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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

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing wrong or unethical with eating meat. It is a natural behaviour, which we are evolved for, and in fact a necessary animal behaviour within the environment at large. If you do not wish to eat meat for personal reasons you are free to do so of course but I object to the current trend of minority groups trying to impose their views to the whole of society and to paint those who disagree as 'wrong'.

[flagged]

Maybe the GP did engage in the naturalistic fallacy, but nobody has been able to demonstrate why eating meat is wrong either, they just say "I personally feel killing animals to eat them is so evil that it should be illegal." OK, that's fine, but why should I also feel that way? I don't.

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

#172
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

No one said that. They did not live the entire lives in the feedlot. Anything else, you read into.

Probably responding to this from a parent comment:

> Shoving 100 cattle into a 1 acre feed lot for their entire lives

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

#173
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beef in itself is not bad for the environment. It's the scale of demand that is bad. And that demand is fueled by the combined effects of global population growth and global increase in standards of living. We tend to stop at the symptoms instead of going after the root cause.

> Beef in itself is not bad for the environment. It's the scale of demand that is bad. Wasting crops feeding cattle is inherently worse than the alternative, feeding directly on the crops and avoiding the wasting of calories when going up one trophic level.

Cows don't eat people crops.

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

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What's "half-beef"?

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

#175
post #138
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wow, one year in jail just for trespassing or taking a photo and doing absolutely no damage. I wonder how much it costs to buy a legislature house. Can't we crowfund buying it to make "modern" farming illegal?

I personally empathize more with the concerns of poor humans than I do mistreated animals and increasing food costs seems likely to increase their pain. I'll gladly wait for technology to improve the lives of animals, but I think it's important our legislation focuses entirely on improving the life of people, exclusively.

Your conclusions are all wrong.

Beef is incredibly expensive in terms of costs of food, land, and water -- and in high density situations - rapid disease spread (and post consumption disease spread via cancer, metabolic, and heart disease)

By promoting sustainable diets, mostly vegetarian with optional beef splurges

- food costs decrease

- food transport costs decrease

- disease caused by diets decrease

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

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money is speech, but photos are not apparently

You should read the linked law. You may find it reasonable.

Unless my understanding of 'misrepresentation' is incorrect, and I'm neither a lawyer nor an American, but I find the law to outlaw basic journalism, including and especially the below section which seems to specifically outlaw undercover journalism. What's reasonable about that?

> (c) Obtains employment with an agricultural production facility by force, threat, or misrepresentation with the intent to cause economic or other injury to the facility’s operations, livestock, crops, owners, personnel, equipment, buildings, premises, business interests or customers;

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

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The historical range of the bison did extend into those states, but granted, not into most of that land area.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_bison_belt

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

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hunting isn't illegal. Selling hunted meat is. It combats overhunting and poaching.

Sincere question - how does one "overhunt"? If I were to use a huge trawler with a big net to catch hundreds of fish I would call that overfishing. But is that even fishing? Thwres nuance between artisanal and industrial, and both get caught with the same word

We have deer seasons for a reason. Lots of times you can only hunt the male bucks to keep populations in check. People have decimated populations. Look at the Goliath Grouper ban in Florida and how the species has recovered.

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

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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.

most people also do not care about factory farming. think the claim is that it is hypocrisy if you care about the animal suffering when you will just kill it at the end
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