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I wonder what it will take to convince people to separate their core identity from meat consumption. At this point pretty much everyone knows what’s going on in

I wonder what it will take to convince people to separate their core identity from meat consumption. At this point pretty much everyone knows what’s going on in these horrible farms, and knows the climate impact. At this point there are also lots of plant based proteins available in many forms and flavors. Yet people still seem to get viscerally offended if you suggest that eating meat is an inherently evil act, and I don’t foresee throwing more charts at them ever changing their mind.

earthwalker99 3y ago
You can't justify your neoliberal capitalism on free consumer choice then just take that away as you please. I suggest reorganizing society because there simply isn't another option. If meat were too expensive to eat, people would eat less of it, but it's not too expensive because capitalists can just outsource the cost of their destruction. This is fundamental to capitalism, which people forget is literally defined as an economic system that prioritizes the right of individuals to exercise their existing capital to accumulate more of it, above everything else.
- guerby 3y ago
  After looking into it I chose to still consume beef (grass-fed) but I buy it from a local organic farmer (farm is about 20km from my home). As for price depending of the part of the animal you buy it varies a lot. According to: https://ourworldindata.org/land-use https://ourworldindata.org/land-use Two thirds of agricultural land is pasture and unsuitable for growing human edible plant food. If a cow needs two hectares on average (specific number depends a lot on the state of pasture) that's about 1.5 billions cows using 0% of arable land. There's about 1 billions cows in the world.
  - hombre_fatal 3y ago
    > Two thirds of agricultural land is pasture and unsuitable for growing human edible plant food. Can you clarify which part of the link supports that statement?
    - guerby 3y ago
      "Croplands make up one-third of agricultural land, and grazing land makes up the remaining two-thirds."
      - strken 3y ago
        This doesn't make grazing land unsuitable for cropping. As an example, a lot of dairy farming is done on fertile volcanic soil that would also be suitable for root vegetables.
        guerby 3y ago
        According to FAO: https://www.fao.org/3/Y4171E/Y4171E20.htm#p4990_295868 https://www.fao.org/3/Y4171E/Y4171E20.htm#p4990_295868 "Cropland ... Includes: All land from which crops were harvested or hay was cut. All land in orchards, citrus groves, vineyards and nursery and greenhouse crops. Land in rotational pasture and grazing land that could have been used for crops without additional improvements. Land used for cover crops, legumes, and soil improvement grasses, but not harvested and not pastured. Land on which crops failed. Land in cultivated summer fallow." By definition cropland is where you could grow crops, the rest is grassland.
        strken 3y ago
        I think "grazing land that could have been used for crops without additional improvements" (emphasis mine) doesn't include e.g. established pasture which could be easily but not trivially used as cropland, right? I would have assumed it was a catch-all for dual purpose crops etc.
Dig1t 3y ago
I think I might be one of the people you describe, but I don’t think you understand the reason that people get offended. I am not offended by the facts about factory farming, or that meat production releases methane. I am offended by the implication that someone will forcefully take away my ability to consume foods that I want to eat, and will use morality to justify it. Removing the freedom to eat meat is still taking away freedom no matter how you justify it and people will resent it. If your goal is to improve the quality of life for livestock or reduce emissions from livestock, perhaps by changing the diet that animals are fed: nobody will have a problem. As soon as you imply that someone’s way of life is immoral and their diet must be forcefully changed, you will encounter huge resistance.
- NotMichaelBay 3y ago
  > As soon as you imply that someone’s way of life is immoral and their diet must be forcefully changed, you will encounter huge resistance. I think this is just due to a lack of understanding or acceptance, because the nature of the problem makes it difficult/impossible to prove (X will lead to Y on date Z). I'm sure there are people who on principle hold personal freedoms above all else, but I think most people could change because they agree with the line of reasoning: 1. My consumption of meat contributes to demand for cows 2. Cows produce methane, which is a potent GHG 3. GHGs are causing global warming 4. Increased global warming is bad for future generations They just question or fundamentally disagree with one or more of the premises.
  - maratc 3y ago
    I think you missed the actual premise these people disagree with: 5. If I change my food preferences, this will have a tangible impact on both global warming and future generations.
