colinsett

The feed grain required per head, per annum, for the following factory farmed animals:

Chickens..............39 kgs per head/per annum

Pigs...................1699 kgs per head

Dairy cows..........1500 kgs per head

Cattle.................1547 kgs per head

Sheep....................22 kgs per head

Grazing/ruminants......20 kgs per head

Total farmed animals = 205 million

NB: Does not include ducks and turkeys.

That must be an awful lot of hectares being desecrated to feed our livestock just to fatten them up for slaughter, Colinsett.

No worries about the starving millions of humans who could be feasting on much of that grain by reducing livestock numbers and thereby reducing the carbon footprint (and methane emissions) in this arid land.

"The feed grain required per head, per annum"

"That must be an awful lot of hectares being desecrated to feed our livestock"

Any ideas on how much grain per head per annum it would take to sustain a human being comfortably?

dickie "That must be an awful lot of hectares being desecrated to feed our livestock just to fatten them up for slaughter,"

at the risk of sounding “religious” - Man shall not live by bread alone!

Alzo asks about “sustainability” and “comfort”

A diet of grain might be "sustainable" but not very "comfortable" - assuming we take boredom as a equating to a discomforting outcome.

I think individuals are best at deciding how much meat they are prepared to buy and how they can best balance their dietary needs (although the obese seem to be doing a poor job at it).

The idea that some central authority decides we will all eat grain to reduce carbon emissions or some other wonky theory is akin to treating us like critters in Animal Farm. Fortunately the "real world" model, which George Orwell used when he wrote that book was destroyed around 15 - 20 years ago.

I have always thought we were put on earth to live, not to merely exist.

“Living” is about making ones own decisions and suffering the consequences, regardless that the outcomes may be sub-optimal.

I have found the consequences of my own decisions have always been “less sub-optimal” than when some faceless bureaucrat tried to make them for me.

As for “No worries about the starving millions of humans”

most of those starving millions are victims of the sort of government who takes it upon itself to decide who will eat what. The despots and dictators who seem to be the scourge of the third world.

I think there is a good argument for re-colonialisation of most of the countries who cannot feed their populations.

Zimbabwe representing a good case study, where the despot, Mugabe raped a viable economy and destroyed the means of food production with his own demented socialist theories

"No worries about the starving millions of humans who could be feasting on much of that grain"

Dickie, you can keep sending more boatloads of food to Africa,
unless you also send some family planning, which the Catholic
Church will fight against, all you'll get is more starving
millions, so its not going to solve anything, just increase
the problem. If every Australian were wiped out tomorrow,
it would take the world just 90 days of breeding to replace
us.

There is in fact plenty of grain for the starving millions.
Somebody needs to buy it for them, farmers can't be expected
to give it away.

But as it happens, the starving millions or livestock won't
be where ever increasing volumes of grain will be going.
It will be for transport, so that people like you have
wheels to use. If you think that people will give up their
cars, for the benefit of the starving millions, I'd say that
you were kidding yourself. But then that is highly possible,
given your postings :)

It seems that the vast majority of opinions here have missed the alternative thrust of Brian Sherman's article - the immense cruelty involved in satisfying the human bloodlust. It is all to easy to pass those massive metal sheds on country (and other) roads, and not think about the torment within them. Pigs, known to be as intelligent as dogs, scream their frustration but have no physical outlet for their distress. Likewise chickens. We should never forget that these are living, sentient creatures, and if people MUST eat them, surely it is not too much to ask that they may have some sort of fundamental enrichment to their wretched lives. The human species is capable of the most horrific cruelty, all in the name of the profit motive. If by some minor dietary modifications we become healthier (I certainly do not want rotting animal flesh in my body), and we even slightly diminish the harm we are doing to this planet, at least some of these hapless animals will not be born for no better purpose than to suffer terribly and die at our brutal hands.

Alzo.

Roughly one pound of grain per day will keep the average homo sapiens sufficiently fed to survive comfortably. A cow needs about 30 times as much.

Nobody seems to have mentioned goats, even though there is more goat meat eaten than any other meat in the world. Goats have the ability to survive on all manner of plants which many other species find quite unpalatable. Apart from goats, the Australian outback also supports quite large populations of donkeys and camels which no one seems to have yet turned into food for human consumption.

David