Comments on Food News
1) You can't get avian flu if you don't keep or eat birds
2) Does anyone else find it funny that chefs are spearheading the effort to save a species? I guess not funny, more like ironic.
I've never been so happy to be a vegetarian.
Not to mention the reportedly common melamine spiked feed in china.
The use of chicken waste to feed fish is actually a good idea, if it weren't for the harmful stuff fed to the chickens that then contaminates the fish. If the chickens were eating normal chicken food, the fish and shrimp would be fine.
Is the DoA honestly pushing this idea RIGHT NOW, with all the publicity surrounding the Chinese wheat gluten? That just sounds like a PR disaster waiting to happen for them (and an issue that Congress ought to be pouncing on RIGHT NOW, damn it.)
Duh. What are you doing eating birds anyhow? There is plenty of food for all of us (at least in this country) without killing animals to eat. The fact that meat seems to be increasingly dangerous to eat will hopefully cause people to stop eating it. Why would we eat an animal? That's like chewing on your own arm.
Like SARS, like West Nile, like Hantavirus, like Lhasa and Bubonic Plague and every other superdisease in the making that the media's used to spook us with, the danger of avian flu is so dramatically overstated comparitive to the actual danger. You have a better chance of dying from dog AIDS.
C'mon, ECB. Quit contributing to the American culture of fear appeals.
Cook @1, mary-kate @2, "Call me a snot" @6 -- agreed. One way to avoid bird flu is just not to eat birds.
But -- and forgive me for trying to hijack this thread to take on a larger issue --even if you're not a vegetarian, you can do some good for the world simply by eating less meat.
Time Magazine recently came up with 51 things that individuals and societies can do to combat climate change. #22 on the list was Skip the Steak:
Which is responsible for more global warming: your BMW or your Big Mac? Believe it or not, it's the burger.
Even Erica here, connoisseur of greasy Texas delicacies, has gone on record saying she moderates her meat consumption as well as her driving.
Cressona your point is well taken. However all this moral bantering about not eating meat isn't helping either. I and others will continue to do so. I'm roasting a bird as I write this.
I think the article states in plain english why we should be questioning the reasons we even get many of our foods ( meats, vegetables, grains) from China. I will be paying attention to this issue in the present and future for sure!
Overall I'm so pissed off about this I could just spit!
The Klamath/Snake River salmon situation is further complicated by
water usage issues for growers. There was a hell of a kill off of returning King Salmon to the Klamath about three
years ago when water was apparently diverted to growers. Dams are only one part of the issue.
--- Jensen
@1: "Does anyone else find it funny that chefs are spearheading the effort to save a species?"
No, I don't find it funny or ironic. You see, chefs make a living cooking salmon for people. Hence, they have a stake in the species survival, as do all fish eating people.
Does anyone else find some vegetarians to be as stupid and annoying as evangelical Christians?
Does anyone else wonder whether veganism is just a rationalization for anorexia?
Actually very little power is generated by the Snake/Klamath dams compared to the NW total. The big power generators are on the Columbia which no one is talking about removing(yet).
The real issue on both of these rivers is the dependence on water for agriculture as Jensen points out. Once we figure out how to deal with that problem in a way that respects rural communities, we can then make progress in removing the dams.
The cows are going to get fed and killed whether or not I eat them, so I might as well get my RDA of protein.
Tear down the city light dams and the Grand Coulee so that the slog will be powered by coal or Nu-cle-ar
I love that the IHT puts a bird flu story under "sports" on their website.
I lived most of the first 24 years of my life in Columbus, Ohio, 6 of which as a vegan. Only the last 3 years have been spent in Seattle, also as a vegan. I am amazed by the difference. Sure, here there are more vegans, and more places to get vegan food, but never before have I had to defend it as a moral decision so much. In Columbus, "I'm a vegan" was often met with "huh?" or a shrug. Here, in Seattle, a supposed bastion of liberal and progressive thought, "I'm a vegan" becomes an affront to the morality of a non-vegan. Seattleites are used to thinking themselves morally superior and when confronted with (not even confronted, more like exposed to) a moral issue they don't subscribe to, it becomes a lighting rod which attracts stupid shit like "Does anyone else wonder whether veganism is just a rationalization for anorexia?" So many Seattleites are liberal and open-minded insofar as their boundaries already extend, but beyond that, they are as bad (worse?) as the conservatives in Columbus, OH.
Erica,
Do you support the tear-down of dams in the region, even though they are the most cost-effective carbon-neutral energy source we have?