    - NotMichaelBay 3y ago
      Heh, good call. I was trying to figure out how to include level of impact, the "every vote counts" argument.
poulsbohemian 3y ago
>At this point pretty much everyone knows what’s going on in these horrible farms... >Yet people still seem to get viscerally offended if you suggest that eating meat is an inherently evil act... If you are eating meat that you raise yourself or where you are buying directly from small-scale producers, do you have this same view of meat? If so, why?
- collingreen 3y ago
  This is a reasonable question and I agree that the two points don't line up -- factory farms being good or bad does not mean all meat eating is good or bad.
  - poulsbohemian 3y ago
    Yeah... it seems to me like the main arguments are: ethics, environmental, and nutrition, in that order. If you agree that it is acceptable to eat meat, you might still be concerned about the environment impact. As I look at the data, it seems to me like raising animals outside our factory production system is not nearly the environmental catastrophe as some would like to project. In fact, I'm inclined to believe that there may even be a net positive, depending on the practices. The problem is, those practices don't yield cheap meat, so they often get discarded as impractical.
jjjjj55555 3y ago
> At this point pretty much everyone knows what’s going on in these horrible farms, and knows the climate impact. At this point the effects of this "knowledge" are neutralized by lack of trust in the sources of information and in one's ability to have any impact on the global issues. It's not that people identify too much as meat-eaters, it's just that they don't trust the numbers or the solutions that are being sold to them, and so we become apathetic.
strken 3y ago
Everyone knows what it will take: cheap vegetable alternatives to meat that can be made at a small factory level or at home, don't have an unfortunate association with xenoestrogens, provide the right macros/amino balance/B vitamin supplementation, and are easy to cook. I'm not convinced eating meat is an inherently evil act. Possibly most factory farmed meat from the US might be evil (depending on how you feel about chicken barns), but the assertion that raising and slaughtering your own animals is evil relies on the unproven assertion that animal deaths are inherently wrong even after a good life. That's not a universal belief and it's certainly not supported by these charts about industrial scale factory farming.
- Voultapher 3y ago
  I think generally I agree with you. Though I'd argue proving anything about morality is practically impossible. Let's take an example of something that was for thousands of years across many cultures and to some degree is still seen as acceptable or morally justifiable behavior, slavery. While I personally believe it is reprehensible, I would be hard pressed to "prove" this in a way that doesn't rely on value judgements along the chain of reasoning. I can't prove or disprove that industrial scale exploitation of mammals is morally wrong. As a society we see this as morally acceptable, what if we are wrong?
- 9dev 3y ago
  > but the assertion that raising and slaughtering your own animals is evil relies on the unproven assertion that animal deaths are inherently wrong even after a good life. Anyone who ever owned a pet, or witnessed young foals or calves actually growing up naturally, will have noticed these animals to dream, to be joyful, frustrated, gleeful, or moody. They play, they enjoy learning stuff and have personalities - in short, they are sentient beings with a subjective experience, even if that experience is very different from ours - there is no way to know. We do not let people kill elderly humans, even if they lived a good life. What is the fundamental difference between a human and an animal, if both experience their existence, both can suffer, and both really want to stay alive?
  - ricardobeat 3y ago
youniverse 3y ago
I don't hold opinions on this but I just watched this and I'm wondering what your (and others) thoughts on this is. Only 7 minutes, gives some interesting arguments. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqRJsIiPTmg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqRJsIiPTmg
- leipert 3y ago
  Interesting arguments like being an ad for Meat sticks? Come on. Of course some kind of Animal husbandry or hunting can be beneficial for the environment. But your parent comment talks about the effects of factory farming, not grass-fed bisons or game.
  - youniverse 3y ago
    I meant the nutrients arguments for real vs plant-based or maybe even the ethical arguments he gave. While it may be an ad it seems like an innovative beef stick!
nonameiguess 3y ago
