@PhitDoctor50 I didnt eat the whole goat just a little bit and given it was the first meat I had ever eaten I thought it wasnt too bad. You could 'laugh out loud' or 'lots of love' for goat it was fifty years ago.

Not all "arable land" is suitable for growing crops. A rocky hillside is hell to plant and harvest, but animals can eat the "weeds" growing there and turn it into biomass people can eat.

Getting back to the root problem: too bloody many humans.

@TaraMarshall Arable land refers exclusively to land on which crops can be grown - rocky hillsides don't qualify. It's also worth noting that those animals which can survive in such challenging conditions, sheep and goats, provide very little to the global consumption of either meat (which is primary beef, although newly-wealthy Chinese consumers also eat pork) or dairy.

But I don't argue that the basic problem is way too many humans.

@moNOtheist, one of the reasons I eat lamb. But there are also several projects to restore the plains environment that are supported by selling high-quality bison meat.

Actually it is available now isn't it?

@patchoullijulie we have been bio-printing skin for years. I think there is bio-printed meat, too, but not ready/approved for distribution or consumption. I'm sure the meat industry will try their best to stop it.

I am all for pissing off the big Pharma. They have a lot to answer for.

@patchoullijulie

Ha ha! Me too.

Dairy farmers and their families know more than anyone else how cruel their industry is. Virtually every male calf in the Dairy Industry is considered to be a waste product. This is why they are taken from their mothers soon after birth to stop them drinking their mothers milk. This cause deep distress for the calf and tremendous grief for the mother in exactly the same way it would for a human mother. Worse in fact because there is not the support mechanism that humans have. As a side note, just in case you did not already know it, humans are a species of animal so why would the grief of a cow etc. be any different?! The male calf is often killed immediately, partly because eating veal is not considered politically correct nowadays. Please Google the terrible cries a mother cow makes when she has her baby taken from her. But I must warn you that it may haunt you for the rest of your days.

"but I must warn you that it may HAUNT you for the rest of your days"...... How dramatic...you have shown your true colors now. If anything I regret that I fell for this one. I doubt you ever have stepped into a farm or anything like that. It all boils down to a simple you don't even know what you're talking about. Either you are a young kid who think is fight to save the world (In that case, fair enough, you'll learn someday) or you're just a troll...

If people don't eat meat, they'll eat something else instead, so jobs will also be created. After all, we don't have tanners, ostlers, footmen, coopers, hatters, weavers, millers etc, any more. They probably moaned like crazy about being made redundant and became estate agents and telephone engineers or started a boy band instead.