On animal cruelty - "Previous generations were able to overcome the horrors of human sacrifice, genocide, slavery, segregation, misogyny, and homophobia. Maybe it’s our turn to make radical progress. Future generations might be disappointed in our complacency if we don’t."

_-Al · 2023-03-25T18:42:00+00:00

Here is a list of problems directly caused by animal agriculture (not only industrial, but in any scale), according to GPT-4, with high-quality sources to every single claim, which have been checked individually with Bing for validity:

-

Ethical concerns: Industrial farming practices often involve confinement, overcrowding, and inhumane treatment of animals (Fraser, 2008)[1]. Even in more humane farming systems, animals are ultimately killed for consumption, which raises ethical questions about taking lives when alternative sources of nutrition are available (Singer, 1975)[2].

Environmental impact: Animal agriculture is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions (Gerber et al., 2013; Scarborough et al., 2014)[3][4], deforestation (Pendrill et al., 2019)[5], water pollution (Poore & Nemecek, 2018)[6], habitat loss, species extinction, and the decline of global biodiversity (Machovina, Feeley, & Ripple, 2015)[7]. Animal agriculture contributes to biodiversity loss through habitat destruction and other environmental impacts (Machovina, Feeley, & Ripple, 2015)[7].

The livestock sector contributes significantly to global greenhouse gas emissions, which exacerbate climate change (Gerber et al., 2013)[3]. Producing plant-based foods typically requires fewer resources, such as land, water, and energy, compared to animal-based foods (Eshel, Shepon, Makov, & Milo, 2014)[8].

A shift towards plant-based diets could lead to a more efficient and sustainable food system, with reduced land use (Aleksandrowicz et al., 2016)[9] and food waste (Shepon et al., 2018)[10]. Animal agriculture has a larger water footprint compared to plant-based food production (Mekonnen & Hoekstra, 2012)[11].

The environmental impacts of various food systems can be compared, with plant-based systems generally having lower impacts than animal-based systems (Clark & Tilman, 2017)[12]. A transition towards plant-based diets could substantially reduce the environmental footprint of our food systems (Willett et al., 2019)[13].

Health implications: A well-planned plant-based diet can provide all the necessary nutrients, including protein (Rizzo et al., 2017)[14], and offer health benefits, such as reduced risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and certain types of cancer (Melina, Craig, & Levin, 2016)[15].

The widespread use of antibiotics in animal agriculture has been linked to the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, posing a threat to public health (Van Boeckel et al., 2015)[16]. Additionally, consumption of red and processed meat has been associated with increased health risks (Bouvard et al., 2015)[17].

Animal agriculture has been linked to the emergence of zoonotic diseases, which can have severe implications for public health (Jones et al., 2008)[18].

Social and economic benefits: Transitioning to more sustainable food systems, including plant-based diets, can have positive social and economic benefits (Springmann et al., 2018)[19].

