My partner and I reduced our red meat intake but I don’t think I could stop completely. A steak a few times a year just hits the spot too much. I’m keen for lab grown though.
kadup@lemmy.world 6 days ago
This is true, and also not usually well taken by most people, even the ones claiming to be pro environment.
Wait until this thread gets full of people saying that their habits are irrelevant because companies pollute much more - which they do indeed, but that absolutely does not negate the many studies we have that calculate a major impact if we simply dropped red meat.
Which is again quite obvious if you think about the energetic demand of growing food only to feed an animal that then will become food, rather than skipping this step and eating the original food instead.
iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
kadup@lemmy.world 6 days ago
That’s a very reasonable and effective individual strategy.
We don’t need everyone becoming a vegan - but we absolutely do need to stop denying the necessity of reducing meat consumption.
logicbomb@lemmy.world 6 days ago
My big problem is not with individuals ethically trying to do the right thing, or about people trying to convince individuals to be ethical and to do the right thing.
My big problem is the amount of effort in this when it will have only small gains. In today’s society, meaningful gains come from changes in government regulations and policies.
If you want people to stop eating as much red meat, get the government to stop providing subsidies to cattle owners. I have a money-focused relative who owns cattle only because of the subsidies. At least let the price of beef go up to its actual market value. You’d think that would be an easy sell for Republicans who believe in the free market, but they’re the ones who want the subsidy the most.
Of course, then, you can add additional regulations and encourage environmental responsibility.
usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml 6 days ago
We should push for large institutional change, but don’t ignore individual change either. Problem is how will you get said governments to act if people aren’t also stepping up and they expect backlash to it? The more people expect it to be cheap and highly consumed, the harder it will be for them to act. Moving people the opposite direction makes it easier. Movements that succeed usually have both individual and institutional change
Institutional change that is achievable at the current moment is smaller. There’s been some success with things like changing the defaults to be plant-based (which is good and we should continuing to push for that), but cutting subsides is going to be an uphill battle until a larger number of people change their consumption patterns
logicbomb@lemmy.world 6 days ago
I agree that individual change is important, but you have to go about it a certain way. Actually the way OP is phrasing it is pretty good. Let people understand that just eating less red meat is always better.
Because if the messaging is at all confusing, you’ll get the kind of result you got during the start of Covid with the masks. It was always true that any amount of masking helped, but when you started to make it complicated, you got a lot of backlash and people completely stopped masking. And of course, with both Covid and red meat, there are people out there incentivized to make things complicated so that people give up. I think it really needs to be dead simple to work.
Feyd@programming.dev 6 days ago
How dare you ask people to change literally any habit they have! It’s obviously someone else’s responsibility to change!
jwmgregory@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 days ago
i find it annoyingly ironic how you’re acting like these people are behaving in some absurd manner when you’re, at the same time, asking an event more absurd thing of humanity by demanding the majority of people concurrently start behaving differently regardless of their privilege or economic status.
i swear to fucking christ every single person banging the individual activism drum in environmentalist circles is some corpo plant or something. do you not understand the vast majority of people who contribute personally to climate change by ignoring these suggested principles don’t really have a choice? sure, it’s john’s fault personally that the only economically viable way he can feed himself in the local food desert is calories from beef…
it isn’t a matter of morals or will - what you are asking or hoping for is functional impossible and has not happened once in human history, ever. even if all people agreed with these ideas and somehow magically got on the individual action horse, it wouldn’t fucking matter. because what makes individual action not work is systemic and has nothing to do with the moral quality of the choices people are making or their personal opinions and has everything to do with harsh economic realities that can’t be whimsically subverted by shaming people for the sins of corporate America.
Feyd@programming.dev 5 days ago
Lol this is ridiculous.
- Small changes across many people add up. IE meatless Monday has a positive effect even though it’s not full abstinence.
