In regards to eating meat

[Monica]

I would strongly disagree with the "vast majority." The vast majority of humans don't have access to the wide range of foods we have available.

They don't need access to the wide range of foods. Most of those foods are mere shadows of their former selves. Did you know that it takes 75 bowls of spinach to equal the iron content of spinach circa 1948?

Due to chemical farming methods, the 'wide range' of foods commonly found in grocery stores are mostly empty.

A much smaller range of foods can easily satisfy basic human requirements, if the foods are nutritious, ie. grown without chemicals, in mineral-rich soil.

It can be done.

To fill in any gaps, there is sprouting. Simple, cheap and easy. It just requires some education.

Eaten in excess. I've yet to see any study based on humanely raised, pasture-based, naturally produced moderate meat coupled with everything else that is good and healthy. These studies all seem to be based off of American diets, eating meat 2 or 3 times a day, rather than 2 or 3 times a week, which is really all that is necessary for protein input.

No, actually, the most comprehensive study was done in China. See The China Study. It shows a direct correlation between meat consumption and disease.

Egg laying chickens lay for 2-3 years, and may live for more than 10. In a system which is maximizing efficiency of food production (or simply a farm in general), it would make no sense to continue to feed and raise a chicken for 5 times longer than it lays eggs for. From the standpoint of a farm business, every bit of revenue that chicken helped create would disappear incredibly fast. From the standpoint of a hungry village trying to sustain, the food which is fed to the chicken could either be used to feed another chicken which produces eggs or a person. From a general sustainability/permaculture standpoint, while the chicken may be adding to your ecosystem, the role that chicken plays could be filled by a chicken which IS producing eggs, adding nutritional output to the system. Egg laying hens are generally processed and eaten at 2 years of age and replaced. It just isn't feasible for any system, business, village, or sustainable/permaculture system, to feed a hen for 8 years after it stops outputting food. To a vegetarian, this may seem like a vain loss, but to hungry people, this hen could make stew and feed a family for a week.

As far as milk production goes, whatever animal is being milked must be bred and produce babies in order to continue producing milk. Most dairy breeds sit at around 1 year for this requirement. At first glance this seems like an okay deal...more cows/goats, more milk, right? Well, only the females produce milk (obviously) and you can't use every single male you get to breed (to maintain strong genetics), so what do you do with the other males? You could feed them and maintain them in your ecosystem, like the chicken who doesn't lay eggs, but from a realistic and efficient standpoint, this is illogical. Again, the food or area required to keep the animal in a natural state could be used to keep an animal which produced nutrient output. Even further, once your system reaches an equilibrium, you can't just keep adding cows or goats to it. It's totally possible to maintain an ecosystem and feed these animals completely on pasture without any inputs, but only if you practice diligent balanced stewardship. Then, what to do with all these new animals? Again, to a vegetarian, this seems to be a vain situation, however, to a hungry family (or simply someone trying to maximize sustainable efficient food production), the cows which can't be kept within the system could provide an amazing amount of food and nourishment (compare how much meat American's eat to the amount required for healthy inputs of protein, iron, vitamins, etc.)
So keeping animals for eggs/milk in a sustainable system is only logical if there is culling and consumption of livestock. Otherwise, the system will cease to be productive.

Thank you; that was very educational! I didn't know any of that. Are you saying that it's impossible to have a sustainable farm without animals? That if I compost regularly, I cannot grow fruits and vegetables, without animal input?

I don't have all the answers. What I do know is that, once we start making choices in alignment with our spiritual principles, the UniVerse will align itself to accommodate our choices.

What you just described might be true of the reality we've lived in thus far. But it needn't necessarily be true in the reality we're creating.

If we decide to create a reality based on compassion, and the desire to reduce or eliminate animal cruelty, then a method for sustainable living will manifest.

There's a couple things. Of the foods which vegetarians can eat for protein,

This is a myth. Vegetarians don't need to eat soy to get enough protein. It's a myth that we must consume 'protein-rich' foods at all. Any well-balanced diet supplying sufficient calories, will meet protein requirements.

Protein isn't the problem. The only nutrient that is challenging in a veg diet is B12. And that is easily remedied by supplementation.

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Animals just seem like a completely roundabout way to get these nutrients. All the talk about "killing" plants. I mainly eat fruits, nuts, and seeds. The leaves I eat do not kill the plant if I go out back and take 2 or 3 from each plant.

I am currently growing kale, spinach, chard, beets and several varieties of lettuce. Every day, I gratefully pull a few leaves from each plant, to use in my smoothies and juicing.

The next day, uncannily, it seems as if the plants had all grown many leaves overnight! It's weird! They just seem to be growing and growing and growing, so prolifically! It seems like the more I harvest, the more the plants offer to me!