learned to make with milk and butter, smoked meats, sausages, rice n sauce, etc etc etc is absolutely exquisite. That creativity is just way cool--and personally I think that creativity is part of the "answer".

Of course I will always savor the morning cold wild huckleberry just picked, or gulping water out of a stream too.

Well, if they are introducing puma, then sooner or later, things will balance out.  NY has quite a few hunger people, though, so it wouldn't be a bad idea to harvest that meat, turn a problem into a solution, ya know.

As far as just leaving carcasses on the side of the road, that is downright stupid.  Now, you have lots of scavengers near the road, waiting to get hit by a car.  At least pull it 50 feet from the highway....

It's amazing that we have laws preventing the use of "waste"

We have tons of deer here and are starting to get some Puma back, but unfortunately the state still traps for "pest predators." 

yeah, the pest predator thing annoys me, I live in Texas for quite some time, and they are big on that.

But, the other side of the coin is that you can become a predator as well!

Well, if they are introducing puma, then sooner or later, things will balance out.  NY has quite a few [s]hunger[/s] too many people, though, so it wouldn't be a bad idea to have pumas harvest that meat, turn a problem into a solution, ya know.

thanks rbrgs!

But we didn't solve the issue of hungry people..... just hungry pumas!

Travis Philp wrote:
Christhamrin, in answer to your question above:

The vegan button: I believe that if you take into account the ground water, salting of the earth, soil compaction, erosion, and air pollution caused by animal husbandry, that a totally homegrown vegan food supply, grown using only plant materials, is the most ethical and humane. In most cases, animals also use more nutrients than they yield.

I think this is comparing apples to oranges a bit.  An omnivorous diet and animal husbandry in forms that have such side effects are not necessarily the same.  If you have animals existing at all, there will be some amount of the natural effects of them existing.  How do you feel that it is more humane and ethical to eradicate the animals rather than responsibly co-existing with them?  This is the part that really bugs me about a lot of vegan arguments - they seem to focus on a world full of tons of plant life and humans, with hardly any animal life.  I definitely feel that is far more ethical/humane, regardless of what you choose to eat, to coexist with plants *AND* animals.

So as long as that is done, I think there is no ethical difference between veganism and omnivorism.

Joel Hollingsworth wrote:

Her basic premise is that a vegan diet is very closely tied to strictly-controlled, topsoil-burning, fossil-dependent farming; that producing enough food for a vegan population means excluding (exterminating?) a forestful or prarieful of creatures from every kingdom and maintaining a monoculture where the only survivable niche for an animal is shaped like an operator of heavy machinery.

I haven't read through the four pages, however I felt like I would add this in.

Yes, a standard cooked vegan diet is very hazardous to the earth, as mentioned above. However, a standard american diet is no better for the land, as it takes 7lbs of grains to raise 1lb of beef. They are both destroying are land, tremendously.

Now if you were to take the approach of a food forest producing ones food, whether or not it was vegetarian, vegan, or cooked, this would not be the issue. Especially for one who consumes a diet predominately of fruit (Low Fat Raw Vegan). The majority of a LFRV (in sub/tropics) calories would come from sweet tree fruits, such as mangoes, lychees, bananas, mamey, papaya and more. This is where stacking could really help.

Casey Allen Shobe ("Raptelan") wrote:
How do you feel that it is more humane and ethical to eradicate the animals rather than responsibly co-existing with them?  This is the part that really bugs me about a lot of vegan arguments - they seem to focus on a world full of tons of plant life and humans, with hardly any animal life.  I definitely feel that is far more ethical/humane, regardless of what you choose to eat, to coexist with plants *AND* animals.

good question.  i think it would be strange for an ethical vegan to eradicate animals on their land.  i dont even like it when people press down on the groundhog burrows.

not sure what you mean when you say vegan arguments do not focus on animal life.  i'd say 1) they do whether explictly or not by the nature of being vegan arguments & 2) its not fair to expect arguments in favor of ethical veganism to focus on much in the way of interactions between plants, animal, fungal and insect life in nature.  but i *do* think it ought to be discussed. 

