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Jan Steinman's avatar

You're right to focus on the damaging effects of *industrially* raised animal products.

But it need not be that way.

First off, "animal products" is often attacked as if it were a single thing. There's at least two dimensions to consider: the lifetime of the animal, and whether industrial farming techniques are used.

Dairy and eggs are often produced using industrial techniques, and in this way, will have a similar ecological footprint with industrial meat.

But dairy, eggs, and even meat *can be* produced in a sustainable manner, in a way that does not use much grain or land that could be used to directly fed people.

For example, my dairy goats were grazed in a forested area, unsuitable for growing annual food crops. Not only that, but they produced eight cubic metres of high-quality fertilizer every year, which we then put on our garden and greenhouse beds.

Vegan agriculture is often held forth as an Earth-superior way of producing human food. But in an industrial agriculture setting, the land will wear out, unless either chemical fertilizer or animal manures are applied — which is not really vegan any more, is it?

The vegan alternative of fallowing requires that a cover crop be ploughed in, without harvesting anything, one out of four years, thus reducing the land's productivity by 25%.

So in general, I find the notion faulty that not eating meat, per se, is more "Earth friendly" than producing animal products — especially ones that don't kill the animal, like dairy or eggs.

Using Permaculture techniques, livestock are integrated into the ecosystem in ways that do not reduce sustainability, indeed, in ways that enhance sustainability.

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