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How about making meat production more ethical and practical? I live surrounded by cows, literally. The area has no good soil, so every farmer here has like 13
by herbst 5y ago
How about making meat production more ethical and practical?
I live surrounded by cows, literally. The area has no good soil, so every farmer here has like 13 to whatever cows (13 is the magical number of cows you can have without studying agriculture or so, assuming you live in a relevant area). All these cows spend most of the time outside, in the summer they are in the Alps, spring and fall they chill in the fields and go to 'sleep' in their stall and winter they are mostly indoors, except on sunny days.
They eat ONLY what is growing around here in the more or less useless soil. Even in the winter.
90% of the farmers here are at least organic. So synthetic fertilizer & power food are out of the question too.
Many small farmers do what one or two people can and help each other on the busy days. And it works.
Literally every reason I've read is this thread about why cow meat is so bad does not apply as far as I can tell to the meat I eat.
- phonypc 5y agoAnd how expensive is it to eat beef from these cows? How many people that currently have a taste for beef could afford eating it regularly if this was the only option? I'm all for it, but in effect this is just the "massively reduce consumption" argument.
- herbst 5y agoI haven't found any conclusive numbers. About 6.5% of all beef eaten here is organic. However not organic does not always automatically mean it's 100% bad. My neighbor's meat is way cheaper than organic meat in supermarkets. Still at least twice as much as 'cheap' meat.
- phonypc 5y agoNear as I can find, baseline Swiss beef prices are already 4x the global average. I'd certainly be eating beef a lot less if it was 4x more expensive, never mind a premium on top of that.
- herbst 5y agoI really don't know. However organic meat is usually cheaper or at least same price here than in Austria or Germany. The cheapest variants may are expensive comparingly, quality however isn't.
- GhettoComputers 5y agoWhat do you think of using buffalo rather than cows? I don't think they are native to the swiss but in the US they used to be native to the area, I saw this article on them being easier to handle. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/buffalo-in-the-swiss-alps https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/buffalo-in-the-swiss-a...
- herbst 5y agoSwitzerland couldn't use 2/3 of their land without cow farming. However I too heard that they may would be a good alternative in regions they belong to.