Bye bye MEAT! How will the post-meat future look?

[friedaweed]

The thread is about eating less meat. The increase in global warming that eating meat causes is only one reason to eat less meat. The cruelty inherent in eating flesh is another reason; I'd argue that it is the best reason.

I appreciate the frankness of Jeff's arguments regarding the true nature of meat eating.

Actually the thread is about the supposed eventual eradication of meat eating as per the thread title and the OP's introduction. Something which definitely isn't going to happen any time soon on this planet.

There are people on this thread discussing ways to combat the issue of climate change and change agricultural practices for that purpose. None of them support factory farming but there's a few folk disrupting that discussion because they can't accept that people will continue to eat meat and have a right to that choice. I get why they don't want to accept that, because they think it is cruel and we should all live on plants and nuts but there's more chance of Jeff admitting that he's an OTT abusive tit than there is any of us living in a 'Post meat future'.

I think Jeff's a hangry person.

 

[DaphneM]

You said it was forever last time.



How many air-miles did your last tour tot up?

Would they not do some kind of carbon offset?

 

[butcher]

You said it was forever last time.



How many air-miles did your last tour tot up?

Probably too busy enjoying the post prandial cheese and crackers to notice.

 

[friedaweed]

Would they not do some kind of carbon offset?

That's why he wants us all to eat less meat.

 

[butcher]

Better lay off that cheese and those hip coffee houses too

 

[friedaweed]

Better lay off that cheese and those hip coffee houses too

View attachment 370397

Coffee must be a significant one nowadays what with its increased popularity as a whole bean produce. I wonder if that includes the roasting process as well?

 

[WouldBe]

Better lay off that cheese and those hip coffee houses too

View attachment 370397

Some of those figures don't make sense. Why is cheese 7 times higher than the milk it's made from? Not exactly much processing in making milk and lots of it are matured in caves so no heating bills.

Also note that it claims pigs (and chickens) aren't ruminants so don't directly give off methane their shit will just as ours does.

 

[butcher]

Some of those figures don't make sense. Why is cheese 7 times higher than the milk it's made from? Not exactly much processing in making milk and lots of it are matured in caves so no heating bills.

Also note that it claims pigs (and chickens) aren't ruminants so don't directly give off methane their shit will just as ours does.

Think of cheese as concentrated milk protein, it takes about 10kg milk to make 1kg cheese.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Some of those figures don't make sense. Why is cheese 7 times higher than the milk it's made from? Not exactly much processing in making milk and lots of it are matured in caves so no heating bills.

Also note that it claims pigs (and chickens) aren't ruminants so don't directly give off methane their shit will just as ours does.

It mostly comes out the other end of ruminants, in their burps.

It's not in dispute that ruminants produce methane. What is in dispute is how much of that methane makes it into the atmosphere (how much is intercepted by methanotrophs in the soil, etc?) and also how much of this is a change from the past, which is what matters when working out why methane levels in the atmosphere have increased since pre-industrial times, given that the ruminants form part of a cycle in which carbon returns to the land they graze through grass growth. Also, some cattle farming practices are far worse than others. Those worldwide figures don't tell you too much about what you may be buying from your local supermarket.

And yeah, what butcher said about cheese. These figures are per kilo of everything, not per kilo of one kind of food such as protein.

 

[WouldBe]

It mostly comes out the other end of ruminants, in their burps.

Not a lot you can do about that but some farms have started installing bio digesters to deal with the waste from the other end and get loads of methane out of them.

 

[Funky_monks]

Better lay off that cheese and those hip coffee houses too

View attachment 370397

Don't you start with the Poore and Nemecek 2018.

 

[Funky_monks]

And yeah, what butcher said about cheese. These figures are per kilo of everything, not per kilo of one kind of food such as protein.

There's a lot of thought that per kilo is not entirely relevant when measuring food emissions and nutritional value might be more relevant, but is, of course more complex.

 

[butcher]

Don't you start with the Poore and Nemecek 2018.

Just using the reference nobody understands

 

[butcher]

Don't you start with the Poore and Nemecek 2018.

Just using the reference nobody understands

 

[editor]

Better lay off that cheese and those hip coffee houses too

View attachment 370397

Who are you talking to, exactly?

Probably too busy enjoying the post prandial cheese and crackers to notice.

Who is?

 

[butcher]

Who are you talking to, exactly?
Who is?

First one a general comment as obviously we are all concerned about the climate and as both cheese and coffee are pretty high up on that list it seems a salient point. Personally I have cut to one cup a day and neatly cut out cheese to reduce my personal carbon footprint.

The second was a humourous aside relating an the air miles comment about someone by a previous poster.

As a simple search reveals many of the posters here have an almost immoral love of cheese and I was impishly try to rag them a little.

I am sure you have a great sense of humour and didn't think you would take offence, but if you or any cheese aficionado have then mea culpa (latin for I am guilty).