Casey Allen Shobe ("Raptelan") wrote:
This is the part that really bugs me about a lot of vegan arguments - they seem to focus on a world full of tons of plant life and humans, with hardly any animal life.  I definitely feel that is far more ethical/humane, regardless of what you choose to eat, to coexist with plants *AND* animals.

So as long as that is done, I think there is no ethical difference between veganism and omnivorism.

I feel as if that is a pretty broad statement. I know plenty of vegans, including myself, that love to live around animals. I have four domestic turkey friends on my land, that I do not use for meat or eggs. I also have plans for more animals, as they are great to be surrounded by and extremely beneficial for myself, and them.

A vegan not wanting to abuse an animal and use them for inhumane labor, is a lot different than an omnivore going to mcdonalds, or even raising they're animal and slaughtering them.

I am curious, How many farmers here build a personal relation ship on a first named basis with there slaughter animals?

I have a great regard for the animals I raise to eat.  I generally don't name them if I'm going to eat them, but I know people who do name their food animals.  A friend of mine had a pig named "Cappy"( for "Capitalist Pig.")  Cappy had a really great life for a couple of years.  My food animals receive the same care as my pet animals, except they don't get to come inside the house.

Jason wrote:
it takes 7lbs of grains to raise 1lb of beef. They are both destroying are land, tremendously.

The problem is feeding the grain to a ruminant.  Stop that.

If you raise that beef on pasture in a paddock shift system, it actually heals the land. 

I find it interesting how books can express broad underlying cultural sentament.I too was vegan for 7 yrs until my health failed after I tried going local(very long story).Anyway,roadkill is the monkeywrench in the debate because it would just go to waste otherwise.I believe anamism is a great `solution`in that it is all about quality of relationship with all beings(living or not)rather than living out rigid ideology.
True,historicaly temperate peoples were not vegan,but practices like permaculture have spread new plant genetics around the world giving people more dietary options so its quite possible that those people in the future who have the body types for being vegan will be able to survive well as such.I think its currently a mistake to say being a temperate vegan is impossible.

paul wheaton wrote:
The problem is feeding the grain to a ruminant.   Stop that.

If you raise that beef on pasture in a paddock shift system, it actually heals the land. 

its already been said, but seems like a lot of this thread is people pointing out that either meat or just non meat food grown sustainably (or regeneratively or whatever) is ecologically and/or ethically superior to just non meat or meat grown in the industrial agriculture system.  there is a shifting back and forth between ideally grown food and food industrially grown.  i don't think this is an official logical fallacy that i can remember, but its not a very good argument no matter whose side you are on.

i don't think it is controversial to say beef on pasture in a paddock shift system is better than beef from the grocery store.

i don't think it is controversial to say kale from your garden, hazelnuts from your food forest, a box from your csa etc is better than the grocery store.

if you are an omnivore you eat beef (and/or other meats) and vegetables, grains, nuts etc.  if you are vegan you won't be eating meat.  if you are good at convincing people of changing their dietary habits and you have ecologically sounder ones then it is great if you can get people to eat more like you.

Jason wrote:
I am curious, How many farmers here build a personal relation ship on a first named basis with there slaughter animals?

I don't raise my own animals yet, but I would certainly do this.  I would prefer to have a good relationship with my animals, and be a good friend/steward to them while they are alive to try to help them live the best life possible.  Raising an animal whether as a pet or for slaughter is taking on a lot of responsibility, just like having a child, and honestly I think much harder sometimes as we as humans don't necessarily know what is ideal for the animal.  So I think it's actually an easier thing all around to hunt animals which have gotten to live life on their own terms instead, however this doesn't seem sustainable for a large population as we've seriously disbalanced and in some cases eliminated native species through  this practice.  So I think the most ideal is raising whatever animals we wish to eat with the same amount of respect as we believe should be used for plant life - namely being careful to ensure that organic, sustainable, and humane practices are used; that the life is not made much worse than nature would provide, etc.

paul wheaton wrote:
The problem is feeding the grain to a ruminant.   Stop that.

