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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

#181

Post by whimsicalism »

giantg2 wrote: post #140
rmbyrro wrote: 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?

"wow, one year in jail just for trespassing" Many western states have much stricter views on property rights and trespassing than the coasts. The penalties are generally higher even if not dealing with this specific scenario. Even regular ID trespassing law can carry 6mo-1y jail time depending on the circumstances, etc. One often overlooked thing that isn't particularly applicable in this case is the biosecurity aspe…

in other states, these penalties only exist for slaughterhouses, if you broke into a Beyond meat factory and filmed you wouldn’t be eligible for same penalties

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

#182

Post by tengbretson »

walthamstow wrote: post #176
tengbretson wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If the definition of undercover journalism is simply lying about ones identity in order to publish secrets with the intent to cause injury to another party, then yes, absolutely, I'm in favor of outlawing it, and a 1 year max seems generous.

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

#183

Post by oaththrowaway »

arrowsmith wrote: post #174
Amezarak wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

It's where you buy half of a cow

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

#184

Post by throwup238 »

merpnderp wrote: post #88
cogman10 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up similarly and it's part of the reason I've cut back on my meat. Shoving 100 cattle into a 1 acre feed lot for their entire lives is unfortunately how a lot of beef is produced. They spend their lives covered in shit, sleeping in shit, and trapped with no where to roam. And instead of addressing this problem, my state (Idaho) made it illegal to take photos of the issue. [1] [1] https://legislature.idaho.gov/…

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.

> 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?

Nobody does that, it’d be way too expensive. People here on HN have absolutely zero knowledge of how industrial cattle farming operates and have some really bizarre beliefs about the process. Largely because their only experience with it is the supermarket meat section and passing those massive stinky feedlots along the CA I5.

For everyone else: After a calf is raised and weaned from their mother, they are sent to “background” on pasture and the last few months a cow spends packed in a feedlot is just to fatten it up for human consumption. These are usually steps done by different companies altogether. The whole point of beef is utilizing marginal land that can’t grow human food. It converts tons of grassland to usable farmland, and that pasture makes up 2/3 of the total agricultural land in the US.

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

#185

Post by carlosjobim »

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?

It is more natural because creatures in nature do it. Together with mating, hunting is one of the foundations of life itself for the predator or omnivore class of animals.

All the behaviours that we have in common with other mammals are natural and eternal. They can never be legislated away, even though many have tried and they have died. Including kings trying to ban hunting certain game for commoners and having them for themselves.

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

#186

Post by vlovich123 »

giantg2 wrote: post #151
vlovich123 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enforcing ignorance is the answer? > but I think it's important our legislation focuses entirely on improving the life of people, exclusively What about the activists who are motivated by a genuine belief that this is wrong and believe it's their life's work to raise awareness of the issue? Throwing them in jail isn't improving their lives - what framework are you using to pick losers & winners of the people you help…

"Throwing them in jail isn't improving their lives - what framework are you using to pick losers & winners of the people you help vs hurt?" Seems to be the combined wishes of the constituents. Same theory applies to most topics. You can see this in how different states poll on firearms (or abortion, etc) and the types of laws they have on that topic. As an extreme example, the same person can carry the same gun in tw…

In a representative democracy, the will of the population isn't so directly represented in the laws that are held. Given the role money and lobbying have in politics, there's no way to conclude that any given law has the broad support of the people vs "this isn't important enough for me to get worked up over vs issues that are more immediately pressing to me" or even "powerful economic powers are acting to sway the opinion of the general population". There's even [1] which adds credence to the idea that laws are passed by the will of the wealthy, not by the will of the constituents. Also immoral laws can be passed when the people in power are immoral. Immoral people can gain power through alternate ways than following the will of the constituents.

More importantly, we have ideals and principles that supersede the will of the public. Arguably the most sacred ideal in America is the First Amendment with respect to protections about speech & this is pretty adjacent in that the law is criminalizing speech for something that should arguably be a civil matter at best. Laws like this are not dissimilar to passing a law protecting employers from employees trying to document unsafe working conditions.

So the idea that the law is purely an expression of the wishes of the constituents is nice but not borne out in the structure of modern democratic governments, not borne out in practice because of how power & money intermix, & invalidated by the idea that we have principles that supersede the wishes of those constituents.

[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...

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

#187

Post by jeffbee »

Amezarak wrote: post #177
jeffbee wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think we are safe in describing the pre-columbian bison range as not marginal, and the post that started this thread is about how most of our cattle grazing is on marginal lands. The way Americans do this is the worst possible way: grow feed on the excellent grazing range, and feed it to an animal that spends most of its life either grazing a desert or standing in parking lot. We'd get more of everything, easier and cheaper, if we just grazed bison where we currently grow corn.

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

#188

Post by whimsicalism »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #121
virtue3 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A large amount of beef is grown in areas that are not suitable for crop farming in the United States. In fact, 85% of the land used to graze cattle in the U.S. is marginal land, which means it's not suitable for growing crops. Marginal land is either untouched or used for grazing livestock, mostly cattle" Grain finishing is another matter. But it's not a 1 grain : 1/10th beef type situation. Now chopping and burning…

They're gonna chop and burn it down either way, it'll either be for cattle or if you make eating meat illegal they'll chop and burn it for something else like palm oil. Like it's obvious the people who own and control that land don't care about it anywhere near as much as you do so if you want them to stop chopping it down essentially you're gonna need to start paying them not to. Just seems naive to think stopping s…

If you take away one of the profitable reasons to chop down the Amazon, it’ll reduce people doing it at the margin - that is simply facts.

> Poor people from eating meat

Yeah and a carbon tax will stop poor people from using as much gas, etc. - if we want to solve climate change we cannot just insulate all poor people from externality pricing.

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

#190

Post by augusto-moura »

righthand wrote: post #145

As an American why would you buy Brazilian beef when it’s already available here probably for cheaper, local, and higher quality?

I can see two reasons: maybe it is not cheaper, or maybe there's not enough for local consumers. There should definitely be some economic incentive somewhere.

Higher quality is debatable, foreign imports are not necessarily "lower quality", I'm a Brazilian so I'm on the other side of the coin, our beef is anything but low quality. The problem that the article wants to expose is that much of it is raised on illegal ranches, more often than not on the deflorested Amazon.

Being local is not something that food chains care about.

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