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Beyond Meat’s Beyond Burger life cycle assessment (2018)

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Re: Beyond Meat’s Beyond Burger life cycle assessment (2018)

#441
post #439

I am an avid meat-lover but it does play on my conscience that I am in fact eating a former sentient being and potentially contributing to environmental devastation. I would appreciate answers to the following two, albeit simplistic questions that always plaque me when I consider stopping eating meat products: 1) Is it really unethical to eat animals when the natural trajectory of most animals lives was likely to be…

I turned vegan after watching Game Changers: https://gamechangersmovie.com/the-film/where-to-watch/ It was made by a guy who trains soldiers in deadly unarmed combat. He got injured and read that a vegan diet could speed up recovery. Instead of trying to convince with ethical concerns, it gave me plenty of sound logical reasons to eat vegan. The reason for me to eat organic meat was B12, but 39% of the people eating…

> 80% of farmland is used for animal husbandry

and how much of that is marginal land that can't be used to grow crops?

Re: Beyond Meat’s Beyond Burger life cycle assessment (2018)

#442
After "seapiracy" I don't really think we are addressing the biggest issue here. I would like to know if there's anything like that for fish. I would buy anything that tastes like tuna but it's fully vegetable, or any other fishes. Just give me the same taste on my sushi, please.

Re: Beyond Meat’s Beyond Burger life cycle assessment (2018)

#443

While it is not my experience at all, I understand that some folks have certain negative opinions of Beyond Burgers, and other fake meat/imitation burgers: - The texture is off - Maybe they cook strangely - Potentially less taste But the most important thing about them, and the reason I urge everyone to at least _try_ Beyond Burgers, is they require no violence against animals. This is not an argument that fairs well…

honestly I don't really see the point of eating a burger that doesn't taste or feel like a burger. I'd prefer to eat meat less often than try a subsitute

Re: Beyond Meat’s Beyond Burger life cycle assessment (2018)

#444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we can't raise the animals that folks want to eat without _also_ growing plants to feed those animals But... we can raise food and dairy animals on a combination of natural range grazing and agricultural byproducts that otherwise need to be disposed of (e.g. cotton seeds, almond hulls, distillers' and brewers' spent grains, etc.)

Not unless worldwide (and particularly US) total meat and dairy consumption drops precipitously.

Right, but "Let's not eat any animals at all ever" is a different target than "Let's raise and kill animals in a way that's ecologically sustainable and humane". I'd argue that working towards #1 is actively working against #2.

The other factor that I don't quite get about think-of-the-animals vegans is this: What exactly do you think is going to happen to all those cows and chickens if the entire world becomes vegetarian? Are people going to keep them as pets? No -- they're simply not going to exist. Isn't it better to have free-range chicken and cattle, which have happy little animal lives, and then are quickly and painlessly killed, than to have (almost) no chicken and cattle at all?

Re: Beyond Meat’s Beyond Burger life cycle assessment (2018)

#445

While it is not my experience at all, I understand that some folks have certain negative opinions of Beyond Burgers, and other fake meat/imitation burgers: - The texture is off - Maybe they cook strangely - Potentially less taste But the most important thing about them, and the reason I urge everyone to at least _try_ Beyond Burgers, is they require no violence against animals. This is not an argument that fairs well…

> Beyond Burgers, is they require no violence against animals. I find this interesting, in that cropping has plenty of violent against animals but one step removed. I have a small cattle property, we run on hill country with diversified ecosystem, mixed grass and bushland. We have a heap of native animals living across the property. And at the end of the day the steers do get sent of for slaughter after 18 to 24 mont…

> I admire vegetarians for their genuinely caring moral position

Actually vegetarians follow a diet along traditional lines (dairy okay, meat nay), they are not so much into moral positioning. Vegans are the ones making an ethical stance: "no animals harmed for me whenever I have the choice"

Hence vegans dont wear wool/silk/leather, dont go to zoos/animal races, and dont consume eggs/dairy.

Re: Beyond Meat’s Beyond Burger life cycle assessment (2018)

#446
Best part is how little labour.

