interesting concept, actually

instead of supporting Charles Manson and his crazy flock in prison for the rest of their unnatural lives, simply harvest whatever usable organs are present in their bodies and then...process the rest into 'Soylent Green';

a 'white collar' criminal swindles someone out of their money?

force the 'white collar' criminal to restore the money and then....process the criminal into 'Soylent Green';

did someone cheat on their income taxes? shocking and time to process that person into 'Soylent Green';

have you been convicted of jaywalking? too bad because you will probably be my next week's allotment of 'Soylent Green';

my library book was two days late in being returned and now I must settle the rest of my affairs before I am processed into....Soylent Green!

In his Gil 'The Arm' Hamilton series of short stories, Larry Niven wrote of a similar future concerning organ transplantation

Last night I saw a new documentary in theatres called "Food, Inc." It's about the way we produce food and how a small number of corporations basically own the food supply. This article fits in perfectly with what the movie showed. The solutions the movie gave are to eat locally, eat from suppliers that respect animals, the planet and you, and that you vote for the kind of world you want to live in with each bite, three times a day.

On that we completely agree.

Contrary to what you wrote about me, If you read through my various axe grindings and scalp takings, you'll see that I do two things: advocate not eating animals, and acknowledge that people are highly unlikely to do this (though there is hope that one day it will happen), so in the alternative, I stress treating the animals people do eat as humanely as possible, and that I think is certainly within the realm of possibility.

Where you are dead wrong and, I am confident, in the extreme minority of zealots,* is that life would be better if we all stopped drinking. You may take my soy cheese, but you will have to pry my bourbon from my cold dead liver.

"Gooba gabba gooba gabba one of us one of us.

The problem isn't just meat. It's mass production. It's monoculture. We throw away masses of food yet people still starve -- cheap produce isn't solving the problem.

It SEEMS like cheap produce is a win, right? But what about the people who grow the produce? If massive agrifarm can produce sweet potatos in ohio and ship them to africa at two cents a pound small farmer in africa who produces them at three cents a pound can't put a roof on his house. And he stops growing them. He works in some sweat shop sending widgits to ohio. Then some tyrant or another comes to power and there are no more sweet potatoes coming from ohio. AND there are no more being grown locally. And of course the ohio widgit market dries up. And we get a famine even though the world has more than enough food.

I don't happen to eat the animals either, Joe, but I don't think that's a magical cure-all for any but the particuar animals that I don't happen to eat.

Yes, the world would in some ways become a better place if we all stopped eating animals tomorrow. It would also become in some ways a better place if we all stopped driving cars tomorrow. Or drinking alcohol. Or all cheerfully stopped practicing religion. Or all cheerfully practiced the same religion... but none of these things are going to happen. Your simple fix is useless because it is completely impractical. And, like all fixes (simple and otherwise) unintended consequences would kick in. And aren't those fun?

So when I wrote, "I would qualify that as certain foods have become too cheap, especially meat," you wrote, Of course you would, Joe, because vegetarianism is your perpetual axe to grind. I agree that the way we eat meat is completely out of wack with environmental and dietary needs, but the entire food supply being cheap is the problem I'm talking about, however.

So you agree with me about meat. That's good.

However, unlike you, I do not consider all food being inexpensive to be a problem. Expensive food = malnourished people. The problem is that the foods that are inexpensive are bad foods, especially factory farmed meat. Conversely, healthy foods like fresh vegetables and fresh fruit are too expensive for many people to purchase.

By the way, my perpetual axe to grind transcends meat: it is all about cruelty to animals, and because animals are treated so viciously by people, my axe is exceedingly sharp, and getting sharper every day.

"In poor countries, there was a lot of corruption going on," explains Mora. "In rich countries, there were more political and economic pressures on the policymaking."

Not to change the subject of an otherwise excellent article, but I found funny the quoted assertion that there's a difference between corruption in poor countries and corruption in wealthy ones.

Of course you would, Joe, because vegetarianism is your perpetual axe to grind. I agree that the way we eat meat is completely out of wack with environmental and dietary needs, but the entire food supply being cheap is the problem I'm talking about, however.

Corn being too cheap gives us corn syrup. This is proving to be a problem. Crops are so cheap all the time because we use petroleum to ship them insane distances and now several countries can no longer create sufficient food to keep their populations alive. That's insane. We use petroleum (which is also far too cheap) to fertilize the crops. Both of these cause immense pollution. The cheap corn is used to raise cheap hogs and cows and chickens on an enormous scale. This mass production causes pollution and causes animals to suffer. It's not good.

You do know what used to fertilzie most of our crops, right? Animal waste. Raising livestock used to contribute to growing crops in an instrumental way. I always want to ask some of the more militant vegetarians how they think their organic produce is grown. What do they think happens to all the animals that make manure? Do they think they live in petting zoos? Human agriculture evolved as an entwined thing.

We mass produce crops over here (then pick them green and refrigerate them -- oooh tasty!) so we can mass produce livestock over there and then ship everything half way around the world to countries that can't feed themselves polluting wildly all the while. And we throw so much away. It's mind boggling the good food that gets discarded. It's a broken system. It produces crummy food.