Interesting tidbits from various sources

[squeek502]

Just going to keep track of random things I find around but have no immediate use for here.

[squeek502]

From Eurostat statistics explained > Meat production statistics > Poultry meat:

According to the 2010 farm structure survey, 18.5 % of all European farms raise broilers. Farms with more than 5 000 broilers (professional farms) represent barely 1 % of the total number of broiler farms, but they account for 93.5 % of broilers.

[squeek502]

Almost all beef in the Netherlands comes from the dairy industry (dairy cows and veal calves).

[DeltoidDelta]

I think it's also worth investigating sustainability aspect as well. Looking into how much water, natural resources, farm lands, rain forests it takes to produce animal products are substantially higher than what an average person believes it to be.

[squeek502]

@simdol in all the times I've looked into that sort of thing, I came away with the following feelings:

• The specifics are much muddier than I expected, and it is not easy to be confident about things being accurate. Or, I certainly don't have anywhere near the knowledge/expertise necessary to know what is accurate.
• The surface-level conclusions aren't necessarily worth promoting, as the easy takeaway is usually something like 'beef bad, chicken okay,' which, if acted on, would lead to ~200 chickens slaughtered for every cow that isn't.

As an example, I think the easiest way to present the general concept of animal products being less efficient is through feed conversion ratios, and I planned to make something demonstrating that way back when (2015, apparently!). Here's what I had started on (note: don't have a list of sources for this info, may not be totally correct):

Two things about this, though, as it relates to the points above:

• The figures are muddy in the sense that feed conversion ratios (as reported by the industry) typically don't include water weight of the feed, so it's hard to formulate any comparison that 'feels' objectively correct. Or, I don't have the knowledge/expertise to formulate that comparison (and it's not something the industry cares about--dry FCR are good enough for comparing efficiency within a single industry--so there's no precedence AFAIK).
• The conclusion, as mentioned above, looks a lot like 'beef bad, chicken okay'

[DeltoidDelta]

Here are some sources that I was talking about earlier. It is up to you to determine the credibility of the findings, but I thought it was worth sharing them. The articles you've cited might be from 2016, but it uses sources that are generally from 2007/2008, which doesn't examine studies that are more recent.

• www.globalagriculture.org/fileadmin/files/weltagrarbericht/Weltagrarbericht/04Fleisch/2018GRAINIATPEmissionsimpossible.pdf
• https://waterfootprint.org/media/downloads/Hoekstra-2012-Water-Meat-Dairy.pdf
• https://waterfootprint.org/en/water-footprint/product-water-footprint/water-footprint-crop-and-animal-products/

I hope these are at least somewhat helpful.

[squeek502]

Thanks for the links, it's definitely true that animal products are less efficient/more polluting/etc than vegan diets, but that doesn't necessarily translate into an argument for veganism. The last link in my previous comment I think makes an important/true point.

One related thing I've thought might be worth writing something on is the fact that most corn/soy in the U.S. (and around the world) is grown for animals, not humans, which is absolutely something almost no one thinks about/takes into account, and ties into the environmental aspect since most of the inherent inefficiency of animal products comes from that animal feed -> animal product conversion (e.g. feed conversion ratio as mentioned above).