One of the ethical trade offs between animal and veg for me is how labour intensive veg is. Back of envelope calculations and equivalent calorie of no mechanically harvested veg (pretty much most things except staples) harm more people than meat production. At the end of the day welfare of people > animals.

Re: Beyond Meat’s Beyond Burger life cycle assessment (2018)

#447
post #442

After "seapiracy" I don't really think we are addressing the biggest issue here. I would like to know if there's anything like that for fish. I would buy anything that tastes like tuna but it's fully vegetable, or any other fishes. Just give me the same taste on my sushi, please.

Yes, it exists for many year. Ask you local vegan community (as product in this field are very different from place to place). We have several vegan sushi places, and the omnis that I know like the food there very much.

Re: Beyond Meat’s Beyond Burger life cycle assessment (2018)

#448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Beyond Burgers, is they require no violence against animals. I find this interesting, in that cropping has plenty of violent against animals but one step removed. I have a small cattle property, we run on hill country with diversified ecosystem, mixed grass and bushland. We have a heap of native animals living across the property. And at the end of the day the steers do get sent of for slaughter after 18 to 24 mont…

This is a complicated topic, with multiple responses, but I'm only going to touch on one specific aspect of it. Reducing violence in regular farming is an admirable goal that people should strive towards. It's also worth talking about the environmental costs of ingredients like palm oil, and it's worth talking about the human costs of products like cocoa. I don't mean to diminish any of that at all, it's all worth pa…

> However, the majority of meat we eat today comes from factory farming, and the majority of the feed for those animals comes from... traditional crop farming.

This is incorrect. Cattle is fed primarily on grass. They are grain finished to increase weight at the end. A lot of that space is unusable as crop fields. Also a lot of animal feed is based off of plant byproduct, corn husk, wheat

"What most livestock in the world mostly don’t eat is grain fit for human consumption."

"What most livestock in the world mostly eat is grass and other forages and crop ‘wastes’ and by-products."

Additionaly:

> This study determines that 86% of livestock feed is not suitable for human consumption. If not consumed by livestock, crop residues and by-products could quickly become an environmental burden as the human population grows and consumes more and more processed food.

http://www.fao.org/ag/againfo/home/en/news_archive/2017_More...

There is a legitimate usage of livestock, they can graze in areas not suitable for crop production (especially sheep and goats). They can consume and digest plant matter that we cannot (which is the whole point of utilizing livestock in the first place).

I think in general (as an American) we eat too much meat. And the consumption needs to go down (and it's been staying flat which is saying something). But I think that livestock has a very useful purpose of converting non-crop farmable lands and plant based byproducts into useful food.

Re: Beyond Meat’s Beyond Burger life cycle assessment (2018)

#449
post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I turned vegan after watching Game Changers: https://gamechangersmovie.com/the-film/where-to-watch/ It was made by a guy who trains soldiers in deadly unarmed combat. He got injured and read that a vegan diet could speed up recovery. Instead of trying to convince with ethical concerns, it gave me plenty of sound logical reasons to eat vegan. The reason for me to eat organic meat was B12, but 39% of the people eating…

> 80% of farmland is used for animal husbandry and how much of that is marginal land that can't be used to grow crops?

Most of that 80% is used to grow crops, that are then fed to animals.

Re: Beyond Meat’s Beyond Burger life cycle assessment (2018)

#450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The WHO directly said that meat is an important contributor to many forms of cancer: https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/cancer-carcinogenic... The problem here is that everyone takes the info they want and discards the rest. Eating meat is not problematic, if done moderately. But nowadays there is not such moderation. There is meat in every meal. Fake burgers are probably not healthy too, but this is not proven…

This is all based on awfully bad epidemiological studies. Humans were eating MUCH more meat for most of our evolutionary past. Look how unhealthy we are now, and we aren't eating more meat. We're eating more plant fats and sugar. There is literally nothing unhealthy in eating meat, not more for us than for a lion.

Lions, and our ancestors, ate much leaner grass fed animals compared to our factory-fattened cows and pigs. I don't believe hunter gatherers were eating meat with 15-20% fat content as often as Americans eat burgers.
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