This question stem is asking us to weaken the ethicist argument. So let's see what the ethicist says.

Right, so you take a cow and you know one pound of steak. Where did that come from? Well it came

from the cow eating 16 pounds of grain. So the conversion ratio is 16 pounds of grain to one

pound of meat. And a pound of meat is more nutritious than a pound of grain. Well okay, sure. I hope so.

I mean it took 16 pounds of this to convert into one pound of that. But 16 pounds of grain could

feed more people than could a pound of meat. Okay, so a pound of meat maybe feeds one person.

16 pounds of grain, I don't know, feeds four people, three people, who knows? More people than one.

And with grain yields leveling off, large areas of farmland going out of production each year.

So we're not improving our yield. Given one acre of land, we're not growing more and more

grain year on year. Our agricultural science on that is sort of leveling off.

But there are also large swaths of farmland going out of production. So the population is

rapidly expanding. We need more people. Here comes the conclusion. We must accept the fact that

consumption of meat will soon be morally unacceptable. But there's so many presumptions here.

Just because all this stuff is happening, grain yield is leveling off. Farmland going out of

production, population rapidly expanding. First of all, I don't even know if that means that we

don't have enough food. What if we had like, what if already at this moment we have enough food to

feed a hundred billion people? Sure, expand as rapidly as you want. We're only at seven now,

we can keep going up. I don't know that that's not true. So that's one presumption we have to

make that that's not true. That our current level of production is sort of just barely meeting

what our population needs. Therefore, if our current level of production dips and our demand

rises, that creates a shortage. And then of course, maybe this becomes problematic. But there are all

sorts of other things that could be, I mean, things that I perhaps can't anticipate, I can't

think of. But let's go into the answer choices, sort of understanding that there's a gap between

how this premise supports the conclusion. A says, even though it has been established that

That's one assumption. What if vegetarian diet is just not healthy? It's not that you morally

a consumption of meat is morally... In fact, we have to keep eating meat. We just have to

beef up our, excuse me, our agricultural sciences. But anyway, so they sort of dismiss that. Many

people prefer to eat meat and are willing to pay for it, but that just doesn't matter. The fact

that they have a preference for eating meat, that doesn't do anything to address the fact that

we are... Grain yields are leveling off, people are rapidly expanding. So yeah, it may just...

Essentially, this support is strong as ever. It doesn't weaken the support. That's why A

that's unsuitable for any other type of farming. And there you go. See, all along we've been making

the presumption that the grain that's grown on this farmland, instead of taking it and feeding

it to the cows, turning it into a pound of meat, and then feeding one person, you just take it,

you feed it directly to the people, and you feed 10 people. But now it's saying, well, this land,

this land, you couldn't grow grain on this land anyway. Instead, the only thing you can grow on

it is grass. And this grass can be fed to the cows, and so some subset of our population still

gets to eat meat. And it's at no loss to other people, because this land couldn't have been used

for anything else anyway. That's a presumption that the argument has made, that all this land

is interchangeable. And B is telling you, no, no, no, that presumption is wrong. This land

is not interchangeable. C says, if a grain diet is supplemented with protein derived from non-native

be addressing a problem, what if nutritionally it's not healthy? And then C's like, oh, don't

worry, don't worry. Grain diet can be supplemented with XYZ to make it just as good. So that seems to

strengthen this argument. D says, although prime farmland near metropolitan areas is being lost

what does that do? I guess, like, sort of give more farmland back. But then, is that enough to

sort of close the shortage in food that might arise? We don't know. We need to assume all these

things. That's why D doesn't work. Just too many presumptions there. E says, nutritionists agree

very tricky answer. It sounds like one of the presumptions in the making is that not eating

meat's okay, but look closely at E to see what it's actually saying. A diet composed solely of

grain products not adequate for human health. Okay, that's fine. So eat not just grain products,

eat grain products plus vegetables, plus fruits, plus soy products, plus other, you know, proteins,

non-animal proteins. Everything that will make it adequate, just still don't eat meat.

So you see, it doesn't actually attack the support here from the premise conclusion,

if you realize that it's actually just talking about grain products. And really,

we're not really suggesting it. We're just suggesting don't eat meat. Don't eat meat

doesn't imply eat only grain products.