The thing is it doesn't even make sense from a resource use perspective.
Like any farmed animal, you need to farm many multiples of the energy you'll get from them in the form of plant feed. Might as well just grow plants in the first place and eat those.
In theory you could feed them garbage, but guess what we don't have a way to make garbage-feeding insects food safe.
The thing is it doesn’t even make sense from a resource use perspective.
It absolutely does. If I grow vegetable protein every season the soil loses its nutrients. So I throw on a forage crop that lets the soil regain nutrients. While I can't eat it, my farmed insects can. Then I can eat the insects, thus indirectly eating the forage crop while keeping the soil fertile.
The other option is just throw the forage crop away or alternatively just use extra fertilizer which has its own environmental downsides.
Oh shit, I didn't realize that all land has the exact same fertility. The principle model of animal agriculture for the past 100 years has been to put the location on farmland that isn't productive anymore.
You're giving up land filled with lake sized puddles of toxic hog shit and you expect to grow beans there?
Is it a productive use of anyone's time to argue with someone who thinks that there is a single principal model of animal agriculture that has existed for a hundred years in the US, let alone across the world? No, it is not.
For others reading this, I am disengaging from this particularly rubbish line of argument because it suggests that - despite a huge percentage of land for feed crops being freed up - we would somehow be restricted to the comparatively tiny pig factory waste pools
This. We can't just lay out in the sun and photosynthesize. We've got to kill stuff that can process more basic forms of energy and nutrients and eat them.
If insects are off the table then so are fruits and vegetables tbh. Mushrooms are extremely complex organisms that rival lower-level animals but no one cares if you eat those.
After you get to fish, the entire argument for not eating certain animals just falls apart. Let alone things like insects.
I think you are saying that insects and plants are morally equivalent, though?
That evidence you're citing is a popsci blog that grasses respond to predation of other grasses? Fuck me dead
For the record, I don't really care about the moral impact of doing the animal agriculture holocaust to insects, but I do care about people with absolutely no qualification or ability to read a couple journal articles via sci-hub making ridiculous claims, like I think you did earlier in this thread comparing mushrooms to fish.
The distinction between plants and animals does seem more and more arbitrary as we learn more about how plants interact with the world. Like I'm willing to entertain arguments that some plants are capable of communication and problem solving but do it in a way that is so alien to us, and on a much slower time scale, so we don't recognize any kinship with them.
Well, I suppose like all things it is a topic of debate. Fish intelligence is still very contested afaik, since it's difficult to evaluate the intelligence of organisms who sense and interact with the world in such a different way from us. Honestly I think cephalopod research has only gotten as far as it has because manual dexterity and color are some of the easiest things for humans to understand. For a fish that doesn't have prehensile appendages and doesn't interact with color in an obviously complex way? It's hard to think of where to start.
Most fruits literally are designed to be eaten as a part of the plant's life cycle.
If you're going to make this argument, at least do what the Jains do and make a distinction between plant foods that you can eat without killing the plant, and ones for which you cannot.
Bugs are animals too and I think it would be cool if we didn't kill them unnecessarily. Plants have protein too.
The thing is it doesn't even make sense from a resource use perspective.
Like any farmed animal, you need to farm many multiples of the energy you'll get from them in the form of plant feed. Might as well just grow plants in the first place and eat those.
In theory you could feed them garbage, but guess what we don't have a way to make garbage-feeding insects food safe.
It absolutely does. If I grow vegetable protein every season the soil loses its nutrients. So I throw on a forage crop that lets the soil regain nutrients. While I can't eat it, my farmed insects can. Then I can eat the insects, thus indirectly eating the forage crop while keeping the soil fertile.
The other option is just throw the forage crop away or alternatively just use extra fertilizer which has its own environmental downsides.
If you got rid of animal agriculture you'd have so much land you'd never have to dick around with insects
Oh shit, I didn't realize that all land has the exact same fertility. The principle model of animal agriculture for the past 100 years has been to put the location on farmland that isn't productive anymore.
You're giving up land filled with lake sized puddles of toxic hog shit and you expect to grow beans there?
Is it a productive use of anyone's time to argue with someone who thinks that there is a single principal model of animal agriculture that has existed for a hundred years in the US, let alone across the world? No, it is not.
For others reading this, I am disengaging from this particularly rubbish line of argument because it suggests that - despite a huge percentage of land for feed crops being freed up - we would somehow be restricted to the comparatively tiny pig factory waste pools
This. We can't just lay out in the sun and photosynthesize. We've got to kill stuff that can process more basic forms of energy and nutrients and eat them.
Nutrition isn't just calories. Insects have B12 and might be useful for other nutrients that are harder to get from plants.
You can make all the B12 you could ever need in a vat (which currently happens for everything that's fortified with B12)
I don't think they are able to feel in the manner that even less intelligent lizards probably can.
If insects are off the table then so are fruits and vegetables tbh. Mushrooms are extremely complex organisms that rival lower-level animals but no one cares if you eat those.
After you get to fish, the entire argument for not eating certain animals just falls apart. Let alone things like insects.
Jesus fucking christ not this carnist shit again
Removed by mod
I think you are saying that insects and plants are morally equivalent, though?
That evidence you're citing is a popsci blog that grasses respond to predation of other grasses? Fuck me dead
For the record, I don't really care about the moral impact of doing the animal agriculture holocaust to insects, but I do care about people with absolutely no qualification or ability to read a couple journal articles via sci-hub making ridiculous claims, like I think you did earlier in this thread comparing mushrooms to fish.
Grass does not feel pain dummy
Cant believe this nonsense gets propagated on hexbear.net
The distinction between plants and animals does seem more and more arbitrary as we learn more about how plants interact with the world. Like I'm willing to entertain arguments that some plants are capable of communication and problem solving but do it in a way that is so alien to us, and on a much slower time scale, so we don't recognize any kinship with them.
Well, I suppose like all things it is a topic of debate. Fish intelligence is still very contested afaik, since it's difficult to evaluate the intelligence of organisms who sense and interact with the world in such a different way from us. Honestly I think cephalopod research has only gotten as far as it has because manual dexterity and color are some of the easiest things for humans to understand. For a fish that doesn't have prehensile appendages and doesn't interact with color in an obviously complex way? It's hard to think of where to start.
Most fruits literally are designed to be eaten as a part of the plant's life cycle.
If you're going to make this argument, at least do what the Jains do and make a distinction between plant foods that you can eat without killing the plant, and ones for which you cannot.
god i cant fucking stand carnists. the mental gymnastics surely must be as exhausting for you as they are for normal people?