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

[CNT36]

I don’t really eat meat and would happily give up dairy if some of the vegan alternatives were not also disgusting, highly processed and potentially also terrible for the environment. I'm pretty sympathetic to the AR position tbh but just don't think the entire world giving up meat is feasible in the next few years and potentially ever. I'm really not convinced by 'alternatives' like eating insects which also throws up its own issues

Podcast idea...

 

[frogwoman]

I think someone having a small holding with some cows is potentially less environmentally damaging than huge fields sprayed to fuck with a monoculture soy or corn or whatever. The issue is big industrial farming imo and there's more aspects of the 6th mass extinction than 'just' climate change as I fear we are going to find out this century tbh

 

[Funky_monks]

I think someone having a small holding with some cows is potentially less environmentally damaging than huge fields sprayed to fuck with a monoculture soy or corn or whatever. The issue is big industrial farming imo and there's more aspects of the 6th mass extinction than 'just' climate change as I fear we are going to find out this century tbh

There was a really good article I posted way back on this thread about that - basically decentralisation, small farms with communal interests like school farms and the return of farms for rehab in prisons etc

 

[Funky_monks]

Here it is:

Simon Fairlie: ‘People are so detached from the land’

 

[butcher]

There was a really good article I posted way back on this thread about that - basically decentralisation, small farms with communal interests like school farms and the return of farms for rehab in prisons etc

If that brought back small decentralised abattoirs and local markets again too all the better; but I fear those days are lost.

 

[frogwoman]

If that brought back small decentralised abattoirs and local markets again too all the better; but I fear those days are lost.

Yea I read an article saying that slaughtering animals had actually got more cruel because of having to transport them over large distances whereas in the past they were taken to local abattoirs.

 

[Funky_monks]

If that brought back small decentralised abattoirs and local markets again too all the better; but I fear those days are lost.

There are still some about. I know there's a push from the big processors to get rid. Seems much less of a problem finding them in the West, but apparently a thing of the past over East.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Yea I read an article saying that slaughtering animals had actually got more cruel because of having to transport them over large distances whereas in the past they were taken to local abattoirs.

The supermarket system has a hell of a lot to answer for.

I shop in supermarkets all the time. How could I not? I live in the middle of a big city. The consumer focused approach to this doesn't work. It is system level change that is needed. Only the rich can afford to totally decouple from the supermarket system. The rest of us rely on it.

 

[frogwoman]

The supermarket system has a hell of a lot to answer for.

I shop in supermarkets all the time. How could I not? I live in the middle of a big city. The consumer focused approach to this doesn't work. It is system level change that is needed. Only the rich can afford to totally decouple from the supermarket system. The rest of us rely on it.

Yes totally agree.

 

[frogwoman]

I don’t really eat meat anyway tbh.

 

[butcher]

There are still some about. I know there's a push from the big processors to get rid. Seems much less of a problem finding them in the West, but apparently a thing of the past over East.

The ones I use are a famlly run business connected to a farm, but there is a couple of small ones in East Anglia, and a butchers 15 miles away who still slaughter.

 

[Jeff Robinson]

I don’t really eat meat and would happily give up dairy if some of the vegan alternatives were not also disgusting, highly processed and potentially also terrible for the environment. I'm pretty sympathetic to the AR position tbh but just don't think the entire world giving up meat is feasible in the next few years and potentially ever. I'm really not convinced by 'alternatives' like eating insects which also throws up its own issues

Many vegan dairy alternatives are good. Some of the oat milk brands are delicious, as are some of the soy and coconut-based yogurts. Naturali butter really hits the spot too. Most of the vegan cheeses aren't there yet in terms of replicating the taste of dairy but they're getting closer. The ready-sliced plant-based Cathedral City works at treat for cheese on toast, especially if you add some vegetarian Worcestershire sauce or dijon with a sprinkle of paprika.

They are also vastly better for the environment than dairy.* But more importantly, they provide an alternative to the inherently cruel dairy industry. Did you see the cow documentary on iPlayer frogwoman? It does a good job of documenting the routine brutality of the industry.

