this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2024
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I mean we can also make long lasting clothes out of natural fibers without hurting animals.
Not everywhere. Many places its much more sustainable to make clothes from the animals you are eating and it makes sure that you aren't wasting any of the life you've taken that you need to survive.
Wool is one of those natural fibers that can be harvested without harming the animal. Even if you end up eating the goat/sheep, it can provide a few coats of wool before hand.
Yes this is true but a lot of places can't mantain a sheep herd, because it is too cold or to dry for grasses and food for the sheep
In Ireland where there are a lot of sheep theyre an ecological disaster (if you think having biologically diverse forests is a good thing)
Note to self: Introduce more dragons to Ireland.
You also don't need to eat the animals to survive.
True...and you don't need to live in a house, or use the Internet, or have a bank account, or have a computer/mobile...all things that have caused catastrophic damage to the environment and killed countless animals.
One has to draw a line somewhere- perhaps you shouldn't be holier than though just because you draw the line at "I don't want to see the evidence of the death"
I mean I just said a fact, sorry if I upset you.
Just a very common case of leftists being anti-exploitation until it involves reconsidering what goes on their plates.
Vegans in western cultures have access to dietary supplements derived from non-animal sources. That's basically impossible without access to modern industrial food processes.
If we're talking about cultures without ready access to plant fibers for clothes, then they're not going to have vegan supplements, either.
Let me guess, you're a westerner with access to plant-based dietary supplements? I suppose you're vegan then? If not, you must be part of some indigenous people.
Do you really think that is how logic is supposed to work?
Logic? No. Sarcasm? Yes.
Maybe YOU don't have to eat animals to survive. What a privilege u you have that you live in a place where vegetation can be grown in your area or more likely shipped there cheaply(not free of harm to the environment or people\animals). But your experience is not universal there are places on earth that people live where that is not an option. And some of those people have been living there sustainably for 10s of thousands of years. Not to speak of people who's body needs meat to live because of some other reason. You can not eat animals and that's fine but it doesn't replace the science of how to stop environmental damage.
Obviously if someone needs to eat meat to live I'm not going to object. And people living sustainably and not just supporting the animal ag industry are also off the hook in my books.
But in regards to your weird vegetation stuff, I hope you're aware that the livestock are raised on vegetation and will typically consume more calories of feed than they provide with meat? This is a large part of why the Amazon is being deforested, it's to feed livestock, not vegans. The science on how to stop environmental damage is pretty clear on that one.
You can indeed. But growing cotton has already resulted in environmental changes beyond my comprehension.
I guess the first step should be to adapt a habit of clothes repair
Growing cattle has also had a massive impact on the environment. And you often need more land for animal based materials because you both need land for the animals and the land to grow food for the animals. With cotton at least you just need land for the cotton.
I dare you to travel to Uzbekistan and see for yourself what's needed to grow cotton for the whole region.
Then maybe not cotton and instead hemp
Why is this always brought up, stop spreading this. Animals usually are not fed grain unless it's harvesting time. We also do not grow food just to feed them. The grain we feed animals is shit you cannot eat. It's roots/stalks/stems/bad/rotted plant matter. It's the leftovers from the greens we can consume. Most animals also are raised on land that is not suitable for crops, rocky/hilly/weak topsoil land.
Food is grown specifically to feed livestock though, it would be a pretty weird trophic pyramid for them to survive on our waste unless you went back to a time where people killed their one pig for the year and salted it away. In our country, the land degradation from clearing hill country for grazing has led to enormous biodiversity loss and a self-fufilling prophecy of eroded weak topsoil that people claim isn't good for anything else (though it could still be rewilded and in other cultures and times would be terraced and swaled to support plant crops).
Why it is true that you’ll graze non-butcher animals on the leftover stalks and such, we absolutely finish beef and pork on grain and a big portion of the grain harvest is for animal feed.
Almost all of the grain we feed is what I just explained. All of that is ground up and a binding agent (usually molasses) is applied. We do not grow crops just to feed to animals, it's a complete waste of land. We grow crops for our consumption and use first and whats left over is turned into grain to feed to animals we then butcher and eat.
It's brought up because it's true.
research
edit: link doesn't appear to be working, but it's the paper by Emily Cassidy called 'redefining agricultural yields'
Beef is fed (extra) soy. A lot of porc as well
What you say is true for 5% of animal feed globaly.
Mate, I have three chickens at home and I feed them a scratch mix that is mostly grain. I think you’re talking out of your arse, and I strongly doubt you have any actual animal husbandry experience.
Animals products are less efficient for a simple energy reason. Animals produce heat which radiates away as lost energy, and they rely on consuming autotrophs. All life gets its energy from the sun, we as animals get it one or two down the food chain from plants or other animals (which are also eating plants). Animal-based products are simply less efficient.
You can think this all you want, but you cannot consume what they do, you also cannot grow crops usually where livestock are raised. Crops need a pretty flat chunk of land, livestock don't.
Except for the deforestation needed to increase pasture area and for growing more feed. Destroying habitats and pushing indigenous people further from their homes. Meat on a large scale doesn't work because it is energetically less efficient. Farmed animals produce waste products like methane which are large contributors to global warming. Even if the land used by livestock was completely unusable for other purposes, they would still be polluting the environment through eutrophication and destroying locally endangered species.
This. We need to get back to repairable shoes and patching clothes. It's fine to keep a "good set" that doesn't have patches, but we wear clothes like no humans before us. It wasn't uncommon to see patched clothes just 60 years ago.
Cotton is often grown with large amounts of pesticides and uses enourmous amounts of fibers.
And cow feed is also grown with tons of pesticides and you need much more of it for less tissue at the end.
I have hard time seeing clothing with a bigger environmental than leather.
Of course, but there are more options than leather, like bamboo, linen, and lyocell.
Organic and recycled cotton is a lot better, and hemp and linen are also pretty good. And if you're worried about hazardous pesticides the majority is used while growing feed for animals.
The tanning process is no joke either.
But one could also use linen, hemp, ramie/urtica/nettle. However, they are more complicated to process and as the results are textiles, they are not windproof or water repellent.
Very few materials compare to the durability of animal leather. When you need leather, you need leather.
Even as a cheeky vegan I find it hard to disagree with you on this one. Leather will absolutely last a lifetime if taken care of. I think you can still get close, there's a lot of very durable upholstery fabrics for instance but you're likely making other trade offs.