5 ms·

I would argue this is incredibly misleading. What percentage of meat or dairy comes from pasture animals? You can't fulfill a country like the US's meat and da

by radec 5y ago

I would argue this is incredibly misleading. What percentage of meat or dairy comes from pasture animals? You can't fulfill a country like the US's meat and dairy demand with pasture raised animals. So realistically we are talking about factory farmed animals. If we are talking about factory farmed animals then it goes back to the needing these nature destructing farms you are talking about just to feed animals that then feed humans, this is not an efficient system.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
cheese_goddess 5y ago
> What percentage of meat or dairy comes from pasture animals? Meat and dairy are separate considerations. Even in industrial farming, meat animals and dairy animals are raised separately and often belong to different breeds. They are certainly treated differently. So for example, where I'm staying, about 80% of the dairy products are made with the milk of sheep and goats in small farms where the animals range freely, in the summer, and eat stored wild grassses as hay in the winter. On the other hand, most of the meat consumed is chicken and pork and of those animals, at least the chicken are kept in large battery operations. I don't know about pig farming. Also, where I stay there are very few cows, most of them raised for dairy, and the country has one of the smallest, if not the smallest number of cattle in Europe. It's in South Europe, but I don't want to say exactly where. Anyway when you ask questions like the one above, please consider that the conditions you know from the Americas are not the same in all of the rest of the world, and that most of the rest of the world simply does not eat as much meat, of all kids, as Americans (and by "Americans" I mean people in the US, Argentina and Brazil). > You can't fulfill a country like the US's meat and dairy demand with pasture raised animals. "Demand", maybe not. But "need"? It seems to me that this can be done perfectly well simply because the amount currently consumed is extravagant. People in the US eat way too much meat, per capita, compared to almost everyone else in the world, including most industrialised nations. My selection below: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/meat-supply-per-person?tab=chart&time=latest&country=DEU~FRA~GBR~USA~ARG~BRA~CHN~ESP~ITA~TUR~JPN~KOR~BEL~NLD~CAN~CHL~GRC~POL~SWE~CHE~SAU~ZAF~BGD~IND~IDN~IRN https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/meat-supply-per-person?ta... Nobody needs to eat that much meat. If there is "demand" for it, that is the matter that should be addressed. Why do people want to eat so much meat? There is something incredibly wrong in the data above, when you look at how the US, Argentina, Spain and Brazil eat, compared to the other industrialised countries in the chart.
- radec 5y ago
  >Meat and dairy are separate considerations. Not everywhere. In the US there is an incredible amount of overlap. For example, Male cows born in the dairy industry end up in the meat industry. But more specifically I don't see how they are separate in the context of this conversation? Aren't we just talking about the inefficiency of raising animals as a food source? >Anyway when you ask questions like the one above, please consider that the conditions you know from the Americas are not the same in all of the rest of the world, and that most of the rest of the world simply does not eat as much meat, of all kids, as Americans (and by "Americans" I mean people in the US, Argentina and Brazil). I thought I was, I honestly wanted to know what the percentage of meat and dairy comes from pasture animals in the world. I guess I should of been more clear about that. >"Demand", maybe not. But "need"? It seems to me that this can be done perfectly well simply because the amount currently consumed is extravagant. People in the US eat way too much meat, per capita, compared to almost everyone else in the world, including most industrialised nations. My selection below: I 100% agree. >Nobody needs to eat that much meat. Again I very much agree.
  - cheese_goddess 5y ago
    > I thought I was, I honestly wanted to know what the percentage of meat and dairy comes from pasture animals in the world. I guess I should of been more clear about that. Well, I confess I don't know the actual numbers. But most places on Earth don't have the intensive farming found in the Americas. > Aren't we just talking about the inefficiency of raising animals as a food source? Quite the contrary. In a sibling comment I discuss how ruminants are the most efficient way to turn inedible plant matter to food that humans can eat. The wikipedia page on "ruminant" has some interesting information about the process of rumination. In short, ruminants have four stomachs. In the first two, plant matter is fermented by bacteria, then regurgitated so that it can be re-chewed to hydrate it with saliva, that promotes bacterial development and controls the pH of these stomachs. The third stomach is a kind of filter that absorbs some nutrients and allows only food of certain size to pass to the final, fourth stomach. The fourth stomach is the true stomach that is similar to the one we have in our beliies. So to eat the plants that ruminants are specialised to eat, we'd need to have it first chewed and pre-digested by ruminants. In yet another comment I noted how sheep and cows that range freely eat wild grasses, and goats eat shrub. As I say in that other comment, factory farmed cows are fed soy and corn, that humans can also eat, rather than wild grasses that humans can't eat. But that is factory farming. It is actually harmful for ruminants to feed them that kind of food and so it's a practice that should absolutely be eliminated, along with the rest of factory farming. Far as I can tell, nobody has been able to breed goats in factory farms. And sheep are normally not factory farmed. I don't know what it is that makes cows good for that sort of thing, but you can be assured that where farming is primarily of sheep and goats, whatever automation of processes there exists is nowhere near the scale of factory farms with giant, thousand-animal feedlots as in the Americas. Anyway I think "efficiency" is a red herring. The farming industry is very efficient at producing cheap meat by the thousand-ton. But human bodies are not tuned to a world were food is produced "efficiently". We are predisposed to eat as much as we can as soon as we can, to make up for the difficulty of finding enough nutrients to sustain us "in the wild". Presented with the extravagant amounts of cheap meat produced by industrial farming, we are inevitably drawn to excesses of consumption. These excesses are used by the very industry that caused them in the first place as justification to produce even more meat, throwing even more fuel to the fire, destroying even more of the environment and treating even more hundreds of thousands of animals like garbage. Inevitably, there is a backlash and people swear off meat, when what we should all be swearing at and off is the meat industry, that would happily farm us if it was profitable.

