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Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces methane emissions by 80%

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Re: Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces methane emissions by 80%

#281

Post by MiroF »

bobthepanda wrote: post #252
MiroF wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cattle is raised on land that is unsuitable for crop production This doesn't really matter - it's about the fact that the cattle are eating crops that could have more efficiently been directly turned into food. Unless you're claiming most Australian cattle aren't given feed? (Hint: pretty much all cattle are given feed, even the "free-range" ones) > If they respond by stopping eating meat, then great - not the best…

This is at least a step in the positive direction. A quick Google tells me that soy has a yield of 2.81 metric tons per hectare, and seaweed has a yield of ~20 metric tons per hectare. Depending on how much of the feed can be replaced by seaweed additive, it's another arrow in the quiver to reduce the environmental impact of food production, the same way that cheap solar and wind don't displace the need for energy ef…

It's a very small amount of seaweed in the feed.

Re: Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces methane emissions by 80%

#282

Post by triyambakam »

throwaway0756 wrote: post #276
triyambakam wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crop deaths tho! Do you realize that /more/ animals die from crop harvesting for feeding animals? Because if you aren't raising animals for food, you don't need to harvest crops for them. The net amount of crop deaths goes down. Further, it's the fallacy of perfection - we can't stop all deaths, but we can do our best to get as many as possible unnecessary deaths to end. Veganism is about what is practicable - i.e. w…

I mean, if someone cares that much about real practical death reduction of sentient beings, they wouldn’t be vegetarian, they would eat grass fed beef. One death for hundreds if not thousands of meals. That or seafood if you don’t consider shrimp sentient.

That's also fallacious thinking because you're knowingly murdering a being, i.e. it is a requirement that the animal is killed to eat it. But when practicing veganism, there is no requirement for murder. That is, while crop deaths may happen, it is not a requirement that it does. We could in fact engineer machines that don't kill animals while harvesting crops, and in fact "crop deaths" is wildly overblown by meat eaters as an argument. Statistically it is not significant.

What's further, you're wildly under estimating how much food the death of one cow would give you.

These are all super common arguments against veganism and easily disproven

Re: Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces methane emissions by 80%

#283

Post by three_legs »

bamboozled wrote: post #264
jamil7 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is our food choices are something we can more immediately control. > but I can’t help feel we should focus on the bigger, more high value targets first? I don't buy this line of thinking as it makes the assumption that a society can't tackle or talk about multiple issues at once.

If I don’t eat at least some meat, what do I eat ? I’ve tried living mostly off soybeans and I can tell you, it was a depressing and miserable existence, at least for me. I legitimately has no energy and felt depressed for a long time. Yes I also ate other legumes. It just didn’t really work well for me. Maybe I’ll try again someday. Even when I was vegetarian, I was freaking out about all the food that was imported…

Why would you live mostly off of soy beans? That sounds depressing indeed. As a vegan I have an even more varied diet than before. I eat all kinds of fruits, vegetables, beans, grains, nuts and seeds. And I eat 0% soy. I also hate tofu/soy/etc.

Re: Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces methane emissions by 80%

#284

Post by thinkcontext »

scoot wrote: post #221
thinkcontext wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its quite rare for beef cattle to be 100% range raised. Beef cattle generally start out in rangeland or pasture where they eat grass with supplementary grain feed for a year or so. Then they get moved to an extremely dense feedlot or Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation where they are fed mostly grain based feed for the next 6 months or so.

The parent commenter is speaking specifically from experience in Australia. Since CAFO is a USDA term, I assume your comment (or the source of it) relates to the USA.

A CAFO is a feedlot with 1k+ animal units (1 animal unit = 1 head of beef cattle), Australia has plenty of those. Here's a list of the top 25

https://www.beefcentral.com/top-25-lotfeeders-list/

I believe it is true that cattle get more nutrition from grass in AU than US but I haven't seen numbers that break it down.

Re: Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces methane emissions by 80%

#285

Post by tassl »

rewq4321 wrote: post #254
tassl wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How much could this reduce the total environmental food print of cattle? I.e. including all the energy used to grow the crops they eat, the deforestation to make room for the crops + cattle, the waste the cows produce. Quite a bit. Most of the deforestation you are mentioning happens for monocrop cultivation, from which livestock consume (mostly) the leftovers. That's usually hidden in data by using total weight, b…

> Most of the deforestation you are mentioning happens for monocrop cultivation, from which livestock consume (mostly) the leftovers. This is incorrect. Humans can and do eat soybean meal. About 98% of soybean meal is used for animal feed and only 1% is used to produce food for people.[0] For soybeans as a whole, only about 6% grown worldwide are turned directly into food products for human consumption.[1] > Ahhh...…

> The peer-reviewed science we have suggests that higher soy consumption correlates with increased lifespan and positive health outcomes.

Couple of things here:

(1) Correlation is not causation (2) Garbage in, garbage out -> referring to most observational studies.

> Can I hazard a guess that you think MSG is bad for your health too? These are antiquated views.

I don't know if it is bad for my health long term, even though I guess yes. I don't think there are good studies pointing in either direction. It is definitely not healthy short term for me, since I get bad headaches and flushes when I eat something with MSG.

