Vegetarians Who Turned into Butchers
I realize that most people will read this and go &quot;haha, see that triggered vegan&quot;, but please take a moment to honestly consider how horribly bad this article is.<p>The article (besides being about vegetarians and vegans who turned butcher, for some self-contradictory reasons) is about the benefits of grass-fed, expensive meat versus soy- and corn- fed meat. The main benefit is that it&#x27;s healthier for the animal, and therefore &quot;nicer&quot; for the animal, and also more environmentally friendly.<p>However, it is not at all more environmentally friendly. The impact on the environment is actually a lot higher, because now you need to dedicate large portions of land to grass-fed animals. And yes, there are plenty of areas that don&#x27;t seem to grow any proper food but do grow grass, which makes it sound like it&#x27;s a perfectly valid plan. But even if you cut down every forest on earth and use every arible piece of land for grass-fed animals, you would still not have enough space on earth to support our current demand for meat in such a way.<p>They hint towards this a little bit, and suggest that people can counterbalance this by only eating a little piece of meat. But then that is the &quot;real&quot; solution here: to severely reduce your meat consumption. The whole part about grass-fed vs corn-fed is not at all relevant to the story after this point, it&#x27;s all about reducing consumption. After all, if you only ate a little bit of meat, it would STILL be more sustainable to eat corn&#x2F;soy-fed meat instead of grass-fed meat.<p>Of course, that&#x27;s exactly what vegetarians and vegans are doing: they&#x27;re reducing the amount of meat they eat.. but instead of stopping at, say, 10% of what the average person eats normally, they stop at 0%. And they are often demonized because of that last 10%, whereas stopping at 10% apparently makes you some kind of noble hero.<p>Also, there are some pretty insane lines in this article:<p>&gt; [...] a vegan for five years &lt;attended a&gt; “Kill Your Own Thanksgiving Dinner” event at a local farm.
&gt; “It was really morbid. I was the only one who signed up,” she said.<p>If you&#x27;re a vegan, and you care about animals, why were you signing up for a &quot;kill your own turkey&quot; event? That sounds like one of the least vegan thing you could do.<p>&gt; After spending her high school and college years subsisting on a vegetarian diet of flavored yogurt, Gardenburgers, pizza pockets and mac and cheese with frozen vegetables mixed in, she began eating meat again in Europe, where she worked on farms for a few years.
&gt;“As soon as I started eating meat, my health improved,” she said.<p>So she stopped eating junkfood and her health improved. This is framed as if it&#x27;s somehow bad to be vegetarian&#x2F;vegan for your health, but I hope any skeptical reader will see her problem was a horrible junkfood diet, not that she was vegetarians. How many meat-eaters can be healthy on only eating pizzapockets, yoghurt and hamburgers?<p>&gt; “I have a business based on the fact that I’m sad about the way animals are being treated,” he said.<p>No, you have a business making a profit from the death of animals.<p>&gt; “Since I became a butcher I’ve been called some horrible things on the internet, and it doesn’t seem right,” [...] “There’s a larger problem here: the problem with concentrated feedlots, and with animals being commodities. That’s what we should be attacking, not each other. ”<p>That&#x27;s like saying &quot;Hey, I treat my slaves really well! We should be fighting the bad slave-holders, not the good ones.&quot;
No, (ethical) vegans are against using animals as products, and that&#x27;s what they&#x27;re commenting on. Not whether or not your meat is healthy.