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Beyond Meat signs global supply deals with McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut

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Re: Beyond Meat signs global supply deals with McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut

#631

Post by MaximumYComb »

zests wrote: post #512
DamnYuppie wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I truly don't understand the methane issue. Historically worldwide the # of ungulates is probably well below historical averages. It looks like today we have around 98 million head of cattle in the US. Historically we had bison in excess of conservatively 60 million. This doesn't even begin to count all the animals in Africa. Overall wide life is declining. https://www.statista.com/statistics/194297/total-number-of-c…

Think about it. Cows release carbon based green house gasses. Where does that carbon originally come from? Plants absorbing carbon based green house gasses. I'm not saying that they cancel out, but there must be some consumption of carbon from the atmosphere in order for cows to produce carbon. If you're an environmentalist trying to convince people to support your cause, you aren't going to talk about the carbon tha…

This is what I don't understand about companies planting trees to offset their fossil fuel CO2. Our problems are heavily caused by carbon being dug out of the ground and released. A tree just means that the carbon will be released at a later date

Re: Beyond Meat signs global supply deals with McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut

#632

Post by gowld »

apozem wrote: post #411
jordache wrote: post #392

I tried the impossible whopper. You literally could not tell the difference between that and a normal beef whopper. I realized a lot the attributes of these commercial food products are the additions, like sauce, and toppings that contribute to that precisely calibrated flavor.

My wife is vegan and let me try her Impossible Burger at a local chain. I am not vegan so she wanted to know how accurate the taste was. It tasted exactly like a frozen burger you'd cook on your backyard grill.

Only if you bury it in toppings.

Re: Beyond Meat signs global supply deals with McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut

#633

Post by sf_rob »

unchocked wrote: post #80

All of the sudden - I get it. These co's are dealing with a really shitty, commodified form of beef that they'd love to develop an alternative to. So the immediate benefit is they get to serve vegetarians, but the long term is they can transition off their price-above-all meat supply chain.

I must be vague, but my friend works at a fast food chain's corporate office and said that their strategy team was the one pushing for alternative meats for supply chain alternatives more than dietary preferences.

Re: Beyond Meat signs global supply deals with McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut

#634

Post by MaximumYComb »

King-Aaron wrote: post #552
mike_d wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority of the worlds meat is raised in areas where forests do not naturally develop. If all natural meat consumption stopped tomorrow, Brazilians would cut down forests to grow whatever is needed for fake meat. The problem is land is one of the few economically exploitable natural resources the country has to sustain itself.

Case in point: The largest cattle producing station in Australia - Anna Creek - is basically low scrubland. https://www.entegra.com.au/anna-creek-the-biggest-cattle-sta... . Australian beef is some of the highest quality in the world, and it's almost solely raised in areas that have very low impact on the environment. (Dairy farming is different, of course, because the location of dairy farms is important to have a c…

The Australian system is using the land in that way because the land isn't good for much else. If Australia wasn't largely arid or desert then I suspect we'd have a far higher population and much intensive land use.

Re: Beyond Meat signs global supply deals with McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut

#635

Post by wdb »

Personally, I don't understand why they need to call it meat or vegetarian butcher while it isn't. I understand it's accepted by the EU courts but it feels odd.

I typically order my vegan meals/recipes from Riverford (https://www.riverford.co.uk) and Abel and Cole which are nice but I do think I need to swap it out occasionally with some vegetarian meals. I do think they could have some more mashes in their recipe collection

Re: Beyond Meat signs global supply deals with McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut

#636

Post by stickyricky »

rictic wrote: post #45
DamnYuppie wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I truly don't understand the methane issue. Historically worldwide the # of ungulates is probably well below historical averages. It looks like today we have around 98 million head of cattle in the US. Historically we had bison in excess of conservatively 60 million. This doesn't even begin to count all the animals in Africa. Overall wide life is declining. https://www.statista.com/statistics/194297/total-number-of-c…

Every greenhouse gas counts, whether it's part of the preexisting baseline or something recent we started emitting. The goal isn't a return to how things were, the goal is to keep the temperature from climbing too high too quickly.