If you raise that beef on pasture in a paddock shift system, it actually heals the land. 

Here here!  BTW Paul, I really enjoyed the depth of thought you put into paddocks versus other systems for raising chickens and hope to employ that approach when I get some this coming spring.

christhamrin wrote:
i think it would be strange for an ethical vegan to eradicate animals on their land.

I would find that unusual myself.  I don't think the problem is so much intentional eradication, but reducing via the practice of making the habitat less appropriate.

not sure what you mean when you say vegan arguments do not focus on animal life.

I mean that common vegan arguments focus on how efficiently land can be used, most often by industrial agriculture means.  The ideal growing environment is argued to be one that focuses exclusively on plant life for human consumption.  I find it bizarre than many vegans I've met will not use honey yet have no problem eating conventionally-grown fruits and vegetable that have been sprayed with pesticides.  Perhaps I should use a more specific term for this - how about "supermarket vegans" as opposed to making a blanket statement about vegans in general.  One supermarket vegan friend of mine, upon hearing that I was no longer choosing to remain vegan, started crying and said it was personally insulting to her for me to be willing to consume their "friends", yet failed to see the problem with heavy farm machinery and plowing practices killing a lot of ground life (everything from worms to rodents).  Perhaps it is a little better that those lives were able to live unmolested by human interference for a while rather than being factory-raised, but animal life is still being killed in the production of most vegan human food.

A permaculture vegan is a whole different ball of wax.  In theory, one could be vegan but allow and encourage animals to live in the same space while managing to not have so much excess animal life that their crops became decimated.  It should certainly be possible and would definitely be respectful, but might be harder to attain balance with.

when making any kind of argument you need to know who your audience is.  when an argument for veganism is made the audience generally is not people who practice permaculture!  personally i wouldn't presume to tell fukouka or sepp holzer or whoever to go vegan (& actually i try not to tell anyone to do anything).

btw w/in the vegan community there is plenty of dialogue about the need to purchase organic foods etc for the reasons you mention.

paul wheaton wrote:
The problem is feeding the grain to a ruminant.   Stop that.

If you raise that beef on pasture in a paddock shift system, it actually heals the land. 

The whole "7 pounds of grain to a pound of beef"  is probably my favorite vegan myth.  Cattle are fed grain in a feedlot however, most cattle spend only a small fraction of their lives on grain.  In most cases cattle are on grass for most of their lives and only spend 60 to 90 days on grain.  The gain from grain is almost 100% calories.  They have already built bone and gut and skin and hair.  The gain is all meat and fat.  A few cents worth of grain produces several dollars worth of meat.  Pretty sweet deal.

Jason wrote:I am curious, How many farmers here build a personal relation ship on a first named basis with there slaughter animals?

I do. I know my animals. The breeders all have names. Some of the other animals have names. We slaughter pigs weekly for sales to local stores, restaurants and individuals. I know all of my animals, both the over 300 pastured pigs as well as the approximately 100 chickens, ducks, geese, sheep, dogs, etc.

Vegetarian/Vegan diets are incomplete in our area without the addition of supplements from far distant sources of foods. Veg proponents also ignore the literally billions of animals that are killed through large scale farming to produce the veggies, grains and fruit they want.

Omnivore diets are ideal for our northern climate. Meat is an excellent way to store summer sunshine through our long cold winters. Grazing animals are an excellent way to utilize steep terrain like our mountain pastures where tilling and cropping are not good options. We are able to do this without buying in grain and the like - pigs are excellent foragers and make beautiful use of excess dairy such as whey, cheese trim and the like.

