Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oxford and CSIRO scientists already proved grass fed cattle is worse for greenhouse gases than CAFO beef farming. Carbon sequestration no where near makes up for the increases emissions.
Do you have a citation for this? Curious about how they figured that, given: * The emissions from the livestock themselves should be identical given the same number of cows and the same dietary input; CO₂ output might increase for pasture-raised cattle, given the higher physical activity, but methane output (IIRC the primary concern re: cattle and their environmental impact) shouldn't change all that much * Non-lives…
Burger King is rolling out meatless Impossible Whoppers nationwide
341–350 of 374 posts
Re: Burger King is rolling out meatless Impossible Whoppers nationwide
#342Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oxford and CSIRO scientists already proved grass fed cattle is worse for greenhouse gases than CAFO beef farming. Carbon sequestration no where near makes up for the increases emissions.
If you take the historical view, we have about as many cattle now as there were bison in North America.
Re: Burger King is rolling out meatless Impossible Whoppers nationwide
#343Earlier quoted context omitted.
The majority of vegans enjoy the meat taste and the new crop of substitutes, just not the ethical/environmental costs. Source- polled my vegan group.
I know a lot of vegetarians and vegans who don't want anything to do with something that's like meat, so perhaps your anecdote and my anecdote add up to advice to not claim either of us knows what a majority of vegans want? As an example of this issue in action, if you're taking your company out for food, it's a huge mistake to go to a place that only offers meat-like stuff for vegetarians and vegans.
Perhaps its a cultural thing, are most of those folks veg who don't like meat from India / South East Asia?
I work in vegan food industry (own company and invested in others) and the market research we've done has always been consistent here that most vegans enjoy eating plant meats (ie- beyond / hungry plannet / impossible / gardein etc). Granted that research has been mostly in Australia and Hong Kong which is where I focus on
Re: Burger King is rolling out meatless Impossible Whoppers nationwide
#344Earlier quoted context omitted.
My understanding is that the vast majority of cattle (80%?) in the United States is raised in factory farms; the vast majority the meat Americans available to purchase grocery store, served in restaurants, and processed for fast food, is sourced from those same farms. And my understanding is that the conditions would be horrific by almost any standard: the animals are kept confined, in extremely cramped and nasty con…
No, 91% of cattle ranches are family owned and about half of all cattle are raised in small herds of 50 head or less. You are also belittling the work of these professionals. You sound like you have little knowledge of the industry in general.
Whether owned by family or raised as a member of a small herd is immaterial to where the majority of these cattle end up as adults: loaded on transport trucks to concentrated feed lots where they await processing by the factory slaughter system. Maybe the first 1/2 of their life is great, even idyllic, but that's not much of a comfort.
I'll admit phrased that last part ("types of people") very badly, so let me clarify. First, I should say that I'm very keen to believe that most of these workers are (as you say) professionals. It sounds like, in your direct experience, they are, which is great. But here's the issue:
This work is dangerous (dealing with deadly equipment and huge stressed animals), dirty (in the Mike Rowe sense), and low-paying (at or near minimum wage, per Google). So the gist of what I'm saying is, in that type of high-pressure, low-ethical-incentive situation, it's simply inevitable that:
1. Mistakes get made. 2. Corners get cut. 3. Equipment fails. 4. A worker stops caring (or didn't care to begin with).
Even if we imagine that literally all workers in these jobs are infallible, professional, and compassionate, we still have to deal with equipment working non-optimally (see the link about the bolt guns above; they ain't perfect). This means that some nonzero % of cattle processed suffer during slaughter. Even if we're charitable and say that that number must be small, like 1%, that's still a hell of a lot of cattle suffering.
In addition, you can easily find first-person accounts from slaughterhouse workers who describe exactly this imperfect system in vivid detail, where some animals end up dismembered while still "sensate". (And this is totally skipping over all of the ethical issues with confinement and slaughter in the first place!) So, to sum up:
We know logically that we make cattle suffer at scale.
We know empirically that we make cattle suffer at scale.
I would really, really like to be wrong about this.
Re: Burger King is rolling out meatless Impossible Whoppers nationwide
#345Earlier quoted context omitted.
As one who also grew up and currently lives in the rural Midwest - it's people not knowing what they're talking about. They hear about the awful conditions poultry are raised in and extrapolate it to all livestock.
I welcome all companies that sell meat to publish videos of their operations. I would really like to buy meat only from companies that minimize the suffering of the livestock. Do you have any preferred livestock vendors that document their supply chain?