* the data comes from a 2018 paper by Poore & Nemecek, the largest meta-analysis of food system impact studies to date. Because of the breadth and quality of the study design it's frequently cited. Urban's 'slaughterhouse-five'** hate it for some unknown reason.***

** A shepherd turned agricultural sciences lecturer, a cattle farmer, a butcher, a game-shooting cuntry gent and LBJ.

*** it's not really unknown - see ** for further details.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

It's not a case of hating Poore & Nemecek, more a case of understanding its limitations, which various links in this thread have gone into. To give just one example, it makes generalisations that obscure big regional variations. Not all farming is equal by any means, as editor's subsequent linked study explains in detail if you read it - that study references Poore & Nemecek several times, mostly to explain what it doesn't show.

As for why it is so widely cited, there are various reasons, not all of them to do with the quality of the study design.

 

[Cid]

Many vegan dairy alternatives are good. Some of the oat milk brands are delicious, as are some of the soy and coconut-based yogurts. Naturali butter really hits the spot too. Most of the vegan cheeses aren't there yet in terms of replicating the taste of dairy but they're getting closer. The ready-sliced plant-based Cathedral City works at treat for cheese on toast, especially if you add some vegetarian Worcestershire sauce or dijon with a sprinkle of paprika.

They are also vastly better for the environment than dairy.* But more importantly, they provide an alternative to the inherently cruel dairy industry. Did you see the cow documentary on iPlayer frogwoman? It does a good job of documenting the routine brutality of the industry.

* the data comes from a 2018 paper by Poore & Nemecek, the largest meta-analysis of food system impact studies to date. Because of the breadth and quality of the study design it's frequently cited. Urban's 'slaughterhouse-five'** hate it for some unknown reason.***

** A shepherd turned agricultural sciences lecturer, a cattle farmer, a butcher, a game-shooting cuntry gent and LBJ.

*** it's not really unknown - see ** for further details.

The problem with vegan cheeses isn't just taste, they have no nutritional value really; just ultra-processed saturated fat and carbs.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

The problem with vegan cheeses isn't just taste, they have no nutritional value really; just ultra-processed saturated fat and carbs.

This is true of many vegan substitutes. Seitan, for instance, contains some nutrition, but nowhere near the range of minerals and vitamins that are in meat. No reason they can't be combined with other things as part of a healthy diet, but they're often not direct substitutes for meat or dairy products wrt the nutrition they provide - you need to add those in elsewhere.

 

[Jeff Robinson]

The problem with vegan cheeses isn't just taste, they have no nutritional value really; just ultra-processed saturated fat and carbs.

That's true, but I don't think anyone has vegan cheese for health reasons. It's just an occasional indulgence to have for a toastie to serve with soup or something like that. I recon I have it about 2-3 times a year.

This is true of many vegan substitutes. Seitan, for instance, contains some nutrition, but nowhere near the range of minerals and vitamins that are in meat. No reason they can't be combined with other things as part of a healthy diet, but they're often not direct substitutes for meat or dairy products wrt the nutrition they provide - you need to add those in elsewhere.

There's no reason why vegan substitutes can't be fortified with those nutrients though, and some are. They may also contain nutrients not found in meat and avoid some of the unhealthy aspects of meat too. Their main problem is their high salt content, which means they should be consumed moderately as part of a predominantly wholefoods-based diet.

 

[CNT36]

It's not a case of hating Poore & Nemecek, more a case of understanding its limitations, which various links in this thread have gone into. To give just one example, it makes generalisations that obscure big regional variations.

I'm not sure how true that is. Various tables that have been posted have that flaw. It does however give ranges also posted in a table on one these threads showing a range for each foodstuffs impact. Not saying it's perfect or that it doesn't make generalisations but it does take account of variation.

 

[editor]

I don’t really eat meat and would happily give up dairy if some of the vegan alternatives were not also disgusting, highly processed and potentially also terrible for the environment. I'm pretty sympathetic to the AR position tbh but just don't think the entire world giving up meat is feasible in the next few years and potentially ever. I'm really not convinced by 'alternatives' like eating insects which also throws up its own issues

There's studies that show vegan/veggie meat alternatives to be a whole load better than the environment

 

[Funky_monks]

Christ, the never ending circular argument.

The study in question (Poore and Nemeck 2018) is deeply flawed for a number of reasons including:

• Assumes all livestock systems are CAFOs
• Uses GWP as a measure of emissions (as opposed to the more modern GWP*)
• Fails to understand that humans cannot eat large parts of the plants grown to feed humans

Also: is just one study
But, don't take my word for it, if you are really bothered, I've posted up numerous peer reviewed studies that refute it.