The point of keeping the climate stable is to _prevent_ biomass loss.

Re: Beyond Meat signs global supply deals with McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut

#637

Post by core-questions »

Falling3 wrote: post #439
core-questions wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For me, it was mostly about reducing suffering of other animals. I thought this way before but it's hard to change behavior and I liked hamburgers. I think this is the strongest argument and the environmental or nutritional arguments feel like side issues to avoid just tackling this issue directly. For me, this is the weakest argument. Animals are not people, and agriculturally farmed animals only exist because of…

This is an extremely uncharitable reply. Where did anyone try and equate the suffering of animals and humans? Accusing your opponents of anthropomorphizing because of concern about non-human suffering is a ridiculous response. The fact that farm animals would not exist without our intervention has no bearing on what we owe them morally. Finally, one can work to alleviate the suffering of both humans and non-humans. N…

> accusing your opponents of anthropomorphizing because of concern about non-human suffering is a ridiculous response.

No, it's actually incredibly reasonable. Anthropomorphizing is the process of imparting human qualities onto non-human things, like animals. This is literally the exact thing that anyone who says we need to alleviate their suffering by not eating them is doing.

> Finally, one can work to alleviate the suffering of both humans and non-humans

Sure, I am 100% in favour of that, as long as they still end up neatly packaged in a store for a price that everyone can afford. As it stands it's already becoming more expensive than it should be, necessitating further logistics and efficiency improvements.

If it ends up being the case that people who make less money can no longer afford meat, then you've simply moved the suffering from animals onto people, which should elicit serious pushback. After all, we're responsible for the existence of these breeds of animals in agriculturally-significant numbers; in short, we made them. They're ours to eat. Prioritizing the anthropomorphized feelings of animals above the nutrition of the economically marginalized is a typically bourgeois conceit. The poor can just eat cake (or in this case, bugs) instead, right?

Re: Beyond Meat signs global supply deals with McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut

#638

Post by stephenr »

gowld wrote: post #622
stephenr wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> fast-food/highly processed crap territory, which probably accounts for a large portion of meat consumption in the developed world A large portion of animal by-products, almost certainly. I doubt that a lot of what fast-food joints use, would be considered "meat" before it was processed. Nobody is asking their local butcher for the Cows eyeballs and asshole.

How many cow anuses would it take to make McDonalds meat? more than cow anuses exist in the world, I bet. McDonalds' is made of meat, just processed into a highly manageable consistent form.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanically_separated_meat

“Meat”

Re: Beyond Meat signs global supply deals with McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut

#639

Post by shawnz »

briefcomment wrote: post #520
hamax wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for the cow.

You could say the same thing for plants right? They probably don't want to be eaten.

I actually think this is a legitimate concern. Here's my rationalization: Plants probably don't have a sense of individuality. Personally, I wouldn't care about eating parts of an animal that grew back (like eggs or milk). Plants seem to be no different.

Re: Beyond Meat signs global supply deals with McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut

#640

Post by zests »

matkoniecz wrote: post #549
zests wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think about it. Cows release carbon based green house gasses. Where does that carbon originally come from? Plants absorbing carbon based green house gasses. I'm not saying that they cancel out, but there must be some consumption of carbon from the atmosphere in order for cows to produce carbon. If you're an environmentalist trying to convince people to support your cause, you aren't going to talk about the carbon tha…

Note conversion of C02 into methane. If methane has bigger effect than the same amount of coal within C02 then your argument fails. > While CO2 persists in the atmosphere for centuries, or even millennia, methane warms the planet on steroids for a decade or two before decaying to CO2. > In those short decades, methane warms the planet by 86 times as much as CO2, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Cha…

Do you find it strange that an article about methane does not mention what percentage of the greenhouse gas effect that methane accounts for? I'd ask everyone to read this article, write down what percentage you think methane accounts for and then read the wikipedia page on greenhouse gasses.

This is to say nothing other than that more nuance is needed when discussing the environment. It is important to reduce our emissions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect#Greenhouse_g... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_emissions#List_of_emis...

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