What If The World Went Vegetarian?

[The Turbanator]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANUoAdXfA60

[miniboes]

I like the comparison to Africa. That should help people realize the scale of the sustainability issue with animal agriculture. I'm pretty confident the arguments about water and climate change are factual. The argument that the lack of cheap byproducts might increase land use might be sort of true, but the increase would absolutely pale in comparison to the decrease in land used mentioned earlier (Africa!). Job loss is a valid argument, but I am of the opinion that mass unemployment in the future is inevitable due to AI. I think we should therefore be looking for a way to have a viable society where only a small portion of people work anyway.

I recall them being rather biased against veg*nism in the past, so this certainly is an improvement. It's disappointing that they do not mention that dairy and eggs have the same downsides as meat.

[brimstoneSalad]

I recall them being rather biased against veg*nism in the past, so this certainly is an improvement.

Right? I thought this was going to be absolutely horrible.

The job loss thing is also a poor argument, because the vast majority of meat consumption in the West comes from a very small number of sources, and the most jobs animal agriculture provides are in slaughterhouses and rendering, which are terrible jobs. Vegetables and fruits require similar low skill labor, but are much less terrible jobs by far than working in a slaughterhouse.
In terms of replacing the higher end jobs, mock meat production is an industry in itself, and there are a lot of great value added products that can be manufactured from plants through processing (including some very simple processing that's viable in the third world, like making tempeh).

[miniboes]

I recall them being rather biased against veg*nism in the past, so this certainly is an improvement.

Right? I thought this was going to be absolutely horrible.

I sure can't blame you.

The job loss thing is also a poor argument, because the vast majority of meat consumption in the West comes from a very small number of sources, and the most jobs animal agriculture provides are in slaughterhouses and rendering, which are terrible jobs. Vegetables and fruits require similar low skill labor, but are much less terrible jobs by far than working in a slaughterhouse.
In terms of replacing the higher end jobs, mock meat production is an industry in itself, and there are a lot of great value added products that can be manufactured from plants through processing (including some very simple processing that's viable in the third world, like making tempeh).

Those are good points. They say "It's a full-time job for more than 1 billion people, most of whom are small-scale farmers." Any idea of how accurate this is? I guess in developing countries this could be true, but for richer nations surely the majority work in factory farms?

[brimstoneSalad]

They say "It's a full-time job for more than 1 billion people, most of whom are small-scale farmers." Any idea of how accurate this is? I guess in developing countries this could be true, but for richer nations surely the majority work in factory farms?

Like you said, mostly goats in the third world. Animal agriculture is not important to farmers in the first world; aside from the big companies, most human or family farmers who keep animals use it only as supplementary income, and many seem to be retired. I went into this in another thread.

https://theveganatheist.com/forum/viewt ... red#p17867