https://newrepublic.com/article/177575/never-trust-green-meat
The industry insists that meat’s problems can be solved with technical fixes. We’ve seen this before.
Climate friendly meat is a black bean burger
A recent study published in Global Food Security, for instance, shows that humble legumes, with the right government push, could provide a far more sustainable and diverse source of protein than meat
i'm still bummed the humble black bean burger (usually no extra charge) has been replaced by beyond/impossible (usually a $1-3 upcharge) at so many restaurants.
The thing that I hate the most about it is it's the same fucking price at the grocery store, but somehow that equates to a 40% more expensive burger. Meat is ungodly expensive nowadays such that my partner and I opt for meat substitutes because it's often cheaper and we prefer them anyway.
I understand economies of scale, and that they're buying less of it so they're gonna be paying a little more, but $3 per 8oz burger is absurd. Burger places have lost their goddamn minds when there's often way better ramen noodles next door for half the price.
The solution is simple: hefty meat tax.
Government has tremendous power to address collective action problems through incentives, regulations, and taxation. In the world of public health, these interventions are ranked on a scale called the Nuffield Ladder, with gentle nudges at the bottom and outright bans at the top. One of the most commonly used tools is taxation. In particular, governments can implement what are known as Pigouvian taxes on things like sugary drinks, tobacco, or polluting factories—the idea is to force producers to cover the cost of the harms their products do. They can also slap so-called “sin taxes” on products to increase direct costs for consumers. These taxes work. Numerous studies show that these are very effective in decreasing consumption, leading groups like the World Health Organization to strongly support them. The academic case for such taxes on meat is robust and convincing. But taxes in general are massively politically unpopular and lead to accusations of a nanny state interfering in consumers’ free choice, as the battles over sugar taxes around the world have shown.
It should also be noted that we currently do the exact opposite and actually heavily subsidize meat, dairy, etc around the world
Thank you.
Just cutting back the subsidies would kill off a good portion of the industrial grade producers.
It would be, nonetheless, very good to actively support small scale family farms, where better practices are often used and simpler to implement and supervise.
Yes, we should subsidize small-scale oil producers in the Arctic. And artesian cobalt mines in the DRC. /s
No, the tax would be temporary. We need to increase the carbon tax over time as a means to phase it out. We dont need carbon energy. Likewise, we need to increase animal ag taxes until its phased out. We don't need to eat animals. What we need to do is stop this unjustifiable, harmful activities.
Yes, lets forbid people that still strive for self sustenance, with small scale farming and animal rearing, to make an independent living.
Get your head out of your ass for a moment and when the oxygen rushes back to your brain realize animals are much more than meat and are an integral part of well managed and sustainable systems.
Animals make use of crops by-products otherwise wasted, manage vegetation and provide fertilizers, just off the top of my head.
And there are regions where no suitable crops can be planted and instead animals are the only means of survival and sustenance for people.
Back off and let people live.
There are better hills to die on than to persecute traditional farming.
Systems are much more sustainable without animals. Its not complex science.
If we want more people to be able to live sustainably off the land, then we should ban animal ag.
Fertilization is easily achieved with growing green manure. Organic materials composted. All without the ecological devastation caused by animal ag
You want to pay a visit to where I live?
Animals - mostly sheep and goats - have been used for millennia to manage vegetation. The moment it was considered an outdated practice, some fifty years back, better resolved by use of machinery, we started having wild fires, due to having unmanaged highly combustible vegetation, that otherwise was consumed by the animals.
Let's avoid black or white purism. Animals have played a fundamental role in our civilization. Let's eliminate the excessive practices and strive for well balanced practices.
Yeah and animals ag has caused many of those areas to turn into deserts. You're right we've been doing it tens of thousands if years, and look at where we are now.
I'm not aguing that we kill all wild animals. Bison and deer are fine (sheep and goats are chicken and cows are not). I'm arguing that we need to stop all human-bred animals that are unnatural species and causing immense damage to the planet.
We grow all our own meat and veg aside from what we forage, hunt and fish. On a small scale, animals are vital to a healthy and regenerative farm.
The thing I can never get behind is that this is always used as an argument for new technologies instead of returning to lower tech, pre-industrial solutions that are already well established and known to be safer.
The problem with this is lifestyle inflation.
Pre-industrial technologies will only get us pre-industrial amounts of meat, which has to be split between the current population.
There's a lot of people who probably won't be very happy with only being able to afford meat once or twice a week. That seems like a surefire way to trigger a backlash.
this is always used as an argument for new technologies instead of returning to lower tech, pre-industrial solutions that are already well established and known to be safer
Maybe because it's about economical efficiency. The old ways were abandoned in favor of new methods, because the new approach was cheaper / yielded higher profits.
Yes, we could produce meat like we did in pre-industrial times, but that would mean higher prices or lower volume. Either way, it would mean less people could afford to eat meat. Like in pre-industrial times.
Maybe because it’s about economical efficiency
Exactly. It's not about "saving the planet" at all. It is, once again, about making more money.
