Though this thread has suffered the expected drift, ( subtexts being, man eat meat, I’m a man, more meat I eat more manly I am, only puffs eat vegetables, etc etc)..
I just watched the program in question, it was really good. I’d never heard of monrobot before but he put his case well. Some real eye openers... We eat 2 million chickens a day in the uk... wow.
51% of the UK covered by animal agriculture, compared to just 5% covered by human homes, roads, industry, airports basically everywhere that we ‘are’ (I’ll think about that next time I’m told we can’t have a new bypass or motorway due to us covering everywhere in concrete and ruining the place) - Another wow moment.
Agriculture rather than industry (which we seem to have got a grip on) causing more pollution of rivers and land... And I’d never thought before about vast tracts of countryside, such as the lake district as green deserts, a completely artificial environment once covered in trees but now just short grass and scrubland due to all the sheep eating everything that tries to grow. And 20 million sheep in the uk? Wow again.
The UN claiming we only have 60 harvests left before our soil is no longer capable of growing anything?
Also very interesting about the possibility of lab grown meat from cells (and it really is true meat, not a soya burger) that can be created using tiny bits of land and energy compared to rearing animals. Microbot didn’t even mention, I don’t think, the plus side of not rearing animals that live short miserable lives.
I’m not sure about his claim that 4kilos of beef has the same carbon footprint as a return flight to New York (too hard to quantify?)
But the fact that most of the worlds soya and other crops that is grown, goes to feed animals for meat after being flown all over the place gives the the lie really to anyone claiming we’d have to clear more land (rainforests etc) to eat more crops, if we ate less meat - it’s clearly the opposite. Just eat the crops and cut out the middle man. (Middle cow?)