Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to a group of ageing rockers, green organisations, Vegan food sellers and mostly B-grade actors, going Vegan will not only save the planet from climate change, it will also reduce the risk of future pandemics like Covid-19.
2021 IS THE YEAR FOR POSITIVE CHANGE –
TOGETHER WE CAN BUILD A BETTER FUTURE2020 has been an unforgettable year, with our attention divided between fears over coronavirus and anxiety over climate change.What has become increasingly obvious is that these two threats have something in common; both are heavily linked to our consumption of animal products.
Animal agriculture is responsible for an estimated 14.5 percent of all human-generated greenhouse gas emissions. Oxford University researchers found that almost every animal product creates far more emissions than almost every plant product. Quite simply, we cannot tackle climate change while we farm and eat animals on an industrial scale.
Pandemic experts warn that because of overcrowded, squalid conditions, factory farms – especially chicken farms – are breeding grounds for the next global pandemic.1 Already these farms have given us H1N1 (swine flu) and H5N1 (avian flu), the latter having a 60 percent mortality rate.2
More than one billion tonnes of food must be grown to feed the billions of animals we farm3 – far more than is needed if people were to eat plants. That farmland has to come from somewhere, and all too often it is taken from the wild.
In recent years, more than 80 percent of deforestation in Brazil was to graze farmed animals,4 and still more forests are destroyed to make way to grow crops to feed animals on farms around the world. Deforestation is serious for lots of reasons. It pushes wild species to extinction. It displaces indigenous peoples. It drives climate change. And it brings us in ever closer contact with wild animals and any viruses they may harbour, raising the risk of another pandemic.
Catastrophic climate breakdown and global pandemics could not be more serious, but they are not inevitable. If we act now, the future can be better. So, let’s go into 2021 with positivity and a determination to do all we can to protect our planet, its wild spaces and the health and wellbeing of all its inhabitants. To do that, we must change our diets.
Today, we are urging everyone to help build a better future by signing up to try vegan this January with Veganuary. Together, we can create a world that is kinder and safer for all.
Read more: https://veganuary.com/letter/
Signatories include Paul McCartney, Greenpeace, Quorn, Jane Goodall and Friends of the Earth.
Interestingly Greta Thunberg’s signature does not appear on the list. Perhaps someone forgot to ask her.
So raising animals is bad, and deforestation for crops that feed animals is bad, but it is also good if we eat more vegetables? Where are we growing this extra vegetables?
In between the wind turbines, under the photovoltaic panels, away from the abortion fields with planned birds, bats, and other vegan matter.
If we eat more vegetable matter, perhaps future generations will be stunted in growth and then we can fit more people on the world? Our Prime Minister Justdumb Trudeau has promised to import more people to make up for the Canadians who have lost hope and refuse to have kids. Export of people has become a major industry for some countries, just like in the heyday of slavery. Back then industry wanted big strong farm workers but now tiny little vegetarians with nimble fingers will do very nicely. And preferably they come from countries with extreme class systems so they know their place and wear stupid masks when they are told and stay inside their 200 sq ft apartments until they are needed.
If we eat more vegetables large portions of which the body can process because it’s fibre there is an inevitable increase in one thing 🙂
should be “can’t” not can sorry
I once heard a lovely discussion of the raw food fad where the proponent was arguing that eating raw food was good because it caused weight loss. The opponent pointed out that in no other time would reduced digestibility be considered an advantage. Vegetarianism is just a childish avoidance of the issue. If the stars and starlets think that there are too many people in the world, just be honest about and then tell us which ones get to stay and which ones have to go. If they think that energy saved from being vegetarian won’t go into producing more people then whatever magic will bring that about would work just fine without vegetarianism.
The Optimum Trust aka Population Matters aka David Attenborough and his ilk have already done that
I’ve posted the link to the spreadsheet on many occasions
<I> If the stars and starlets think that there are too many people in the world, </I>
Then they should lead they way by going first.
Start with Thymol face the actual pandemy
Animals are CARBON NEUTRAL
They cannot put out more “carbon” than they take in.
Wood burning gets the CO2 neutral stamp of AGW zealot approval
So should cows, sheep etc etc.
They are all part of the short term CARBON CYCLE.
Please don’t confuse the issue with your logic.
Here is a great graphic from The Saltbush Club and Clexit.
https://saltbushclub.com/2020/12/10/fake-meat/
Why would anyone chose fake meat over the real thing?
