5 ms·

Beef in itself is not bad for the environment. It's the scale of demand that is bad. And that demand is fueled by the combined effects of global population grow

Beef in itself is not bad for the environment. It's the scale of demand that is bad. And that demand is fueled by the combined effects of global population growth and global increase in standards of living. We tend to stop at the symptoms instead of going after the root cause.

defiamazing 3y ago
Agreed. Check out /r/keto and /r/zerocarb for some great research about the natural human diet. Humans have eaten beef (exclusively even) for billions of years.
- crawfishphase 3y ago
  [flagged]
- chickenchase-rd 3y ago
  Brazilians of years, not billions
- jdietrich 3y ago
  Humans have only existed for about 300,000 years. Cows are about 10,000 years old.
Qem 3y ago
> Beef in itself is not bad for the environment. It's the scale of demand that is bad. Wasting crops feeding cattle is inherently worse than the alternative, feeding directly on the crops and avoiding the wasting of calories when going up one trophic level.
- mytailorisrich 3y ago
  That's an uneeded "optimisation". There is nothing wrong with eating meat and breeding cattle. Again, the issue is that the environment has a limited, finite capacity, which we exceed when we are 10 billion with good standards of living. To reduce quality of life (because it's not limited to meat, it's comprehensive restrictions) simply to accomodate ever more humans on the planet is madness and unsustainable, anyway. PS: Let's also remember, for example, that 50-60 million bisons roamed North America before European settlement, whereas there are about 28 million beef cows in the US today (according to Google).
  - repelsteeltje 3y ago
    Another way to cast the meat vs crops debate is "true pricing": the growing demand for meat is not simply a result of growing population or growing standards of living, but caused by ignoring "externalities". I.e.: if the true impact of turning crops into meat were reflected in the price of a hamburger, demand elasticity would eventually result in much less production. Or: growing meat consumption is mostly a result of implicit subsidies to maintain status quo, ignore climate change,etc.
  - emptysongglass 3y ago
    > There is nothing wrong with eating meat and breeding cattle. You're not doing a whole lot to explain why there is nothing wrong with eating meat and breeding cattle. I can think of a whole host of reasons why it is wrong in matters of ethics and mercy. Who is there to advocate for the cow? We know cows feel a gamut of emotions just as we do. They are not insensate. Most humans, when given a knife or a captive bolt gun and told to go kill that cow on yonder would not. So we externalize the death-making to slaughterhouse workers who coincidentally also suffer: > ...SHWs had significantly higher levels of depression compared with office workers, but not butchers. The difference in depression rates differed from study to study, ranging from 10% to 50% [1] There's really no good, ethical argument to be made for the killing of animals for food or pleasure. Did we need to do it once to survive as a species? Yes. Are we largely living in a post-scarcity world where those practices should now be challenged? Yes. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10009492/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10009492/
    - mytailorisrich 3y ago
      There is nothing wrong or unethical with eating meat. It is a natural behaviour, which we are evolved for, and in fact a necessary animal behaviour within the environment at large. If you do not wish to eat meat for personal reasons you are free to do so of course but I object to the current trend of minority groups trying to impose their views to the whole of society and to paint those who disagree as 'wrong'.
      - 3y ago
- b800h 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - emptysongglass 3y ago
    That's essentially what we do with cows. Do you see the hypocrisy? We don't inflict this on humans so why do it to other creatures which can know terror and pain just as we do?
    - BoingBoomTschak 3y ago
      Because empathy being applied to other species is an evolutionary bug, not a feature. Bug probably triggered by the luxurious abundance and the accompanying decadence acting on brains a bit too disconnected from the reality of the animal kingdom. And if you want intellectual justifications: because we're the apex predators and we do what we want when we want; that includes raising and eating beasts that are of no other value to us. The other carnivorous animals wouldn't act in any other way, in our position.
