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Tracking Illicit Brazilian Beef from the Amazon to Your Burger

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Re: Tracking Illicit Brazilian Beef from the Amazon to Your Burger

#161

Post by samatman »

notesinthefield wrote: post #123
merpnderp wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep seeing people make this claim that cattle spend their entire lives on feed lots, but I've never seen this anywhere and I've been all over cattle country. Where do they do this? Because around here feedlots are only for finishing cattle and typically only spend about 2-3 months there after having very happy lives as calves on a ranch.

[flagged]

> Ah yes its fine to kill them

Yes. Fundamentally, most people, including myself, believe that it's fine to kill animals and eat them.

There's no hypocrisy here, disgusting or otherwise. You have your own concept of morality, I have mine, yours is considered extreme by society at large, mine is a shared moral belief of the great majority.

That's all that's going on here.

Re: Tracking Illicit Brazilian Beef from the Amazon to Your Burger

#162

Post by nanna »

hpestyghr wrote: post #55
nanna wrote: post #11

A month or so ago a ship filled with 19,000 Brazilian cattle destined for the Middle East docked in Cape Town. The cows were living in such horrendous conditions that the stink of the ship took over the entire city. Living in pools of excrement, sick, lame, pregnant and even dead cows among them. The South African animal protection service had to put many down. It's easy, its right to blame the Bolsonaro regime for h…

In this specific case, it's because Middle Eastern countries want live imports due to halal requirements. Live exports should be entirely banned.

Don't see why halal needs live imports. The main thing is theyre slaughtered in a halal way. Presumably it's just cheaper to ship them live (or just about) to the middle east and then slaughter them there than send halal qualified slaughters to Brazil and then ship over frozen meat.

Also, don't think it's right to let Brazil off the hook here - it's their cattle ranching practices and export legislation.

Re: Tracking Illicit Brazilian Beef from the Amazon to Your Burger

#163

Post by [deleted] »

swayvil wrote: post #157
jareklupinski wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when you are stuck in a game like that "we" people just aren't in the habit (or have overcome our desire) of getting stuck in evil games: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-win_situation > "the only winning move is not to play" as long as the sun isn't terribly angry at its energy being used to help my heart beat, there should be a path to converting its energy into what i need in 2024

You pay taxes under pain of imprisonment. Your taxes fund maiming and killing innocent civilians. That's one of those evil games.

[deleted]

Re: Tracking Illicit Brazilian Beef from the Amazon to Your Burger

#165

Post by Drakim »

mathieuh wrote: post #134
carlosjobim wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hunting is just as necessary for life as breathing. Domestication of animals and agriculture are the unnatural ways that man has invented. So banning it is banning the most natural human behaviour. All other predators do nothing except hunt, breathe, drink, sleep and mate. And they don't keep slaves. There's a lot of people who never drink water, but drinking water is still essential and shouldn't be outlawed.

That doesn't make any sense. What makes hunting any more natural than agriculture? Isn't exerting control over our environment one of the defining characteristics of humanity?

That's an odd view, were hunter-gatherers less human than us?

Re: Tracking Illicit Brazilian Beef from the Amazon to Your Burger

#166

Post by Amezarak »

MandieD wrote: post #120
ljf wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the UK - but yes he's a registered 'pest controller' - he gets paid by local farmers to keep the invasive deer population low (muncjac and Chinese water deer), and is also licenced to sell the meat. You can get either a whole/half skinned and basically butchered deer from him, or any selected cuts, for £9 a kg - which pretty damn cheap really!

That is a fantastic deal for meat you can feel good about! I pay that much for pork at the big organic grocery chain in Germany (ebl) that I can only hope they’re telling the truth about, and far more for the occasional beef steak there.

I live in America. I buy half-beef from a farmer down the road. His cows are pastured all the time, grass-fed and grass-finished. It costs me $3.50/lb to do this and that includes dozens of steaks - all cuts and ground beef etc. are the same flat rate.