Oh, that's not what I meant to describe. There are differences in ecological impact of various foods and production methods, obviously. Choosing the smaller options helps to do less harm, to "save the planet".
I meant to point out that we moved from pre-industrial methods to modern methods because they make more sense in economic terms, in capitalism. And that just going back might lead to unwanted consequences like lots of people with much less access to meat.
The problem with meat is not that we eat it, but that we eat too much of it. Most people eat a week's worth of meat in a single day, and that results in the over production of meat, which is helping to destroy the environment.
The problem with meat is not that we eat it, but that we eat too much of it.
This isn't how it works. Consuming meat and cheese and butter and other animal products has been made into a conspicuous consumption deal for a long time, it's a status symbol, obviously important to pastoralist cultures and their industrial descendants (like The West).
You can't do "low meat" without first attacking the status power of meat.
People would go crazy and riot over reducing it, as it would most likely manifest as:
If you don't do those, it's just going to be imported.
If you ban imports, you're going to get a meat mafia. Meat bootleggers. The "leather underground" mafia and terrorist organization.
You may actually get to see this, since the prices are destined to shoot up eventually, since it's so unsustainable.
Solution to #2: Implement as a pigovian tax. Return the tax revenue to the population per capita.
Yes, the most powerful will always have the most power. It still makes sense to set up some rules.
Pigovian taxes can still be beneficial for society, even if the super rich evade the system. They create incentives for everyone else to move in the desired direction. This includes consumers, producers, investors, researchers. For all those people in their different positions, it will be financial advantageous to consider other options.
But my main point was that you can raise prices without hurting the poor. By returning the tax revenue to the poor.
Better option: keep your fucking hands off our food. All it accomplished is building political opponents for great reasons
Lots of government health agencies have recommendations for protein. For example https://www.eatforhealth.gov.au/guidelines/guidelines
The actual problem is capitalism.
Most people only eat that much meat because of a combination of lobbying, advertising, education (or lack thereof, about where our food comes from, home ec, etc..) and so on which all influence and create social norms, all engineered and focused on making money for those at the top, not our health, not our well being, and definitely not those of the animals.
The horror that is factory farming only exists because of profit motives. Remove the profit motive and whole thing comes tumbling down (because it's just unsustainable).
The horror that is factory farming only exists because of profit motives. Remove the profit motive and whole thing comes tumbling down (because it’s just unsustainable).
Nope. The horror of factory farming exists because herding/ranching exists. It's the descendant, the result of the transition from extensive herding (which is also horrible) to intensive herding (which is obviously horrible). The CAFOs are the ones making profits by economies of scale. Most of the animal products are from CAFOs. End those and it's going to get really surprising :)
Profits existed way before, with pastoralism. The "livestock" or "living capital" is a form of primitive accumulation, part of the formation of capitalism. The profit incentive and the GROWTH incentive goes deep in pastoralist culture. The notion that it's in any sense non-profit is absolutely incorrect.
The truly climate friendly meat has been right in front of us since the dawn of time, but it is illegal in most places and taboo in most cultures except in emergencies.
Human meat is unsustainable even if it could be allowed like some muscle donation. Adding in capitalist incentives would make "human trafficking" reach new levels horror.
Human meat is unsustainable
That's the neat part that makes it so environmentally friendly.
Whereever there is need for something, some assholes come and create a new sector out of it to milk it as much as possible before moving onto the next thing. Pretty much the same story with responsibly sourced or net carbon zero emissions certificates etc. Some people are making shit loads of money out of it, while probably serving nothing (or barely anything) for the original purpose but just making it seem like they do. And worse they are probably delaying real solutions by at least a couple decades.
Why is this articles content all blurry?
Strange, doesn't show up like for me. I don't think there's a paywall on this article, so I'm not sure why it'd be showing up like that. Maybe a browser issue? I'm using Firefox, what browser are you using?
Privacy Browser
Edit: not sure why I'm downvoted. The browser is literally called "Privacy Browser" on F-Droid.
Does it disable JS or limit it or something along those lines? Maybe could be the reason?
Lab-grown meat needs to become the norm, and cow-based meat needs to become a specialty food.
Though we also don't have time to only wait for lab grown production to scale up, so in the mean time, there's plenty of good plant-based meats and just general plant-based food as well. If we just wait, harm will continue to be done
It's really an order of magnitudes difference between any plant-based food and even best case meat production
Regardless of whether you compare the footprint of foods in terms of their weight (e.g. one kilogram of cheese versus one kilogram of peas); protein content ; or calories, the overall conclusion is the same: plant-based foods tend to have a lower carbon footprint than meat and dairy. In many cases a much smaller footprint.
[...]
If I source my beef or lamb from low-impact producers, could they have a lower footprint than plant-based alternatives?The evidence suggests, no: plant-based foods emit fewer greenhouse gases than meat and dairy, regardless of how they are produced.
these conclusions are largely based on poor nemecek 2018. the methodology in that study is suspect.
