LeftieBiker wrote:As a strict ethical vegetarian for 40 years, after being raised in a hunting household where I ate mainly meat, and who spent a decade on the net debating these issues, I think I understand what meat is.
Yet there are different legal and social definitions of it from country to country, which I wasn't aware of. I think what you're saying is that you know what meat is
to you, just as I know what is
to me, and our understanding is probably similar to that of most Americans. My surprise upon reading Smil was the relatively wide range of what is and is not included in the definition, from country to country and era to era.
LeftieBiker wrote:Your continuing to ask "Who will force the rest of the world..." completely misses the point. I'm not taking about anyONE forcing anything - I'm talking about the economics of food - not some scary "WHO" - doing the forcing. Yes, meat consumption increases with economic prosperity. If you think about that for a moment, though, increasing economic prosperity is pretty much over. What comes next, as climate "change" and ever-increasing population destroy the relative haven in which we've lived for tens of thousands of years, is decreasing economic prosperity, and increasing scarcity for most of the world's population.
And of course, since the very idea of anyone "forcing" anyone else to do anything whatsoever to stop the process is fundamentally repugnant to most humans, there will be nothing to mitigate the accelerating downward spiral but brute economics.
Yes, scarcity will force the price of meat higher, the question is how will societies that have become used to eating it react as they can no longer afford it? Will the haves need to fight off the have nots? The only country that hasn't (so far) seen any major increase in per capita meat consumption with a (still relatively small) increase in their average standard of living is India, owing to very strong religious/social taboos, but I doubt that everyone's likely to become Hindu anytime soon. Smil does show per capita consumption by various countries, and somewhat to my surprise, although we're well up the list we're not at the top - Spain is. One trend that is mildly encouraging is that above a certain income/education level, meat consumption levels off and even decreases slightly, for health or, if you prefer, faddish reasons.
BTW, some time back when we were discussing this subject, you said (IIRR) that pork or maybe it was poultry had a greater environmental and energy impact than beef. If I've remembered things correctly, as this conflicts with all the info I've read which claims most to least impact as beef -> pork -> poultry, could you point me to a source?