A very selfish attitude

Fertilizer is fertilizer. Nitrogen is nitrogen. Yes, the nitrogen in grass is turned into urine, but where does she think that urine goes? Into a black hole? Soil has been "treated" with animal fertilizers since the beginning of time. Animal waste, dead animals, plant waste and dead plants are all an important and necessary source of soil fertility.

So, I have to ask. If a rabbit were to poop in the cabbage patch, do these vegan gardners clean it up before it "fertilizes" the soil? Silly...

 

What's that got to do with the price of fish?

 

To Animal Rights!


~Fer~

 

Dog food is not made from cows , so what has this to do with the original question?

 

I agree with green_thumb on all of this. Cows are wonderful creatures for milk, butter and cream. But eating meat is evil. It was the cause of man's downfall in the first place. It's something we all need to rise above. There, I said it. In proportion, cows are fine. But the lie that we need to eat meat causes too many of them to be bred for meat only and oops, there goes the rainforest. Oops, blue green algea in our water, not to mention the pollution done to them from too many cows.

Grass clippings make excellent fert + mulch. That and kitchen refuse is mostly what i use + some hay. My garden blooms and i don't have to collect dung. I've tried many different methods and this is the best for me and it works + free mulch, which is vital in Australia.

Bilby, what is dogfood made of if not then unused stuff from cows and other animals, boiled to a sludge and then reconstitued to a meat-like shape, much like Hungry Jack's chicken burgers?

 

its all about BALANCE in all things

dont be a victim of ignorance
or maybe you dont know any better?

 

When was it ever known that man only ate plant materials, havnt we always been omnivores?

I am not anti vegan, and I am not anti eating meat, I am in the middle and really dont know which one is better.

I can see how we would be healthier if we ate all plants, but then we would have to clear out a lot of forest land to grow the crops, which is what is destroying the rainforests.

I do not hunt, I couldnt kill anything. But if I am dead hungry and nothing is around I will kill me a cow and eat it. Its survival.

I had a teacher that told me the appendix would have been like another stomache to break down grasses and stuff, but it was never used so it lost its functions or something like that.

But if thats not the reason, obviously we wasnt meant to be totally veg. or we would be able to eat grass and stuff. But I dont know im not a biology major or anything, so dont jump on me or anything.

 

That's exactly what dogfood consists of. For having such an interest, Bilby is surprisingly ignorant about all this.

 

Dear God. What do you think cows eat? Do you think they just magically get fattened up for consumption? Here's how it works, I'll make it very simple: Land is cleared. A crop is planted, harvested and fed to cows. They grow over the course of a few years. They are butchered and consumed by humans. If we didn't eat meat, instead of planting the field with cow food, we could plant it with human food. There would be a net loss of crop land needed to sustain human life. I cannot believe some people do not get this.

Yes, and we are all in that situation sooooo often....

You don't have to be a biology major to think for yourself and decide that meat is unhealthy and not the best choice in this day and age. It doesn't really matter what our bodies are capable of handling, you can eat what you want. No, we are not ruminants like cattle are, but humans do very well on a vegetarian diet, more and more people are waking up to this fact. Certainly anyone who claims to care about the environment should adopt a meatless life.

 

Meat-eating isn't unhealthy unless it's excessive, but every diet is unhealthy if done to excess. Meat-eating actually provides you with protein and vitamins that are much harder to find in vegetables. Many vegetarians have to take nutritional supplements because otherwise their bodies would not have access to all the nutrients they need.

As for the whole animal rights issue...I have a question for those who would criticize me for eating a burger: Why does a cow deserve the right to live? It isn't self-aware. It can't reason. A cow's intelligence is a very very very small fraction of a human being's intelligence.

 

Well, to be fair, cows are often fed with crop wastes. Oh, and the occasional dead diseased cow they grind up to feed to the rest of the herd! <does his best homer simpson impression> Mmmmm, mad cow disease! Ugggghhhhhh

Don't be afraid to go a bit further either: land is cleared, huge monoculture tracts are farmed with a large number of extraneous inputs and outputs. The land becomes so degraded farmers must rely on chemical fertilizers and pesticides which in turn creates a large amount of outputs into streams and groundwater. After many years of growing one or two crops some of the fields are turned into pastures because they can no longer support crops. I won't even touch the energy demands farms think they need. It's amazing how this society can take the most natural thing ever and turn it into one big machine.

There is a much better way: the natural way. We've studied natural systems for a long time now and we proved we can beat them. Isn't it time we work with Nature instead of against her?