There's no clear connection between the two parts of your statement here. If the problem is factory farming and climate impact, then eating meat is not inherently evil. If it's inherently evil, then factory farming and climate impact don't matter. Ten dudes throwing spears at a mammoth 15,000 years ago were just as evil. That, I think, would be the source of the disconnect. Food is not just a core component of regional cultures and histories, it's a core identifier of all life. Species are known, in large part, by what they eat. Thankfully, for humans, because we populated the entire globe and have omnivore guts, that can be just about anything, but in many cases, particular animals, particular cuts, and particular methods of preparation, cooking, and flavoring are deeply intertwined with an entire group of people and their history. If you're telling people eating meat is inherently evil, you're well, one, telling them they're evil, so it shouldn't be a huge surprise they find that offensive. But you're also telling them their family is evil, their friends are evil, their ancestors and entire culture is evil. Does it really not make sense that the reception to this may not be great? For what it's worth, I don't even know that I disagree that eating meat in most circumstances, given the way it's being produced, is a morally worse option than other ways to feed yourself, and I've greatly reduced but not totally eliminated my own meat consumption, but there's also the element of "no ethical consumption under capitalism" going on here. Wheat harvests utterly obliterate small fauna. Your clothes and probably sewn together in sweat shops by child labor. The batteries in your electric car are strip mined in some poor victim of colonialism country where the land is owned by foreigners. Nonetheless, you have to consume something. People need food, clothes, transportation, housing, and it can be overwhelming to consider every step of every supply chain to think of all the ways in which evil may creep into the system. Historically speaking, we've mostly relied on governments to curb that kind of thing, not individual consumer choice. Rather than expecting every person downstream to know that their Nutella* has palm oil in it that decimates rainforests with soil-depleting monoculture, destroying the most diverse ecosystem in existence and also one of the world's great carbon sinks, and then opting to eat something else, we hope that national governments and international treaties prevent manufacturers from doing the worst things in the first place. * Yes, Nutella the company claims it is sustainably produced and doesn't destroy rainforests, but are you personally confirming that?
alejohausner 3y ago
I think you’re conflating two things that are different: factory farming, which is run by huge agribusiness companies, and eating meat. Small farmers can also raise animals for meat consumption, and they can probably do it on a smaller scale, with less environmental impact and less pollution than Cargill, Sysco, Tyson, and the rest of the cabal. There used to be rules controlling how much farmers could produce, and this kept meat prices higher, and benefited small farmers. But big ag got those controls removed in the 1970s, leading to lower prices paid to farmers, forcing them to get bigger to survive, or driving many of them into bankruptcy. Bigger farms require more chemicals and more pollution. The problem is not meat production per se, but rather a distortion of the system by powerful large corporations.
- Clubber 3y ago
  >Bigger farms require more chemicals and more pollution. Yes, including antibiotic resistance. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/to-fight-antimicrobial-resistance-start-with-farm-animals/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/to-fight-antimicr... >Small farmers can also raise animals for meat consumption, and they can probably do it on a smaller scale, with less environmental impact and less pollution than ... Absolutely. Here's a good video on the topic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRK4I1bSV5I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRK4I1bSV5I >But big ag got those controls removed in the 1970s, leading to lower prices paid to farmers, forcing them to get bigger to survive, or driving many of them into bankruptcy. And a lot of suicide, sadly. >The problem is not meat production per se, but rather a distortion of the system by powerful large corporations. I'm not sure when the US lost its will to keep large corporations at bay, but it's been hurting us ever since. Ever see a M&A the federal government didn't like?
rayiner 3y ago
> At this point there are also lots of plant based proteins available in many forms and flavors. Which are highly processed and laden with chemicals. > Yet people still seem to get viscerally offended if you suggest that eating meat is an inherently evil act How can it be “evil” when we evolved to eat meat and our closest evolutionary relatives regularly eat meat? And what about chicken, which are dinosaurs and would eat you if they could? It’s far more reasonable to conclude that “life” doesn’t have the intrinsic value you assume it does.
loeg 3y ago
Meat is tasty and nutritious, and eating it is fine, actually.
antifa 3y ago
I don't feel like I can go into any random restaurant and get the same calorie per dollar food from a vegan entre as you would a meat entre. It's almost always paying more for less, and sides-only. There is a supply-side problem that the morality argument isn't addressing.

