"Rupert" wrote
Do you claim that *no-one* who talks about the "inefficiency" of meat
production has this environmental argument in mind? That seems like a
pretty extraordinary claim to me.
----

He's saying that the argument that you can grow 50 pounds of potatoes (or
whatever the number is) using the same resources as it takes to produce one
lb of beef (using conventional methods) is a silly argument, because
potatoes and beef are not equivalent commodities any more than bicycles and
cars or TVs and computers. It presumes that people are willing to substitute
something they want for something they don't want. In this case they want
both, and there are more than sufficient resources in the world to produce
both. What is lacking is the political and economic will to produce
distribute both to the hungry populations of the world.