Dear Jenn H,
I belive you make some excellent points about the use of pesticides and in showing that the possibility that someone could live their life without harming any creatures is nonexistent. However, the point of veganism/ vegetarianism is not to completely eliminate animal death and suffering but to reduce it is much as possible. Any pragmatic human being must recognize that to exist is to destroy, but that doesn’t mean that you can try to reign in your incumbent destruction. I’d also like to speak to the bulk of your argument. While by no means entirely wrong, it is a bit misleading (which I recognize may be entirely unintentional). I will readily concede that the agricultural system which you described, when practiced perfectly, would result in less overall deaths than crop production, but theven system which you mentioned is a rarity in the modern agribusiness system. The vast majority of animals used for food purposes are fed a diet consisting of corn, soy, nutritional supplements, and other grains for all of their lives ( a notable exception is ruminants like cattle which graze for the first couple of years of their lives and are later transferred onto the system which I am referring to). Livestock converts this feed into energy at a horrible rate with chickens and swine converting feed to energy at around a 50% efficiency rate and cattle at only a 10% efficiency rate. These rates can vary greatly depending on the breed of animal and other factors but no matter what an animal will always use more food energy than it produces in the form of bodily tissues because most of the energy goes to maintaining basic metabolic processes and the leftover is turned into mass. So most animals will utilize the crop production system that kills much of the local wildlife and then still be killed themselves. By eating the crop directly you are killing far fewer animals. As a matter of fact, equation for how many animals more you kill by eating meat calories as opposed to plant calories would be [ (animals killed per crop calorie/ efficiency rate of livestock) +1]-animals killed per crop calorie. All in all, if you care about animals the best way would to live would be to grow as much of your own food as possible, eating mainly a plant based diet and supplementing it with meat you raise yourself in the livestock production system you described Jenn.
Thanks for your insight. I appreciate your use of logic instead of sputtering guttural pathetic crap in all caps