The problem is that there should be good studies when adding something humans don't consume into their diet. Humans have consumed meat for hundreds of thousands of years, yet now it is the source of all evil. We haven't consumed rapeseed at all yet its oil is labeled "healthy". In my book skepticism is a virtue.

Re: Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces methane emissions by 80%

#286

Post by throwaway0756 »

triyambakam wrote: post #282
throwaway0756 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, if someone cares that much about real practical death reduction of sentient beings, they wouldn’t be vegetarian, they would eat grass fed beef. One death for hundreds if not thousands of meals. That or seafood if you don’t consider shrimp sentient.

That's also fallacious thinking because you're knowingly murdering a being, i.e. it is a requirement that the animal is killed to eat it. But when practicing veganism, there is no requirement for murder. That is, while crop deaths may happen, it is not a requirement that it does. We could in fact engineer machines that don't kill animals while harvesting crops, and in fact "crop deaths" is wildly overblown by meat ea…

I don’t think you can easily hand wave the logical inconsistency here.

Rats and rabbits are killed all the time on farms, it’s just how it is.

> That is, while crop deaths may happen, it is not a requirement that it does.

I don’t understand how ignorance that your diet kills sentient beings is an excuse.

> We could in fact engineer machines that don't kill animals while harvesting crops

That’s not the case now though

Re: Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces methane emissions by 80%

#287

Post by MiroF »

nemo44x wrote: post #241
ticmasta wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what gives cows the taste most consumers recognize as "prime beef". Eating solely grass-feed is definitely a different taste;I'm not sure most consumers would like it, at least initially (outside of a hamburger).

Not sure why parent was voted down but it's true. The inputs have a lot to do with the outputs. Grass fed beef has its advantages in many ways, but grain fed does as well. Generally, you see a nice balance when a cow is grass fed most its life and then fed grain the last couple months to fatten it up. Aaron Franklin talks about this in his book and mentions he only uses grain fed beef for BBQ. Grass fed briskets just…

Here's the thing, "grass fed" beef is still fed grain. You're looking for "grass finished", which is quite rare.

Re: Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces methane emissions by 80%

#288

Post by tassl »

triyambakam wrote: post #282
throwaway0756 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, if someone cares that much about real practical death reduction of sentient beings, they wouldn’t be vegetarian, they would eat grass fed beef. One death for hundreds if not thousands of meals. That or seafood if you don’t consider shrimp sentient.

That's also fallacious thinking because you're knowingly murdering a being, i.e. it is a requirement that the animal is killed to eat it. But when practicing veganism, there is no requirement for murder. That is, while crop deaths may happen, it is not a requirement that it does. We could in fact engineer machines that don't kill animals while harvesting crops, and in fact "crop deaths" is wildly overblown by meat ea…

> (...) while crop deaths may happen, it is not a requirement that it does.

Wait, so just because you consider that it is not a requirement, it is ok? The reality is another and veganism could be ending the world and you would be defending a best case scenario that doesn't exist?

> Statistically it is not significant

Have you ever worked in fields? I haven't spent significant amount of time there, but I have spend weeks in a farm owned by relatives. I don't know what you call significant, but the meat processing that happens there is not "not significant". Rodents, snakes, even foxes. And all that without counting insects.

> These are all super common arguments against veganism and easily disproven

I don't think so. You are just using some higher moral ground to defend your position: "I don't want deaths; yes they happen but they are not a necessity for my beliefs".

All that without considering the damage we could be making to the human race. We don't know the impact of large scale veganism on long term health.

Re: Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces methane emissions by 80%

#289

Post by MiroF »

lxmorj wrote: post #184
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the demand will always be there. Humans like to eat meat. I doubt very many will give up the privilege, esp. when others are not. I guess that's why we're all doomed to a broken planet. As long as we keep using "well, no one else is going to change" as an excuse we'll inherit the world we deserve.

Any plan that relies on self-imposed austerity measures of billions of people from disparate groups is doomed to failure. We need to quietly change the math behind the scenes by internalizing externalities legally - long enough for green tech to get enough investment dollars to be cheaper than dirty tech even if those rules change later. This is mostly already happened with solar / wind power, though we need some imp…

> self-imposed austerity measures of billions of people from disparate groups

We don't need self-imposed austerity measures. Just end the meat & dairy subsidies.

Re: Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces methane emissions by 80%

#290

Post by tassl »

triyambakam wrote: post #261
tassl wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not as simple as you think, and there is quite a bit of people cannot be healthy with such diet. > Many are also passionate about it because there are other benefits that come with it - no longer needing to kill sentient beings (you probably wouldn't eat your dog, so why eat a pig who is of equal awareness and intelligence?) Plenty of "sentient beings" are killed for crop farming. I am not even sure meat eaters…

Crop deaths tho! Do you realize that /more/ animals die from crop harvesting for feeding animals? Because if you aren't raising animals for food, you don't need to harvest crops for them. The net amount of crop deaths goes down. Further, it's the fallacy of perfection - we can't stop all deaths, but we can do our best to get as many as possible unnecessary deaths to end. Veganism is about what is practicable - i.e. w…

> we can do our best to get as many as possible unnecessary deaths to end.

What if the best way to decrease (unnecessary) deaths is to consume animals?

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