But in this case with this country, that small exceptional worldwide population is overrepresented in our national population. It stands to reason that many people can infact consume lactose in the U.S. given this demographic history. The general case in the context of the U.S. population could very well refer to this population of people historically predisposed to tolerate lactase.
And on the other hand, I think there is this false logic at play with the meat/dairy industry as a whole. People assume these interconnected systems are in fact discrete. That we could do away with eating meat and suffer no consequences, in fact even see improvement in our ways of life. I am not so optimistic given how interconnected systems are. For instance, take the cow. Its not just used to derive meat. 99% of the cow is used. The pancreas is used to extract insulin and other factors. Same with the liver, and the pituitary gland. Serum is used for biomedical research applications. The hair is used for products, the hide is used. The fats are used for everything from toothpaste to flooring to crayons. Collagen and gelatin are extracted. I don't even need to go into the uses of the hide, I feel. The bones and blood are used for organic fertilizer, so I'd wager that many organic vegetarian products today actually rely on the cheap organic fertilizers produced by the meat industry versus synthetic sources. On top of that pasture land is often land that is not compatible for traditonal farming, owing to terrain mostly (e.g. Summit county in Colorado sports a lot of ranching versus farming, due to the rocky mountainous terrain being almost impossible to plow but trivial for a grazer to roam on).
Could you replace all of the parts of the cow with synthetic sources? Certainly. Would this lead to a net reduction in greenhouse gasses and other environmental externalities replacing each and every of these products with synthetic sources that hopefully aren't any more costly? That I doubt, and it worries me that headlines and other material in the media seem to ignore how all these externalizes will be resolved, assuming it will be an easy transition.
And on the other hand, I think there is this false logic at play with the meat/dairy industry as a whole. People assume these interconnected systems are in fact discrete. That we could do away with eating meat and suffer no consequences, in fact even see improvement in our ways of life. I am not so optimistic given how interconnected systems are. For instance, take the cow. Its not just used to derive meat. 99% of the cow is used. The pancreas is used to extract insulin and other factors. Same with the liver, and the pituitary gland. Serum is used for biomedical research applications. The hair is used for products, the hide is used. The fats are used for everything from toothpaste to flooring to crayons. Collagen and gelatin are extracted. I don't even need to go into the uses of the hide, I feel. The bones and blood are used for organic fertilizer, so I'd wager that many organic vegetarian products today actually rely on the cheap organic fertilizers produced by the meat industry versus synthetic sources. On top of that pasture land is often land that is not compatible for traditonal farming, owing to terrain mostly (e.g. Summit county in Colorado sports a lot of ranching versus farming, due to the rocky mountainous terrain being almost impossible to plow but trivial for a grazer to roam on).
Could you replace all of the parts of the cow with synthetic sources? Certainly. Would this lead to a net reduction in greenhouse gasses and other environmental externalities replacing each and every of these products with synthetic sources that hopefully aren't any more costly? That I doubt, and it worries me that headlines and other material in the media seem to ignore how all these externalizes will be resolved, assuming it will be an easy transition.