Keith Thomas wrote:

>The BBC website today has an item titled "Hungary world must eat less
>meat".  It's at:
>
>http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3559542.stm
>
>The scientific approach of the authors is useful: looking at the volume of
>water required to produce one kilogram of meat (up to 15 cubic metres of
>water)and to produce a kilo of cereals (0.4 to 3 cubic metres).
>
I think the authors gave us a hint at their prejudices by saying that
pastured beef
requires as much water as growing grain.  The only case in which this is
true is
winter wheat (grown in the Great Plains) which is not irrigated and
relies on snowfall
over the winter.  Just try growing corn and soybeans that way....

The problem with the high resource cost of meat is the feedlot system.
The feedlot
generates huge amounts of waste, uses a lot of water, and feeds corn and
soybeans
grown with irrigation water and vast quantities of petroleum in the form
of tractor
passes over the field, herbicides, and pesticides.

Pastured cattle, sheep and goats make human food out of grass and weeds
which
humans could not otherwise eat.

>The underlying assumption that the whole planet must bend, crack and
>eventually break just to accommodate the plague species Homo sapiens is
>what gets up my nose most.
>
And it's unbelievable that these people think that no matter how many
humans the planet
has, we can feed them all if they'll only eat vegetarian.  20 billion,
30 billion, 40 billion:
no problem, just grow more soybeans and corn.  Do you remember Soylent
Green?

    Lynnet