Cows.
Some thoughts.
A thread.

2. The reason humans domesticated genus Bos in the first place was because they could digest a widely available plant family that we couldn't digest, and turn it into food for us, into meat, milk, cream, cheese, and butter.

3. Grass.
Musicians, do you know your bass clef?
Spaces: ACEG.
All Cows Eat Grass.
Grass is an important part of the global ecosystem. Cows are part of the grass ecosystem.

4. There is a movement afoot to discourage people from eating meat because cows waste resources.
Cows don't waste resources.
Humans waste resources.
Capitalists, in particular, waste resources.
Cows are supposed to eat grass, and we can't.

5. Raising cows on grain is terrible for their health. We have to feed them all these antibiotics, they stand around in polluted mud and their own shit...

7. Their microbiomes change...
Cows don't really digest grass, you know. They carry around in their guts these big vats of bacteria, and the bacteria digest the grass, and the cows live on bacteria poop.
And it works.
Except.
We take the grass away from them.
Everything breaks.

8. And then we take the concentrated cowshit and pollute other parts of Earth with that...
And blame the cows.
Because it's wasteful to feed grain that humans could eat to cows.
And they exhaust methane.
So do I. There went a little puff just now.

9. We fees grain humans could eat to cars and trucks, too. Whaddya gonna do about that?
The reason we feed so much grain to cattle is: capitalists.
The reason there are so many cows is:
Capitalists.
If people really wanted to eat that much beef McDonald's would not advertise.

10. The whole magic trick is to keep you blaming anything and anyone but the system that is creating all this destruction.
Vegans proudly don't use leather. Because death, or something.
Everything dies. So is the advocated solution extinction for genus Bos? Then they won't die.

11. Or is the advocated solution to waste all the cowhides of all the cows who ever die?
There is no third choice. Except using leather.
What do people use instead of leather?
Plastic.
Leather is intrinsically better.

12. In the first place, plastic is made out of petroleum, or sometimes natural gas. Sometimes corn.
You can't make plastic without making poison at the same time. Then you argue about where to dispose of the poison, and blame the people who dispose of it, and call them polluters.

13. Leather is naturally UV resistant. Plastic has to me treated with more petroleum - based chemicals to resist UV, and even then it's no better than fair. Plastic dies in the sun.

15. Leather breathes. Body moisture escapes through its pores, we don't rot.
Plastic rots skin.
When leather wears out we can, if we choose, just throw it in the garden. Eventually it will return to dirt, carbon, hydrogen, and living bacteria.

16. Plastic may not last long as a usable product, but it lasts forever as trash. About a third of it winds up, sooner or later, in the ocean, in the guts of dead animals.
If a sea turtle eats an old leather glove she will defecate small parts of the old leather glove. And live.

17. Oh, did somebody say biodegradable plastic?
So it's wrong to feed corn to cows, and then eat them, but it's OK to feed it to plastic.
And cars.
Sure, there are about umpteen billion too many cows, but... That's not the cows' fault. It's the capitalists.
--jeff out