earthwalker99 3y ago

You can't justify your neoliberal capitalism on free consumer choice then just take that away as you please. I suggest reorganizing society because there simply isn't another option. If meat were too expensive to eat, people would eat less of it, but it's not too expensive because capitalists can just outsource the cost of their destruction. This is fundamental to capitalism, which people forget is literally defined as an economic system that prioritizes the right of individuals to exercise their existing capital to accumulate more of it, above everything else.

guerby 3y ago
After looking into it I chose to still consume beef (grass-fed) but I buy it from a local organic farmer (farm is about 20km from my home). As for price depending of the part of the animal you buy it varies a lot. According to: https://ourworldindata.org/land-use https://ourworldindata.org/land-use Two thirds of agricultural land is pasture and unsuitable for growing human edible plant food. If a cow needs two hectares on average (specific number depends a lot on the state of pasture) that's about 1.5 billions cows using 0% of arable land. There's about 1 billions cows in the world.
- hombre_fatal 3y ago
  > Two thirds of agricultural land is pasture and unsuitable for growing human edible plant food. Can you clarify which part of the link supports that statement?
  - guerby 3y ago
    "Croplands make up one-third of agricultural land, and grazing land makes up the remaining two-thirds."
    - strken 3y ago
      This doesn't make grazing land unsuitable for cropping. As an example, a lot of dairy farming is done on fertile volcanic soil that would also be suitable for root vegetables.
      - guerby 3y ago
        According to FAO: https://www.fao.org/3/Y4171E/Y4171E20.htm#p4990_295868 https://www.fao.org/3/Y4171E/Y4171E20.htm#p4990_295868 "Cropland ... Includes: All land from which crops were harvested or hay was cut. All land in orchards, citrus groves, vineyards and nursery and greenhouse crops. Land in rotational pasture and grazing land that could have been used for crops without additional improvements. Land used for cover crops, legumes, and soil improvement grasses, but not harvested and not pastured. Land on which crops failed. Land in cultivated summer fallow." By definition cropland is where you could grow crops, the rest is grassland.
        strken 3y ago
        I think "grazing land that could have been used for crops without additional improvements" (emphasis mine) doesn't include e.g. established pasture which could be easily but not trivially used as cropland, right? I would have assumed it was a catch-all for dual purpose crops etc.

Dig1t 3y ago

I think I might be one of the people you describe, but I don’t think you understand the reason that people get offended. I am not offended by the facts about factory farming, or that meat production releases methane. I am offended by the implication that someone will forcefully take away my ability to consume foods that I want to eat, and will use morality to justify it. Removing the freedom to eat meat is still taking away freedom no matter how you justify it and people will resent it. If your goal is to improve the quality of life for livestock or reduce emissions from livestock, perhaps by changing the diet that animals are fed: nobody will have a problem. As soon as you imply that someone’s way of life is immoral and their diet must be forcefully changed, you will encounter huge resistance.

NotMichaelBay 3y ago
> As soon as you imply that someone’s way of life is immoral and their diet must be forcefully changed, you will encounter huge resistance. I think this is just due to a lack of understanding or acceptance, because the nature of the problem makes it difficult/impossible to prove (X will lead to Y on date Z). I'm sure there are people who on principle hold personal freedoms above all else, but I think most people could change because they agree with the line of reasoning: 1. My consumption of meat contributes to demand for cows 2. Cows produce methane, which is a potent GHG 3. GHGs are causing global warming 4. Increased global warming is bad for future generations They just question or fundamentally disagree with one or more of the premises.
- maratc 3y ago
  I think you missed the actual premise these people disagree with: 5. If I change my food preferences, this will have a tangible impact on both global warming and future generations.
  - NotMichaelBay 3y ago
    Heh, good call. I was trying to figure out how to include level of impact, the "every vote counts" argument.

