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The cartel that controls the US meat industry

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Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#161

Post by gen220 »

ben_w wrote: post #30
gen220 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

("We" below refers to the US, and an increasing proportion of the world that is adopting US farming practices). There's a good-natured argument to be made that plant-based diets are more sustainable, because we don't generally farm meat sustainably and ensuring that your meat was farmed sustainably is difficult and expensive. But it's important to underline that sustainable is an insufficient target in the U.S. in 20…

Can you elaborate what you mean by "regenerative"? I'm anchoring on things like crop rotation for soil nitrogen, but that doesn't feel quite right for your comment, somehow?

It’s a bit of a ramble, but to give you the oeuvre: the problem is that our fruits, vegetables and legumes are not as nutritious today as they were decades ago. The hypothesis motivating regenerative agriculture, is that the explanation for this fact is that we treat soil as a lifeless medium for growing crops, rather than as an organic contributor to a natural ecosystem.

Relevant to this thread, Animals are a core component of a natural ecosystem. This includes grazers, insects and predators. Healthy soil is living soil, full of bacteria that literally digest their environment into free nutrients for a crop to draw from. If we aim to fuel human civilization from the earth, there’s no free lunch — an equal amount of nutrients have to be returned to the earth, and animal husbandry (and consumption) are the historical solutions to this problem.

Regenerative agriculture is agriculture that works in harmony with a living soil and its ecosystem. It means consuming more perennials than annuals, growing polycultures (e.g. the three sisters) instead of monocultures, using crop rotation to let soil lay fallow while it’s used to service the needs of animals.

It’s basically the application of permaculture principles to agronomy.

Other people in this thread have fixated on the climate aspect, and while this is certainly one big motivation for regenerative farming, IMO an equally large one is health — we are fundamentally not as healthy today as our grandparents were at the same age (in terms of cancer incidence, fertility issues, chronic inflammation, diabetes, etc.), and the food chain is an obvious place to scrutinize.

In theory, could you synthesize the perfect cocktail of organic molecules to fertilize soil for healthy crops?

Perhaps, but consider this: would it be less expensive and carry fewer negative externalities than maintaining a herd of animals that have literally co-evolved with these crops for millennia? Especially when you account for the ancillary benefits cattle husbandry (seasonal access to dairy, meat and leather as the herd is culled, etc.)?

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#163

Post by wombat-man »

jvm___ wrote: post #147
wombat-man wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

mmm, wouldn't she be able to go after the third party company?

Maybe it was that she was hired as an independent contractor so she had no recourse. Either way, the story painted a horrible picture of the slaughterhouses who hire disadvantaged workers, and then just discard or ignore them when they are injured. Also, I think this was in Texas which isn't exactly a worker friendly state.

Yeah, the law is one thing but actually pursuing recourse is a pain itself.

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#164

Post by jvm___ »

wombat-man wrote: post #163
jvm___ wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it was that she was hired as an independent contractor so she had no recourse. Either way, the story painted a horrible picture of the slaughterhouses who hire disadvantaged workers, and then just discard or ignore them when they are injured. Also, I think this was in Texas which isn't exactly a worker friendly state.

Yeah, the law is one thing but actually pursuing recourse is a pain itself.

A single Spanish speaking mother with kids and a broken arm is unlikely to be successful in sueing the companies and they know it.

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#165

Post by malcolmgreaves »

tristor wrote: post #144
malcolmgreaves wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, this is quite thinly vieled attempt to let corporations hurt people and make a profit doing it! You've linked to a politically Republican organization's page, where they're promoting legislation that would let companies produce unsanitary and unsafe meat. Do you not understand that the USDA guidelines are (a) easily obtainable and (b) exist to keep people from getting sick or dying from unsanitary meat? Or do y…

> a politically Republican organization Your other arguments aside, why is this surprising or relevant? For whatever else you can say about the broken politics in America, the only party that gives a shit about rural people is the Republicans, so of course any organization focused on rural issues is Republican.

> the only party that gives a shit about rural people is the Republicans

Unfortunately, the Republican party has long outspent its benefit of the doubt.

I'll admit that Republicans say they care about rural people. But, then again, the Republican party says a lot of things, much of it are easily disprovable lies. An easy one to point out is the lie that "the 2020 election was stolen" or that the numerous criminal cases against the former president, backed by tremendous evidence, are "witch hunts". These, and other lies, are constantly pushed by the Republican party, its leadership, and the most vocal advocates of the party.

