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bryanrasmussentoday at 5:04 PM1 replyview on HN

how fast do you expect vegan diets to be distributed through society? What is the relation between the expectation of how fast they can be distributed through society and the requirement for speed of distribution to have the desired effect?

Obviously the requirement would have to be significantly quicker than current spread of veganism which would, as you noted, lead to a big dent in the agriculture sector.

How are your calculations taking into account the need to kill off, en masse, cattle and other animals as veganism spreads because they no longer can be considered economically sustaining for the farmer to support them?

I ask because I've never seen any calculation about this! Everybody always seems to think that veganism spreads and the cattle fairy will blink them out of existence.

When I was working for Greenpeace all the holier than thou vegans were all talking about how immoral it was to kill animals for food, not taking into account that once you no longer user those animals for food you need to kill off a lot of them. This taking into account of things always caused me to have a sneaking suspicion that they wanted the animals not to be killed, as if the farmers would be oh well we can't sell you for meat so let's just keep you on in retirement and feed you, but not have you breed, until you die of old age.

Given the influx of sudden and wide spread veganism and the collapse of the meat as food industry, what are the plans for getting rid of the bodies of lots of dead cows? I know what the plans are now with meat as food, cows are butchered, cut up, refrigerated and transported all over the world, but without meet as food none of that will happen because there would not be profit at the end to support it, so please, what is your plan?

Frankly, the whole wide-spread veganism is part of the solution seems to have the weakness of having many problematic moving pieces that are not at all planned for in any meaningful way - that I have ever seen that is.


Replies

michaelbartontoday at 5:15 PM

I think current livestock usage is driven by demand? I don’t think everyone needs to become strictly vegan. If every ate meat just two days a week that would have a big impact. Perfect being the enemy of the good and all that. For example if meat usage was rationed by the government WW2-style that would likely effect demand too.

You might argue that’s a ridiculous suggestion which is fair. The western world did mobilize for something that’s likely to end less of life that if we continue on our current trajectory.