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Re: Mad Cow disease, BSE; Justice is served.
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Subject: Re: Mad Cow disease, BSE; Justice is served.
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From: edj@cruzio.com
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Date: Sun, 5 May 1996 03:56:21 GMT
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Article: 12337 of alt.sustainable.agriculture
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Newsgroups: sci.environment, uk.environment, alt.sustainable.agriculture, sci.agriculture, scot.environment, misc.consumers, alt.politics.greens, alt.org.earth-first, alt.save.the.earth
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Organization: Cruzio Community Networking System, Santa Cruz, CA
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References: <DozrJ0.IwM@news.tcd.ie> <4jqig3$na2@ricrdc1.rdc.ricoh.co.jp> <31850B19.3143@super.zippo.com>
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Reply-To: edj@cruzio.com
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Sender: edj@cruzio.com (Ed Fieberg)
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Xref: newz.oit.unc.edu sci.environment:93288 alt.sustainable.agriculture:12337 sci.agriculture:11072 misc.consumers:124807 alt.politics.greens:16528 alt.org.earth-first:4074 alt.save.the.earth:19071
In article <31850B19.3143@super.zippo.com>, drddrd <DrD@super.zippo.com> writes:
> Robert Blackburn wrote:
>
> > STOP EATING BEEF!
> > Free our land for organic arrable farming / tree growing.
>
> I really would like for you to visit the western half of the North American
> continent, the mid-latitude steppes of Asia, Patagonia, and the bulk of
> Australia.
[...]
> ...politically naive plans for humanity. Until then, I will regard you as an
> extremist (read: idiotic fool) who has not the slightest idea of the role
> of beef cattle and range management in helping feed a world gone slightly
> mad.
>
> Steve Denham
The original poster probably was referring to land used to
grow grain for the cattle, while you're referring to grazing
land. Of course you'll end up in a bitter argument.
I'd like to quote from a book that discusses these issues. It
is "Food Crops for the Future" by Colin Tudge (1988). Tudge
is a freelance scientific writer, and his general position is
that "livestock production, sensibly orchestrated and
controlled, must continue to play a large part in feeding
people."
It's the "sensibly orchestrated and controlled" part that
causes all the problems in these discussions, isn't it?
Tudge does admit: "Livestock production can be profligate,
and often is. The production of very fat beasts to over-feed
people who are already over-fed, is nonsense."
But in the best case: "Grazing and browsing animals -- cattle,
sheep, goats, horses, camels -- can be kept on land on which
it is too dry, too steep, too wet, too cold, too salty or too
rocky to grow worthwhile amounts of food crops."
However: "Granted, over much of the world grazing is
uncontrolled...There is much to be done to improve the
world's permanent pastures, which cover a quarter of the land
mass in the world -- two and a half times as much as is
devoted to arable crops. Much of this land is severely
degraded, and little is used to anything like its full
capacity. Improvement is far from simple."
Often it is the vegetarians who are called the "idiotic"
idealists, but might it not really be the ranchers who have it
figured out in theory how useful animals can be, only that in
practice hardly anyone seems to have come close to
accomplishing the ideal situation.
It makes sense to me to opt out of the meat-eating process.
Or to reduce consumption to something like 2 or 3 times a
week, rather than 2 or 3 times a day. This should even be
appreciated by the ranching theorists. The more people who do
this, the less pressure there will be to produce such massive
quantities of meat, which will make it easier to implement
and showcase their utopian farming practices.
Ed Fieberg
edj@cruzio.com
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References: