I haven’t eaten red meat in years due to not reacting well to it, glad to see it’s also helping the environment 😄
YSK that apart from not having a car, the single greatest thing you can do for the climate is simply eating less red meat
Submitted 8 months ago by Wulri@lemmy.world to youshouldknow@lemmy.world
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/3041d99b-25ff-4dac-8c2f-21bda6a1210d.png
Comments
Broadfern@lemmy.world 8 months ago
not_that_guy05@lemmy.world 8 months ago
You might have Lyme disease…
Broadfern@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Fortunately it’s not an allergic reaction, mostly just an intolerance but I appreciate your concern :)
LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
As long as we can take the rich with us, let the baby burn 🔥🔥🔥
johsny@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Sure. Imma keep using my jet though.
nadram@lemmy.world 8 months ago
True. Though maybe also activism until manufacturers are held accountable for their production methods and clean up costs. I do my share but I’m tired of being told it’s on me. It’s on corporate greed. Instead of spending on lobbying to avoid any changes to the status quo, they could spend much less coming up with different cleaner methods of production.
usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
It’s fundamentally inefficient. The claims of “green” meat production are greenwashing from the industry. The industry would love for you to believe there is a way that they could clean it up. It takes growing tons of crops just for most of that energy to be lost by the creatures moving around, digesting, etc.
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/html
Nor is something like grass-fed production a solution when that has even higher emissions due to higher rates of methane production from cows. It also is even higher land demand
We model a nationwide transition [in the US] from grain- to grass-finishing systems using demographics of present-day beef cattle. In order to produce the same quantity of beef as the present-day system, we find that a nationwide shift to exclusively grass-fed beef would require increasing the national cattle herd from 77 to 100 million cattle, an increase of 30%. We also find that the current pastureland grass resource can support only 27% of the current beef supply (27 million cattle), an amount 30% smaller than prior estimates
[…]
If beef consumption is not reduced and is instead satisfied by greater imports of grass-fed beef, a switch to purely grass-fed systems would likely result in higher environmental costs, including higher overall methane emissions. Thus, only reductions in beef consumption can guarantee reductions in the environmental impact of US food systems.
humble_boatsman@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
This is a poor argument which will be repeated through out this thread because it doesn’t take into account the product… Meat consumption can not be ‘cleaned up’ or ‘held accountable’ unless you are growing or purchasing meat from a direct source. You can change your habit in that sense. But when you purchase a fast food meal or even a Sysco steak at a fine dinning establishment you are supporting the established CAFOs that make the statistics in the post. Not corporate greed.
pineapple_pizza@lemmy.dexlit.xyz 8 months ago
For me, this wasn’t too hard. Cheese on the other hand…that will be a challenge
WizardofIs@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
Coffee and Dark Chocolate are pretty danced high on the list, too.
Fermion@feddit.nl 8 months ago
Sure, but it’s normalized to kgs of product. With two lattes a day, 2kg of coffee lasts me about 2 months. 2kgs per person of beef would last many households less than a week.
If you were to normalize to average daily consumption, coffee and chocolate would be significantly lower ranked. It’s ok to keep some indulgences while focusing on higher impact reductions.
kadup@lemmy.world 8 months ago
[deleted]NewNewAccount@lemmy.world 8 months 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.
0x0@lemmy.zip 8 months 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.Feyd@programming.dev 8 months 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 8 months 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.
commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months 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.
usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml 8 months 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
logicbomb@lemmy.world 8 months 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 8 months 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
iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
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.
selokichtli@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
See, OP is not saying we should “just drop red meat”, and this is probably why you get that kind of reactions.
muntedcrocodile@hilariouschaos.com 8 months 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.
ReluctantZen@feddit.nl 8 months 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.
BestBouclettes@jlai.lu 8 months 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.
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 8 months 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.
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months 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 8 months 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.
commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
why do we need to grow corn and soybeans for them
we don’t. but we do grain finish most cattle, because it’s faster.
usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
Unfortunately grass-fed production is no solution. It both does not scale or help reduce emissions
We model a nationwide transition [in the US] from grain- to grass-finishing systems using demographics of present-day beef cattle. In order to produce the same quantity of beef as the present-day system, we find that a nationwide shift to exclusively grass-fed beef would require increasing the national cattle herd from 77 to 100 million cattle, an increase of 30%. We also find that the current pastureland grass resource can support only 27% of the current beef supply (27 million cattle), an amount 30% smaller than prior estimates
[…]
If beef consumption is not reduced and is instead satisfied by greater imports of grass-fed beef, a switch to purely grass-fed systems would likely result in higher environmental costs, including higher overall methane emissions. Thus, only reductions in beef consumption can guarantee reductions in the environmental impact of US food systems.
muntedcrocodile@hilariouschaos.com 8 months 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.
Screen_Shatter@lemmy.world 8 months 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.
ApollosArrow@lemmy.world 8 months 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.
BlueLineBae@midwest.social 8 months 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.
artifex@lemmy.zip 8 months ago
If it’s any consolation, at least a kilo of coffee is many more servings than a kilo of beef.
humble_boatsman@sh.itjust.works 8 months 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.
Angry_Autist@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Fuck your gatekeeping and special pleading
Auli@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
I eat meat and it has very little impact. I hunt.
FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months 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).
Catoblepas@piefed.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
Not eating red meat is so fucking easy now. If I can be an old man who went to school uphill in the snow both ways for a second, I dropped meat 20ish years ago in the deep south, and holy fuck talk about an impossible diet. Even the vegetables had meat in them, and that is not a joke.
This is obviously going to depend on your area and how much of a food desert you’re in, but I’ve never seen so much access to so many kinds of meat replacements in average grocery stores and not just bougie upscale places. Tofu, tempeh, fake meat everything! Which isn’t even a big part of my diet, but I love having the option when I want something new.
grysbok@lemmy.sdf.org 8 months ago
Ten years ago I got caught by surprise bacon in frigging Pennsylvania. I’d done the “make a vegetarian meal out of sides” thing while visiting my parents.
The restaurant named all the cheeses in 5-cheese macaroni and cheese but didn’t mention that bacon was also mixed in. My mom parent-pressured me to not send it back and I ate it, suffering the gastrointestinal consequences later.