 

I cannot beleive that anyone believes that land as in the attached pic can be used for human food.The land needed for human food ie to grow fruit and vegetables is called arable land.Only 18% of mainland USA and 6% of Australia is arable.Dry land -as opposed to arid land- that has a reasonable amount of rainfall can be used to grow some cereal crops such as wheat and oats.It is true that a good deal of it is fed to livestock.There are market gardens around here but they rely on irrigation water from the Murrumbidgee River.There is only so much available.To suggest that arid land that does carry sheep and cattle could used for crops is plain silly.
In an article by George Monbiot in
The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/famine/story/0,12128,865087,00.html

he brings up that old chestnut about it takes 100,000 litres of water to produce 1 kg of beef.This is what it takes on irtrigation land.However most beef is not raised on irrigation land or fed with crops from irrigation land.The suggestion that 100,000 litres of water would be available for other purposes for every 1kg of beef not produced is highly misleading.I consider such disinformation an abuse of free speach.

 

Downunder pet food is mostly made of kangeroos with the odd recently died (of natural causes) sheep, pig or COW. Euthenised cats and dogs also become pet food.

 

lol. Please do some research, you'll benefit from getting the facts straight.

The better question would be why does it not deserve to live? By your psychotic reasoning, we should be eating the mentally disabled.

Besides, the issue is hardly limited to the consideration of a cow's life, it has much more to do with the reduction in habitat for other species (many of those endangered) caused by the cutting down of rainforest to provide cropland, the pollution of rivers and streams from agriculture waste and the increased demand for water (which is drying up rivers/aquifers all over).

 

I think a lot of things must be different "down under", I hope you are considering the actions and outcomes in other countries as well when you ponder this matter.

 

There's a lot bigger difference in intelligence between a cow and a human than between a mentally disabled human and a normal human.

"Why does it not deserve to live?" So you're implying that everything has the right to life? I'm reminded of a T-shirt my brother used to wear: "How many vegetables had to die for your stupid salad?"

Are you also against antibiotics, because the infectious bacteria has the right to life? It not, where do you draw the line?

Cows and pigs are raised and fed in temperate environments. What does that have to do with the rainforest? There's no shortage of temperate land. And you make it sound like there's a shortage of fresh water as a result of agriculture, which there absolutely is not.

 

No, a lot of the rainforests are cut down to farm, then are grazed (overgrazed) and then the soil washes away. Sometimes they don't even farm on it, just cut/burn the forest, graze it, then watch it erode away in a few years. Overgrazing is a huge problem, especially in more arid regions like the edge of the Sahara.

You do realize cows live in places besides the American Midwest, right?

 

Not the ones I eat.

 

You should consider doing a little research. There are many places in the world which are rapidly approaching a shortage of water. The Ogallala Aquifer in the Great Plains region is one example, but there are many more which are worse. Here is a quote about the aquifer:

Use of the aquifer began at the turn of the century, and since World War II reliance on it has steadily increased. The withdrawal of this groundwater has now greatly surpassed the aquifer's rate of natural recharge. Some places overlying the aquifer have already exhausted their underground supply as a source of irrigation. Other parts have more favorable saturated thicknesses and recharge rates, and so are less vulnerable.

http://www.iitap.iastate.edu/gccourse/issues/society/ogallala/ogallala.html

 

Your logic is astounding. You rank species based on intelligence? Less "intelligent" species are less deserving of life? Wow. I don't know what to say.

Yes, that's what I'm implying. All species have the right to exist and persist. As far as "vegetables" (not a botanic term), yes I would be against the consumption of an endangered plant species. Potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, etc. are definitely not endangered.
Your bother must be a bright one too .

By our overuse of antibacterial products, we are creating more resistant strains of bacteria. Many people overuse antibiotics.

Anyways, I would be against the human-caused extinction of a bacteria species. Also, I object to the destruction of viruses such as small pox. There is much opportunity for research and I don't believe humans have the right to determine what should exist and what should not.
Bacteria are fascinating and unique, would you be OK with the elimination of them? Consider the bacteria species Deinococcus radiodurans, a bacteria that is able to withstand 1,000 times the radiation that would kill a human being. Impressive, no? Do we have the right to end the existence of this species or others? Hell no.

There's no way you are a biology professor. If so, God help your students. I expect this ignorance from those not in the field of science and perhaps young children, but adults who claim to be educated in science should not be so ill-informed. There is most certainly a shortage of fresh water and it is largely to do with agriculture. Cattle are definitely being raised in the tropical rainforests which are being cut down at an alarming rate, are you going to claim that is untrue also.