It's just the general gist of it I got from what I have read, was it would be better for the environment.
I think it was one of those "what if the whole world went veggie" articles, we use masses of land for agriculture and 68% of current agricultural land is used for live stock alone, a mixture of pasture land and crops for cattle feed. Without the need for cattle 80% of the pasture land could be converted back into bio diverse forests and grasslands and 15-20% could be used for crops to fill up the gaps left in the food supply.
So we know how much better natural grassland and especially forests are for the climate in general than pasture land. Ontop of that would be an arguably bigger benefit from the reduction in harmful greenhouse gases(methane), unless you don't subscribe to the climate change theories. Livestock output a staggering amount of methane gas, food production accounts for 1/3 of harmful greenhouse gases(attributed to human activity) and the bulk of that comes from the livestock industry, it's said to be more than than the whole transport industry combined.
The whole world is probably not going veggie any time soon but the above indicates that even a reduction would be beneficial.
I'm no tree hugger or anything but where's the harm in trying exploring viable solutions in the here and now, for future generations? They're only on version 2.0 of that recipe, if it's successful there may be more cropping up and who knows we genuinely might not be able to tell the difference one day. I wouldn't mind trying one. The cynic in me says it will probably be a disappointment(like Quorn was when I tried it in the 90s), after all the hype but I'd at least give it a try.