      - asoneth 3y ago
        > Because empathy being applied to other species is an evolutionary bug, not a feature I hope our eventual AI overlords do not feel similarly.
      - lukas099 3y ago
        Ah yes, might makes right, the pinnacle of moral thinking…
      - nathan_compton 3y ago
        Sometimes there isn't anything one can do to sugarcoat something: this is stupid. For one thing, even if we were to take your bald assertion that empathy is somehow an evolutionary bug at face value, though you've provided no evidence for this or even really any suggestion of what it could mean, it doesn't follow that lacking it is the optimal behavior relative to "evolutionary goals" (which are nothing) or whatever unstated goals you presume we all share. Like on of the most wonderful things about human beings is that we can reflect upon our behavior, form moral and aesthetic opinions about how we'd like the future to be, and make appropriate adjustments to our behavior to achieve those ends. In any case, the material circumstances that produced us have absolutely no meaning at all. The essence of the evolutionary explanation is that life really is random, given that, we may just as freely reject evolutionary understandings of what we want from the world as we may accept them. Surely they are of practical value, in the sense that if we want to optimally act on the world we have to understand it, but they impose no necessary moral or aesthetic demands upon us. It is deeply confused to believe that the mere evolutionary circumstances that produced you ought to constrain how you want the future to look.
- virtue3 3y ago
  "A large amount of beef is grown in areas that are not suitable for crop farming in the United States. In fact, 85% of the land used to graze cattle in the U.S. is marginal land, which means it's not suitable for growing crops. Marginal land is either untouched or used for grazing livestock, mostly cattle" Grain finishing is another matter. But it's not a 1 grain : 1/10th beef type situation. Now chopping and burning down the amazon to create grazing land for cattle? yeah that's going to probably kill us all.
  - verisimi 3y ago
    > Now chopping and burning down the amazon to create grazing land for cattle? yeah that's going to probably kill us all. How? I mean, I'm not a fan of destroying forests, etc, but around here, there is no unmanaged land so presumably all the forests were already burnt etc for farmers... But we're all around, right? I don't get how burning the Amazon for food people want will actually kill us.
    - adrianN 3y ago
      The Amazon is pretty important for the global climate
    - jterrys 3y ago
      Because the rainforest is important in regulating global temperature and oxygen production, much more so than the (probable) temperate climate forests you are from. You are living in a post destruction area, with new forests planted to supplement the destruction that was there before. Most of these forests aren't more than 70 years old, that's about when we finally made an effort to fix how badly we totally fucked up and why people needed clean air to not die from lung cancer (among other things). The loss of biodiversity, air quality, etc. already occurred. You are a survivor. What's more, your survival was in part supported by the air quality of other virgin forests further away from you that weren't yet cut down. But now that they are being cut down, there's less left to support you. In short, you're asking yourself why you shouldn't shoot yourself in the foot again, because you managed to survive the first shot and it looks to you like it healed just fine (it didn't).
- bongodongobob 3y ago
  Cows don't eat people crops.
  - colordrops 3y ago
    The amount of energy and water used to grow those crops is spent regardless, and could have either not been spent, or spent on people crops.
DasIch 3y ago
Beef is extremely inefficient compared to plant-based food. We could sustain a far larger population with no loss in standards of living without it.
- wk_end 3y ago
  Most people would argue that not eating beef would lower their standard of living.
  - _3u10 3y ago
    [flagged]
- rangestransform 3y ago
  [flagged]
pickleberto 3y ago
[dead]
colordrops 3y ago
That's like saying "oil is not bad for the environment, it's the scale of the demand that is bad".

