Hacking Meat: Can technology make us eat fewer animals?

Well,

> "... the hackathon’s goal is to come up with technological answer to the problems of meat supply, processing, distribution, health and ultimately consumption. One of big problems the group will tackle is how — simply put — to get people to eat less meat."

That said, it's true that meat production (beef at least) is a very inefficient use of arable land, in terms of nutrition per acre.

Curse their tasty hides.

For that matter, you could probably create engineered organisms that do a better job of extracting the phosphate from seawater. Animal kidneys are pretty good at this already.

Before we were able to process phosphate rock on an industrial scale, animal waste was the primary source of agricultural phosphate and nitrate. There was a thriving industry in mining bird droppings (guano) from various islands all through the 19th century. The birds would eat the sea life, concentrate the minerals, and deposit them on land. There's no reason we couldn't cut out the middle man (or middle bird, in this case).

Others have already answered, but to address the health issue allow me to mention a credible source [1], written by one of the leading experts on the relation between nutrition and health. The word 'vegan' appears only a couple of times in this book, but what it advises approaches veganism, based on purely decades-long research.

The research shows that more than a little meat is not healthy (unless you have no better alternative), and there is no harm in not eating meat at all.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Eat-Drink-Be-Healthy-Harvard/dp/074326...

summary: I am hoping for some clarification

>>>Can I ask you a favor? If you do truly care about "responsibility" of "improving the world," please stop using exclusively strawman arguments against vegans, a group which adapts their entire lifestyle and existential place in the universe toward positive change. This is far more than most meat eaters. You have a really patronizing tone and make little, subtle suggestions that vegans are just idiots. This crosses the line.

It seems to me that you are offended. If you would like to give me some specific examples of what offended you, I would love to read them and potentially change the way that I post comments here.

Disclaimer: The rest of this comment further explains my confusion and desire for specifics, it is not necessary for you to read it. If you choose to read it, note that it is likely written in a tone that will offend you. I ask you to be as civil as you feel you are capable of being, as you are posting this on a public forum, and Poe's Law is in full effect :D(this smiley face is to indicate a lighthearted mood as opposed to some sarcasm that may offend you).

Until you can help me understand what offended you, I can not intentionally stop offending you, since I did not intend to write anything offensive and you have not cited specific examples about what was offensive to you. I honestly don't know what you think needs changing. I would recommend not reading the rest of this comment since it will likely have the same tone, and serves only to offer some academic frameworks designed to explain why we are having conflict.

-------academic communications issues---------

It is interesting that what I meant to say (thingA), what I actually said(thingB) and what jicksta2 voluntarily chose to infer(thingC) are at the very least two completely different things, related only by the pixels that jicksta2 saw on their screen. It is unfortunate that they were not all identical. The relationship between thingA, thingB, and thingC has been studied by many very famous academians, and is often lumped into a field known as "communications", more specifically "linguistics." More specific to the issue at hand is "semiotics", which concerns the relationship between the "signifier" (pixels on a screen) and the signified (what I actually meant).

Obviously the relationship is very complicated and there is another issue about the relationship between what I said and what I meant(thingA & thingB), which opens up a bunch of epistemological, existential, and quite frankly solipsistic waffling that Dagmar :D Descartes famously reduced to 'cogito ergo sum', Latin for "QED - Trust me, this proof proves it :D." Lojban and other engineered languages are attempts at alleviating some of these issues. There is a conversation about Lojban elsewhere in this thread.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/René_Descartes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q.E.D. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_de_Saussure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotics

It makes me very happy to hear that there are parts of the world where my anecdotal experiences are not representative of the real statistics.

Note, I expressed that among technologically inclined ethivegs there was universal acceptance of the idea among those that I introduced it to, meaning that their hearts and minds still work...they just aren't hackers or engineers that see a problem and then try to fix it using whatever technology possible, extant or not :D.

RE luddites: there is a vast number of luddite ethivegs that reject any technology that they didn't create themselves - including metal, medicines, making paper, and etc. It can be a brutal life and I imagine it is only possible in some areas of the world. They also acknowledge that they only survive due to law enforcement protecting them with armaments that they do not allow themselves to use. The real crazies do all that and then refuse to use domesticated animals! Fruitarianism, eat your heart out :D.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruitarianism