Message no. 1

From:	David Buehrer <dbuehrer@******.CARL.ORG>
Subject:	Re: [OT] Got Beef?
Date:	Thu, 21 Jan 1999 12:17:14 -0700

For the mere cost of a Thaum, Sommers wrote:

/ At 09:47 AM 1/21/99 , you wrote:
/ >It's not the ammount of space that a cow takes up that creates the
/ >inefficiency, it's the ammount of space and energy required to grow the
/ >grain to feed the cow that creates the inefficiency.
/
/ But you also have to factor other considerations into those equations to
/ determine efficiencies. Almost all food is shipped by truck or train, so
/ that volume, not weight is a consideration. Meat is generally more dense
/ that any other food, so for the same amount of volume in a truck you get
/ more mass of food. There is also more nutritional benefits, such as
/ calories etc in meat than in most grains and vegetables.
/
/ Last year a British group did a study to determine how much it cost it
/ terms of energy and cash to bring the same amount, nutritionally, of both
/ meat and grain/vegetables. They were very surprised to learn it was almost
/ exactly the same, not the much higher figures that most people thought
/ would be required for meat. Turns out that because most veggy things are
/ much more cyclic that meat in terms of growing, shiiping costs are a lot
/ higher than they would be for meat.

Ah, I just figured out why my previous post could've caused confusion. I
used the word "energy" when I shouldn't have.

The arguement of vegetarians against meat is that the production of
meat is an inefficient use of *resources*.

Growing grain/vegetables requires sunlight (free) land, water, some
fertilizer, a few people (if you have access to modern farm technology)
and very little petroleum energy (fuel for machines at harvest, and
fuel for machines at planting time, plus a few other uses of
machines). Packaging grain/vegatibles is very efficient and requires
few people, respective of the ammount of food packaged.

Producing meat requires grain and all the resources that grain
requires. Whereas meat production requires fewer machines to tend the
animals, it is very labor intensive, especially at slaughter time, no
matter what your technological level. And all that labor adds
significantly to the resources required when you add in their
transportation and living needs. Producing grain/vegetables requires
*much* fewer people.

-David B.
--
"Earn what you have been given."
--
email: dbuehrer@******.carl.org
http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/1068/homepage.htm