Im concerned..

[brimstoneSalad]

Pasture uses more land but the impact on the land is low when managed properly. That is to say, pastured animals can co-exist within the existing eco-system where as confined feeding operations require you to destroy the natural state of the land.

That kind of argument would only be compelling if you are an aesthetically obsessed psychopath who only cares about the visual continuity of the land near you/that you can see, and cares not at all about the global environment or other beings (including other human beings).

Grazing is not environmentally benign; it contributes massively to global warming and the harm of others. It also degrades the land being grazed on, just maybe not as quickly as you'd be able to notice if it's not intensive. That means a small effect on enormous amounts of land across the world and over time, rather than a comparatively larger effect that's more localized and immediately visible. The sum total of environmental harm is worse with pasture feeding, which means more harm to our fellow man. Not much I can say to convince you if you genuinely don't care about others and are only concerned with pastoral aesthetics.

And pesticides and herbicides aren't apply to pasture land so I'm not sure what you're talking about there. And its confined animals, not pastured ones, that more frequently require antibiotics.

@Dsalles' family literally runs a grass feeding operation.

[Dsalles]

The ecosystem of pasture cattle is, the soil and water and sun produce grass, the cattle eat the grass, then the cattle get taken away and shipped to all parts of the world and eaten by humans. It is a one-way extraction of resources, except for the manure and urine, which return to the soil, but the land does get depleted over time. Also the soil gets compacted. And cattle are very dangerous and scarey to rabbits, lizards and other mid-to large sized mammals such as deer, which avoid interacting with them. It is possible to manage cattle in ways that do not require remedial medication against flies, ticks, and all sorts of intestital parasites, but the cheaper and easier way is to dose the animals with abamectin, etc. Termite mounds are abundant in this area, so are ant hills, and insecticides are used to destroy them, just to increase the area that grass can grow. Herbicides are used to kill plants that are not grass. Again, this could be done with labor, but the faster way is dousing with herbicides, roundup being the least toxic of the choices. Pasture is still agriculture, you are growing grass.
Pasture raising is lower density than confinement but it is higher than (I imagine) would be natural. Animals get sick, their hooves crack, they fight and get wouned, they fall in holes, or try to jump a fence, calves are very susceptible to injury. I know the way my parents raised was not very well managed, just like if you have a backyard full of cats, and you dont really care about them, when they show signs of illness, you just shoot them up with antibiotics because it is cheaper than calling a vet, or good prevention or letting them die.

I agree with all of Brimstone salads responses to Carnap, and just wanted to add the above.

@Dsalles' family literally runs a grass feeding operation.

Brimstone is right, my stepfather and brothers are continuing with my late mothers grass-fed cattle production, in Brazil, but I, after some legal battles, have separated my part and am getting out of cattle and transitioning to organic agriculture.

[carnap]

Grazing is not environmentally benign; it contributes massively to global warming and the harm of others. It also degrades the land being grazed on, just maybe not as quickly as you'd be able to notice if it's not intensive.

Grazing doesn't contribute "massively" to global warming, for example, total animal agriculture in the United States only contributes around 5% of green-house gases and cattle in the United States are already mostly pastured (but grain finished). Pasturing entirely would increase green-house gas emissions but not by a significant margin.

https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/source ... -emissions

@Dsalles' family literally runs a grass feeding operation.

And? That isn't the same as a pasture system and you can easily find farmers making conflicting claims. But it also seems like they are in an entirely different region of the world.

[carnap]

The ecosystem of pasture cattle is, the soil and water and sun produce grass, the cattle eat the grass, then the cattle get taken away and shipped to all parts of the world and eaten by humans. It is a one-way extraction of resources, except for the manure and urine, which return to the soil, but the land does get depleted over time.

The "except" part here is the critical factor, ruminants primary add to the soil quality via their manure. Soil doesn't contain a fixed number of nutrients that get depleted over time, its a renewable resource. You just cannot exceed the carry capacity. People have been pasturing ruminants in Europe and other nations on the same land for thousands of years without the soil becoming depleted.

In contrast current methods for cultivating plant crops will deplete soil very quickly, you have to add nutrients aggressively with every new crop.

And cattle are very dangerous and scarey to rabbits, lizards and other mid-to large sized mammals such as deer, which avoid interacting with them.

Rabbits are scared of anything big that moves, but cattle by no means drive out rabbit populations. At worst they will compete with deer for food.

It sounds like you're in Brazil, where as I'm commenting about North America. I really have no idea what people do in Brazil. Here you can pasture cattle in the hills and there is very few insects or parasites that threaten them. There is no need for pesticides because the land is naturally grass land and most of the "weeds" are edible anyways.

