Not actually a case for meat eating

From kottke.org - The case for meat eating: "
From the Guardian, a review of a book called Meat: A Benign Extravagance by Simon Fairlie. In it, Fairlie argues that meat production isn't actually that inefficient when done properly and veganism as an ethical response leaves something to be desired.

But these idiocies, Fairlie shows, are not arguments against all meat eating, but arguments against the current farming model. He demonstrates that we've been using the wrong comparison to judge the efficiency of meat production. Instead of citing a simple conversion rate of feed into meat, we should be comparing the amount of land required to grow meat with the land needed to grow plant products of the same nutritional value to humans. The results are radically different.
If pigs are fed on residues and waste, and cattle on straw, stovers and grass from fallows and rangelands -- food for which humans don't compete -- meat becomes a very efficient means of food production. Even though it is tilted by the profligate use of grain in rich countries, the global average conversion ratio of useful plant food to useful meat is not the 5:1 or 10:1 cited by almost everyone, but less than 2:1. If we stopped feeding edible grain to animals, we could still produce around half the current global meat supply with no loss to human nutrition: in fact it's a significant net gain."

None of the educated veg*ns (meaning educated about vegetarianism, not just educated in general) claim not to eat meat because it's inefficient; almost all claim that the system of meat production, the way it's done now, in North America, by many producers, is immoral. And it is.

It's completely true that a cow is extremely efficient at turning non-farmable grassland into protein, and chickens are great at turning insects into eggs. It's just that very few chickens and cows are actually fed by letting them run around eating grass and insects, and what they are fed is gross, and what they produce is gross, and it's all morally despicable to begin with.

So. If we dismantled the subsidized/corporatized agricultural system, started feeding people off of ground that can grow people food (without extensive irrigation etc., but using GMOs) and starting feeding animals off of ground that can grow animal food, and let food prices return to an sustainable levels (yes, this means most people in most of the world will be paying more for food than they do currently, especially meat)... then you know what? I'd eat meat again. (In small amounts)

But I don't see that happening any time soon, do you? And until then, meat is not "benign," it's disgusting. kk?


*footnote: again, most veg*ns have a whole host of reasons, one of them being distaste for current meat-producing systems.