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I regret butchering the paraphrasing in my previous reply to you, this is I believe the most powerful point (at least the most convincing to me personally) so I want to make sure it is clearly communicated as possible, quoting another ex-vegan: > Start with Africa seven million years ago, because that’s where human life began. The climate, the creation of our ancestors—our beloved kin of bacteria, fungi, and plants—eased from wet to dry. The trees gave way to grasses and a tide of savannas rippled across the world. Cradled in the grasses were large herbivores. Twenty-five million years ago, in the exuberance of evolution, a few plants tried growing from their bases instead of their tips. Grazing would not kill these plants; quite the opposite. It would encourage them by stimulating root growth. All plants want nitrogen and predigested nutrients, and ruminants could provide those to the grasses as they grazed. This is why, unlike other plants, grasses contain no toxins or chemical repellents, no mechanical deterrents like thorns or spines to discourage animals. Grasses want to be grazed. It was grass that created cows; human “domestication” was, in comparison, just the tiniest tug on the bovine genome, and cows tugged back with the lactose tolerance gene. - Lierre Keith, _The Vegetarian Myth_: Chapter 4, Nutritional Vegetarians, pg. 139 Put another way, the grass depends on the cows as much as the cows depend on the grass. A symbiotic interdependence. If the implied argument is to instead of eating animals that eat plants, to eat their plants directly, in the spirit of "refuting the central point" in Paul Graham's hierarchy, I responded in depth to @maxxxxx elsewhere in this thread who made the same point, but long story short humans cannot digest the grass which cows (naturally) eat. I definitely wouldn't advocate for grain-feeding, it is indefensible, but even grain-finished cows eat grass. Through the marvel of the rumen, indigestible (to us) cellulose is turned into delicious meat, milk, and (to grass) fertilizer. Pastured grassfed beef does not depend on industrial agriculture/grain farming (corn, wheat, soy, etc.), and is in fact directly opposed to it. Instead of disrupting ecosystems by planting rows and rows of monocultures, grasslands of clover, millet, bluegrass, plantain timothy, sweet grass, fescue, etc. are sustainably nurtured by ruminants. Working with nature, instead of against it. |