What a load of drivel.
Some facts.
1. To create meat uses a terrific amount of grain/land/ oil compared with how much pulses/grain for human consumption could be produced. Meat is a luxury item not a necessity for life and will get ever more expensive.
2. I think a lot of people have this image of cows grazing in fields. RUBBISH even in Britain there are big milk farms where the cows never get out, far more efficient and they are so changed by breeding that they can't get around the fields anyway. Countryfile a few weeks back. In hot countries like southern Spain milk is also produced this way as there isn't grazing land. Incidentally milk from green parts of Spain is a lot more expensive e.g. Asturias. As for the use of antibiotics in feed even chicken food comes dosed up but it doesn't matter as it has all been approved and is in the interests of getting more out of the life of each animal.
3. There was a good series of farming and how it has changed over the last 50 years in Britain on Fridays recently. Very informative, unbiased and eye opening and a little sad too.
4. The future of food programmes that you "didn't watch" Nickbat actually covered GM foods and I thought it was quite impartial.
I remain sceptical about any forecast on population decline. It is human nature to generally reproduce. If medicine and economic conditions permit then more and more people will be born and crucially have longer life expectancies. I wonder if any of the "experts" years ago predicted the world population would be as large as it is now. Don't think so. So I have no confidence in a bunch of so called experts today predicting a decline unless it is by some man made cause we aren't privy to yet (plague, chemical or biological warfare)
V
I don't do drivel, Varche.
Yes, there were daft fools around in the 1970s, too:
Earth Day predictions, 1970“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”• George Wald, Harvard Biologist
“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist
“By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.”• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist
“Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”• Peter Gunter, professor, North Texas State University
“Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”• Life Magazine, January 1970
Doomsayers? Heard them all before. And they were
ALL wrong.
Varche, nowhere did I say that there are not poor farming practices which need to be addressed. Here is Britain, there is a sustained movement towards more ethical and humane farming practices. But, even where I live - in a London postal area - dairy herds graze freely on grass! Of course, that doesn't mean that no more needs to be done, and poor farming practices will always be found, albeit at increasingly isolated spots.
[sarc/on]
Still, at least over here we don't sink swords into bulls for fun, or drop donkeys off towers, or let frightened bulls loose in city streets.
[sarc/off]
Cheers, Nick
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Topic: How Many Steaks To The Gallon..? (Read 1437 times)