poulsbohemian 3y ago

>At this point pretty much everyone knows what’s going on in these horrible farms... >Yet people still seem to get viscerally offended if you suggest that eating meat is an inherently evil act... If you are eating meat that you raise yourself or where you are buying directly from small-scale producers, do you have this same view of meat? If so, why?

collingreen 3y ago
This is a reasonable question and I agree that the two points don't line up -- factory farms being good or bad does not mean all meat eating is good or bad.
- poulsbohemian 3y ago
  Yeah... it seems to me like the main arguments are: ethics, environmental, and nutrition, in that order. If you agree that it is acceptable to eat meat, you might still be concerned about the environment impact. As I look at the data, it seems to me like raising animals outside our factory production system is not nearly the environmental catastrophe as some would like to project. In fact, I'm inclined to believe that there may even be a net positive, depending on the practices. The problem is, those practices don't yield cheap meat, so they often get discarded as impractical.

jjjjj55555 3y ago

> At this point pretty much everyone knows what’s going on in these horrible farms, and knows the climate impact. At this point the effects of this "knowledge" are neutralized by lack of trust in the sources of information and in one's ability to have any impact on the global issues. It's not that people identify too much as meat-eaters, it's just that they don't trust the numbers or the solutions that are being sold to them, and so we become apathetic.

strken 3y ago

Everyone knows what it will take: cheap vegetable alternatives to meat that can be made at a small factory level or at home, don't have an unfortunate association with xenoestrogens, provide the right macros/amino balance/B vitamin supplementation, and are easy to cook. I'm not convinced eating meat is an inherently evil act. Possibly most factory farmed meat from the US might be evil (depending on how you feel about chicken barns), but the assertion that raising and slaughtering your own animals is evil relies on the unproven assertion that animal deaths are inherently wrong even after a good life. That's not a universal belief and it's certainly not supported by these charts about industrial scale factory farming.

Voultapher 3y ago
I think generally I agree with you. Though I'd argue proving anything about morality is practically impossible. Let's take an example of something that was for thousands of years across many cultures and to some degree is still seen as acceptable or morally justifiable behavior, slavery. While I personally believe it is reprehensible, I would be hard pressed to "prove" this in a way that doesn't rely on value judgements along the chain of reasoning. I can't prove or disprove that industrial scale exploitation of mammals is morally wrong. As a society we see this as morally acceptable, what if we are wrong?
9dev 3y ago
> but the assertion that raising and slaughtering your own animals is evil relies on the unproven assertion that animal deaths are inherently wrong even after a good life. Anyone who ever owned a pet, or witnessed young foals or calves actually growing up naturally, will have noticed these animals to dream, to be joyful, frustrated, gleeful, or moody. They play, they enjoy learning stuff and have personalities - in short, they are sentient beings with a subjective experience, even if that experience is very different from ours - there is no way to know. We do not let people kill elderly humans, even if they lived a good life. What is the fundamental difference between a human and an animal, if both experience their existence, both can suffer, and both really want to stay alive?
- ricardobeat 3y ago

youniverse 3y ago

I don't hold opinions on this but I just watched this and I'm wondering what your (and others) thoughts on this is. Only 7 minutes, gives some interesting arguments. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqRJsIiPTmg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqRJsIiPTmg

leipert 3y ago
Interesting arguments like being an ad for Meat sticks? Come on. Of course some kind of Animal husbandry or hunting can be beneficial for the environment. But your parent comment talks about the effects of factory farming, not grass-fed bisons or game.
- youniverse 3y ago
  I meant the nutrients arguments for real vs plant-based or maybe even the ethical arguments he gave. While it may be an ad it seems like an innovative beef stick!