 

[bcuster]

• • • Over 18,000 dairy cows have been killed and 1 person critically injured after a massive explosion and subsequent fires tore through a Texas farm in the United States. The disaster happened on Monday 10 April at around 19.20 at South Fork Dairy run by the Brand family situated near the city of Dimmitt.
    www.dairyglobal.net/health-and-nutrition/health/explosion-on-texas-farm-kills-over-18000-dairy-cattle/
    Explosion on Texas farm kills over 18,000 dairy cattle

 

[DaphneM]

• • • Over 18,000 dairy cows have been killed and 1 person critically injured after a massive explosion and subsequent fires tore through a Texas farm in the United States. The disaster happened on Monday 10 April at around 19.20 at South Fork Dairy run by the Brand family situated near the city of Dimmitt.
      www.dairyglobal.net/health-and-nutrition/health/explosion-on-texas-farm-kills-over-
    18000-dairy-cattle/
    Explosion on Texas farm kills over 18,000 dairy cattle

The answer to his question is that it has to have at least 18,000 cattle

 

[friedaweed]

at South Fork

 

[CNT36]

Better lay off that cheese and those hip coffee houses too

View attachment 370397

Some potentially good news on rice I first heard on Newsround earlier.

Rice—Asia's principal staple—is to blame for around 10 percent of global emissions of methane, a gas that over two decades traps about 80 times as much heat as carbon dioxide.

Usually associated with cows burping, high levels of methane are also generated by bacteria that grow in flooded rice paddies and thrive if leftover straw rots in the fields after harvest.

The message from scientists is: rice cannot be ignored in the battle to cut emissions.

In the Mekong Delta, Canh, now a 39-year-old rice farmer, does not leave straw out to decay on the paddies—nor does he burn it, as his parents did before him.

Motivated by the memory of being forced inside his home on days the smoke was thick—sometimes so acrid it made him choke or faint—he joined an initiative that removes straw from the fields and turns it into mushrooms and organic fertiliser, earning a small income on the side.

"If we can collect the straw and make money, all of us benefit," he told AFP, running his fingers through a large, soft mound of straw, cow dung and rice husks that will soon become nutritious food for Mekong crops.

From

How Vietnam is trying to stop rice warming the planet

As a child, Dong Van Canh watched while the rice fields of Vietnam's Mekong Delta were set alight to make way for the next crop, blackening the sky and flooding the air with potent greenhouse gases.

www.google.com

 

[editor]

First one a general comment as obviously we are all concerned about the climate and as both cheese and coffee are pretty high up on that list it seems a salient point. Personally I have cut to one cup a day and neatly cut out cheese to reduce my personal carbon footprint.

The second was a humourous aside relating an the air miles comment about someone by a previous poster.

As a simple search reveals many of the posters here have an almost immoral love of cheese and I was impishly try to rag them a little.

I am sure you have a great sense of humour and didn't think you would take offence, but if you or any cheese aficionado have then mea culpa (latin for I am guilty).

In the endless pile-on of ad hominems, I assumed that you were another one having a dig at me for my supposed hypocrisy. Apologies if I misread this.

Seeing as the general gist of the debate is about reducing one's meat intake, I think I'm doing pretty good on that score, having not eaten any of the stuff for 30 years or so, so I don't think I'm sort of blazing hypocrite if I had a cheese sandwich a month ago (I've massively reduced my cheese intake to the point where I go weeks and sometimes months without any).

The stuff about my (sigh) 'dad band' having toured America once seems particularly childish and petty too. I've never, ever argued against the banning of all flights, but have always encouraged people to use alternatives where possible. I certainly wouldn't expect someone to quit their job because it involved the occasional flight.

With the band, we took the train for almost all of our European tours, despite it taking hours and hours longer and costing shit loads more. We also used equipment provided by the venue, so we didn't have to drive around heavy loads of gear.

And I do exactly the same in my personal life too: I will ALWAYS take the train if practical, and have never caught an internal UK flight.

We're all hypocrites to some degree, but it's fucking tedious putting up with all the endless off topic personal attacks from people who could be taking short haul flights every week and driving gas guzzling cars everywhere for all I know (I don't drive and have never owned a car).

Perhaps now we could shift the subject away from my personal life and its relatively low environmental impact and get back to the more pressing concerns of the impact of the meat industry on climate change?

 

[editor]

• • • Over 18,000 dairy cows have been killed and 1 person critically injured after a massive explosion and subsequent fires tore through a Texas farm in the United States. The disaster happened on Monday 10 April at around 19.20 at South Fork Dairy run by the Brand family situated near the city of Dimmitt.
    • www.dairyglobal.net/health-and-nutrition/health/explosion-on-texas-farm-kills-over-
    18000-dairy-cattle/
    Explosion on Texas farm kills over 18,000 dairy cattle

That's fucking obscene.

 

[bcuster]

That's fucking obscene.

Modern conventional weaponry would be hard pressed to take out 18,000 living creature in one fell swoop. Yet, humanity's utter disregard for the covenant our ancestors made with these sentient, intelligent creatures has wrought this disaster and multitudes other like it on these defenseless beats...

