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I found this interesting and thought I would pass it on. I never considered the fact that what and how I eat had this much of an impact on anything more than my own health and well being. Chalk one up for the Veggiemonster :)

http://bicycleuniverse.info/transpo/energy.html



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And what about the fuel consumption for raising and transporting poultry and fish? Where's the data on that?
Food for thought (no pun intended), but his complaints about being misunderstood are a bit disingenuous when he headlines his article that way. Plus, if I decide to kick up to 200 miles a week or something, I won't be increasing my meat consumption so much as I will my carb consumption
I would think fish would be considerably lower if they were farm raised. Catching though who knows with big ships using all that diesel fuel.

Tank-Ridin' Ryan said:
And what about the fuel consumption for raising and transporting poultry and fish? Where's the data on that?
Right, his calculations are for beef heavy diets. Otherwise, this article kinda blew my mind.

JeffB said:
Food for thought (no pun intended), but his complaints about being misunderstood are a bit disingenuous when he headlines his article that way. Plus, if I decide to kick up to 200 miles a week or something, I won't be increasing my meat consumption so much as I will my carb consumption
Funny Serge, real funny.

Serge Lubomudrov said:
Poultry can walk or fly, fish can swim. No transportation costs :)



Tank-Ridin' Ryan said:
And what about the fuel consumption for raising and transporting poultry and fish? Where's the data on that?
Me? Sarcastic? Never!

Serge Lubomudrov said:
Are you being sarcastique, Ryan? ;)



Tank-Ridin' Ryan said:
Funny Serge, real funny.

Serge Lubomudrov said:
Poultry can walk or fly, fish can swim. No transportation costs :)



Tank-Ridin' Ryan said:
And what about the fuel consumption for raising and transporting poultry and fish? Where's the data on that?
What a load of Hooey! This article would pertain to anyone with an active lifestyle. It's just more garbage telling people that meat is bad. I'm off to drown a vegan!
I don't eat meat, but the math here is complete and utter bullshit. Here's a George Monbiot review of a recent book that addresses the topic. My favorite bit:

Like many greens I have thoughtlessly repeated the claim that every kilogram of beef requires 100,000 litres of water to produce(3). Fairlie shows that this figure is wrong by around three orders of magnitude. It arose from the absurd assumption that every drop of water that falls on a pasture disappears into the animals that graze it, never to re-emerge.

For comparison's sake, a human being is three orders of magnitude larger than an ant.
Yeah, why even make an effort? May as well just live in a 5,000 s.f. home, leave every light on 24 hours because it makes the house look nice and vibrant, eat Sirloin every night, and drive to Burger King in a mobile home. It's all hopeless, right?



chrisc927 said:
The arguments for or against mode of transport and dietary lifestyle are myopic. A car-less vegan forfeits all green points the very second that first child is born.
Dr. Doom is a bit selective in his quotes. Even just fixating on the one point that seems to make a relevant observation, you had to stop and smell the bullshit when reading "the animals that graze it". Unless you are getting meat at Whole Foods, you're eating an animal that stood in a pen covered in it's own shit it's whole life, and the poor beast never got a day in the sun grazing in a pasture. It's called factory farming, and it accounts for the vast majority of the meat you eat. We're a long way from Kansas Toto.

The closing paragraph of the Monbiot's article points to the fallacy of Fairlie's argument that meat production is not as bad as we think.

The meat-producing system Simon Fairlie advocates differs sharply from the one now practised in the rich world: low energy, low waste, just, diverse, small-scale. But if we were to adopt it, we could eat meat, milk and eggs (albeit much less) with a clean conscience. By keeping out of the debate over how livestock should be kept, those of us who have advocated veganism have allowed the champions of cruel, destructive, famine-inducing meat farming to prevail. It’s time we got stuck in.

I agree that going with local small-scale food production is the answer. It would be awesome to see the suburbs bulldozed and converted back into small family farms feeding our cities. However, we are so far away from this model that one has to start getting critical about the food we consume. It only took a couple generations to devolve into the mess we're in, so it should only take a couple generations to correct things, right?

~steven
The figures in the originally linked piece are ridiculous (thus the link to the review of a book on the topic). Because the argument is based on bad figures, it comes to silly conclusions.

As I said, I don't eat meat myself. However, the impact of meat eating is more than bad enough without making absurd, demonstrably false claims about it.
You know what tastes good? Veal. ;-) F'in delicious ;-)

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