The Republican party doesn't have any credibility left. So, I'll continue to do the rational thing, which is to ignore the folks that have a long history, and ample evidence in the present, of intentionally lying.

Of course, I could be swayed if you can point to actual laws, executive actions, or judicial rulings made by Republicans -- and in opposition by Democrats -- that resoundly demonstrates that there is "only one party that gives a shit about rural people."

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#166

Post by [deleted] »

NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #138
myshpa wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vegans have cheese. Salty and fatty, melts. You should try it. There is no magic ingredient in cow (dog, giraffe, lion, bat, dolphin) milk that we couldn't get from plants instead. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcN7SGGoCNI https://www.vegancheese.co/discover (1700+ cheeses from all over the world)

To call other things "cheese" that aren't cheese is torturing the very definition of the word, much like "milk", which, of course, as a precursor to cheese, has been traditionally understood, inconveniently for you, as excretion from mammary glands. A lot of of cheesemakers have also traditionally depended upon rennet, a product of animal stomachs, so in the effort to replace it as a coagulant, the definition of "ren…

[deleted]

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#167

Post by malcolmgreaves »

dreadlordbone wrote: post #136
malcolmgreaves wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, this is quite thinly vieled attempt to let corporations hurt people and make a profit doing it! You've linked to a politically Republican organization's page, where they're promoting legislation that would let companies produce unsanitary and unsafe meat. Do you not understand that the USDA guidelines are (a) easily obtainable and (b) exist to keep people from getting sick or dying from unsanitary meat? Or do y…

"You've linked to a politically Republican organization's page" Why does this matter? You could have said "a political organization's" but didn't.

If I did that, I'd be intentionally leaving out critical information that is necessary to understand the context, motivation, and aim of the article.

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#168

Post by tristor »

malcolmgreaves wrote: post #165
tristor wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a politically Republican organization Your other arguments aside, why is this surprising or relevant? For whatever else you can say about the broken politics in America, the only party that gives a shit about rural people is the Republicans, so of course any organization focused on rural issues is Republican.

> the only party that gives a shit about rural people is the Republicans Unfortunately, the Republican party has long outspent its benefit of the doubt. I'll admit that Republicans say they care about rural people. But, then again, the Republican party says a lot of things, much of it are easily disprovable lies. An easy one to point out is the lie that "the 2020 election was stolen" or that the numerous criminal cas…

> The Republican party doesn't have any credibility left. So, I'll continue to do the rational thing, which is to ignore the folks that have a long history, and ample evidence in the present, of intentionally lying.

You're making politically motivated reasoning and ignoring the people who are telling you something from the ground. You're free to continue to do so, and this HN subthread is not the right place to re-litigate the entire history of American politics. Just be aware that motivated reasoning is not necessarily the best approach to find the truth.

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#169

Post by xnx »

r3trohack3r wrote: post #14

A reminder that Tyson is abusing the legal system to force people in the American south into working in their chicken plants for free: https://revealnews.org/article/they-thought-they-were-going-... I don't know every brand that uses Tyson products, but when I discover something is coming from a Tyson factory I stop purchasing it.

Another solid reason to boycott meat.

Re: The cartel that controls the US meat industry

#170

Post by malcolmgreaves »

tristor wrote: post #168
malcolmgreaves wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the only party that gives a shit about rural people is the Republicans Unfortunately, the Republican party has long outspent its benefit of the doubt. I'll admit that Republicans say they care about rural people. But, then again, the Republican party says a lot of things, much of it are easily disprovable lies. An easy one to point out is the lie that "the 2020 election was stolen" or that the numerous criminal cas…

> The Republican party doesn't have any credibility left. So, I'll continue to do the rational thing, which is to ignore the folks that have a long history, and ample evidence in the present, of intentionally lying. You're making politically motivated reasoning and ignoring the people who are telling you something from the ground. You're free to continue to do so, and this HN subthread is not the right place to re-li…

I wouldn't call this "motivated reasoning." It's rather simple cognitively: I have made observations and only the barest form of logical inference.

I've observing mountains of evidence that clearly shows multiple crimes committed by Mr. Trump. I've also observed how the Republican Party has decided to ignore this evidence and reject truth to rally behind him. Perhaps most notably was the GOP's 2020 platform (more accurately, lack of a platform as they didn't actually publish anything of substance other than a re-iteration of their positions 4 years prior), that included "party's continued support for Trump's America First agenda" [1]

I'm so curious as to what you could possibly mean by:

> who are telling you something from the ground

Because there's only conspiracy theories and outright lies left fueling the fabricated "outrage" in the Republican party.

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