Deer versus Cow versus Billy Gates Brand Vat Meat

 In recent weeks, I've gotten in the habit of walking around in my woods in the morning. Right now, in the cold weather of February, it's very relaxing to be out in the cold, clear, still mornings. It's pretty common for deer to be hanging out back there. In the hours immediately after sunrise, they tend to nap and lounge around in the woods. They're not totally used to me walking around back there, but they aren't too concerned. They tend to camp out in places that they can easily run away from predators who aren't as fast as they are in difficult terrain.

I've done a few posts on how much easier it would be to let nature raise deer than it is for farmers to raise cows in our northeast Ohio environment. Go drive around in a rural area and check out the pastures where cows graze. It's quite common for the plant life to be completely destroyed by the cows, which are animals of the plains and prairies, like bison, rather than animals of a wet climate... maybe they'd do alright in woods? Nobody does that, though. I think Aurochs were in European forests, and are the ancestors of all the modern cows.

The cows require tending and maintenance. The deer require less than none. Where I live, there's a sizable deer herd in the city of Chardon, and there's a larger herd in the rural areas. I think there's more than one per person in Geauga County. Cows go in a barn over winter in many farms, and live off hay that was harvested in the spring and summer. Deer survive fairly well on foraging through the winter.

It's not too hard to imagine changing how we manage property so the landscape could revert to more of a natural condition, even while maintaining a fairly large human population. Really, if people just did less maintenance it'd just happen. If we're really resource constrained as a civilization, that's the most intelligent approach to "engineering" the future--doing less.

However, it seems like the exact opposite approach is being promoted now. The idea is that "meat" would be grown in vats. It's sold as being more "efficient" than animal husbandry. That's retarded.

As a deer is more efficient than a cow, a cow is more efficient than vat meat. The technological "solution" is to replace all the services that nature provides with human made approximations of the same. A cow has an immune system, for example. In a clean farm, with a low density of animals, and with clean water and good food, animals barely need any health interventions. By contrast vat meat will have no immune system. No digestive system. No circulatory system, so it will require human made versions of all that. It will produce a nightmare scenario breeding ground for weird diseases, bacteria, and fungi.