- If someone truly can’t economically afford to change their eating habits I’m not talking about them. You’re extrapolating to them in order to make a bad faith argument against anyone making any positive change. (Though beans and rice is cheaper than beef lol)
- Corporate America, while it can’t be controlled exclusively by people’s habits, actually is able to be influenced by enough people’s spending habits. It has to make money after all.
Have fun completely abdicating your agency and making absurd rants though, I guess
humble_boatsman@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Hence the bumper sticker that has been around since the 70s
REAL ENVIRONMENTALIST DONT EAT MEAT
Homesteaders and locally grown meat is a necessary way of life for those living in the country. CAFOs and suburban grillers can burn in hell.
FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 days ago
I think it’s also a bit of a thing where most people treat it like a binary.
They either think you have to go full on vegetarian or you eat meat.
When what we should really be encouraging most people to do is cut down on meat. (You’re gonna have a lot less sucess if you ask them to straight up stop).
Auli@lemmy.ca 6 days ago
I eat meat and it has very little impact. I hunt.
Angry_Autist@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Fuck your gatekeeping and special pleading
Screen_Shatter@lemmy.world 6 days ago
I enjoy red meat, but I avoid it most of the time because of trying to be healthier. Also guilt from seeing videos of happy cows looking like gigantic dogs.
Fucking shit though I had no idea coffee was so high up the list. I probably should drink less of it anyway, but ouch, that one hurt me way more than the beef.
artifex@lemmy.zip 6 days ago
If it’s any consolation, at least a kilo of coffee is many more servings than a kilo of beef.
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 5 days ago
it wouldn’t be very scientific but it’d be nice to have a graph like this with co2equivalent per serving
BlueLineBae@midwest.social 6 days ago
Same here. I only eat beef a few times a year as a treat both for health and environmental reasons. But coffee and chocolate so high up the list is more of a killer for me. I definitely enjoy a couple cups per day as well as at least one bite of dark chocolate. Probably should cut back now that I can’t claim ignorance.
ApollosArrow@lemmy.world 6 days ago
I was surprised it was that high. I don’t ever drink coffee, so hopefully it offsets some of the meat. We have already reduced our consumption.
NewNewAccount@lemmy.world 5 days ago
because companies pollute much more
This argument drives me crazy. Companies, in this context, are the people. The companies pollute exclusively on behalf of their customers. WE ARE THE COMPANIES.
commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 days ago
if you think about the energetic demand of growing food only to feed an animal that then will become food, rather than skipping this step and eating the original food instead.
most people don’t want to eat grass or soy cake. letting cows graze, and feeding soycake (the byproduct of soybean oil production) to pigs and poultry is a conservation of resources.
kadup@lemmy.world 6 days ago
most people don’t want to eat grass or soy cake
If only we mastered farming, allowing us to plant a wide variety of crops. But alas, we are left eating grass.
commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 days ago
not all land is suitable for crops. letting cattle graze it is fine.
kadup@lemmy.world 6 days ago
You’re delusional if you believe most of the meat you consume comes from cows eating naturally growing grass in areas no other crops can grow.
usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml 6 days ago
Good news is that overall arable farmland usage goes down the less meat you eat. Don’t need to use all the same land, you have flexibility to move around production
we show that plant-based replacements for each of the major animal categories in the United States (beef, pork, dairy, poultry, and eggs) can produce twofold to 20-fold more nutritionally similar food per unit cropland. Replacing all animal-based items with plant-based replacement diets can add enough food to feed 350 million additional people, more than the expected benefits of eliminating all supply chain food loss.
usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml 6 days ago
It’s worth noting that soybean meal is not a byproduct. When we look at the most common extraction method for soybean oil (using hexane solvents), soybean meal is still the driver of demand
However, soybean meal is the main driving force for soybean oil production due to its significant amount of productivity and revenues
[…]
soybean meal and hulls contribute to over 60% of total revenues, with meal taking the largest portion of over 59% of total revenue
www.sciencedirect.com/…/S0926669017305010
This is even more true of other methods like expelling which is still somewhat commonly used
Moreover, soybean meal is the driving force for the whole process [expelling oil from soy] because it provides over 70% of the total revenue for soy processing by expelling
commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 days ago
some studies show soybean oils being as much as half the value of the crop, despite being just 20% of the weight.
usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml 6 days ago
If we assume that’s the case, half of revenue is still not a byproduct, it’s a coproduct. The other half is still pretty relevant to its value and usage. If 50% of your revenue disappears from something, you’re going to be making a lot less of it
commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 days ago
hexane solvents are not the most common method of oil extraction. you have been misinformed.
muntedcrocodile@hilariouschaos.com 6 days ago
I’m one of those people, and I’ve brought the critical thinking required to prove it.
U see the issue with those studies is that they are calculating methane output from the animals themselves and that’s it. It demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of thermodynamics and chemistry. Methane is CH4 and is a product of fermentation (which takes place in the gut of said animals). We know that matter cannot be created or destroyed so this carbon and hydrogen must come from somewhere in the animals diet (in this case grass). Now the grass must get those elements from somewhere and if u did heigh school chemistry u would know that the answer is photosynthesis (6CO2 + 6H2O + Light Energy -> C6H12O6 + 6O2).
So what’s happening is grass gets eaten by an animal. Most of that grass passes through unprocessed and is excreted as shit (a carbon sink contributing to the biomatter of the soil). A small fraction of that grass undergoes fermentation and a small fraction of that fermented carbon is byproduct methane. All that carbon originally came form the atmosphere due to photosynthesis. A majority of that atmospheric CO2 is sequestered in the cow shit by contributing to the soil biomatter. That’s not even accounting for the additional plants that the cow shit helps to grow which are also carbon sinks.
Now as an Aussie where 99% of our red meat is grass fed that’s actually a net carbon negative activity. As for the dumbass yanks feeding livestock corn (due to politicians buying votes with corn subsidies) then u have a problem. But nobody is gonna acknowledge any of this they just gonna spend all day shouting at each other.
BestBouclettes@jlai.lu 6 days ago
The problem is not only the farts, the problem is the absolutely humongous amount of feed and space cattle needs. Most crops grown around the world are used to feed cattle, just like most farmland is used to grow cattle. That’s what’s polluting, producing so much green house gases, deforesting, etc.
muntedcrocodile@hilariouschaos.com 6 days ago
We are talking about carbon here not other environmental impacts. If u wanna talk about other environmental impacts I’m happy to discuss how bad monocrop agriculture is especially the ridiculous amount of pesticides getting into the water and fucking everything up.
Producing feed doesn’t make GHG producing feed is the systematised mass application of photosynthesis (turning atmospheric CO2 into sugar). Using more land isn’t an environmental problem unless ur doing mass deforestation which is happening in 3rd world nations not the west. So what ur actually saying is that 3rd world nations shouldn’t eat red meat cos its causing deforestation but ours is ok because it’s not.
Their is the feed and livestock transportation emissions cost and that’s about the only good argument u got. Except that problem is an electric vehicle problem not a red meat problem. And if ur gonna use the argument of its an additional carbon cost that u don’t pay for just eating plants then why don’t u go live in a grass hut cos the additional carbon cost of concrete is unnecessary.
BestBouclettes@jlai.lu 6 days ago
Where do you think most of the world’s red meat is coming from? Brazil is one of the top producers and exporters of red meat, deforestation is ravaging the Amazon.
3rd world countries are not eating red meat, we are. The link between rich countries and meat consumption has been established for a long time now.Most cattle eat soy, not grass, that’s also a myth. Simply because soy is a whole lot cheaper, and a lot more abundant and easier to grow than grass.
We need soy, so we need monocultures of soy, and that’s catastrophic, just like you said.
Transport is actually not that big of a problem with red meat. Land usage and the actual cattle are. They’re the top source of GEG emissions from agriculture.