And, as the attempts to smear me as a singular crank continues from the evangelist loons who apparently have no idea how science works, here's a declaration signed by several hundred scientists who agree that livestock systems are essential for numerous reasons (listed on the site):
Signatures

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Christ, the never ending circular argument.

The study in question (Poore and Nemeck 2018) is deeply flawed for a number of reasons including:

• Assumes all livestock systems are CAFOs
• Uses GWP as a measure of emissions (as opposed to the more modern GWP*)
• Fails to understand that humans cannot eat large parts of the plants grown to feed humans

Also: is just one study
But, don't take my word for it, if you are really bothered, I've posted up numerous peer reviewed studies that refute it.

And, as the attempts to smear me as a singular crank continues from the evangelist loons who apparently have no idea how science works, here's a declaration signed by several hundred scientists who agree that livestock systems are essential for numerous reasons (listed on the site):
Signatures

Yeah but you're all agricultural and food scientists. What would you know?

It's a little ironic that various posters have compared the attitude to that of tobacco companies. But that's exactly what tobacco companies did. They chose one study out of hundreds (I actually think it was two off my head) whose conclusions they liked, and stuck to that as if that were how science worked.

 

[kabbes]

Andrew Wakefield and colleagues got a study published in the BMJ in 1998, which went on to have over 4000 citations and change the world. Once the story told by that study was out there, the myriad of responses that showed it to be flawed didn’t stop it being used as the basis for hundreds, if not thousands of newspaper articles. And then a flood of millions of parents worldwide were given a message about the dangers of vaccines, the collective memory of which has ramifications to this day.

 

[editor]

Andrew Wakefield and colleagues got a study published in the BMJ in 1998, which went on to have over 4000 citations and change the world. Once the story told by that study was out there, the myriad of responses that showed it to be flawed didn’t stop it being used as the basis for hundreds, if not thousands of newspaper articles. And then a flood of millions of parents worldwide were given a message about the dangers of vaccines, the collective memory of which has ramifications to this day.

And the meaningful connection between this quarter-century old flawed paper and this discussion is what,, exactly?

 

[editor]

As if beef wasn't already harmful enough to the environment....

Mexican beef could hit UK supermarket shelves as the farming minister confirmed that the high-carbon meat could be imported under a new trade deal.

Mark Spencer told journalists at the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) conference in Birmingham that the deal could pave the way for meat from the Latin American country, declaring: “We have to be fair to everyone; we can’t say we will sell milk to you but we won’t buy your beef.”

Farmers are being hit hard by rising prices for fuel, fertiliser and animal feed. They are also concerned about lax post-Brexit border controls that threaten to import animal diseases, and angry at the threat of an influx of cheap food from overseas competitors with lower standards, owing to trade deals that look set to disadvantage UK farmers.

Farmers will receive £2.4bn a year in public payments following Brexit. That is spending that ministers have guaranteed until the end of this parliament. The amount is based on what farmers used to gain from the EU’s common agricultural policy, but the criteria on which it is allocated to farmers is changing from payments based on the amount of land farmed to payments based on farmers taking action to improve the environment.

Concern as UK minister confirms beef could be imported from Mexico

Farming groups say allowing high-carbon meat to enter UK could undermine domestic beef sector and harm environment

www.theguardian.com

 

[littlebabyjesus]

And the meaningful connection between this quarter-century old flawed paper and this discussion is what,, exactly?

It's obvious, no? You don't just keep quoting figures from P&N (2018) uncritically. You pay attention to responses and critiques. (Ironically, without knowing it, you yourself linked to a study that implicitly critiques the methods and limitations of P&N (2018).)

That's not intended as a diss to P&N (2018) necessarily. It's how science works. A study is produced. It is critiqued and gaps in its results are subsequently filled by further studies.

Meanwhile, if you were being honest with yourself, you would acknowledge that you have been posting up a ton of links and unwittingly giving a misleading impression of a wide consensus of scientific opinion - all of the articles you linked to use P&N (2018) for their figures, and you didn't realise that.

 

[Jeff Robinson]

Yeah but you're all agricultural and food scientists. What would you know?

