4 ms·

$38 billion is $100 per person. People eat a lot more than 4 pounds of meat per year, so this doesn’t compute, or it’s singling out some category of hamburger

$38 billion is $100 per person. People eat a lot more than 4 pounds of meat per year, so this doesn’t compute, or it’s singling out some category of hamburger meat, while ignoring all others. Average meat consumption per person is 260 pounds, which would come out to about 40 cents per pound in subsidy.

DangitBobby 4y ago
They gave the cost of two beef products before and after subsidies. There are a bunch of other types of meat that presumably are not as expensive per pound. According to this article, less than 1/3 of Americans' meat consumption is beef [1]. I don't know what the factors are, but there might be some reason in particular ground beef ends up taking a large share of the subsidies. I know what steak at the grocery store is quite expensive compared to ground beef, so maybe ground beef is targeted so lower income people can afford it while steak is not. Who knows. It would take more than napkin math to convince me that they're lying. 1. https://sentientmedia.org/meat-consumption-in-the-us/ https://sentientmedia.org/meat-consumption-in-the-us/
- SamReidHughes 4y ago
  The source of this ridiculous $30->$5 number is linked from the article: https://scet.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/CopyofFINALSavingThePlanetSustainableMeatAlternatives.pdf https://scet.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/CopyofFINALSavi... And it is given without a citation, and the document's authors are Directors/R&D/Tech Lead people at Samsung, VMWare, and Google. And: "This paper was created in an open classroom environment as part of a program within the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology" So it's just laundered fake research. The source of such a figure is surely going to be some reasoning like this, plus inflation, which cites the vast majority of "subsidy" being "healthcare costs": https://meatonomics.com/2013/08/15/each-time-mcdonalds-sells-a-big-mac-were-out-7/ https://meatonomics.com/2013/08/15/each-time-mcdonalds-sells... But without looking at the source, napkin math tells you at the very least the number is way out of whack, and at best it'd have been cherry-picked for the purpose of deception.

DangitBobby 4y ago

They gave the cost of two beef products before and after subsidies. There are a bunch of other types of meat that presumably are not as expensive per pound. According to this article, less than 1/3 of Americans' meat consumption is beef [1]. I don't know what the factors are, but there might be some reason in particular ground beef ends up taking a large share of the subsidies. I know what steak at the grocery store is quite expensive compared to ground beef, so maybe ground beef is targeted so lower income people can afford it while steak is not. Who knows. It would take more than napkin math to convince me that they're lying. 1. https://sentientmedia.org/meat-consumption-in-the-us/ https://sentientmedia.org/meat-consumption-in-the-us/

SamReidHughes 4y ago
The source of this ridiculous $30->$5 number is linked from the article: https://scet.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/CopyofFINALSavingThePlanetSustainableMeatAlternatives.pdf https://scet.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/CopyofFINALSavi... And it is given without a citation, and the document's authors are Directors/R&D/Tech Lead people at Samsung, VMWare, and Google. And: "This paper was created in an open classroom environment as part of a program within the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology" So it's just laundered fake research. The source of such a figure is surely going to be some reasoning like this, plus inflation, which cites the vast majority of "subsidy" being "healthcare costs": https://meatonomics.com/2013/08/15/each-time-mcdonalds-sells-a-big-mac-were-out-7/ https://meatonomics.com/2013/08/15/each-time-mcdonalds-sells... But without looking at the source, napkin math tells you at the very least the number is way out of whack, and at best it'd have been cherry-picked for the purpose of deception.