You were talking about thermodynamics earlier. Red meat is incredibly inefficient converting resources to usable calories. 1kg of beef requires 25kg of feed.
You’re also using a lot of straw men in your arguments, living in a grass hut instead of a concrete building, or electric vehicles for cattle transportation?
You can enjoy red meat but you can’t argue in good faith that it’s not completely awful for the environment at pretty much every level.
A few sources to support my claims:
ReluctantZen@feddit.nl 6 days ago
Just a note before my comment: my reference is the Netherlands, which is struggling with too much cattle and too little land.
Methane is a worse greenhous gas than CO2 though (28 times more) and just growing more grass, which gets eaten pretty much immediately again, does not necessarily compensate for it.
But methane is not the only problem with large amounts of cattle. The shit can actually become problematic in for the soil and water due to ammonia. This is a large problem in The Netherlands right now (and sadly we don’t have politicians in power willing to make actual changes here). Biodiversity and water quality are going down significantly and a very big contributor is cattle farming.
0x0@lemmy.zip 5 days ago
people saying that their habits are irrelevant because companies pollute much more
What people are saying is that their habits are negligible because companies pollute much more.
But sure, try to shame the little guy who might be doing their negligible effort instead of going after the big polluters, that’ll help a lot.kadup@lemmy.world 5 days ago
That’s what they are saying, yes. They are wrong.
selokichtli@lemmy.ml 6 days ago
See, OP is not saying we should “just drop red meat”, and this is probably why you get that kind of reactions.
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 6 days ago
The idea that we have to grow food for food is ridiculous. Cows turn grass into meat just fine, why do we need to grow corn and soybeans for them
I bet it’s because, like with hogs, we’ve bred them to be so growth optimized they can’t get enough calories from grass anymore.
usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml 6 days ago
Unfortunately grass-fed production is no solution. It both does not scale or help reduce emissions
iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/…/aad401
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Not scaling could be a feature and not a bug. It would raise the price of beef and thus lower demand.
usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml 6 days ago
To an extent, yes it would likely do that. Though on the other hand running into the maximum capacity limitations would not look pretty. Even countries that have a just bit higher grass-fed production than others have a fair number of issues (and still use plenty of supplemental grain)
For instance, in New Zealand, they use a massive amount of synthetic fertilizer on grasslands to try to make it keep up for dairy production
theconversation.com/11-000-litres-of-water-to-mak…
Or in the UK and Ireland where grass-fed production leads to deforestation and they still need additional grain on top of it
theconversation.com/livestock-grazing-is-preventi…
commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 days ago
the first time in probably a year i’ve seen someone explain supply and demand correctly. thank you.
Sl00k@programming.dev 6 days ago
A huge aspect of this is ranchers not cycling their land and allowing it to regrow native grasses properly, which does end up running into the land use problem again. But right now we’re very unoptimized with land regrowth and there’s a huge difference that can be made with just properly handling the land and to stop ranching in literal deserts.
muntedcrocodile@hilariouschaos.com 6 days ago
Nope it because politicians need votes from farmers so they continue to give farmers corn subsidies cos they lose votes if they take away the subsidies they where given decades ago.
In Australia most of our beef is grass fed. Not only is it cheaper (when u don’t account for the reduced price of subsidised corn) but because much of Australia is so desert like it can only support grass and cattle are the only way to convert that grass to food and profit.
commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 days ago
we don’t. but we do grain finish most cattle, because it’s faster.
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 5 days ago
we need to feed them corn and soybeans because people want lots and lots of meat, and that’s the best way to get lots and lots of meat.
that’s… kinda why people advocate for eating less meat, so that there won’t be such a powerful incentive to turbomaximize meat yields to meet the huge demand…
Azzu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 days ago
Well, it’s not “growing” per se, but we produce fertilizers which are “plant food”, so you could say we grow food for our food even for plants.