We have to prioritize our environmental causes: if global warming is an existential threat to mankind, we may have to find some other way to accommodate the salmon.
@17 The dams that are proposed to be removed do not contribute significant amounts of energy to the region AND dams are not even close to carbon neutral. Check out this link:
And to the vegetarians and vegans - I think it is the smug moral superiority that some of you display that fuels the negative responses that you get here. Many of us do what we can to reduce our ecological footprint ( or to reduce our feelings of guilt anyway ). Is eating local and organic food, including some local meats worse for the planet than eating soy products that have traveled thousands of miles to get here? I don't know, but I think this game of who is the most righteous is juvenile and reminds me of when I was raised in a fundamentalist religion.
When I heard about importing chickens from China I couldn't believe it. The timing of the US is perfect. What a bunch of idiots. But I also hate to rain on every vegetarian's parade, but I recently learned (to my sorrow) that only the meat & poultry industries in the US are regulated. The produce farms in the US are not. Unfortunatley, more people are becoming sick from eating tainted veggies than meat right now in the US. If would like to learn more listen to KCRW's Good Food, May 5th show. It's one of our favorite food podcasts. There were actually 2 interviews; one on food contamination & one on animal feed. The whole show is great.
the problem about contaminated produce is that it is usually contaminated from the runoff of livestock crates. like the spinach E.coli scare? shit downstream from a cow factory.
http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=11440
about the traveling food, i don't know exact data about what is less, but i can't see how eating meat in any situation is efficient. if you find anything regarding this, i'd be interested to see it.
and if you were thinking of bringing up the fact that the amazon is being destroyed for soybeans, which is true, the reality is that most of that feed goes towards feeding cows because of the mad cow scares (they stopped feeding cows other animals and now they need a high protein food).
and finally:
"It takes 5,000 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of meat, while growing 1 pound of wheat only requires 25 gallons. A totally vegetarian diet requires only 300 gallons of water per day, while a meat-eating diet requires more than 4,000 gallons of water per day. You save more water by not eating a pound of beef than you do by not showering for an entire year."
i couldn't post more than one link, so here is another RE the last two blurbs. feel free to just explore this site, it's really easy to understand and clear.
@6
Because we like to eat meat. We enjoy it. It tastes good. We're well aware that there are plenty of other options. Those options are side dishes for us.
You will never be able to stop people from eating meat. Ever. Deal with it.
Go ahead and make a correlation to eating humans. Those are always fun to ignore completely.
@11
"Does anyone else find some vegetarians to be as stupid and annoying as evangelical Christians?
Amen.
Too bad this thread turned into a veggie vs. carnivore eco-chat. Very worth debating, but the more immediate issue is that once again our gov't is looking the other way in the name of profit.
China would feed its own people ground glass if they could get away with it, so why should we trust China with any food they send us? For all we know the ordinary Cheerios we eat could contain ingredients imported from unsafe sources, ie, from China. We just don't know...
And yeah, the imported chicken from China idea - OMG!!!!
Keep in mind - because of farming practices, where livestock are kept in extremely close quarters - unfortunately a practice in SE Asia, is the main source of the world's flu strains.
And, please don't think I'm anti-Chinese people - it's their government. It has little regard for humanity.
@20
Yeah, let's save water. You know we're running out of it.
Dumbass.
@25,
Maybe we, Washingtonians, aren't running out of water, but the Southwest is on its way to being seriously fucked. Many other parts of the world are facing serious water shortages. It's only going to get worse, not better.
Dumb ass.
PCC caries local all-grass-fed beef. Obviously there are ways that could be done wrong but, by and large, it’s a pretty good deal; low food miles, no need to grow or ship animal feed, and if the cows are being grazed then their manure is going back into the eco system the way it’s supposed to, rather than being concentrated in a barn or a pen. As long as the ranchers are watering the animals responsibly, grass-fed ranching is extremely sustainable. There are cultures in Europe that have been doing it on the same pastures for hundreds of years.
Not only does the need for water vary from region to region, but the big picture (the energy necessary to process water for use in agriculture or in our homes, locally and globally) would theoretically benefit from reducing consumption in any way. It's an everyone-does-his-or-her-small-part kinda deal. That said, I am not a vegetarian. Guess it's time to stop showering....