 

[CNT36]

Modern conventional weaponry would be hard pressed to take out 18,000 living creature in one fell swoop. Yet, humanity's utter disregard for the covenant our ancestors made with these sentient, intelligent creatures has wrought this disaster and multitudes other like it on these defenseless beats...

I hear this about a covenant from all quarters. Crock of shit. We should treat them with respect and not put them in a situation where we'll blow 18,000 or more of them to pieces but that has nothing to do with some mythical contract.

 

[bcuster]

I hear this about a covenant from all quarters. Crock of shit. We should treat them with respect and not put them in a situation where we'll blow 18,000 or more of them to pieces but that has nothing to do with some mythical contract.

Covenant, not contract; there's a big difference...

 

[Spymaster]

Yet, humanity's utter disregard for the covenant our ancestors made with these sentient, intelligent creatures has wrought this disaster and multitudes other like it on these defenseless beats...

Can you elaborate on this?

 

[redsquirrel]

I'd be interested to know what you disagree with me on?

Off the top of my head I can't remember if you have explicitly stated your support for animals rights but you have made clear your opposition to humans killing, or exploiting, animals.

Similar to what LBJ and kabbes said, my environmentalism requires human exploitation, and occasionally killing, of animals. I'd like to minimise cruelty where possible but in Australia the killing of cane toads, culling of camels etc, is a necessary action. On the same principle a general reduction in meat consumption is probably a good thing environmentally, but the point made by FM, LBJ and others that the exportation, killing and eating of animals can be better for the environment - both from the point of climate change and more generally - I agree with.

In a wider context I think your views on exploiting/killing/eating animals are representative of your value based, fundamentally liberal, politics. Or at least the politics you espouse on here.

 

[bcuster]

I’m not sure that the issue of animal rights is even germane. To me, it is more a matter of recognizing the duties humanity has towards other sentient being, regardless of whether there exists a legally defined duty to respect any rights that these creatures may have

 

[MickiQ]

I’m not sure that the issue of animal rights is even germane. To me, it is more a matter of recognizing the duties humanity has towards other sentient being, regardless of whether there exists a legally defined duty to respect any rights that these creatures may have

God I love Urban every time I think we've reached peak crazy you prove me so spectacularly wrong.

 

[Jeff Robinson]

Off the top of my head I can't remember if you have explicitly stated your support for animals rights but you have made clear your opposition to humans killing, or exploiting, animals.

Similar to what LBJ and kabbes said, my environmentalism requires human exploitation, and occasionally killing, of animals. I'd like to minimise cruelty where possible but in Australia the killing of cane toads, culling of camels etc, is a necessary action. On the same principle a general reduction in meat consumption is probably a good thing environmentally, but the point made by FM, LBJ and others that the exportation, killing and eating of animals can be better for the environment - both from the point of climate change and more generally - I agree with.

In a wider context I think your views on exploiting/killing/eating animals are representative of your value based, fundamentally liberal, politics. Or at least the politics you espouse on here.

Thanks for your feedback.

Yes, I’m a fervent animal rights advocate, though as with any sensible view of human rights, I’ve never held that these rights are absolute or can’t be balanced against countervailing considerations. Killing animals that pose dangers to humans (e.g. cane toads) can be justified on my view, if there are no reasonable alternatives.

So I’m not opposed to the ‘occasional’ killing of animals either (I also support killing animals for their own benefit of course). What I’m opposed to is building industries around the domestication, exploitation and killing of animals. These industries happen to almost always be worse for the environment than plant-based alternatives (and the narrow focus on GHGE is problematic here, we need to also be talking about soil erosion, deforestation, land use, ocean dead zones etc).

But, as Kabbes said, at the heart of my opposition to animal agriculture is not its environmental impact but its incompatibility with the rights of animals. I also think that minimising cruelty is close to impossible in the context of animal farming. This isn’t because I think farmers are inherently cruel people but because the very enterprise of subordinating animals’ existence to the imperatives of human consumption almost inexorably leads to cruel treatment. Just think of the wretched lives of dairy cows for example, whether organic, free range or industrially reared. Or the mass grinding up and gassing of male chicks in hatcheries (again whether for intensively reared, free range or organic egg production). But even more significantly, the economic pressures of capitalism are everywhere driving animal farming in the intensive direction, which guarantees a torturous existence for the hundreds of billions of animals caught in its maw. This is why I’m emphatic that veganism is the only game in town for tackling animal cruelty.

Yes, this is a value-driven position. It stems from the same values that guide my socialism - a commitment to justice, an opposition to exploitation, domination and discrimination. Wanting a world in which others aren’t subjected to brutal violence (see any slaughterhouse) for the economic benefit of others. This is going well beyond the bounds of this thread but I think that value judgements are both unavoidable and essential in politics. Socialism and anarchism without firmly entrenched values at their centre are meaningless (I reject entirely certain strains of Marxist orthodoxy on this point). Appeals only to ‘interests’ guarantees the preservation of the status quo.