It takes 20 to 40 plant calories to raise one calorie of beef. So slaughtering a cow kills 20 to 40 times the number of lives as eating plants directly.

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burnished 10 months ago | parent [-]

Number of calories !== number of lives

	▲	mattlutze 10 months ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Significant input costs per animal calorie means there's an order of magnitude or more insects being killed to raise the animal that you ultimately end up eating, to get the same calories you'd have gotten just eating the plant sources.
	▲	zargon 10 months ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		If anything, I would expect the number of insects, small mammals, etc. killed by harvesting animal feed to be higher than that of harvesting crops grown for people, on a caloric basis.