"Is being vegan the most ethical way to live?"

[Second Summer]

Today is the last day of Meat Free Week, the annual jamboree for meat reducers. I hope you’ve enjoyed it. So should you take your dietary activism to the next degree and cut meat out completely? Along with processed foods, animal foods are among those with the highest effect on climate and environment (including water use, air pollution and deforestation).

There’s been a rumour that the grains on which vegan and vegetarian diets are based have a higher footprint than raising livestock, aka the “grain drain”. It’s a myth. While some crops have a shocking eco profile (soy, for example, grown in deforested monocultures), in 2005 one-third of the world’s cereal harvest went to feed livestock.

Is being vegan the most ethical way to live? | Lucy Siegle | Environment | The Guardian (29 March 2015 )

This is not a particularly well-written article, but it does talk about veganism. The reference to the supposed top-soil problem and how it can be solved by increasing the number of livestock animals does not seem to hold water. If you follow their link, which takes you to another Guardian article, or rather, George Monbiot's Guaridan blog, you'll see what I mean.

The last two paragraphs seem disconnected from the rest of the article. Or maybe I just don't see the connection?

 

[Poppy]

I wouldn't call a vegan lifestyle for environmental reasons the "most ethical way to live". Sure, the environment is a grave concern, but to leave out the animal welfare and human welfare sides of the equation, only to protect the environment doesn't seem to be superlative to me. Add in the animal and the human issues and perhaps I'd agree.

 

[beancounter]

Unfortunately, the most ethical way to live, is to be dead.

Finding volunteers is the hard part.

 

[Clueless Git]

This is not a particularly well-written article, but it does talk about veganism. The reference to the supposed top-soil problem and how it can be solved by increasing the number of livestock animals does not seem to hold water. If you follow their link, which takes you to another Guardian article, or rather, George Monbiot's Guaridan blog, you'll see what I mean.

The idea of letting naturaly sustainable numbers of animals roam relatively freely to feed'n'fertlilise in order to restore some natural balance does, at face value, make some sense.

Where it becomes total nonsense lies in that the demand for high volumes of low cost meat cannot possibly be met like that. That naturaly unsustainable meat consumption simply cannot be supported in a naturaly sustainable way.

All the article is really doing is offering the meat-munchers another 'happy farm' style conscience appeasing fantasy.

 

[pierathuntress]

It's better than the alternative
Even if you treat animals nicely, you're still killing them for selfish reasons.
This is Danielle. Not sure what happened