Cow’s etc actually ENHANCE the biosphere.
They produce from land that could not grow viable domestic crops
https://notrickszone.com/2020/12/15/uc-davis-prof-dismisses-climate-doom-by-livestock-cows-lead-to-greater-food-yield-carbon-sequestration/
“ruminants in fact enhance global food production and sequester carbon.”
“arable land needs to be fertilized, and that half of this fertilizer is organic manure coming from the ruminants on the marginal land.”
fred250,
Sounds similar to Allan Savory’s theory for reversing desertification; ruminant hoofs break up the soil and allow their manure to penetrate and enrich it for greater plant growth.
More cattle grazing in Commifornia might also help slow the spread of grass fires by keeping the fuel cropped too low to allow rapid spread, but that would take honesty and common sense which are quickly vanishing in the land of fruits and nuts!
We ought to be paying farmers to raise more cows.
And sorry Paul, much as I enjoy all the wonderful music you have produced during your life time… (listening to some now, as it happens)
…that DOES NOT mean I need to take your advice on diet or climate.!
He hasn’t made any wonderful music since 1972. His brain is dead along with all the other idiot signatories. Maybe if they ate meat the protein would have kept their brains functioning.
Their diet lacks not only animal protein, but animal fat, an essential nutrient for human beings.
Was wondering what to have for dinner. Think I’ll have a nice thick medium rare delmonico, just dripping with blood!
And good marbleing, (the fat in the meat that enhances the flavor) also don’t forget the beer of your choice.
Beer with steak! Aaaack! Heathen! Heretic!
Beer is for burgers or an aperitif, you need a nice big red wine for that thick, juicy steak! Best prime rib I ever had was with a bottle of 1974 Chateau Margaux!
Lucky so and so. The cheapest 1974 Chateau Margaux I can find is $440 per bottle plus taxes!
StephenP,
It was in 1986, when the wine was in its prime and much more affordable. I had bought it and a few other Bordeaux for special occasions. The Margaux was and is my favorite!
Vegans should be encouraged to forage for and feast upon all kinds of mushrooms and other natural fungi.
There should also be a special award for people who eat wild mushrooms to lower CO2 emissions.
I think there might even be one already – a Darwin award?
They get this award by eating wild mushrooms, then dying, which removes the CO2 they would have continued emitting had they not eaten said mushrooms.
That’s the problem they’ve had too many magic mushrooms in the past & its addled their brains!!
“There should also be a special award for people
who eat wild mushrooms to lower CO2 emissions.”
There is. It’s called the Darwin Award.
Sorry. I should have read your full post before I reacted to it
🙂
Cattle are grown on land that is unsuitable for farming.
If we stop hunting, then game animals will quickly become over crowded and then sick and diseased animals will start wandering into cities looking for food.
They’re doing that already. I get photos in e-mail from people who want to know how to get the raccoons and skunks and deer out of their yards. (Stop feeding them!!!!)
Didn’t we kill off all the mega fauna 100,000 yrs ago and the millions of buffalo in the 1800s just so we could replace them with domestic animals to eat? Probably there is little diff in the CO2/CH4 production before and now. Its the veggies that have taken over the natural world. Veggies alone do reduce longevity which the Totality probably like. Anyway, I’m not up for advice from the illiterati.
I believe there are thousands of aborted foetuses currently going to waste.
Just going to cause the spread of Vegannaire’s disease.
I thought we were omnivores. We need to eat a little bit of everything. The problem with food is we just too damn much too damn often, which leads to all the inflammation and diseases. Our evolutionary and social progression suggests we ate far less and survived just fine. The body is a very efficient energy engine.
About a year ago the only body of knowledge more f-ed up than climate was nutritional knowledge. Now they all are. Sad that this has happened. Due to the nature of my career I have to have a healthy and deep knowledge of a diversity of subjects and it is getting harder even for me to actually know things, trust the studies that are produced and make rational decisions. I cannot imagine what it is like for a normal garden variety homo sapien who does not even realize that subconsciously its brain/body is doing calculus just to keep it walking upright.
FOLLOW THE SCIENCE!
Except when it comes to nutrition (B12 from veggies alone?), which bathroom to use (XX and XY chromosomes are a capitalist invention), The Medieval, Roman, Minoan warm periods before fossil fuels? FOLLOW THE HOCKEY STICK!!!!!
Non sequitur, Adolf Hitler was vegetarian.
If you had omitted non sequitur,
you would have won a Godwin Award.
Godwin only applies if Hitler is mentioned out of an appropriate context.
And apparently Adolf’s generals would get overwhelmed by his cabbage farts when they were all hunkered down in the bunker.
(probably one of the main reasons the generals plotted to blow him up?)
Very much sequiter, don’t you see? Look at the millions of reduced carbon footprints, a challenge the Malthusian greenies can wistfully emulate.
There is a hard drive here in Aus to promote vegetable based “meat”, I kid you not. Many burger joints now have a vegetable “meat” option and there are many vegetable based “meats” and meals in the supermarkets. I had a one once, a vegetable based chilli con carne (I guess they don’t know what carne means) and felt ill for several days afterward.
I always wonder what they put in these vegetable-based meats,other than vegetables? There must be all sorts of unnatural additives to make it look, taste and feel like a meat-product. Are all these additve healthy and “climate neutral”? Are these made without fossil fuels?
All meat is vegetable based; whether it be people that eat cows that eat grass,
or whales that eat fish that eat fish that eat krill that eat plankton.
In every case, plants are at the bottom of the food chain.
Yes, but it was Disney that gave domestic and wild animals a human face!
A side note.
Mary Poppins.
If you ever saw Disney’s “Saving Mr. Banks”, She did have the rights to edit the script. She insisted that there be no personification of animals.
But she didn’t have the rights to the editing of the film.
That’s where Disney put in all the animated “animal people”.
She did cry during the movie at it’s premier (to which Disney did not invite her. But she showed up anyway.). But she cried because of what Disney had done to her story.
In her will she stated that Disney would never do another one of her books.
(Tolkien, a professor of English literature, also had in his will that Disney would never get the rights to any of his works, long before Mary Poppins.)
Interesting. Thanks.
I really really should wear my glasses when I go shopping for food. I got a veggie Rogan Josh today.
Same thing here in the (newly renamed) USSA.
And the hypocrisy of wanting veggies to look, smell, taste, even bleed like meat. What’s that all about.
Vegan: Inuit word meaning ‘lousy hunter’.
I run sheep on my farm. I also have a vegan daughter in law. I often tell her its ok to have a lamb chop as our sheep are vegetarians, they only eat grass. Unfortunately, vegans have no sense of humour. We’re still talking though.
Once I asked a vegan if he would eat grasshoppers. In several countries, they can be a pest, and a delicacy. Also here, no sense of humor.
Rush Limbaugh once asked if a Vegan would kill a tape worm growing inside them 😉
and if you look at the reduced piles
the fakemeats are quite plentiful
last seen at 99c for a kilo that was around 15$ originally
made me laugh
even my dogs n chickens wont eat that muck
“and if you look at the reduced piles”
My piles need reducing !!
Prep-H works!
Do they cook the veggie burgers on the same grill as the regular burgers?
Many vegans ask that question. I don’t care for the answer. I just should use my glasses.
Humans are intelligent; they can produce many reasons for you to trade an 80 year lifespan for a 30-40 lifespan.
…with a smaller brain for your offspring.
No thank you. Humans need B12 and a small amount of animal fat to be healthy. And both only come from meat. The body knows the difference between vitamin supplements and the real thing. You have to get your essential nutrients from food.
Plus, when a cow is slaughtered, almost everything is used. The scrapings from a baby cow’s stomach (rennet) is required to make cheese. The blood and bones are used to make blood and bone meal, good for plants. Leather is needed for a lot of stuff. The hooves can make glue. And I could go on.
Now, if these people want to make the argument that farm animals need to be treated better, then I am all for that. Animals that are properly raised taste better and are more tender. There are few things that bring me more joy than a tender, juicy steak. I think it is all the iron in the red meat.
Agreed, Wade. I love animals, and they should be humanely treated, right up to the time of slaughter- and that, to be as quick and painless as possible. Nature doesn’t care, but we do.
When nature slaughters if far from humane. Wolves start eating before the pray is dead as do most predator’s. Yes we should treat animals humanely in slaughter after all we do think about out actions. Most animals on this planted do not and far to many human do not. Vegans diet is energy intensive and somehow they miss that! They also don’t understand solar panel and wind mills will not feed them, let alone light and heat their large homes!
There is a recent move to ban halal slaughter methods by bleeding out the animal. My feeling about this changed years ago when I haemorrhaged. As my BP fell, all the pain and fear disappeared. I felt calm and relaxed. The buggers in emerg banged in an 18g needle and pumped in oxytocin, bringing it all back. I have often wondered if this is why those who sufficiently cut suicidally complete the act.
