I’d agree if there would ba a “could” in there or something. The reality is that a lot of soy (that humans can digest) is fed to animals…
Comment on those damn vegans!
Everythingispenguins@lemmy.world 6 months agoIt is worth mentioning that the types of plants that people and animals eat are different. Humans can’t digest cellulose and hemicellulose where herbivores can.
philm@slrpnk.net 6 months ago
Everythingispenguins@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I can’t digest soy, soy is actually one of the most common allergies. I am actually finding that as I get older all legumes are getting a little hard for me to digest (not sure what that is about). I am someone who would have not lived though childhood with out the ability to have both the protein and calories I got from eating meat. (I couldn’t do dairy as a child either)
I get what is being said about gain finishing. A practice that is really more of a result of corporate agriculture than anything else. I just find these black and white statements about how non ag people think ag should work. Fail to take into account pastoralism or dry land grazing, while also glossing over petrochemical fertilizer uses. All the best studies I have read on the climate affects of any type of agriculture come to the conclusion that it is near impossible to tell, due to the vast number of variables. The ones that come to some strong conclusion tend to throw out a lot of data because it is too hard to use.
I have nothing against reducing meat intake nor will I ever say that vegetation diets are “bad” I just find that people are often unwilling to understand the systems they want to change.
Dasus@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I am someone who would have not lived though childhood with out the ability to have both the protein and calories I got from eating meat. (I couldn’t do dairy as a child either)
A soy allergy isn’t a death sentence. Eggs exist, and so do tons and tons of other sources of protein.
Cannabis seeds, for one, are great source of protein and contain all the essential aminoacids.
I was unaware of the term “grain finished”, so I looked it up.
When beef is grain-finished, cattle are free to eat a balanced diet of grain, local feed ingredients, like potato hulls or sugar beets, and hay or forage at the feedyard.
You’re not seriously suggesting that most cattle enjoy such conditions?
If you just plain do the math of the area needed for grazing versus the average consumption of beef per capita you can see that most cattle is definitely not just “grain finished”.
Everythingispenguins@lemmy.world 6 months ago
So for me soy was a death sentence. As a child I would get an anaphylactic reaction to soy. So yeah I had to be very careful.
I did eat eggs, lots of eggs. The thing is a large egg has about 70 calories. In my teens and 20s I had a maintenance diet of over 3000 calories a day. I could easily eat a meal of over 1000 calories and be hungry in a few hours. That is 30+ eggs a day.
I assume you mean hemp seeds? Right? It’s great that food sources like that exist. Having said that, I don’t really think they were available during the Reagan administration…
No I don’t think Grain finishing is a good thing. As I said it is a thing that exists because of commercial ag. I personally think. That JBS, national, Tyson, and Cargile are destroying the meat industry for their own gain. No one except their shareholders benefit. That is why I always advocate for people to buy their meat from the rancher. It is much better for the animals, Grass finished tastes better, and it supports independent producers.
If you just plain do the math of the area needed for grazing versus the average consumption of beef per capita you can see that most cattle is definitely not just “grain finished”.
Feel free to show me the math. Look I am not trying to be mean but that statement is just not true. That is not how cow digestion works. Both steers and nursing/pregnant heifers need to be on a grass diet. If you really want I can give you a much better break down of how exactly it works. It may be through silage or haylage, but they are not a grain diet. Grain is what makes beef marbled, that is why cows are just finished on it. Too much fat in the beef reduces its value.
Look I agree that industrial ag practices are not the right way. And as I said last time it is very important to understand a system to be able to create real change.
Leviathan@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Yeah, instead of using that land to grow monocultured grass, we could use it to grow plants we do eat. It’s not like we would keep growing grass there and say “Darn! We can’t eat this grass!”, we wouldn’t need to plant plants we don’t eat in the first place.
Everythingispenguins@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Yeah I agree and we need to start with lawns.
huffpost.com/…/lawn-largest-crop-america_n_55d0dc…
Also many animals are grassed on areas which are unsuitable for farming. And if done in a responsible manner allows for the natural diversity of an area to be maintained.
Monocroping corn or potatoes is just as bad.
Leviathan@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I totally agree, lawns are a huge waste of space and resources. I’ve torn up every lawn on every property I’ve rented or owned and replaced it with local plants for native pollinators (honeybees are invasive and harm native pollinators).
Dasus@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Yeah, we can’t really eat grass, but thinking that most cattle nowadays actually graze is… inaccurate, to put it mildly.
Factory-farmed cattle are almost always fed grain made of up corn and soy, both of which are completely fine for humans to eat, in case someone was unaware.
Producing 1kg of beef takes about 25kg of feed.
Everythingispenguins@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Just so you know cattle are only grain finished, personally I don’t like the practice. More details in my reply to a different comment. lemmy.world/comment/8250179
chetradley@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Grass fed: small minority of beef cattle, finished on grain after grazing for about a year. Typically slaughtered at 18-24 months of age.
Grass finished: even smaller minority not fed grains and allowed to graze their entire lives. Typically slaughtered around 18-24 months of age.
Normal: majority raised in feedlots on heavy grain-based diets. Typically slaughtered closer to 16 months of age.
All are slaughtered well shy of the 20+ year life expectancy of a cow in a sanctuary.
Leviathan@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I grew up with an uncle who raised steer and the sheer amount of land it took just to grow the corn and grass they ate was astounding. The animals also needed constant medication to stop them getting each other sick due to diet and proximity. So that’s the regular non organic, non grass fed/finished reality. With human population the way it is that kind of farming is pretty much the only way we can sustain eating meat in the amount we do.
I wonder, realistically, how much land it would take to produce our meat, at the current rate of consumption per capita, to grass feed/finish all those animals.
Everythingispenguins@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I have never even heard of a cow calf operation operating as a feed lot. Every single cow calf operation I have ever seen, heard of, ect feeding pasture or grass hay.
And you did we were I said I disagree with feed lots right?