I'll reply to this post in the hope that you are really unaware of the connection. Strongly encourage you to look this up some. Starting with the UN report on this:
Livestock impacts on the environment
The livestock industry accounts for
18% of greenhouse gas emissions.(I am not advocating dogmatic vegeterianism. Certainly a case can be made for drastically reducing the amount of meat consumption though as there is a 10:1 efficiency in producing vegeterian food with equivalent nutrition).
I realize this is just a cricket forum etc, what got me going was a poster citing a doctor equating health with a predominantly (or even exclusively) vegeterian diet. I'm doing my bit (despite your ridicule) on a fairly important topic.
This is the sort of post which infuriates. You're dealing with educated people here and you assume they're unaware? Do you honestly think the ridicule stems from ignorance?
Seriously, grow up. It's not about 'choosing' to use data, the data is the juice here. There's no serious consensus even on the construct/internal validity of measures used to inform half the stuff some environmentalists use. So, no, the 'evidence' is far from overwhelming.
Just to pick on the Vit B12 example again;
Guess what, the Vitamin B12 in meat products is produced by....
...bacteria. Same way that B12 gets into plant based foods.
You're not going to claim eating plants with the right bacteria will serve B12 needs are you? Because, sorry to say, it ain't the case. If you have access to an academic journal search;
Rauma AL, Torronen R, Hanninen O, Mykkanen H. Vitamin B-12 status of long-term adherents of a strict uncooked vegan diet ("living food diet") is compromised. J Nutr. 1995 Oct;125(10):2511-5.
And the Indian example Redbacks mentioned essentially found that the Indian population only satisfied their VitB12 needs from bacteria because they had drinking water polluted by human faeces.
Albert MJ, Mathan VI, Baker SJ. Vitamin B12 synthesis by human small intestinal bacteria. Nature. 1980;283(Feb 21):781-2.
This furthers the old theory that plant-eating animals satisfy their Vit B12 needs from eating their own faeces. Further confirmed by the classic study where vegans were fed extracts from their own stools (no kidding, wouldn't get past an ethics committee now that's for sure) which stopped their Vit B12 deficiency dead in its tracks;
Herbert V. Vitamin B-12: plant sources, requirements, and assay. Am J Clin Nutr 1988;48:852-8.
This is from a 2 minute OVID search, I saw heaps more.
And, waddayaknow, even pro-vegan sites agree;
Vitamin B12: Are You Getting It? : Are Intestinal Bacteria a Reliable Source of B12?
The point? Even raw food adherents, faecal bacterial crawling all over their food, have to supplement. There's no way you can eat any non-meat foods and get all the B12 you need. Sure you could eat your own faeces but I doubt I'd have to post any studies to prove how bad that would be for you or mention all the other health problems the Indian population in the study above had.
</grump>
EDIT: Not that it matters but I don't eat a lot of red meat, ridiculously expensive anyway. Just tired of the propaganda.