The underlying cause of this is that a hypotensive crisis releases a massive amount of dopamine in the brain – the chemical that is responsible for reinforcement and motivation. In the lab, to measure dopamine contents of cells we had to klll with a single blow to the head, otherwise as an anaesthetised rat’s pCO2 increased, all the Da in the cells was released.
In regard to slaughter methods, to get good meat it is necessary that the animal dies without a large surge in the sympathetic system. Thus, the good steak comes from humane slaughter.
Just try to take the bacon away from me. I dare you!!!!
Farmers have known for a long time that healthy, well-fed, contented animals grow faster, produce more and taste better. Those who accuse us of deliberately mistreating livestock are assuming that we deliberately act against our own best interests.
Vegan brain-shrinkage is real….
Vegan diet – bad to the bone 🦴 !
New epidemiologic research from Oxford University UK shows that all non meat eaters suffer significantly elevated risk of osteoporotic fractures including the debilitating and often life-terminating hip fractures:
https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-020-01815-3
The biggest increase in fractures of 43% was seen in vegans. Basically they aren’t getting enough available calcium.
Humans need vitamin B-12 for nerve health. Unlike many other animals, humans cannot synthesize B-12. It does not exist in any plant material. A true vegan diet, one that isn’t supplemented with artificial B-12, will cause nerve damage, quite possibly including brain degradation. Before artificial B-12 was created, there was no way any vegan could have sustained their health without supplementing their diet with some kind of animal product. We know, for absolute certainty, that a true vegan diet is very bad for you. That’s one reason we know for sure that humans evolved needing to eat animal products.
One other reason we know that we evolved to eat meat is that (for almost everyone) cooking a steak creates wonderful smells and causes our salivary glands to go into high gear. Have you ever seen what a horse (a herbivore) does when you try to give her a piece of steak? I have, and I feel lucky that I didn’t get trampled.
https://www.vegansociety.com/resources/nutrition-and-health/nutrients/vitamin-b12
When they peel my cheeseburger out of my cold dead fingers.
Just try taking away my ice cream and whole milk and cheese and bacon and ham.
Just try…..
Well, I was going shopping tomorrow, anyway, so I’ll just add “Buy more beef” to the list. 🙂
When are these uninformed persons going to understand that, like our apish cousins the chimpanzees, we are omnivores??????
Had a sort of Cajun spag-bol for dinner.
Lots of nice minced beef, ….
YUMMM !
Try using half beef and half coarsely ground pork in your next bolonaise.
Mixed beef and pork– that’s for meatballs or meatloaf. Bolonaise is beef only.
We’re having Russian roast pork for Christmas this year instead of Turkey.
Regardless of what you may think of the vegan diet, the statement in the headline, to summarize, going vegan leads to fewer pandemics, is obviously true: Most cases of influenza, as well as SARS (10% fatality rate), and Covid-19 originate when humans and animals come close together- usually in crowded meat/produce markets, or in the case Swine flu, on farms. If everone was vegan (not likely anytime soon) these opportunities for cross species transmission would, mostly, cease.
Clearly a diet high in meat is inefficient- the same amount of land can yeild at least 10x the calories and protien from non meat sources, with one hundredth the water, and one tenth the energy input.
Is that even a real issue? My pasture produces way more grass than I can eat, and come to think of it, more cattle than I can eat as well, but way way more grass….
Wrong, Wrong, land use for grazing will grow nothing but grass, pastures in the west produce very poor yields of grains and anything else. Lack of water make dry land potatoes look like stew potatoes and maybe twice the out of the seed potatoes. Two for one will never feed the world. Storage and movement of vegetables especially leafy vegetables are a problem and very energy depended. In your world they would be mass starvation. the efficiencies you tote are fiction.
As in the solution to “climate change” – the solution to “zoonotic pandemics” – is: NUKE CHINA NOW!
That billions of Chinese are still living (in some sense of “living,” considering their tyrannic government) just tells me that the panic-mongers are not, and never have been, looking for a solution. It would make them superfluous.
You can say the same about a diet that includes many types of lettuce (like Iceburg), celery, and quite a few other plants that have very, very little nutritional value – some plants yield few calories, no protein, and require even more water than it takes to raise cattle, especially range-fed cattle. Yet we never hear the anti-meat crowd going after the plant foods that are even worse for the environment than raising animals for food. The Maasai tribe lives on a diet that consists entirely of cattle, milk, and occasionally cow blood. No plants. You cannot live on lettuce and celery no matter how much of it you eat but you know what? I eat lettuce and I bet you do too. Are you one of the anti-meat hypocrites?