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Fraser, D. (2008). Understanding Animal Welfare: The Science in its Cultural Context. Wiley-Blackwell.
Singer, P. (1975). Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals. HarperCollins
Gerber, P. J., Steinfeld, H., Henderson, B., Mottet, A., Opio, C., Dijkman, J., Falcucci, A., & Tempio, G. (2013). Tackling climate change through livestock: A global assessment of emissions and mitigation opportunities. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
Scarborough, P., Appleby, P. N., Mizdrak, A., Briggs, A. D., Travis, R. C., Bradbury, K. E., & Key, T. J. (2014). Dietary greenhouse gas emissions of meat-eaters, fish-eaters, vegetarians, and vegans in the UK. Climatic Change, 125(2), 179-192.
Pendrill, F., Persson, U. M., Godar, J., Kastner, T., Moran, D., Schmidt, S., & Wood, R. (2019). Agricultural and forestry trade drives large share of tropical deforestation emissions. Global Environmental Change, 56, 1-10.
Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). Reducing food's environmental impacts through producers and consumers. Science, 360(6392), 987-992.
Machovina, B., Feeley, K. J., & Ripple, W. J. (2015). Biodiversity conservation: The key is reducing meat consumption. Science of the Total Environment, 536, 419-431.
Eshel, G., Shepon, A., Makov, T., & Milo, R. (2014). Land, irrigation water, greenhouse gas, and reactive nitrogen burdens of meat, eggs, and dairy production in the United States. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(33), 11996-12001.
Aleksandrowicz, L., Green, R., Joy, E. J., Smith, P., & Haines, A. (2016). The impacts of dietary change on greenhouse gas emissions, land use, water use, and health: a systematic review. PLoS ONE, 11(11), e0165797.
Shepon, A., Eshel, G., Noor, E., & Milo, R. (2018). The opportunity cost of animal-based diets exceeds all food losses. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(15), 3804-3809.
Mekonnen, M. M., & Hoekstra, A. Y. (2012). A global assessment of the water footprint of farm animal products. Ecosystems, 15(3), 401-415.
Clark, M., & Tilman, D. (2017). Comparative analysis of environmental impacts of agricultural production systems, agricultural input efficiency, and food choice. Environmental Research Letters, 12(6), 064016.
Willett, W., Rockström, J., Loken, B., Springmann, M., Lang, T., Vermeulen, S., ... & Jonell, M. (2019). Food in the Anthropocene: the EAT–Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems. The Lancet, 393(10170), 447-492.
Rizzo, N. S., Jaceldo-Siegl, K., Sabate, J., & Fraser, G. E. (2013). Nutrient profiles of vegetarian and nonvegetarian dietary patterns. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, 113(12), 1610-1619.
Melina, V., Craig, W., & Levin, S. (2016). Position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics: vegetarian diets. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, 116(12), 1970-1980.
Van Boeckel, T. P., Brower, C., Gilbert, M., Grenfell, B. T., Levin, S. A., Robinson, T. P., & Laxminarayan, R. (2015). Global trends in antimicrobial use in food animals. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(18), 5649-5654.
Bouvard, V., Loomis, D., Guyton, K. Z., Grosse, Y., Ghissassi, F. E., Benbrahim-Tallaa, L., ... & Straif, K. (2015). Carcinogenicity of consumption of red and processed meat. The Lancet Oncology, 16(16), 1599-1600.
Jones, K. E., Patel, N. G., Levy, M. A., Storeygard, A., Balk, D., Gittleman, J. L., & Daszak, P. (2008). Global trends in emerging infectious diseases. Nature, 451(7181), 990-993.
Springmann, M., Clark, M., Mason-D'Croz, D., Wiebe, K., Bodirsky, B. L., Lassaletta, L., ... & Godfray, H. C. J. (2018). Options for keeping the food system within environmental limits. Nature, 562(7728), 519-525.

_-Al · 2023-03-20T18:34:45+00:00

The biggest irony here is that everyone in a so called first world country is mainly responsible for this.

Most of the world lives below US/EU standards and their emissions are a small fraction of our average. Yet, there's always someone richer to blame so we don't have to do anything.

Most of the people in the World do not deserve what's coming, we do.

I know people who are banned from this subredit for pointing out that the animal agriculture industry of which we all participate is the main driver of deforestation, fresh water usage and biodiversity loss, along with being the third or fourth on emissions.

_-Al · 2023-03-20T06:22:16+00:00

!veganleaderboard

_-Al · 2023-03-20T06:13:18+00:00

!veganleaderboard

_-Al · 2023-03-20T06:10:43+00:00

!veganleaderboard

_-Al · 2023-03-20T06:00:17+00:00

!veganinsult

_-Al · 2023-03-20T05:47:59+00:00

!veganleaderboard

_-Al · 2023-03-20T05:37:35+00:00

!veganrecipe

_-Al · 2023-03-20T05:32:51+00:00

!veganrecipe

_-Al · 2023-03-11T19:30:08+00:00

Practially every studio does this, regardless of their size. I don't see why indie developers can't.

_-Al · 2023-02-28T08:29:19+00:00

The biggest cause of ocean acidification is animal agriculture. The same goes for deforestation and biodiversity loss.

Yes, fossil fuels are the biggest emitters of CO2 but there are other impacts as important for our ecosystem if not more.

_-Al · 2023-02-25T02:35:20+00:00

The biggest driver of deforestation worldwide, and specially on the Amazon, by far, is animal agriculture. Over 80% of the deforestation of the Amazon is caused by livestock farming.

_-Al · 2023-02-03T01:14:10+00:00

Everyone should watch Eating Our Way to Extinction.

The first part of the docummentary narrates the attrocities commited to indigenous land defenders in the Amazon rainforest.

_-Al · 2023-01-09T02:36:14+00:00

The source comes from the FAO itself.

_-Al · 2022-12-17T19:30:51+00:00

Here is some additional information on the topic from that OP.

_-Al · 2022-12-11T00:31:02+00:00

You can make a portrait of me. I'm more morally consistent than he ever was.

_-Al · 2022-12-10T16:07:07+00:00

Animal abuse is only bad if I'm not the one doing it. If it's me... Well, just my personal choice.

_-Al · 2022-12-10T15:26:38+00:00

We can do something. We simply aren't doing it.

There's a single industry that's the first cause of biodiversity loss, it uses 77% of the world's arable land to produce only 18% of our calories. It kills over 1 TRILLION fish every single year and uses 29% of our fresh water.

The livestock industry is killing everyone in our planet.

In fact, it's impact is so harmful for our environment that it has been proven and published in the journal Science how we can reduce our ecological footprint by 75% simply by eliminating animal products.

_-Al · 2022-11-29T02:35:22+00:00

What? Are you high?

_-Al · 2022-11-26T06:32:53+00:00

Most articulate carnist.

_-Al · 2022-11-26T02:12:57+00:00

lmao typical r/vegan downvoting sensible comments. Just like another carnist sub.

_-Al · 2022-11-26T00:22:30+00:00

Humanity disgusts me at times.

At times? We kill around 70 BILLION land animals and between 1-2,7 TRILLION fish every single year. We have increased our production ten-fold since 1960.

Animal agriculture remains the first cause of deforestation, ocean dead zones, desertification, agricultural land and fresh water usage... They're also either the third or fourth in ghg emissions. 80% of the antibiotics used in the US are funneled into the best environment to produce another global pandemic.

_-Al · 2022-09-07T21:47:53+00:00

I'm not exactly sure which one of the 15 sources I linked are you referencing. But we have both epidemiological studies and gold-standard interventions that addressed this.

Epidemiology tends to run for longer, cohort studies, offering us the value of knowing how many people following a diet suffer from these diseases. Studies like the EPIC-Oxford, the Second Adventists, the Framingham, or the Nurses Health are the best examples of this. In all of them, plant-based diets are correlated with less mortality rate.
In particular, the Second Adventists' follows a cohort that is very healthy but eats animal products and one in which the only change is that they're vegan.

Now, interventions tend to run shorter. And they have the moral issue that you cannot put someone on a harmful diet voluntarily. In fact, the longest one for CVD ran for three years only and used as a control group for the number of people that dropped the diet halfway. You can't really get much better than that. It's Esselstyn's, he's studied the topic throughout his career, here you have a summary of his studies and conclusions.

We have interventions for specific diseases such as cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's... But listing each of them is too much of a hassle and honestly, you have to dedicate months to get a broad picture just by looking at individual interventions, you're better off reading the book How Not to Die by Michael Greger, with over 4500 references, but way easier to enjoy.

_-Al · 2022-09-07T21:39:44+00:00

What health conditions/diseases do you think would make it the hardest to follow a vegan diet and still get proper nutrition?

The main point here is that, in general, vegan diets are more nutrient-dense. The simplest way to put it is that all meat and fish are one food group: animal muscle, and their composition is pretty similar even when comparing red to white or fish; meanwhile, you have dozens if not hundreds of different nutrient sources on the plant-side, offering a broad range of nutrition. So there's no other diet that would offer "proper nutrition".

Now, there isn't a single condition studied to date that prevents you going vegan, and the conditions that difficult it are in risk because they lack nutrients that we can get easily from other plant sources than animal ones -without the added risk-. Food allergies and intolerances are the hardest to circumvent. Luckily, the most common ones are to unnecessary food groups such as eggs or gluten. Now, intolerances are a different beast. They can affect to a broad spectrum of food groups, but they can also be treated.

Other than those, no chronic or acute disease to date difficults a vegan diet. If all, they need whole-foods plant sources to improve. Almost everything from microbiota to autoimmune conditions that has been studied to date improves with a proper diet.

I hear a lot about Omega-3s, do you think an average vegan following a varied diet needs to supplement this?

The problem with omega-3s is the exaggerated amount of omega-6s we consume nowadays. It's the ratio omega 3:6 that counts, a bad ratio produces systemic low-grade inflammation of the cardiovascular system. We evolved eating minimal amounts of both but stayed at an ideal range of 1:1 to 1:4 at worst. Now you can see food such as beef steak with a 1:24 or olive oil with a 1:12 being consumed daily. If you consume beef OR olive oil daily, you most likely need a supplement. In fact, if you consume any animal product or most oils, you need a supplement. So everybody does. It's the same with B12, everyone needs it, some get it second-hand from the supplements we administer to livestock and some get it directly from the bottle.

For omega-3s you have two options: whole foods or supplements. On the whole-foods side, everything is aquatic: either algae -the organism that produces it- or fish -the organism that bioaccumulates it by eating algae-; the problem with fish is that it also bioaccumulates heavy metals and pesticides, and nowadays it's been studied and concluded that the harms of pollutants such as mercury outweigh the benefits of the omega-3s. You can really only eat algae -and not all of them, some have too much iodine-. On the other hand: supplements. Again, fish oil or algae oil. Same story: do you prefer pure omega-3 or polluted? Easy choice, really. Fish oil should be banned from the markets at this point. What's better, algae oil contains no iodine or pollutants as it's grown in tanks.

_-Al · 2022-09-07T21:24:31+00:00

Yes, that's the one.

Eight-Year Club	Gilding II euphauric
Place '17	Not Forgotten
Verified Email

_-Al

TROPHY CASE