[Mirioron]

>1) Since we already grow enough plants to feed the entire human population, we will only reduce animal suffering and land use by eating a vegan diet. It’s just that at the moment we feed grain to animals that we then slaughter instead of growing it to eat ourselves

But do we grow enough plants to eat a vegan diet? A vegan diet requires a rather narrow set of plants in much higher quantities than we normally consume, eg beans, soy etc. You can't just look at the calories we get from corn or grain and say that we have enough.

>2) A vegan diet is very healthy.

As long as you supplement B12, maybe.

[maxerickson]

Feed conversion for beef is around 6:1, so you have 6 pounds of plants for every pound of beef. Lots of those plants are grass and other stuff humans don't really want to feed on though. Still, the large number of calories cattle need to make gains leave some room to adjust the crop mix.

[tracker1]

Of course grazing animal migration patterns and grassland effects (desertification/deforestation) not withstanding. I would love to see an increase in variety and number of grassland mammals in general in order to preserve/expand grasslands.

[littlecosmic]

Corn, wheat, rye, oats, beans and soy are staple foods for humans and are what is often fed to the animals we intensively farm. For the non human-edible crops like alfalfa, canola, etc there is some wriggle room to change to other crops. My main point is that it is a realistic change not an environmental and moral disaster as it was framed.

As far as supplementing B12, I say better safe than sorry, but even that is not straight forward when you look into it.

[checkyoursudo]

I don't advocate supplementing, but a ton of people already do it, so would that part really be much of an issue?