Bu taking the example of snakes explian how by killing small animals weare actually harming over salves
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Shane Grey
Answered Apr 17, 2015
The questions asks if animals are killed in farming vegetarian foods. But it fails to make an important distinction. The nature of the process is important.
There will always be some collateral damage to some number of animals, and certainly to insects and worms etc. But the number, and the species which are killed in the process is highly dependent on how the farming is done.
Conventional farming of grains uses large, highly mechanized equipment and offers no practical method for displacing wildlife prior to processing the ground it lives in. This is why insects, worms, snakes, rodents, rabbits, and just about any other animal that lives in holes in the ground are killed in the process of conventional grain farming.
I'm not sure how common the practice is, but I've heard that some farmers choose to cut in a pattern that drives the animals to the center of the field so that they can kill as many of them as possible. This isn't out of malice. It's pest control. The animals are considered disruptive to the future crop. But it gives an idea for how incompatible the practice of conventional grain harvest is with wildlife.
Many vegetable crops are also processed with similar mechanical harvest methodology and cause similar loss of animal life. But even those which don't mechanically kill animals, such as large fruit trees perhaps, do kill and otherwise disrupt the quality of life of many through use of herbicides and pesticides.
Another way the death of animals is involved in the process of conventional farming is through the use of animal byproduct fertilizers. Blood and bone is processed into fertilizer, often organic fertilizer which is used on many crops where the farmer is not using the chemical based alternatives which would cause their crop to not qualify as organic.
There are alternative processes to farming that significantly reduce this cycle of animal death in farming. Some of them involve reducing the mechanization of the process. But the larger impact is had by changing which crops are being farmed. Grains, by the nature of their tiny size, must be mechanically processed to meet the production standards we have in modern society. But foods such as tree nuts provide similar, often higher nutritional value, while not requiring the kind of processing that leads to as much collateral animal death.
Reduction in efficiency intended to reduce the damage to wildlife will often cause a corresponding increase in energy use (fossil fuels?), and likely increase land use as well. The trade offs are important and sometimes don't make things better overall.
Indoor growing of many vegetables is not only less directly damaging to animal life, but can also reduce or eliminate the use of herbicides and pesticides, while extending the growing season and giving more control over growing conditions such as water and lighting. These combine to make for less land use for the same output, and therefore less death of animals. But erecting greenhouses is more expensive and they have their own drawbacks.
So, to answer the question more directly, animals do die in the production of food for vegetarians. Animals die as a result of human activity in general. But the process is important to how and how much. The process can be improved on.
A major point the question misses is that this conventional farming of soy, and corn, and wheat, and beans, and rice, which may make up the core calories of many vegetarian diets, is only a small fraction of the volume of those crops grown for food.
Most, by a large margin, are grown for animal feed. This means that while those farmers are killing wildlife for the sake of feeding vegetarians and non-vegetarians, they are killing many times more wild animals for the sake of feeding animals which will then be killed for feeding humans.
I you
Shane Grey
Answered Apr 17, 2015
The questions asks if animals are killed in farming vegetarian foods. But it fails to make an important distinction. The nature of the process is important.
There will always be some collateral damage to some number of animals, and certainly to insects and worms etc. But the number, and the species which are killed in the process is highly dependent on how the farming is done.
Conventional farming of grains uses large, highly mechanized equipment and offers no practical method for displacing wildlife prior to processing the ground it lives in. This is why insects, worms, snakes, rodents, rabbits, and just about any other animal that lives in holes in the ground are killed in the process of conventional grain farming.
I'm not sure how common the practice is, but I've heard that some farmers choose to cut in a pattern that drives the animals to the center of the field so that they can kill as many of them as possible. This isn't out of malice. It's pest control. The animals are considered disruptive to the future crop. But it gives an idea for how incompatible the practice of conventional grain harvest is with wildlife.
Many vegetable crops are also processed with similar mechanical harvest methodology and cause similar loss of animal life. But even those which don't mechanically kill animals, such as large fruit trees perhaps, do kill and otherwise disrupt the quality of life of many through use of herbicides and pesticides.
Another way the death of animals is involved in the process of conventional farming is through the use of animal byproduct fertilizers. Blood and bone is processed into fertilizer, often organic fertilizer which is used on many crops where the farmer is not using the chemical based alternatives which would cause their crop to not qualify as organic.
There are alternative processes to farming that significantly reduce this cycle of animal death in farming. Some of them involve reducing the mechanization of the process. But the larger impact is had by changing which crops are being farmed. Grains, by the nature of their tiny size, must be mechanically processed to meet the production standards we have in modern society. But foods such as tree nuts provide similar, often higher nutritional value, while not requiring the kind of processing that leads to as much collateral animal death.
Reduction in efficiency intended to reduce the damage to wildlife will often cause a corresponding increase in energy use (fossil fuels?), and likely increase land use as well. The trade offs are important and sometimes don't make things better overall.
Indoor growing of many vegetables is not only less directly damaging to animal life, but can also reduce or eliminate the use of herbicides and pesticides, while extending the growing season and giving more control over growing conditions such as water and lighting. These combine to make for less land use for the same output, and therefore less death of animals. But erecting greenhouses is more expensive and they have their own drawbacks.
So, to answer the question more directly, animals do die in the production of food for vegetarians. Animals die as a result of human activity in general. But the process is important to how and how much. The process can be improved on.
A major point the question misses is that this conventional farming of soy, and corn, and wheat, and beans, and rice, which may make up the core calories of many vegetarian diets, is only a small fraction of the volume of those crops grown for food.
Most, by a large margin, are grown for animal feed. This means that while those farmers are killing wildlife for the sake of feeding vegetarians and non-vegetarians, they are killing many times more wild animals for the sake of feeding animals which will then be killed for feeding humans.
I you
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