Comment on "Forget the pig is an animal - treat him just like a machine in a factory" | Source: Washington Post

Sanguine@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• prowess2956@kbin.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Totally agree when the meat is produced by an industrial model. I think there are regenerative models that are [more] sustainable in ecological and economic terms.

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  • usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It’s unfortunately largely greenwashing. Animal products have a lot of fundamental inefficiency that really can’t be reduced all that much

    Plant-based foods have a significantly smaller footprint on the environment than animal-based foods. Even the least sustainable vegetables and cereals cause less environmental harm than the lowest impact meat and dairy products [9].

    www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/8/1614/htm

    If I source my beef or lamb from low-impact producers, could they have a lower footprint than plant-based alternatives? The evidence suggests, no: plant-based foods emit fewer greenhouse gases than meat and dairy, regardless of how they are produced.

    Plant-based protein sources – tofu, beans, peas and nuts – have the lowest carbon footprint. This is certainly true when you compare average emissions. But it’s still true when you compare the extremes: there’s not much overlap in emissions between the worst producers of plant proteins, and the best producers of meat and dairy.

    ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat

    Livestock farmers often claim that their grazing systems “mimic nature”. If so, the mimicry is a crude caricature. A review of evidence from over 100 studies found that when livestock are removed from the land, the abundance and diversity of almost all groups of wild animals increases

    theguardian.com/…/most-damaging-farm-products-org…

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    • prowess2956@kbin.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      How do you keep soil fertility up with no animal inputs?

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      • usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Largely with the same types of fertilizer used today, but counterintuitively much less synthetic fertilizer due to removing the large amount of feed grown. That’s even compared to using as much manure as possible

        Thus, shifting from animal to plant sources of protein can substantially reduce fertilizer requirements, even with maximal use of animal manure

        www.sciencedirect.com/…/S0921344922006528

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• deegeese@sopuli.xyz ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  IDK, they had me at “sausage machine”.

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