Ending factory farming as soon as possible

I found myself reading this list several times. Intriguing how we have "no wilds" left for soo many of our "favorite" animals.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_domesticated_animals

They talk about it toward 2:20 (I do like how they had a full transcript and ToC so you can jump around in the audio).

In any case, my take away was that because there might be some chance of a "net negative" life for insects in farms, we shouldn't be looking to replace some of our protein needs by insects.

Given the sheer amount of ecological damage that is being done to the planet with each season of industrial animal farming, I really don't understand why we're not looking at lab-grown insects as the MVP for "lab-grown meat".

The problems needing to be solved to make crickets/mealworm protein a scaled operation that could reduce the demand on chicken/beef/pork are much easier than growing meat in a lab (feel pretty confident in this claim, open to rebuttal).

How many cows would be saved every year if just 1 major fast-food burger joint switched to 50/50 mealworm-beef burgers? Would anyone even notice if Taco Bell switched their taco meat to be 50% ground crickets?

What resources are required to make lab grown meat anyways? Where are they sourced from? What habitats are collapsing to provide the necessary solvents/catalysts/preservatives/energy/etc for whatever solutions it needs to grow in? What are the negative externalities of this lab-growing process? What does that look like at the scale necessary to take even 20% of the current beef demand?

We're twisting our britches over what a cricket or mealworm might feel in a factory farm setting, yet they are basically the perfect little machines for turning carbohydrates, water and air into essential human-accessible proteins and vitamins (crickets have a ton of B12, just like red meat). They're the perfect stop-gap solution until the lab meat is ready for prime-time.

Also, insect-farming waste products are typically just great compost and fertilizer and you could basically grow insects underground (mealworms love the dark) and grow their substrate/feed above them. I think calories/acre would be another useful measurement to look at when trying to evaluate which direction human agriculture should be headed.

Alright, TL;DR - Insect farming is low hanging fruit for alleviating the ecological pressure of factory animal farming which is being ignored for no good reason. /rant

1. Environmental -- For "our children" as you call it. This assumes that countries have gov'ts that give a shit and are not totally controlled by the industry (essentially the mega shareholders)

2. Health -- Plant-based (especially whole plant food) diet is much, much healthier than the a diet that contains several serving of meat/dairy/eggs per week (many have that in a day). This is ALSO an argument for the children, as they will learn from us. (We could not tell kids to not smoke, we have to stop ourselves too!)

3. Ethical -- Whole categories of abuse towards fellow earthlings (poor, women, slaves, lower-caste, captured enemies, etc.) were generally accepted as permissible, yet are now near unanimously condemned. It is not unfathomable that animals --that are currently still being permissibly abused for being of a different species-- may get added to that list.

Also the ethical reason will have a huge impact on "our children". As we have seen with the other steps we made in awareness, it is totally worth making these steps.

Peace.

That being said, I have no idea what it's like to be a penguin, or how much they suffer. I did watch March of the Penguins and it seemed the males huddling together deep in Antarctica during the winter were uncomfortable.

So we'll have to choice either to undig (and uncontaminate) the fertile lands under the roads and streets in the urban areas, that is a way;

or instead burn the last forests and give our precious natural areas to the pigs, literally. The pressure to ocuppy still relatively intact areas and the last protected sanctuaries for biodiversity would be irresistible and inescapable.

And is a wrong (but much repeated) idea than we'll stop the suffering. Is just that they are conveniently dismissing the suffering caused to the ecosystems. "Gazillions" of savage animals, plants, trees and fungi will suffer inmensely if we scalate the solution to all our cattle.