And the Masai are not stupid. They know, as do the Chukchi in Siberia and the Inuit in northern Canada, that nomadic pastoral care of semi-domesticated ungulates is the best way to survive in the long term, in marginal habitats. To meet both their needs and the welfare of the whole environment. Veganism is an urban religion among those within walking distance of a supermarket, who themselves are becoming vegetables.
Obviously a vegan suffering from B-12 deficiency.
Every single one of the issues you claim motivate you, have been addressed above.
Actually. I’m not vegan. I just follow the evidence. B12 deficiency is easliy addressed. about 1c per day of supplements will do the job. As for the “not complete protein” argument- One only needs to combine 2 different vegan protein sources to get the required amino acids.
Meat is a complete protein, vegetables are not. Meat is more nutrient dense. A plate with meat and veg is a good meal a plate of veg is not, it’s lacking to much and what it does have it doesn’t have in large enough quantity. We are all born omnivores. Be glad we are at the top of the food chain. We slaughter animals humanely for the most part other carnivores are not so considerate.
I do not understand this adamant belief that we are omnivores really comes from. We have always been opportunistic scavengers that heavily targeted meat, organs and related fats in out diet. The N15 data indicates that part humans (the last 350000+ years) have had a animal based diet with very little plant matter. We seasonally gorged on fruit that were bitter and small compared to today’s varieties in preparation for winter by using it to put fat on.
Omnivores indicate continual consumption of both animal and plant foods in large amounts.
Even chimps in the wild (the males at least) target meat as the main source and only fall back to fruit if the hunt is unsuccessful. The females like to target the fattier termites and any leftover meat the males bring back. Even the Savannah chimps use tool to hunt rather than look for plant foods.
I agree with you but our diet over the last 350000 years might not have given us much choice especially in northern latitudes given that most of that time was glacial. It seems logical that there would be more fruit and veg available during interglacials and therefore more likely we would of eaten more of it then. The books I have read about so called caveman diet never seem to consider this.
“or in the case Swine flu, on farms”
Nope. The “swine flu” is not a thing. Never existed.
The pandemic of H1N1 was also phony. In Europe it was a dud. Wonder why the US felt it so bad.
Either very poor health, awful healthcare, something else?
So, if animal-human interaction is the cause of all pandemics, the solution is simple.
Eliminate all but human animal life on the planet!
No one would ever die again!
(But I do hope the geoengineering endeavor to accomplish that also includes wiping out the dandelions in my yard.)
Vegans are by nature authoritarians.
Non-vegans generally don’t care what vegans choose to eat as opposed to vegans who, if they could, would force everyone to be vegan whether they wanted to or not.
It’s very very simple.
We are not plant eaters because we have acid stomachs.
That’s all you need to know. Don’t let anyone confuse you or claim otherwise
Eating plants, surprise surprise, comes with the hazard of added dirt (soil) and without careful preparation we would ingest that dirt/soil.
Washing/cleaning. Needs lots of CLEAN water
Next we need to cook the stuff lest we eat raw starch which is of completely zero nutritional value to us and we;d run the very serious risk of Death By Constipation
The starch grains/particles woud stick together in our lower nether region and simply set like concrete
The business of doing those things is called ‘Processing’
Watch McCartney (and his band) run at the mere mention
The actual problem would be the attached dirt.
Made of powdered rock it is of ‘metal chemistry’ Silicates, carbonates, oxides etc etc
Our acidic stomachs would dissolve/solubilise/mobilise those metals and they’d get into our bloodstream
And MOST metals are hideously poisonous. Even ones we actually need, notably copper.
Hence why ‘proper’ herbivores have pH neutral stomachs. The dirt and the attendant metal-poisons they unavoidably eat pass straight through
Minor points:
Mushrooms/fungi are more like animals than plants – they take in oxygen and breathe out CO2. eating shrooms is NOT going to reduce emissions
It may have dawned on Greta that her condition was caused by a lack of B vitamin and iron during her pregnancy and early childhood – things very lack from a plant diet. Yes you get iron from eating dirt but it’s of very low bio-availability.
Now we understand the rise in case numbers of Autism, Aspergers etc etc?
Fake meats are constructed from soya.
Without being left to rot for years (some call that haha process ‘Fermentation’ it is chock full of fake Oestrogens.
Even then, the original soy-eaters only ate very small amounts, typically as Soy Sauce condiment or flavouring
Not all *that* fake, they will turn a male anything into a female anything, or even something else.
Aha you say, does *that* explain the various myriad sexual confusions we are now engulfed in?
We are not omnivores. Yes we do need to eat *some* plant material to get Vitamin C but historically we got that while out hunting – when we pulled up a tuber to find water in an otherwise hostile environment.
Yes, water divining maybe is a 6th Sense, certainly among boys
Otherwise fruit supplied Vit C, in exchange for a quick Dopamine fix and in the hope the plant could ‘borrow’ our legs to disperse its seed
Having said that, Linda’s** original vegetarian sausages were very tasty.
Poor Linda, bless her, she meant well and put money where her mouth was.
She was ‘genuine’, unlike that muppet husband she got.
**McCartney
I highly doubt that. We share 98% of the DNA of gorillas, they are totally vegetarian, and their digestive system isn’t radically different than ours.
We can’t eat grass because we don’t have a four chambered stomach, but we could get by on fruits vegetables and grain. That is as long most of the grain is devoted to beer and whiskey production.
Kazinski,
We are more closely related to chimpanzees, who are also omnivorous, than we are to gorillas. We may be able to survive on a vegetarian diet, but that doesn’t mean it is ideal. The essential amino acids and essential fatty acids that are readily available from some meats are difficult to get in sufficient quantity from vegetables alone!
Incidentally, some claim that the original impetus for the vegan diet was religious in nature; that not eating meat would curb the “base” desires in men. While I don’t think it has been proven, it sure seems to have some correlation in our present society!
Also look at the cultures that were renowned for their warriors like the Maoris and the Comanches. They had high-protein diets; buffalo for the Comanche, swine and fish for the Maori and other Polynesians. Maybe that is another reason for TPTB to push for vegan and vegetarian diets; weak and docile men are more easily controlled!
Indeed – apart from ridiculously large heads, our main difference from the other apes is a short intestine – more akin to cheetahs and dogs and stuff.
There’s a reason why we did grow ridiculously large heads – diet.
It is further noted that Inuit, Maasai, etc very rarely suffer from ‘modern diseases’ – unlike vegans.
I wonder if there is another ‘cunning plan’ behind this vegan marketing?
Modern inuit, Maasai etc do suffer these diseases as few live anywhere near the traditional diet they previously ate. Children in some Maasai tribes start the day with sweetened porridge as more and more plant products make their way into the diet. diet studies done in the inuit since the 1940s have indicated anywhere from 8% to 55% calories from carbs as a standard and in a almost match for dose response their health suffered.
Overall the brain cavity and size of the brain of humans have drastically shrunk with the increase in plant foods in the diet and the drop from a previously high fat, moderate protein diet that was rich in DHA and other brain feeding vitamins and minerals common in animal foods.
For the further above vegan comment animals, even herbivores, will target animal products if offered or available. A rather humourous story from india where a herd of cattle had to be sent to ‘rehab’ to get over their meat ‘addiction’.. The animals would gather out the back of a resturant that would throw meat scraps out the back, the cows eventually refused to return to the pasture to eat but would wait for meat scraps to be given instead. this horrified the locals who sent the 50-odd cows to be rehabilitated to eating grass again. The animals were not unhealthy. There are plenty of videos of deer eating corpses (including a freakish one of a deer eating a long dead human corpse).
Not totally. Gorillas also eat fecal matter.
And we also share 25% of the DNA of daffodils, yet last I checked, we are not 25% plant. 🙂
hmm dont gorillas as well as chimps n other eat each other and small prey animals,
pretty sure they do
We share something like 90% of our genes with plants, so obviously we should be able to survive on a diet of dirt.
And Sunlight!
we also shar 65% DNA with birds. I don’t recommend jumping off a high rise building and trying to fly, but since you think sharing large percentages of DNA is so meaningful, perhaps you should give it a try and report back on how your flight went.
Kazinsky …. We ARE radically different from gorillas. Gorillas are what are known as hind-gut fermenters. They spend most of their waking time eating, and their human-indigestible diet is fermented in the caecum . Humans have a very small caecum and our overall gut-design is far closer to obligate carnivores like dogs and cats.
