I’m going to critique the only three scholarly(-ish) responses to Davis’ calculations I know of. If there is another one that I don’t mention, please share it with me and I’ll happily discuss it in a follow-up post. For now, I’ll be constantly referencing my own corrections to Davis’ study (LINK ME PLEASE=D), which I would recommend opening up and keeping on hand as you peruse through this article. Matheny’s Response Matheny, Gaverick. "Least Harm: A Defense of Vegetarianism From Steven Davis's Omnivorous Proposal," Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 16 (2003): 505-511.
productive. Check out what I mean here. I’ll be discussing this more in the conclusion of this Deaths Comparison series.
proposing a “crops with ruminant-pasture” system. It was just pasture, with the cultivation of forages (forages are grasses and legumes that farm animals feed on, not crops that are being grown with massive amounts of inputs for human consumption). To speak to the total amount of land, I criticized Davis for this, too. In my calculations, I evaluated deaths caused in our current system, which does use over twice as much land for pasture than the amount of land utilized as crop field. In my calculations, I did a deaths per food unit (ie calories/servings/grams of protein) in addition to the deaths per unit of land.
identified line up pretty closely with my own calculations… they’re still not realizing that only 40% of agricultural land is usable in crop production. Livestock have the ability to graze land that cannot grow corn or wheat or soy and turn it into usable calories. Once again, my calculations used the current land usage which does represent livestock producing fewer grams of protein per hectare. Recall that I reframed the deaths/land unit into deaths/food unit (ie calories/servings/grams of protein), which overcomes this issue, but not in a vegetarian’s favor.
Lamey’s Response Lamey, Andy. "Food Fight! Davis versus Regan on the Ethics of Eating Beef," Journal of Social Philosophy 38, no. 2 (2007): 331-348.
for Davis’s argument. The animal protection movement as a whole has long drawn an ethical distinction between animals killed by people versus those killed by animal predators.” Lamey is saying that these deaths cannot be counted because they were a part of the natural food chain of animals. However, here is a quote from the Tew and Macdonald study Lamey is trying to reference: “The removal of the cover afforded by the crop greatly increased predation pressure on the mice.” This means that these deaths would not have occurred if it was not for human intervention. The vegan philosophy, as I understand it, would count these deaths because, had no crops ever been planted, native grasses would inhabit the field keeping the mice safe from predators. If humans had not taken the action, the animals would still be alive.
predators of small mammals in the cereal ecosystem such as tawny owls Strix aluco and weasels Mustela nivalis.” The jump from “may benefit” to “a bonanza” shows a vegan agenda peeking through. Lamey is trying to suggest that crop production saves these predators, but that’s not at all what Tew and Macdonald are saying. Nowhere does this study say that these predators would die without the crop harvest. Instead, they identify a change in hunting behavior, not a risk of going without.
at its longest duration. Here are some sources about that: “Sugarcane.” Agritech, Apr. 2014, agritech.tnau.ac.in/agriculture/sugarcrops_sugarcane.html. “Sugar Cane.” Purdue Horticulture, Purdue University, 6 Dec. 2017. “Usual Planting and Harvesting Dates for U.S. Field Crops.” Mannlib Cornell, USDA, Dec. 1997. That brings us to an average growing time of 13 months, which is not significantly different from other crop growing times. The reason that the Nass study references a much longer growing time is because it was conducted in 1970 and also in a tropical climate, whereas it’s grown inland more commonly. Today, we use much more advanced methods, including improved fertilizers, equipment, land tillage techniques, etc. that speed that time drastically up. Unfortunately, all of these advancements also contribute to many more animal deaths because they require more passes through the field and larger volumes of pesticides that have more- concentrated toxins. It could be argued that transferring the 77% mortality rate found in the Nass study to today’s conditions is downplaying the death toll from sugarcane production.