defiamazing 3y ago

Agreed. Check out /r/keto and /r/zerocarb for some great research about the natural human diet. Humans have eaten beef (exclusively even) for billions of years.

crawfishphase 3y ago
[flagged]
chickenchase-rd 3y ago
Brazilians of years, not billions
jdietrich 3y ago
Humans have only existed for about 300,000 years. Cows are about 10,000 years old.

Qem 3y ago

> Beef in itself is not bad for the environment. It's the scale of demand that is bad. Wasting crops feeding cattle is inherently worse than the alternative, feeding directly on the crops and avoiding the wasting of calories when going up one trophic level.

mytailorisrich 3y ago
That's an uneeded "optimisation". There is nothing wrong with eating meat and breeding cattle. Again, the issue is that the environment has a limited, finite capacity, which we exceed when we are 10 billion with good standards of living. To reduce quality of life (because it's not limited to meat, it's comprehensive restrictions) simply to accomodate ever more humans on the planet is madness and unsustainable, anyway. PS: Let's also remember, for example, that 50-60 million bisons roamed North America before European settlement, whereas there are about 28 million beef cows in the US today (according to Google).
- repelsteeltje 3y ago
  Another way to cast the meat vs crops debate is "true pricing": the growing demand for meat is not simply a result of growing population or growing standards of living, but caused by ignoring "externalities". I.e.: if the true impact of turning crops into meat were reflected in the price of a hamburger, demand elasticity would eventually result in much less production. Or: growing meat consumption is mostly a result of implicit subsidies to maintain status quo, ignore climate change,etc.
- emptysongglass 3y ago
  > There is nothing wrong with eating meat and breeding cattle. You're not doing a whole lot to explain why there is nothing wrong with eating meat and breeding cattle. I can think of a whole host of reasons why it is wrong in matters of ethics and mercy. Who is there to advocate for the cow? We know cows feel a gamut of emotions just as we do. They are not insensate. Most humans, when given a knife or a captive bolt gun and told to go kill that cow on yonder would not. So we externalize the death-making to slaughterhouse workers who coincidentally also suffer: > ...SHWs had significantly higher levels of depression compared with office workers, but not butchers. The difference in depression rates differed from study to study, ranging from 10% to 50% [1] There's really no good, ethical argument to be made for the killing of animals for food or pleasure. Did we need to do it once to survive as a species? Yes. Are we largely living in a post-scarcity world where those practices should now be challenged? Yes. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10009492/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10009492/
  - mytailorisrich 3y ago
    There is nothing wrong or unethical with eating meat. It is a natural behaviour, which we are evolved for, and in fact a necessary animal behaviour within the environment at large. If you do not wish to eat meat for personal reasons you are free to do so of course but I object to the current trend of minority groups trying to impose their views to the whole of society and to paint those who disagree as 'wrong'.
    - 3y ago
b800h 3y ago
[flagged]
- emptysongglass 3y ago
  That's essentially what we do with cows. Do you see the hypocrisy? We don't inflict this on humans so why do it to other creatures which can know terror and pain just as we do?
  - BoingBoomTschak 3y ago
    Because empathy being applied to other species is an evolutionary bug, not a feature. Bug probably triggered by the luxurious abundance and the accompanying decadence acting on brains a bit too disconnected from the reality of the animal kingdom. And if you want intellectual justifications: because we're the apex predators and we do what we want when we want; that includes raising and eating beasts that are of no other value to us. The other carnivorous animals wouldn't act in any other way, in our position.
    - asoneth 3y ago
      > Because empathy being applied to other species is an evolutionary bug, not a feature I hope our eventual AI overlords do not feel similarly.
    - lukas099 3y ago
      Ah yes, might makes right, the pinnacle of moral thinking…
    - nathan_compton 3y ago
      Sometimes there isn't anything one can do to sugarcoat something: this is stupid. For one thing, even if we were to take your bald assertion that empathy is somehow an evolutionary bug at face value, though you've provided no evidence for this or even really any suggestion of what it could mean, it doesn't follow that lacking it is the optimal behavior relative to "evolutionary goals" (which are nothing) or whatever unstated goals you presume we all share. Like on of the most wonderful things about human beings is that we can reflect upon our behavior, form moral and aesthetic opinions about how we'd like the future to be, and make appropriate adjustments to our behavior to achieve those ends. In any case, the material circumstances that produced us have absolutely no meaning at all. The essence of the evolutionary explanation is that life really is random, given that, we may just as freely reject evolutionary understandings of what we want from the world as we may accept them. Surely they are of practical value, in the sense that if we want to optimally act on the world we have to understand it, but they impose no necessary moral or aesthetic demands upon us. It is deeply confused to believe that the mere evolutionary circumstances that produced you ought to constrain how you want the future to look.
virtue3 3y ago
"A large amount of beef is grown in areas that are not suitable for crop farming in the United States. In fact, 85% of the land used to graze cattle in the U.S. is marginal land, which means it's not suitable for growing crops. Marginal land is either untouched or used for grazing livestock, mostly cattle" Grain finishing is another matter. But it's not a 1 grain : 1/10th beef type situation. Now chopping and burning down the amazon to create grazing land for cattle? yeah that's going to probably kill us all.
- verisimi 3y ago
  > Now chopping and burning down the amazon to create grazing land for cattle? yeah that's going to probably kill us all. How? I mean, I'm not a fan of destroying forests, etc, but around here, there is no unmanaged land so presumably all the forests were already burnt etc for farmers... But we're all around, right? I don't get how burning the Amazon for food people want will actually kill us.
  - adrianN 3y ago
    The Amazon is pretty important for the global climate
  - jterrys 3y ago
    Because the rainforest is important in regulating global temperature and oxygen production, much more so than the (probable) temperate climate forests you are from. You are living in a post destruction area, with new forests planted to supplement the destruction that was there before. Most of these forests aren't more than 70 years old, that's about when we finally made an effort to fix how badly we totally fucked up and why people needed clean air to not die from lung cancer (among other things). The loss of biodiversity, air quality, etc. already occurred. You are a survivor. What's more, your survival was in part supported by the air quality of other virgin forests further away from you that weren't yet cut down. But now that they are being cut down, there's less left to support you. In short, you're asking yourself why you shouldn't shoot yourself in the foot again, because you managed to survive the first shot and it looks to you like it healed just fine (it didn't).
bongodongobob 3y ago
Cows don't eat people crops.
- colordrops 3y ago
  The amount of energy and water used to grow those crops is spent regardless, and could have either not been spent, or spent on people crops.

DasIch 3y ago

Beef is extremely inefficient compared to plant-based food. We could sustain a far larger population with no loss in standards of living without it.

wk_end 3y ago
Most people would argue that not eating beef would lower their standard of living.
- _3u10 3y ago
  [flagged]
rangestransform 3y ago
[flagged]

pickleberto 3y ago

[dead]

colordrops 3y ago

That's like saying "oil is not bad for the environment, it's the scale of the demand that is bad".