It's a little ironic that various posters have compared the attitude to that of tobacco companies. But that's exactly what tobacco companies did. They chose one study out of hundreds (I actually think it was two off my head) whose conclusions they liked, and stuck to that as if that were how science worked.

In 2019 over 11,000 scientists signed the 'World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency'. It notes the '[p]rofoundly troubling signs' of increases in 'ruminant livestock populations' and 'per capita meat production'. It continues: 'Eating mostly plant-based foods while reducing the global consumption of animal products, especially ruminant livestock, can improve human health and significantly lower GHG emissions. Moreover, this will free up croplands for growing much-needed human plant food instead of livestock feed, while releasing some grazing land to support natural climate solutions.' A 2021 follow-up warning signed by almost 14,000 scientists advocated 'switching to mostly plant-based diets' to tackle the climate crisis.

What would they know? Perhaps at least as much as the 800 or so agricultural and food scientists who signed the 'Dublin Declaration', many (most, all?) of whom work for or with the animal agribusiness industries and have no expertise in environmental sciences, ecology, climatology, conservation sciences or any of the relevant fields needed to assess the environmental impacts of different forms of food production. In any event, Poore & Nemecek is just one of many studies documenting the environmental need to move towards a more plant-based diet. It's just more cited than the others because it's the largest scale study on the question to date. To present it as a tobacco-funded or Wakefield-like dodgy outlier is a complete inversion of reality. Its the meat industry acting as merchants of doubt in this space, not environmentalists.

 

[Karl Masks]

As if beef wasn't already harmful enough to the environment....

Concern as UK minister confirms beef could be imported from Mexico

Farming groups say allowing high-carbon meat to enter UK could undermine domestic beef sector and harm environment

www.theguardian.com

Breefxit

 

[littlebabyjesus]

In 2019 over 11,000 scientists signed the 'World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency'. It notes the '[p]rofoundly troubling signs' of increases in 'ruminant livestock populations' and 'per capita meat production'. It continues: 'Eating mostly plant-based foods while reducing the global consumption of animal products, especially ruminant livestock, can improve human health and significantly lower GHG emissions. Moreover, this will free up croplands for growing much-needed human plant food instead of livestock feed, while releasing some grazing land to support natural climate solutions.' A 2021 follow-up warning signed by almost 14,000 scientists advocated 'switching to mostly plant-based diets' to tackle the climate crisis.

What would they know? Perhaps at least as much as the 800 or so agricultural and food scientists who signed the 'Dublin Declaration', many (most, all?) of whom work for or with the animal agribusiness industries and have no expertise in environmental sciences, ecology, climatology, conservation sciences or any of the relevant fields needed to assess the environmental impacts of different forms of food production. In any event, Poore & Nemecek is just one of many studies documenting the environmental need to move towards a more plant-based diet. It's just more cited than the others because it's the largest scale study on the question to date. To present it as a tobacco-funded or Wakefield-like dodgy outlier is a complete inversion of reality. Its the meat industry acting as merchants of doubt in this space, not environmentalists.

There's a link to a subsequent study on here. Editor provided it. It examined the regional variability of impacts and stressed the need to work out what can or should be grown where. As such, it was a marked improvement on P&N (2018), which is to be welcomed. But it still didn't address the question of systems. Farming involves integrated systems, not a series of single crops/animals being grown in isolation. The idea that agricultural scientists are not well placed to judge the environmental impacts of different farming systems is bizarre.

The way that study was reported is instructive, though. It was used to produce an impact calculator that completely ignored regional variability, which was one of the main points of the study. And sadly that's typical of much science reporting in this area.

ETA:

I'm not sure how many times FM has to repeat that he thinks we need to change the way we farm before some posters actually notice.

 

[Jeff Robinson]

There's a link to a subsequent study on here. Editor provided it. It examined the regional variability of impacts and stressed the need to work out what can or should be grown where. As such, it was a marked improvement on P&N (2018), which is to be welcomed. But it still didn't address the question of systems. Farming involves integrated systems, not a series of single crops/animals being grown in isolation. The idea that agricultural scientists are not well placed to judge the environmental impacts of different farming systems is bizarre.

The way that study was reported is instructive, though. It was used to produce an impact calculator that completely ignored regional variability, which was one of the main points of the study. And sadly that's typical of much science reporting in this area.

