Milk

[eppie]

First off, the traditional dairy farmers I knew babied their milking cows.  They named each one and tended to them with love.  Dairy cows are in great discomfort if they are not milked on time, and might suffer from mastitis.

I eat very little beef, but I'll try eating 50% less beef if the 3rd world agrees to have 50% less children.  The poverty problem has more to do with population growth exceeding per capita GNP growth in the developing world.
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Of course, but most countries don't have enough space to let their animals walk around freely. In Holland we have around 15 million pigs (hogs) but you can drive around for years without ever seeing one. (apart from when the go on transport to Parma, to become the famous prosciuto di Parma, which is later sold in Holland for a very nice prize).

I did not want to "insult" teh normal farmer, I just wanted to point out the benefits of eating less meat. Fish is another thing, the energy balance there is completely wrong. It cost around 15 times more resources to put them on your plate then you get from burning it.

And there are even development countries that grow crops for feeding their livestock which they then sell to western countries, while meanwhile their own people are dying of starvation. In Brazil they are burning down rainforrest for these kind of practices.

And we in the west with our trade constrictions are even worse. We subsidize farmers to be able to (in our small country, with tough rules) sell their products to e.g. germany for prizes that are lower than what farmers from let's say afrika and south america ask. That means that per ton of grain, milk, meat, we pay hundreds of euro's to these farmers just to be able to export....but that is another discussion.

eppie