Benefits for environmental sustainability of vegan diets for dogs, cats and people

I don't disagree with the message (we should all eat less meat) but I have a couple of nitpicks with the data / presentation.

In a couple places there's mention of billions of aquatic animals being on the block. It's too broad of a descriptor - a billion whales looks different from a billion krill. A whale probably eats a billion krill on its own (note: I have no idea, I just know whales are big and krill are tiny)

Pie charts should almost always include percentage labels because people are in general bad at making visual comparisons within a circle. That may not be overly necessary here where the intended message seems to be that chicken vastly outnumber all combined livestock, but it's always something to keep in mind.

However, the most egregious issue: the final point says that 5,313 million (5.3B) additional humans could be fed, which is equated to every region/country on earth. So the global population. Which is fairly easily verifiable to be about 8 billion people - which means the quoted figure is only approximately 65% of the global population. This calls into question every other data point in the infographic.

While typing this up, I did give the last point a more charitable read and thought maybe the message was that if everyone switched to vegan diets, we could feed that many more people which means nobody in any nation would have to go hungry. But even if that's the interpretation, it doesn't seem to be in line with the other points being made, and it makes me question if I'm interpreting the rest of the graph incorrectly. So even with a charitable view it's still a confusing point.

Anyway, again, I like the overall message because it's clear to me that we should strive to eat less meat and this graphic outlines the myriad positive impacts that might have. But the goal is to educate people, and if there's a whiff of misinformation surrounding something that people feel most passionately about, it calls into question what other things people are misinformed about

Here's the journal article the infographic cites

I don't like it. I can not understand it within a second. It is too much (questionable) info. I am vegan but that data is not beautiful

this is (at least partially) based on poore-nemecek. it's bad science gaining entrenchment.

source

Aren't the meat products used for pets by-products of the meat (for humans) industry? That is, isn't it the case that no additional livestock animals are slaughtered to feed pets, beyond those that are already being slaughtered to feed humans?

Considering how rare it is for anyone to pay enough attention to the complex and difficult processing needed to feed an obligate carnivore a vegan diet without fucking it up, I'm going to call bullshit on a vegan being allowed to have a cat. If you believe that strongly in whatever it is, just don't have a cat instead of screwing them up.

Even a dog is dubious, because again, most people can't be trusted to make their own dog food with meat and not screw the animal up. The extra steps to make it a vegetarian diet is beyond most people, and a vegan diet is harder to manage. So, you know, pick a companion animal that doesn't eat meat at all, you'll all be happier.

It isn't the diet itself that's the problem. It's humans being fucking morons and thinking they can handle the job when they can barely handle picking their nose. It's like the idiots that feed their dog grapes, raisins, and chocolate because "it hasn't hurt him any". Yet is the word they forget to add.

And, as shitty as it will seem, vegans aren't smarter or more reliable than anyone else. If anything, the kind of zealot that's going to try and feed a cat vegan instead of just picking good foods that are sourced well are less capable of using their brain properly because blind faith is a sign of stupidity.

"Full transition to nutritionally-sound vegan diets would spare from slaughter the following numbers of terrestrial livestock animals annually globally (billions): Humans 71.3"

71.3 billion humans slaughtered each year huh?