As has already been mentioned, the human stomach is also one of the most acidic, a feature common in animals that primarily eat a LOT of meat, and particularly those that eat carrion.
Incidentally, we share about 70% of our DNA with bananas. Numbers don’t mean much when the defining issue is where we DIFFER. Meanwhile, you may wish to think that you are close to a gorilla, but one of the major differences is our failure to naturally share that huge fermenting-vat of a pot-belly. Go have another look.
I’ve heard the “we share 98%” thing since I was a kid in the ’60’s. That was long before the human genome project.
“98%” of what precisely?
I own a car. It has a battery, tires, copper wiring, lights, metal, a steering wheel, etc.
Is it ‘98%” a B-1 bomber?
A 2% difference is HUGE.
You can get Vitamin C from meat. It just has to be raw or very lightly cooked.
Vitamin C is water soluble. Cooking is accelerated dehydration. No water, no C.
vitamin c requirements are massively over-estimated. The only RCT done on this tested how much vitamin c is needed to keep off scurvy. The RDA is about 70-90mg/day. They found 0 participants developed scurvy with 10mg/day on a high carb diet. The reason high carb is important in this is that vitamin c uses the same pathway as glucose does and thus you need higher levels of vitamin c on those types of diets than those low on carbs as competition for this pathway leads to loss.
Muscle meat by nature is about 2mg per 100g uncooked or you can get many times that by eating a small piece of liver if you so wish. The only real times cooking meats become an issue with vitamin c is excessively overcooking meat such as slow cooking or cooking the meat and mixing it in a high carb diet that does not contain at least pro vitamin c (plant vitamins are pre-vitamin forms called ‘pro’, humans often struggle to convert pro versions into the correct version for our body)
Ok, so let’s say I buy the premise that going vegan will 100% guarantee that we will never in the history of the world have another pandemic.
Too bad, it’s not worth it.
I love my totally vegetarian diet! I run most of my vegetables through several types of food processors. They go by names like pig, cow, chicken and sheep; sometimes I get lucky and get to use the special processors: elk and antelope!
The weather report shows that we’re going to have a little warm up after New Years; I think I’ll try and smoke a big bunch of vegetables! I’m thinking brisket or pulled pork. Wish I had a bunch of jalapeños to throw in as well; the ones I smoked back in October were amazing with a touch of brisket flavoring! Until then I’m stuck Xmas ham and Happy New Year prime rib!
I’ll stick to my high-protein diet so I don’t get dementia and start sounding like the Commander-in-Thief elect; ‘Beijing’ Joe Biden!
Back to winning the war.
1. Don’t let them create a common enemy such as the meat industry or farming in general.
2. Force them to live up to their own standards.
3. Ridicule them whenever possible.
A. If animals are bad for food, then surely they are bad for enjoyment. No pets or horses allowed.
B. If livestock agriculture is bad because of its land use then surely vineyards are bad and so are nurseries.
If anyone campaigns about the negativity of meat products ridicule them for not campaigning against dogs, cats horses, flowers and Chardonnay.
FWIW I know nutjob vegans who own farms just to keep a couple of horses.
Absolute hypocrites.
They whine about the alleged low food efficiency of meat.
What’s the food efficiency of those pets?
Meat is by far the most nutrient dense food. Meat is grown where veggies don’t.
<blockquote>”Catastrophic climate breakdown and global pandemics could not be more serious, but they are not inevitable.”</blockquote>
Global pandemics are actually one of the things that are almost certainly inevitable. Especially so, now that we have rapid worldwide mass transport of humans and various food products, both animal and vegetable.
Natural climate change, too, is also inevitable. It is the catastrophic breakdown part that is highly subjective and debatable. The depressing thing is just how many people apparently earn a living being paid to trot out such claims day-in and day-out as part of their job in the media, in government, and in the bureaucracies.
Mods, I guess the new site doesn’t accept html codes etc the same way as before. Do you have an advice page for commenters?
Use the icons at the bottom of the post window.
When I walk to my local shop/store there is a “sign” spray posted on the footpath/sidewalk that says “Eat Ass. Not animals”.
I will have a 12oz rump, medium rare, steak, with mushroom and garlic gravy. I have not mentioned veggies.
“fears over coronavirus and anxiety over climate change.”