Cheers

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
Pastured Pigs, Sheep & Kids
in the mountains of Vermont
Read about our on-farm butcher shop project:
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/butchershop
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/csa

Tinknal wrote:
The whole "7 pounds of grain to a pound of beef"  is probably my favorite vegan myth.  Cattle are fed grain in a feedlot however, most cattle spend only a small fraction of their lives on grain.  In most cases cattle are on grass for most of their lives and only spend 60 to 90 days on grain.  The gain from grain is almost 100% calories.  They have already built bone and gut and skin and hair.  The gain is all meat and fat.  A few cents worth of grain produces several dollars worth of meat.  Pretty sweet deal.

then whats so great about grassfed beef?

All of my animals have names.  I pride myself in giving them a very happy existence with us.

Happy animals = better meat

christhamrin wrote:then whats so great about grassfed beef?

Ideally the "grass-fed" really means pastured so the animals are out spreading their valuable manure on the pastures, able to enjoy the fresh air and sunshine and all that good stuff. In the process they also improve the pastures, the soils and sequester carbon. All good things too.

Then there is the fact that our pasturing uses almost no petroleum inputs, no herbicides, no pesticides, etc. It is sustainable.

We pasture pigs, sheep, chickens, ducks and geese. It works.

Cheers

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
Pastured Pigs, Sheep & Kids
in the mountains of Vermont
Read about our on-farm butcher shop project:
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/butchershop
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/csa

velacreations wrote:
All of my animals have names.  I pride myself in giving them a very happy existence with us.

Happy animals = better meat

Some people seem to think you should not have regard for your food animals, it seems as if these people think the animals will "feel betrayed" when you kill them.  Personally I don't think this is true, or why it might be better to disregard the animal if you plan to eat them.  It makes no sense to me.   

Ludi, I actually think it is a guilt thing.  Some people think if they become attached, then they will feel guilty when it comes time to butcher.  The solution is not removing attachment, but reviewing their perspective of butchering, death, and relationships.

I don't feel guilt when I butcher, I feel gratitude.

Yes, I agree, vela.  I think a relationship with the living world in which we feel part of it and our attachment and gratitude for what other living things give us, is more appropriate than guilt.  Death is part of life; to pretend things don't have to die for us to live is, I think, ignoring reality. 

christhamrin wrote:
then whats so great about grassfed beef?

I always thought that one of the main appeals of grass fed beef was that animal was less likely to have been given antibiotics.

Another benefit of grass-fed rather than feed-lot or factory farm meat is that the fatty acid composition is different.  I'm at work and going off the top of my head here, but I think grass-fed has more omega-3 fatty acids and grain-fed has more omega 6.  You need both, but in the proper balance, and the grain-fed animals are out of balance.  This makes sense to me, because the animals' own health will suffer if they are on the feedlot diet for very long.

Kathleen

Kathleen Sanderson wrote:Another benefit of grass-fed rather than feed-lot or factory farm meat is that the fatty acid composition is different.  I'm at work and going off the top of my head here, but I think grass-fed has more omega-3 fatty acids and grain-fed has more omega 6.

Correct. Grass fed has more of the heart healthy Omega-3 Fatty Acids and other things. These come from eating the chlorophyl in the grasses, legumes, etc.

Live healthier - Eat vegetarians.

Warren David wrote:
I always thought that one of the main appeals of grass fed beef was that animal was less likely to have been given antibiotics.

I raise my own beef.  If you raise your own you get to control what they get and don't get.  My cattle get free feed grass or hay their whole lives, and varying amounts of grain.  I wouldn't feed grain all the time but for the fact that I get a pickup load of bread every two weeks and have to feed it up.

pubwvj wrote:
Correct. Grass fed has more of the heart healthy Omega-3 Fatty Acids and other things. These come from eating the chlorophyl in the grasses, legumes, etc.

Live healthier - Eat vegetarians.

I believe christhamrin's rhetorical question concerned the statement about feedlot cattle being grass-fed until they're finished on grain.

I guess that the main point of all of this for me is that I am an omnivore.  Biologically I am an omnivorous and the only naturally available source of the vitamin B12 I need  is meat.  My religious beliefs support the eating of meat, and ethically and morally I am comfortable eating meat.  I like eating meat.

(please pass the gravy)