In Dysrationalia it was noted that the arguments advanced by many supposedly bright people are not well reasoned from good data and valid premises.

Feeding domestic animals is a far more inefficient way of using plant biomass than eating it directly: for example, it takes about four kilograms of good feed to produce a kilogram of chicken meat, for boneless lean pork the ratio is around 10 and there is an even higher ratio for beef depending on how much time an animal spends on pasture and in a finishing feedlot

All cats are gray. The assumption here is that all animals eat the same things - biomass is biomass - and that those things are also food for humans. This is wildly inaccurate, as anyone with even the smallest amount of actual knowledge is aware. Cattle, and other ruminants, don't naturally eat the grain on which this analysis is based, but even poultry and hogs don't eat such diets to such an extent in nature. Though poultry and hogs are omnivores like humans, and so can be considered competitors, ruminants can thrive on diets that no human could consume or digest.

This only considers the defects in the arguments about grain consumption, but that's not the only problem with such biomass is biomass claims.

"Thirty million tons – or 36 per cent – of the world's total fisheries catch each year is currently ground up into fishmeal and oil to feed farmed fish, chickens and pigs," . . .

"Globally, pigs and chickens alone consume six times the amount of seafood as US consumers and twice that of Japan," says lead author Jennifer Jacquet, a post-doctoral fellow at UBC's Fisheries Centre. "Ultimately these farm animals have a greater impact on our seafood supplies than the most successful seafood certification program." . . .

"Global fisheries consume 13 billion gallons of fuel each year just to catch and land fish," says Jacquet. "That's more gas than 22 million cars would use. Energy use would be much higher if we include the fuel used to ship fish further for processing and to market. No discussion of the overall impact of fisheries would be complete without clarifying its contribution to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change."

Sloppy thinkers with agendas like to argue that poultry is better than beef since the conversion ratio of grain to meat is higher. In addition to all of the other defects in this argument the impact of fishing should be added. When looked at in greater detail the idea that any omnivore could be a less harmful source of proteins for human diets falls apart. They are too far up the food chain. Ruminants thrive on foods that humans do not eat and cannot digest even if they did eat them.

I often wonder why this simple truth is so hard for supposedly bright people to grasp? You can sensibly argue that ruminants should not be fed grains as so often happens, or even that humans - also omnivores - should not be fed so much grain, using ruminants fed on otherwise indigestible biomass as their protein source instead since it is less environmentally harmful and energy intensive. But such consumer oriented arguments have little effect.

Many sustainable seafood campaigns focus on consumers but ignore large-scale market impacts – such as farming demand for fishmeal – and have failed to reach their goals, say the study's authors, which include Enric Sala of the National Geographic Society and Rashid Sumaila and Tony Pitcher of UBC.

After pioneering and distributing more than one million seafood wallet cards – pocket-sized guides that advise consumers of ocean-friendly seafood, the Monterey Bay Aquarium conducted a study that revealed no overall change in the market and that fishing pressures had not decreased for targeted species, the study points out. . .

"Global fisheries consume 13 billion gallons of fuel each year just to catch and land fish," says Jacquet. "That's more gas than 22 million cars would use. Energy use would be much higher if we include the fuel used to ship fish further for processing and to market. No discussion of the overall impact of fisheries would be complete without clarifying its contribution to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change."

"Overall, we'd like to encourage people to engage more as citizens – as they have with the global climate change movement – and less as mere consumers," said Pauly. "Big problems like overfishing require efforts to be directed at big change."

This is feel-good wanking for the wealthy and dysrational "elites". Wallet cards? Ridiculous. To be sincerely engaged as "citizens" - meaning politically active - it is government manipulation of markets that should be targeted. If the various encouragements and subsidies for grain farming and fishing ceased then many of the current practices in livestock agriculture would change for the better from an energy and environment perspective. Those may not be the important issues for everyone, but if they are your's then you need to get your arguments in order and advocate things that can actually help. And if you seek to make personal choices that are consistent with such values then drop that tofu and get a grass fed burger.