[cornivore]

Comparing dietary classes is not problematic for determining which of them result in more food poisoning (or its severity), for example.

The same issues I discussed apply to food poisoning. Comparing dietary classes will obscure information about specific dietary patterns which is really what you care about. Individuals have specific diets, not generalized diets.

The specific patterns are covered, because the sources of food poisoning are categorized as such. The fact is if you're eating things other than plants it would be less healthy from a food safety standpoint based on those statistics (more people are poisioned to death by animal products).

[carnap]

The specific patterns are covered, because the sources of food poisoning are categorized as such. The fact is if you're eating things other than plants it would be less healthy from a food safety standpoint based on those statistics (more people are poisioned to death by animal products).

What you cited doesn't show that you're more likely to get food poisoning when you eat animal products. For one the numbers aren't adjusted in relation to the amount of food people are eating. Americans eat more meat than vegetables so even if they were just as likely to cause food-poisoning you'd find more cases with meat.

But this is besides the point, my point was that aggregates hide information about specific practices.

[cornivore]

The question was "Is there any research which shows that the vegan diet is actually healthier than the omnivorous diet?" The answer is yes, there are several examples (and I'm not going to list every study ever done); obviously the health problems of other diets are well publicized, in addition to those stating the benefits of plant based ones. If you want to say none of the research amounts to anything just because you can, have fun with that. It would be healthier not to ignore it though (and I cook veggies too, so as not to ignore the info on food poisoning either). In contrast, there are articles noting that fruitarianism is not likely to be healthy and why, so I don't think researchers are being subjective about plant foods (as if they were a panacea), or they'd be saying fruitarianism is fine and dandy too. Mostly what has been noted about veganism in the research is why it can be healthier as a balanced diet, as it contributes to fewer health problems. Of course there could be problems with an unbalanced diet of any kind, but that isn't what the question was about.

[brimstoneSalad]

Globally, emissions from animal ag are roughly that of transportation (around 15%), but in practice are probably much higher due to opportunity cost. It's not yet very clear how much higher. Probably not the 50% World Watch reports, but 30% is plausible.

Regardless, the more important thing to understand is animal agriculture as a portion of dietary emissions, and studies modeling different diets have found that going vegan cuts dietary emissions roughly in half even with conservative figures for animal ag contribution.

That's 50% of dietary emissions. A big return on such a small change.

We need to cut emissions in other areas too, but we can't leave out diet since it's probably the easiest change with the greatest impact. Switching out our lights for LED and other trivial actions doesn't come close, and we shouldn't be compromising human access to essentials like clean water, safe housing, and power for light, cooking, etc.

[carnap]

The question was "Is there any research which shows that the vegan diet is actually healthier than the omnivorous diet?" The answer is yes, there are several examples (and I'm not going to list every study ever done); obviously the health problems of other diets are well publicized, in addition to those stating the benefits of plant based ones.

This again ignores my point, when you compare aggregates like dietary classes you will miss information about specific diets. But in this case nobody has shown that "vegan diets are healthier" as a class, studies that have looked at all-cause mortality in large diverse populations haven't found in any difference, for example:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4691673/

But as I said, even if studies consistently showed that "vegan diets" as a class had lower all-cause morality that wouldn't mean that every type of vegan diet is healthier than every type of omnivorous diet. In particular, its entirely possible that there is some specific omnivorous diet that is healthier than every type of vegan diet.

[carnap]

Globally, emissions from animal ag are roughly that of transportation (around 15%), but in practice are probably much higher due to opportunity cost. It's not yet very clear how much higher. Probably not the 50% World Watch reports, but 30% is plausible.

Global emissions ratios are irrelevant when thinking about the impact within a specific country. Vegans make this mistake all the time, but the reason why agriculture represents a larger share of global emissions is because the average family in the world doesn't have a large home with a 100/200 amp electrical panel, doesn't have 2 large cars in their garbage, doesn't buy a houseful of junk and so on.

Even if you assume going vegan (or mostly vegan) would cut dietary emissions by 50% that would have little impact on total green-house emissions in developed nations. In the United States it would mean a reduction of about 2% in total emissions which isn't large enough to matter. But also most of that reduction is from cattle, if people just shifted away from beef towards poultry and limited dairy the reduction would be around 1.5%. So there is only a 1/2% or so reduction from people "going vegan" compared to just shifting the types of animal products consumed. Of course that shift would increase the number of animals that suffer in food production by a large margin so you have to wonder why vegans would focus on this at all.

Saying we need to cut emissions in another areas is a profound understatement, these other areas are what matter the most in developed nations. What you eat i really the last thing you should be thinking about.