Am I (or even Davis) daring to suggest that harvesting on every farm causes exactly a 60% mortality rate of the wildlife animals? No—sometimes it will be less, sometimes it will be more. We’re simply trying to get an average that’s usable in big-picture calculations that’s applicable anywhere in the world.
that will be discussed later in this series!
all large-scale livestock operations must submit a Nutrient Management Plan. If it wasn’t for crops, all manure could be recycled as energy and these risks would not be present.
manufactured, are more dangerous to humans because they release toxins into the air, including greenhouse gases, and many have exploded with hundreds of unfortunate casualties.
on this, and it said, “Page Not Found.” Lamey goes on to say that the most common method of death is attacks by bulls. Simply put, bulls just aren’t really kept around on the majority of farms because of artificial insemination. Furthermore, ninety-nine percent of the time, if an animal attacks, it’s because they feel threatened. One could argue that vegans should be happy that animals fighting back is a check against animal cruelty. I’m not denying that being a farmer is a dangerous job, but no evidence is presented here that working with livestock is any riskier than cultivating crops. I may do a follow-up post about this.
bad when it got pulled out of your butt. Jokes aside, working in a meatpacking plant is a very dangerous job and I will agree whole-heartedly that it’s something we need to address.
above human lives. Middleton’s Response Middleton, Mark L. “Number of Animals Killed to Produce One Million Calories in Eight Food Categories.” Animal Visuals: Visual Animal Advocacy, Animal Visuals, 12 Oct. 2009, www.animalvisuals.org/projects/data/1mc. This report tried to do exactly the same thing as me, reframing death calculations in terms of food-related units instead of the land used to produce it on.
How he got these numbers: In other words, he’s saying that the number of deaths can be calculated by dividing the target number of calories (he used one million, the amount a human would consume in a year and an easy-rounding number) by the product of the following: calories per food item (ie one cow yields a little over 850 thousand calories) X what I think he means here is dressing percentage or the ratio of live weight to carcass weight X live weight. In simpler terms, this formula could be stated as how many animals have to be slaughtered to make one million calories of just that animal. That’s not terribly different from what I did, except I did an overall average of all species slaughtered, whereas he only did the top five US livestock commodities. Not counting the deaths from harvest, his deaths per calorie are probably very similar to the numbers I found for animal products, just shown on a different scale. I’m not entirely sure what the meaning behind the harvest deaths (orange bars) being added onto the livestock products are for. Does he believe that livestock grain is made from fully produced crops? If that’s what it is, then those should just be knocked off because I’ve explained time and time again why that’s simply not the case. Where his calculations find error are in his estimations in deaths of crop production. He uses Davis’ mortality rate of 7.5 deaths per hectare, which, as I mentioned in the previous article, only represents the deaths of mice from harvesting, completely ignoring all the other wildlife species and all the other field activities. Furthermore, Middleton never mentions how he how he calculated the number of hectares are needed to grow one million calories of vegetables, fruits, and grains. I explained my methods in the spreadsheets, and am suspecting with different results. What’s more? Calories are just one way of expressing the deaths, and, conveniently for Middleton, the one with the lowest relative death toll to animal products. Here’s some other things Matheny got wrong because he simply does not understand farming:
natural causes. Egg-laying chicken breeds are completely different from meat chicken breeds-- the birds your eggs come from do not get slaughtered. The male chicks are the only ones dying. Multiply by one.
thanks to these practices. I’ve busted all these myths here.
hunting crop pests and how habitat modification for livestock improves the quality of life for wildlife (definitely not killing them!) but habitat modification for crops causes extensive suffering and deaths. I discuss how most food-borne illnesses are caused by plant-based foods here (If you go to read this one, I recommend searching “food-borne illnesses,” it’s a pretty long article).
inhibited by crop production. I also debunk all of the cattle-being-bad-for-the-environment nonsense, and also provide sources as to why there is NOT enough land on earth to feed the world a plant-based diet in this series.
3 Comments
Graeme M
7/16/2018 10:51:56 pm
Very comprehensive. Have you seen this discussion (not pro-vegan)?
Reply
Marcelo Juanico
7/5/2019 12:15:16 pm
Nice discussion, but it forgets (or at least does not stress enough) the huge contamination (and resulting animal killing) produced by crops and NOT produced by grass-fed animals.
Reply
Vegan Factcheckerist
4/3/2020 08:00:10 am
You say, "egg laying hens are not killed and lay eggs until they die of natural causes".
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