The lower Snake and Klamath dams aren't water supply dams -- removing them would actually reduce pressure on farmers to augment flows from further upstream. And like people have said, these are relatively minor power producers that can have their energy replaced through efficiency and wind -- i.e. removing them would be carbon neutral. Nobody's talking about removing really big hydropower dams like Grand Coulee or Bonneville -- we can save a lot of salmon without doing that.
@28 - actually, if the slacker Klamath farmers would just stop using old 20th century irrigation practices, and use 22nd century irrigation (drip irrigation done when most of the water doesn't vaporize and create salt-encrusted fields), there wouldn't BE a water problem for the Salmon.
But that would be ... PRUDENT.
COOK Wrote:
"A totally vegetarian diet requires only 300 gallons of water per day, while a meat-eating diet requires more than 4,000 gallons of water per day"
How much water does a fish-eating diet require? I grew up in Hawaii and that is mostly what we ate.
--- Jensen
http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/environment/water/food_security.html
n contrast, fish require on average 2 kilograms of grain to add 1 kilogram of live weight, and are therefore more “water efficient” as an animal protein source. Aquaculture presents both costs and benefits, producing “water efficient” fish while exacting a heavy toll on habitat and water quality, and increasing evaporative losses from freshwater ponds. Clearly, these tradeoffs have important implications for evolving food and water management policy.
PS: if anyone here feels like they are being preached to, it is not intentional on my part. the difference between veganism and evangelicalism is that we don't know if god exists, but the health, environmental, and animal rights benefits are all very clear through veganism.
and @22, i agree that animals and animal products are tasty, i just think some things come above taste...
Cook, I haven’t researched this in detail, but I disagree with your basic premise re water and such. Not the specifics— I’m sure that water resources are being abused and misused for meat farming all over the globe. But I’m not convinced that the metrics you’re using are universally applicable. So, for example, large herbivores are part of a healthy natural ecology. Their droppings serve a thousand functions for plants, insects and small mammals. Likewise their dead bodies, in terms of scavengers and such. So you can look at a herd of cows and say, “Those animals consume X amount of water, Y amount of grain, and only produce Z amount of food.” And you’d be right. But some of the things those animals do just by taking up space help ensure biodiversity and sustain the planet’s ability to support human life. I mean, just by way of a paradigm demonstration, how much water and food did the bison herds that used to cover the great plains consume? Lots, I would imagine. But we wouldn’t think of that as a harmful waste of resources.
Like I said, I haven’t done the research on this, so I’m not putting it forward as "the way things are." But it is another way to look at the question of whether or not food animals can be a good investment of resources.
Judah: PCC caries local all-grass-fed beef. Obviously there are ways that could be done wrong but, by and large, it’s a pretty good deal; low food miles, no need to grow or ship animal feed, and if the cows are being grazed then their manure is going back into the eco system the way it’s supposed to, rather than being concentrated in a barn or a pen. As long as the ranchers are watering the animals responsibly, grass-fed ranching is extremely sustainable.
Strictly from an environmentalist's standpoint (leaving the animal rights issue aside), eating beef like this is certainly preferable to eating beef that comes from a far-away factory farm. But it's still many times less energy-efficient than going vegetarian. Veg fare skips the middle-man, so to speak. Really, the climate change issue with meat-eating is one of degree (forgive the pun). Meat-eating at current levels (barring disproportionate strides in other sectors) is not sustainable. Meat-eating at lesser levels -- even meat from factory farms -- is sustainable.
There are cultures in Europe that have been doing it on the same pastures for hundreds of years.
And you'll find that these cultures, because of the limitations of traditional agricultural technology, didn't eat that much meat. Remember, the palace guards in England are called the Beefeaters. Back in those days, beef was enough of a luxury that such a name meant something. Of course, the other difference between then and now is just how many people there are in the world.
The "health benefits" of veganism are dubious, at best. If you put a ridiculous amount of effort into it (i.e. more effort than 99% of humans are likely to have available for dietary planning), you can (in some situations) maintain a healthy vegan diet. It takes a lot of knowledge and planning.
That said, most practicing vegans tend to have abysmal diets, if only because most practicing vegans are teenagers whose primary concept of healthy food extends no further than the Boca burger.
Go evangelize somewhere else, veganists.
Vegans, like Christians, have found something that makes them happy.
Vegans, like Christians, believe that what they have found is good for them should now be a must for us.
I have yet to meet a Vegan who will not flip out into an argument on animal rights the second you suggest that it's your right to eat meat, and that you aren't selfish for enjoying it.
They both have one-track minds. That's selfish.
Note: Vegans, not vegetarians.
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