nonameiguess 3y ago

There's no clear connection between the two parts of your statement here. If the problem is factory farming and climate impact, then eating meat is not inherently evil. If it's inherently evil, then factory farming and climate impact don't matter. Ten dudes throwing spears at a mammoth 15,000 years ago were just as evil. That, I think, would be the source of the disconnect. Food is not just a core component of regional cultures and histories, it's a core identifier of all life. Species are known, in large part, by what they eat. Thankfully, for humans, because we populated the entire globe and have omnivore guts, that can be just about anything, but in many cases, particular animals, particular cuts, and particular methods of preparation, cooking, and flavoring are deeply intertwined with an entire group of people and their history. If you're telling people eating meat is inherently evil, you're well, one, telling them they're evil, so it shouldn't be a huge surprise they find that offensive. But you're also telling them their family is evil, their friends are evil, their ancestors and entire culture is evil. Does it really not make sense that the reception to this may not be great? For what it's worth, I don't even know that I disagree that eating meat in most circumstances, given the way it's being produced, is a morally worse option than other ways to feed yourself, and I've greatly reduced but not totally eliminated my own meat consumption, but there's also the element of "no ethical consumption under capitalism" going on here. Wheat harvests utterly obliterate small fauna. Your clothes and probably sewn together in sweat shops by child labor. The batteries in your electric car are strip mined in some poor victim of colonialism country where the land is owned by foreigners. Nonetheless, you have to consume something. People need food, clothes, transportation, housing, and it can be overwhelming to consider every step of every supply chain to think of all the ways in which evil may creep into the system. Historically speaking, we've mostly relied on governments to curb that kind of thing, not individual consumer choice. Rather than expecting every person downstream to know that their Nutella* has palm oil in it that decimates rainforests with soil-depleting monoculture, destroying the most diverse ecosystem in existence and also one of the world's great carbon sinks, and then opting to eat something else, we hope that national governments and international treaties prevent manufacturers from doing the worst things in the first place. * Yes, Nutella the company claims it is sustainably produced and doesn't destroy rainforests, but are you personally confirming that?

alejohausner 3y ago

I think you’re conflating two things that are different: factory farming, which is run by huge agribusiness companies, and eating meat. Small farmers can also raise animals for meat consumption, and they can probably do it on a smaller scale, with less environmental impact and less pollution than Cargill, Sysco, Tyson, and the rest of the cabal. There used to be rules controlling how much farmers could produce, and this kept meat prices higher, and benefited small farmers. But big ag got those controls removed in the 1970s, leading to lower prices paid to farmers, forcing them to get bigger to survive, or driving many of them into bankruptcy. Bigger farms require more chemicals and more pollution. The problem is not meat production per se, but rather a distortion of the system by powerful large corporations.

Clubber 3y ago
>Bigger farms require more chemicals and more pollution. Yes, including antibiotic resistance. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/to-fight-antimicrobial-resistance-start-with-farm-animals/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/to-fight-antimicr... >Small farmers can also raise animals for meat consumption, and they can probably do it on a smaller scale, with less environmental impact and less pollution than ... Absolutely. Here's a good video on the topic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRK4I1bSV5I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRK4I1bSV5I >But big ag got those controls removed in the 1970s, leading to lower prices paid to farmers, forcing them to get bigger to survive, or driving many of them into bankruptcy. And a lot of suicide, sadly. >The problem is not meat production per se, but rather a distortion of the system by powerful large corporations. I'm not sure when the US lost its will to keep large corporations at bay, but it's been hurting us ever since. Ever see a M&A the federal government didn't like?

rayiner 3y ago

> At this point there are also lots of plant based proteins available in many forms and flavors. Which are highly processed and laden with chemicals. > Yet people still seem to get viscerally offended if you suggest that eating meat is an inherently evil act How can it be “evil” when we evolved to eat meat and our closest evolutionary relatives regularly eat meat? And what about chicken, which are dinosaurs and would eat you if they could? It’s far more reasonable to conclude that “life” doesn’t have the intrinsic value you assume it does.

loeg 3y ago

Meat is tasty and nutritious, and eating it is fine, actually.

antifa 3y ago

I don't feel like I can go into any random restaurant and get the same calorie per dollar food from a vegan entre as you would a meat entre. It's almost always paying more for less, and sides-only. There is a supply-side problem that the morality argument isn't addressing.