by radec 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

cheese_goddess 5y ago

> What percentage of meat or dairy comes from pasture animals? Meat and dairy are separate considerations. Even in industrial farming, meat animals and dairy animals are raised separately and often belong to different breeds. They are certainly treated differently. So for example, where I'm staying, about 80% of the dairy products are made with the milk of sheep and goats in small farms where the animals range freely, in the summer, and eat stored wild grassses as hay in the winter. On the other hand, most of the meat consumed is chicken and pork and of those animals, at least the chicken are kept in large battery operations. I don't know about pig farming. Also, where I stay there are very few cows, most of them raised for dairy, and the country has one of the smallest, if not the smallest number of cattle in Europe. It's in South Europe, but I don't want to say exactly where. Anyway when you ask questions like the one above, please consider that the conditions you know from the Americas are not the same in all of the rest of the world, and that most of the rest of the world simply does not eat as much meat, of all kids, as Americans (and by "Americans" I mean people in the US, Argentina and Brazil). > You can't fulfill a country like the US's meat and dairy demand with pasture raised animals. "Demand", maybe not. But "need"? It seems to me that this can be done perfectly well simply because the amount currently consumed is extravagant. People in the US eat way too much meat, per capita, compared to almost everyone else in the world, including most industrialised nations. My selection below: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/meat-supply-per-person?tab=chart&time=latest&country=DEU~FRA~GBR~USA~ARG~BRA~CHN~ESP~ITA~TUR~JPN~KOR~BEL~NLD~CAN~CHL~GRC~POL~SWE~CHE~SAU~ZAF~BGD~IND~IDN~IRN https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/meat-supply-per-person?ta... Nobody needs to eat that much meat. If there is "demand" for it, that is the matter that should be addressed. Why do people want to eat so much meat? There is something incredibly wrong in the data above, when you look at how the US, Argentina, Spain and Brazil eat, compared to the other industrialised countries in the chart.

radec 5y ago
>Meat and dairy are separate considerations. Not everywhere. In the US there is an incredible amount of overlap. For example, Male cows born in the dairy industry end up in the meat industry. But more specifically I don't see how they are separate in the context of this conversation? Aren't we just talking about the inefficiency of raising animals as a food source? >Anyway when you ask questions like the one above, please consider that the conditions you know from the Americas are not the same in all of the rest of the world, and that most of the rest of the world simply does not eat as much meat, of all kids, as Americans (and by "Americans" I mean people in the US, Argentina and Brazil). I thought I was, I honestly wanted to know what the percentage of meat and dairy comes from pasture animals in the world. I guess I should of been more clear about that. >"Demand", maybe not. But "need"? It seems to me that this can be done perfectly well simply because the amount currently consumed is extravagant. People in the US eat way too much meat, per capita, compared to almost everyone else in the world, including most industrialised nations. My selection below: I 100% agree. >Nobody needs to eat that much meat. Again I very much agree.
- cheese_goddess 5y ago
  > I thought I was, I honestly wanted to know what the percentage of meat and dairy comes from pasture animals in the world. I guess I should of been more clear about that. Well, I confess I don't know the actual numbers. But most places on Earth don't have the intensive farming found in the Americas. > Aren't we just talking about the inefficiency of raising animals as a food source? Quite the contrary. In a sibling comment I discuss how ruminants are the most efficient way to turn inedible plant matter to food that humans can eat. The wikipedia page on "ruminant" has some interesting information about the process of rumination. In short, ruminants have four stomachs. In the first two, plant matter is fermented by bacteria, then regurgitated so that it can be re-chewed to hydrate it with saliva, that promotes bacterial development and controls the pH of these stomachs. The third stomach is a kind of filter that absorbs some nutrients and allows only food of certain size to pass to the final, fourth stomach. The fourth stomach is the true stomach that is similar to the one we have in our beliies. So to eat the plants that ruminants are specialised to eat, we'd need to have it first chewed and pre-digested by ruminants. In yet another comment I noted how sheep and cows that range freely eat wild grasses, and goats eat shrub. As I say in that other comment, factory farmed cows are fed soy and corn, that humans can also eat, rather than wild grasses that humans can't eat. But that is factory farming. It is actually harmful for ruminants to feed them that kind of food and so it's a practice that should absolutely be eliminated, along with the rest of factory farming. Far as I can tell, nobody has been able to breed goats in factory farms. And sheep are normally not factory farmed. I don't know what it is that makes cows good for that sort of thing, but you can be assured that where farming is primarily of sheep and goats, whatever automation of processes there exists is nowhere near the scale of factory farms with giant, thousand-animal feedlots as in the Americas. Anyway I think "efficiency" is a red herring. The farming industry is very efficient at producing cheap meat by the thousand-ton. But human bodies are not tuned to a world were food is produced "efficiently". We are predisposed to eat as much as we can as soon as we can, to make up for the difficulty of finding enough nutrients to sustain us "in the wild". Presented with the extravagant amounts of cheap meat produced by industrial farming, we are inevitably drawn to excesses of consumption. These excesses are used by the very industry that caused them in the first place as justification to produce even more meat, throwing even more fuel to the fire, destroying even more of the environment and treating even more hundreds of thousands of animals like garbage. Inevitably, there is a backlash and people swear off meat, when what we should all be swearing at and off is the meat industry, that would happily farm us if it was profitable.