ETA:

I'm not sure how many times FM has to repeat that he thinks we need to change the way we farm before some posters actually notice.

As it's already been pointed out to you, Poore & Nemecek repeatedly discuss regional and geographic variability in their paper, do you really think an omission that significant would be missed in the peer-review process for a journal like Science? This is literally the third sentence of the paper: 'Impact can vary 50-fold among producers of the same product, creating substantial mitigation opportunities.' It continues 'However, mitigation is complicated by trade-offs, multiple ways for producers to achieve low impacts, and interactions throughout the supply chain. Producers have limits on how far they can reduce impacts. Most strikingly, impacts of the lowest-impact animal products typically exceed those of vegetable substitutes, providing new evidence for the importance of dietary change.'

These variations are captured in this diagram:

The paper also notes:

...the impacts of animal products can markedly exceed those of vegetable substitutes to such a degree that meat, aquaculture, eggs, and dairy use ~83% of the world’s farmland and contribute 56 to 58% of food’s different emissions, despite providing only 37% of our protein and 18% of our calories. Can animal products be produced with sufficiently low impacts to redress this vast imbalance? Or will reducing animal product consumption deliver greater environmental benefits?

We find that the impacts of the lowest-impact animal products exceed average impacts of substitute vegetable proteins across GHG emissions, eutrophication, acidification (excluding nuts), and frequently land use... though ruminants convert ~2.7 billion metric tons of grass dry matter, of which 65% grows on land unsuitable for crops, into human-edible protein each year, the environmental impacts of this conversion are immense under any production method practiced today.

Your claim that the paper ignores regional and geographic variation is false and FM's claim that the paper 'assumes all livestock systems are CAFOs' is also false.

 

[Funky_monks]

In 2019 over 11,000 scientists signed the 'World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency'. It notes the '[p]rofoundly troubling signs' of increases in 'ruminant livestock populations' and 'per capita meat production'. It continues: 'Eating mostly plant-based foods while reducing the global consumption of animal products, especially ruminant livestock, can improve human health and significantly lower GHG emissions. Moreover, this will free up croplands for growing much-needed human plant food instead of livestock feed, while releasing some grazing land to support natural climate solutions.' A 2021 follow-up warning signed by almost 14,000 scientists advocated 'switching to mostly plant-based diets' to tackle the climate crisis.

What would they know? Perhaps at least as much as the 800 or so agricultural and food scientists who signed the 'Dublin Declaration', many (most, all?) of whom work for or with the animal agribusiness industries and have no expertise in environmental sciences, ecology, climatology, conservation sciences or any of the relevant fields needed to assess the environmental impacts of different forms of food production. In any event, Poore & Nemecek is just one of many studies documenting the environmental need to move towards a more plant-based diet. It's just more cited than the others because it's the largest scale study on the question to date. To present it as a tobacco-funded or Wakefield-like dodgy outlier is a complete inversion of reality. Its the meat industry acting as merchants of doubt in this space, not environmentalists.

Joseph Poore is an economist by trade - essentially a mathematician.
Plenty of ecology based institutions represented in the Dublin Declaration.

Once again, you haven't a clue what you're talking about or lying.

Most of the Agricultural scientists I know have a Biology/ecology background, as do I.

 

[Funky_monks]

As it's already been pointed out to you, Poore & Nemecek repeatedly discuss regional and geographic variability in their paper, do you really think an omission that significant would be missed in the peer-review process for a journal like Science? This is literally the third sentence of the paper: 'Impact can vary 50-fold among producers of the same product, creating substantial mitigation opportunities.' It continues 'However, mitigation is complicated by trade-offs, multiple ways for producers to achieve low impacts, and interactions throughout the supply chain. Producers have limits on how far they can reduce impacts. Most strikingly, impacts of the lowest-impact animal products typically exceed those of vegetable substitutes, providing new evidence for the importance of dietary change.'

These variations are captured in this diagram:

The paper also notes:



Your claim that the paper ignores regional and geographic variation is false and FM's claim that the paper 'assumes all livestock systems are CAFOs' is also false.

Their "lowest impact systems"  are feedlot systems, by way.
Some feedlot systems use more grass products than others.

As per the peer reviewed critiques I've posted here that you can't be arsed to read.