There is plenty of other research finding similar conclusions. Here's a review looking at 34 different papers finding that:
there is no indication that a situation or condition may make beef burgers more environmentally friendly than these two plant-based alternatives, or that the addition of plant-based meats to vegan and vegetarian diets may reduce their environmental benefits.
[...]
This paper shows that plant-based diets and plant-based meat options are unambiguously better for the environment. This is true for modeled vegetarian and vegan diets as well as for observed diets that may include highly processed foods such as plant burgers
this paper is fucked in about as many ways as poore nemecek. The homogenized disparate studies about LCAs when they all use different methodologies. The LCA numbers that they're using were never meant to be used in this context. it's possible they're even right but this methodology simply can't support their conclusions.
If I'm reading the methodology correctly, the paper is mainly comparing the relative findings within each study. (They do have some other comparisons that don't, yes, but they are mainly looking at relative numbers where each is computed with the same methodology)
Our focus on the percent change from a diet switch relative to the environmental impacts of the baseline omnivorous diet described in each study, makes the findings comparable across papers. Within each paper, the environmental impacts of one diet are comparable to those of another diet because these are expressed as a function of calories provided, taking as a benchmark a requirement of between 2000 and 2700 kcal/person/day
They then look at the distribution of the relative change figures. The entire range looked at here is lower emissions
We can also look at non-review studies as well. Here's one comparing emissions of farming types more directly
The aim is to compare the environmental impacts of different diets with different levels of animal product consumption, while accounting for the type of farming systems (organic or conventional) of the food consumed.
A positive link between animal-sourced food consumption and total environmental impact was observed in this large sample of French adults. By far, omnivorous had the highest-level of greenhouse gas emissions, cumulative energy demand and land occupation while vegan diets had the lowest
We found that a 100% organic omnivorous diet exhibited higher environmental pressures, suggesting that following an organic diet without changing towards a more plant-based diet is of little help, at least as regards the studied indicators
the vegan diet, whatever the indicator considered, remained less resource-intensive and environmentally damaging than other diets
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352550919304920
But do take into consideration the enormous amounts of nitrogen and phosphorous based fertilizers used to produce the plants, especially by greenhouses and industrial explorations.
Not the person you are replying to, but it should be noted that synthetic fertilizer usage is lower on plant-based diets even compared to maximal usage of manure. This is due to the fact that you don't have to grow so much animal feed (which you lose most of the energy from by other creatures body functions using that energy themselves)
shifting from animal to plant sources of protein can substantially reduce fertilizer requirements, even with maximal use of animal manure
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921344922006528
While any food production is not going to be free of environmental effects, plant-based diets are substantially better on nearly all metrics
Wait till you learn about all the extra food we grow just to feed the animals we eat.
It takes up the majority of farmland in the US. more than we dedicate to growing for humans to consume directly.
If you actually want to use less farmland, and therefore fertilizer, I welcome you to veganism.
What I think is more likely though, is that you need to tell yourself this to feel better about eating animal products.
Ah, yes, that pillar of good practices, US, where corn is so heavily subsidized its by-products had to be force injected into the entire food chain to justify it, to the point all food is rendered sweet by default.
I know it’s popular but believe it or not, the US isn’t the cause of all the world’s problems.
Only 23% of ag land worldwide is used to grow crops for direct human consumption. That’s lower than the US number by the way.
The fact remains that if you actually care about reducing farmland and fertilizer use, you’d go vegan.
Or was I right and that was just a throwaway comment meant to make you feel better about your habits?
As opposed to the enormous amounts of nitrogen and phosphorous based fertilizers used to produce cattle feed.
Talking out of what I can see out of my window, hay and feed crops for cattle are sown in the same fields where animals are led to graze, with no added fertilizers besides the manure left behind that is tilled into the soil, in field rotation system.
The greenhouses and berry farms around here turn down the readily and locally available and cheap manures to instead consume huge amounts of synthetic fertilizers produced in far away factories that have to be trucked in.
That's a cute fairy tale.
In the real world, over 5.6 million tons of nitrogen are applied to corn (40% of which is feedcorn, on top of 40% for ethanol. barely any for us vegans!) each year through chemical fertilizers, compared to a mere million tons of nitrogen from manure. A good amount is coming from cattle, like you said, but the reality is that the clear majority is artificial.
And regardless of whether it's natural or artificial, nitrates then wash into the rivers and waterways causing algae blooms, fish die-offs in rivers and lakes, drinking water pollution, ocean dead zones, coral bleaching and other habitat destruction, that shit even gets into the groundwater. In the human body it causes cancers, thyroid disease, birth defects, and probably more we don't know about.
Poison isn't better for you just because it's "natural" 🙄
Hm. How is offering a safe alternative that some people may buy of their own volition an “attack on our food supply”?
Because environmentalists always ban what they're "offering" an alternative for. You see it in this very thread left and right.
It's a threat to our freedom we need to work to defend ourselves against by preventing it from getting any power