If you take a car trip anywhere outside the major city centres of Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, etc (and from what I hear, Texas) you'll inevitably see many, many head of cattle milling about in fields. I would put forth that no farmers really want to mistreat their animals, and will go at great lengths to keep them as safe as they can - this year's cyclone blizzard in Nebraska was especially indicative of this[0]. Farmers generally don't have a complete supply chain anyway - they sell their animals at the stockyard to whichever packing plant is buying them.
[0] https://www.omaha.com/news/plus/heavy-snow-freezing-temps-ha...
Re: Burger King is rolling out meatless Impossible Whoppers nationwide
#346Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am decidedly not a coffee snob, but agree that almond milk in coffee isn't great. I've tended to use coconut milk because it has some creaminess to it that seems to work well in coffee. I'll have to see if I can find oat milk to try.
Most shops in SF have oat milk, if you're located in that area. Oat milk has been a game changer for me. All Blue Bottle locations carry Oatly oat milk.
While Oatly scrambles to scale up, some of the other major brands have stepped in. Silk has an oat milk out in the past few weeks and it’s good. But Oatly is still my fav.
Re: Burger King is rolling out meatless Impossible Whoppers nationwide
#347I might try BK again based on this. Love the impossible burger. I wish my local BK were a little cleaner.
Re: Burger King is rolling out meatless Impossible Whoppers nationwide
#348Earlier quoted context omitted.
So it's a meatless burger that might have been in contact with meat or been in contact with a surface that has been in contact with meet ? And this upsets people to the point the entire product is dismissed and labelled a lie ? No wonder the world is not at peace.
People don't like being lied to.
How is it a lie ?
Where is this line drawn ? After all farmers like to fertilize fields using manure from animals - which ends up in the plants. Animals breathe and exhale CO2, which plants might take up. Plants might have been in contact with or partially eaten by birds, butterflies, deer etc. "contaminating" the plant we later eat, but this does not seem to bother people.
Re: Burger King is rolling out meatless Impossible Whoppers nationwide
#349Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Vegetarians are not common outside of certain metropolitan areas in the US There are roughly half a billion vegetarians in India.
Im pretty clearly talking about the United States. I cant believe people reacted so emotionally to my comment when i wasnt even passing a value judgment and just stating a fact. Only 5 percent of Americans identify as vegetarian and of that 5% most are liberal. If you can give me a good argument for why those liberal people should be evenly distributed around the US I am all ears. This entire thread is about a questi…
>> I cant believe people reacted so emotionally to my comment when i wasnt even passing a value judgment and just stating a fact.
This is why I'm so emotional. This isn't a fact. This is an assumption, and a really weird one at best. Here's what we have for facts:
About 5% of the US population identify as Vegetarian or vegan. "Most" vegetarians are liberal. Liberals are not evenly distributed among the general population.
Putting this together, your assumption is highly flawed at best. There's no logical reason we can't assume that while liberals aren't equally distributed, vegetarians are. Being a vegetarian means you're likely inclined to be liberal, it's a correlation not causation. There's nothing I've seen that shows anything about expected distribution of vegetarians based on where they live. The best thing anyone has come up with is the thanksgiving gallup poll below.
Also, your OG statement was that they aren't common outside of meto areas. This is so vague and meaningless. What's common? That 1/100 people are a vegetarian? That people know someone anecdotally that is a vegetarian?
My point is that your asserting that you know that vegetarians are uncommon in the Rural US. I posit that it's impossible to know that. That's not to say you're wrong or not (I'm not claiming I know either) but that making a statement of that type is problematic in a fact based discussion.
Re: Burger King is rolling out meatless Impossible Whoppers nationwide
#350Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have a citation for this? Curious about how they figured that, given: * The emissions from the livestock themselves should be identical given the same number of cows and the same dietary input; CO₂ output might increase for pasture-raised cattle, given the higher physical activity, but methane output (IIRC the primary concern re: cattle and their environmental impact) shouldn't change all that much * Non-lives…
Sure: http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2017-10-03-grass-fed-beef-good-or-b...
Full report: https://www.fcrn.org.uk/sites/default/files/project-files/fc...
Now granted, I haven't read the entirety of the 127-page report, but it doesn't seem to say much of anything about CAFO at all (searching for "CAFO" or "factory" gives zero results, and searching for "concentrate" gives five results that all have nothing to do with CAFO), so I'm not sure how that's supposed to function as a citation for the specific claim that CAFO is somehow more environmentally friendly than free range ranching.
What the report actually seems to be claiming is that free range cattle ranching is not carbon neutral on a global scale. It can be carbon-neutral or even outright carbon-sequestering on a local scale, however, with the right diet / plant availability and other factors, albeit with other environmental tradeoffs/externalities (for example, the crops that help reduce methane output when used as feed tend to require more fertilizer to grow).