#and yes i realize popsci mags arent the end-all of sources but its better than most vegans provide (nothing)

[missbaphomet]

Replies won't let me type the full response so here

@thefalse first of all, there's more to meat/dairy consumption than "it tastes good". There are health issues that necessitate eating meat and animal products, and they provide vital vitamins, minerals, and proteins. Your body will specifically even give you cravings for food high in these nutrients when you're in need. Secondly humans are omnivores, our healthiest diets consist of meat AND plant. Livestock also consumes a huge percentage of food waste that humans, including vegans, can't or won't eat. This can be "ugly" food, food too close to expiration, food you can't keep overnight like baked goods. 30% of the diet of that pork chop that I had last Tuesday was food people threw away. Only 36% of food (by calorie) grown globally is eaten by livestock, 55% makes it onto the plate of a human. 9% goes to biofuels.

If you're as worried about resource scarcity as you claim maybe start trying for renewable resources??? The problem isn't "oh wow animals are so bad for the environment", the problem is "companies and corporations are doing bad things for more money and they're only getting worse." You can stop eating milk and honey all you want, but that's not doing literally anything towards what you claim to be advocating for. We can develop new ways to farm that are sustainable and renewable but we can't unfuck the environment with a simple "just don't buy meat lol". It's infinitely more complex than that.

Did you know it's illegal to harvest seeds you got from a tomato at your local Walmart and cultivate them for yourself? That is assuming the plant hasn't been rendered sterile to enforce reliance on whatever company sells the seeds. I personally think that's a bit more fucked up than having a grilled cheese every so often.

Also no one is arguing animal abuse is good, but it's pretty common knowledge that if you abuse your livestock, it reflects negatively in the product. Put simply: animals that are abused then slaughtered for meat make shitty meat. Is there some sketchy shit happening in factory farming? Abso-fucking-lutely. Many livestock animals live on the bare minimum. I absolutely think that livestock should have good lives. Obviously not every cow and pig and chicken can be raised with the same quality of life as a champion show poodle, but they absolutely deserve a nice pasture and good scratch and a warm, comfortable shelter.

You know who provides these things? Local farmers or even just hobbyists. I have several family friends that raise chickens, and we get more eggs than we could ever hope to reasonably eat as a family of four. If you don't eat the egg, toss it back to the chicken! She will happily eat her eggs because they're nutritional and make a damn fine meal. My family also has connections to a family owned cattle farm, and we split a cow up the middle every year, and did for almost 20 years before the owner got cancer and stopped selling beef to focus on his health, and it was damn good beef too. Pigs aren't prominent in my area, but I'm sure I could find one semi-locally. My DM keeps bees and my family went from basically never using honey to buying it by the pint. I think the only thing that my family buys from the store that we couldn't get anywhere else is milk and cheese because pasteurization and cheese making is a huge expensive process that isn't really reasonable to maintain for just a small family.

Ultimately the argument of "but animal abuse" boils down to factory farming, but the solution then becomes just don't buy meat and other products from factory farms.