…..these two concerns cannot be used as equals. Opinion polls give repeated examples of the publics unconcern with “Climate change™” or “Global warming™” or “Inadvertent Climate Modification™” as they used to call it back in the day.
https://ibb.co/djnMSsp
I doubt the level of anxiety even qualifies to be described as anxiety. It’s 4th on the list of major concerns even for our friendly green Norwegians. 10th for the vocal Germans, and 13th for those eternal heretics the Brits. What a surprise, immigration and unemployment occupy the majority of thoughts these days, and this is what we were thinking before it all kicked off.
“Together, we can create a world that is kinder and safer for all.”
Oh please get me the bucket…..
Get your Linda McCartney soya (don’t ask where it comes from) burger here!!
I found Gretas car full of CANS rather amusing
she might eat beans but not ecofriendly ones;-)
though from the look of her undersized n scrawny bod shes still on the anorexia trail n dad prob ate the majority
CAFO setups as well as the filthy stressed cramped chinese animal keeping IS a recipie for disease.
jamming bulk antibiotics into the animals in CAFO to keep infections ewtc down is how the 1st world covers n reduces risks
other places..either too little the wrong sort or none at all
throw in wild animals with god knows what bugs and zoonoses are a given. free ranging farm animals arent ill much, most issues of flus are from migratory birds crapping over the farms, or in the water they drop in to share use of, ie victorias birdflu outbreaks this year
Cows eat vegetables, pigs eat vegetables, chickens eat vegetables, therefore I am a vegetarian.
This is about as dumb a campaign as is possible Going vegan means no dairy products, fish and other sources of vitamin D. People in the northern hemisphere lack vitamin D during winter. Vitamin D greatly helps our immune systems so cutting it means we are reducing our resistance to things such as Covid 19 and influenza. So good luck and happy sniffly winter, Paul and your mates.
If one does a simple mass balance for a cow – carbon in versus carbon out (actual carbon here contained in vegetable matter) it works out that they actually help to sequester carbon!!
Dairy, eggs and even meat are also good sources of K2 MK4 which also plays a part as well as most animal products containing abundant amounts of available zinc which are also used in our immune response. Zinc in plants can be locked up by the various defenses plants have developed to stop being eaten as they cannot get away.
From the article: “Animal agriculture is responsible for an estimated 14.5 percent of all human-generated greenhouse gas emissions.”
Is that all? That’s not bad. Especially since CO2 has no discernable effect on the Earth’s atmosphere.
They lie… Even in the US it’s only about 4%
Years ago I read a German study that said that before trying IVF in infertile young women, They should be gain 10lb and stop jogging. This apparently reduced the infertility rate dramatically. A psychiatrist recently told me that there was a ‘new’ eating disorder common among young women involving avoidance of first class protein (meat) and carbohydrate rich foods. The key as a disorder is obsessive focus on what they ate. It seems Sir Paul might qualify.
Just remember, it takes killing billions of animals so you can enjoy your “organic” vegetables. Most die in sticky traps. But go ahead, pretend you are virtuous.
Great bass player, but not too bright!
These are the same mental midgets that think hemp solves everything.
“Already these farms have given us H1N1 (swine flu)”
Swine flu is not animal related, so wrong, doofus.
The stupid in this is epic.
it primarily depends on the belief that if we stop eating cows, sheep and goats, cows, sheep and goats – along with a bunch of other ruminant animals, will stop eating grass.
I have – and I kid you not – had vegans tell me that animals only breed because we force them to.
The 7th Day Adventist Church is essentially the western religion arm of veganism. They have powerful corporations that they own (Sanitarium being one, Kellogs was created by one of the early 7th day adherents as well) , medical facilities that they own and also have far outmatched input in the fields of nutrition and lifestyle. Since their increased interference in our diet over the past century we can see the devastation caused, not only at an environmental level through monocropping for their cereals and grains but also on our health through the use of added seed oils at the cost of less oxidised animal fats for example.
This said, when vegans talk of saving animals it conjures up the image of one walking through the forest surrounded by animals etc, in fact this article indicates they actually want nothing to do with animals and must be eradicated altogether. A task their farming methods are doing quite effectively..
1) Vegan diet can negatively intelligence
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200127-how-a-vegan-diet-could-affect-your-intelligence
2) Vegan diet kills more animals than cow-based carnivore diet, though smaller ones.
https://www.carnivoreisvegan.com/carnivore-diet-is-vegan/
Interestingly Greta Thunberg’s signature does not appear on the list. Perhaps someone forgot to ask her.
No, she is getting married in the Maldives on the one island that seems to be growing so its appearance on the photos will be splashed across the world to highlight the catastrophic seal level rise we all face.