this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2026
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[–] Catoblepas@piefed.blahaj.zone 25 points 5 days ago (16 children)

Is it more or less than the amount that die when you grow crops to feed to animals that you then slaughter and eat? It seems like less, but I’m not a math major.

[–] RaoulDuke25@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 5 days ago (15 children)

Just throwing in Buddhas dilemma when he wanted to stop eating meat, but realized the insects that die in the process and asking himself does one life form have more value than another?

[–] Catoblepas@piefed.blahaj.zone 11 points 5 days ago (7 children)

But if the answer to that is no, then by eating meat you’re responsible for the death of the animal you eat, plus all the insects that were killed to raise crops to feed it before you ate it. For something like a cow, they’re eating significantly more crops than you would because they weigh like 1000 lbs.

If the answer is yes, then don’t eat the cow, because as far as we can tell it has more awareness and capacity for suffering than a bug.

[–] redfish@piefed.blahaj.zone 0 points 4 days ago (1 children)

take soy, as an example.

some 80%+ of all soy is pressed for oil, but a soybean is only about 20% oil anyway. that leaves 80% of 80% of the total crop as industrial waste. we feed that to livestock. (we call it soymeal or soycake). so no insects are harmed to produce that for livestock: they were harmed to make soybean oil. by feeding the byproduct to livestock, we are conserving resources.

[–] Catoblepas@piefed.blahaj.zone 0 points 4 days ago (1 children)

so no insects are harmed to produce that for livestock: they were harmed to make soybean oil.

Sorry, this is an accounting trick. The cows are still eating an agricultural product that killed insects, we can’t decide ‘oh, actually that’s entirely for oil’ if the soy meal is also valuable enough to sell and export as a product (about 65% of production, per the wiki article you linked).

There also aren’t any livestock that live entirely off soybean meal; a huge amount of corn is also fed to livestock. So even if you want to do shoddy accounting, they’re not being raised off waste and sunlight. A lot of crops are grown exclusively for livestock consumption.

[–] redfish@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 points 4 days ago

even the corn plant is a great example. people don't eat corn leaves, cobs, or stalks, but livestock eat silage made from them.

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