Chook Me!

Zoology... what do you think?

Which would be a more energy-efficient strategy for supplying animal protein for human diets? Why? a.) Feeding people grain-fed beef raised in feed lots, or feeding people beef that has been raised in pastures. or b.) Feeding people sardines and herrings, or processing sardines and herrings into fishmeal that is subsequently used to raise poultry, which is used to feed people.

Public Comments

1. probably feeding people beef that has been raised in pastures cuz the other two examples would require more energy to produce the grain and process it also processing the fish into fishmeal would require more energy
2. to grain feed cows, you first need to grow the grain. Grain is a high-energy food compared to grass, which means it takes more energy to grow, artificial fertilizers may be used. You also have to process grain before feeding it to a cow (removing the stalks/chaff), which also takes energy. The cows are going to use most of the grain's energy to run around, or just maintaining body heat, rather than using the energy to grow larger/produce more meat. In contrast, grass grows without human intervention on rocky, poor soils. You can take land that would be unproductive for growing grains, and raise healthy cows on it. Thus, grass feeding is much more energy efficient. Feeding people sardines is much more energy efficient than processing them, and feeding them to poultry. First of all, whenever you feed something to something else, about half the energy is lost. So just by feeding the herrings to chickens you lose half the energy the herrings had to begin with. Second, herring are cold blooded and chickens are warm blooded. Warm blooded animals use up energy they get from food to keep their body temperature constant. Cold blooded animals don't keep their temperature constant, and so most of the energy they consume goes toward making them bigger (i.e. producing more meat!). So by feeding sardines to chickens, you are losing ALOOOOT of energy.