This isn't a special deal either, this is how the guy makes his living, along with some other farm products.

Re: Tracking Illicit Brazilian Beef from the Amazon to Your Burger

#167

Post by Amezarak »

LinXitoW wrote: post #141
debacle wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a counter point, livestock are a critical part of the regenerative ag movement. Our property was farmland for 150 years before it basically ran out of nutrients in the 1970s. After one year of a pretty good harvest (not great) in 2019, we couldn't grow anything. One home testing kit later, and we found that there were virtually no minerals in the soil. Fast forward five years and between heavy composting and gener…

Rgenerative AG is BS. For example, they'll talk about how they sequester CO2, but fail to mention that after 10 years, the ground reaches a limit, from which point forward it produces far more CO2 than our current meat production. They'll also ignore any imports into the system from conventional sources. SO, they'll feed conventionally grown feed, but not include that in their numbers. In the end, even if regenerativ…

What is the solution to recover topsoil in the midwest without cattle? I'd also be for returning the buffalo that made it so fertile in the first place, but clearly what we're doing now is not sustainable.

Re: Tracking Illicit Brazilian Beef from the Amazon to Your Burger

#168

Post by Amezarak »

jeffbee wrote: post #143
lukas099 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Not suitable for crop farming” =/= “ecologically unimportant”

Seriously, the is a big problem in the US. Cattle are grazed on BLM land and they trample all the stream banks to such an extent that riparian ecosystems are totally destroyed. And in exchange the grazing fee is only $1/head/month! If you stand at the point where a stream crosses from a fenced conservation area into a grazing area, the difference across the boundary is stark.

How did did the riparian ecosystems thrive when there were tens of millions of bison? There is the same order of magnitude of cows in the US today (90 million) as bison hundreds of years ago (30-60 million.) Bison are also generally much heavier, meaning they eat more and trod the ground more deeply.

Re: Tracking Illicit Brazilian Beef from the Amazon to Your Burger

#169

Post by micromacrofoot »

jonahbenton wrote: post #156
micromacrofoot wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell them what? that we've grown so fat and stupid on the abundance the earth provides that we can't properly manage it and will probably cause millions undue suffering because we don't want to reduce our meat consumption to less than 250lbs per year despite it being easily possible?

Heh, I eat a lot of meat and still less than 250lbs per year. That's a perfectly fine number. The parent was saying that zero was the right number. Zero is really not the right number for much of the current human population. We shall see what happens in the future. I'm with you that the collective we is fat and stupid and would go further than our various systems and patterns solve for predatory behavior against bot…

250lbs per year is the american average

0 is a great number for rich countries to aspire to. Without some sort of massive crisis (which we're heading towards globally) it would probably take at least 100 years to even halve the current consumption levels. It took roughly 100 years to go from an average of 10lbs of chicken consumption per year (1920) to the current 70lb average (2020). Chicken is really where all the growth for meat consumption has come from.

Beef has been fairly steady per capita, and has decreased from its height a few decades ago — but the population keeps rising so it can't continue like this.

Re: Tracking Illicit Brazilian Beef from the Amazon to Your Burger

#170

Post by jeffbee »

Amezarak wrote: post #168
jeffbee wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously, the is a big problem in the US. Cattle are grazed on BLM land and they trample all the stream banks to such an extent that riparian ecosystems are totally destroyed. And in exchange the grazing fee is only $1/head/month! If you stand at the point where a stream crosses from a fenced conservation area into a grazing area, the difference across the boundary is stark.

How did did the riparian ecosystems thrive when there were tens of millions of bison? There is the same order of magnitude of cows in the US today (90 million) as bison hundreds of years ago (30-60 million.) Bison are also generally much heavier, meaning they eat more and trod the ground more deeply.

The historical range of the American bison was largely not overlapping with BLM grazing lands. The bison, a sensible animal, wasn't found in California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington.
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