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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

#211

Post by mytailorisrich »

whimsicalism wrote: post #207
mytailorisrich wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At global scale we can't solve the environmental crisis in general (climate is only one aspect) and solve poverty at the same time with 10 billion people. Solving the environmental crisis means reducing our consumption of resources. Solving global poverty means a significant increase in consumption of resources. So the only way forward is to let the global population decrease ASAP so that we can both live well and pr…

Resource intensity is decreasing. We can solve both at the same time, but we can’t solve both with maximum possible speed at the same time, true.

Resource intensity may or may not be decreasing but that's not solving the issue if you look at global numbers of poor people versus economic and consumption growth needed to bring everyone to, say, European level of living standard.

We are already wreacking havoc on the planet and marginal decrease in resource intensity is not going to make a difference because our total impact needs to be slashed.

I never understand the insistence of some of ignoring population in the equation, which is the key parameter.

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

#213

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

jeffbee wrote: post #187
Amezarak wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

I'm all for that: bison is delicious.

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

#214

Post by [deleted] »

nolverostae wrote: post #124
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…

Yes, but now give out the statistics on how much of the calories fed to cows in total in the US or worldwide is actually grazing and how much is from crops that need extra area apart from where the animals graze. Even cattle that grazes is often supplemented with grain, and the grain is of course much more calorie-dense. The world wide land area for farming would reduce from 4 to 1 billion hectares if we didn't use l…

[deleted]

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

#215

Post by whimsicalism »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #211
whimsicalism wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Resource intensity is decreasing. We can solve both at the same time, but we can’t solve both with maximum possible speed at the same time, true.

Resource intensity may or may not be decreasing but that's not solving the issue if you look at global numbers of poor people versus economic and consumption growth needed to bring everyone to, say, European level of living standard. We are already wreacking havoc on the planet and marginal decrease in resource intensity is not going to make a difference because our total impact needs to be slashed . I never understa…

> marginal decrease in resource intensity

We're seeing more than simply marginal decreases - if we can successfully transition our power. The gap in per capita CO2 emissions between developing, middle-income, developed is not nearly as great as what you are suggesting [0] and will decrease even further in the time that it takes to raise people in poverty now to developed-world standards.

> I never understand the insistence of some of ignoring population in the equation, which is the key parameter.

A few reasons: 1. Population is projected to peak in the coming decades. 2. "Slashing" population counts requires a global deployment of force that is both not practically feasible right now and incredibly unpopular. There is no practical path to "slashing" population. This is the primary reason, imo. 3. People in the West always imagine that it would be other people/nations slashing their population count when the biggest marginal impact (especially given climate lags) would be slashing their own population. These solutions are eugenicist in nature.

Also - taking a step back for a moment, I am confused as to how this in any way justifies beef. Beef contributes to the gap between rich and poor in CO2. If we reduce reliance on beef, it means we can support a larger population sustainably?

[0]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?t...

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

#216

Post by righthand »

mistrial9 wrote: post #164
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?

ask the chain burger fast-food companies.. they buy it

Who buys the chain burgers fast-food companies burgers?

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

#217

Post by zackmorris »

wil421 wrote: post #201
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?

Because it’s cheaper for Mc’Donalds and Burger King but probably not for the average consumer. Grocery store beef quality has gone down after Covid except Prime grade and local butchers $$$.

For context, I've known that McDonald's uses rain forest beef since the mid-1980s when my dad first told me about it. I thought they stopped that for a while, but nope:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-30/mcdonald-...

Nothing has been done to stop it because of a number of cultural problems: 1) Americans love beef: "why would I eat what food eats?" 2) America could stop all conflict around the world, from deforestation to war to civil rights abuses, if that wasn't directly at odds with the appetites of our capitalist empire and 3) scarcity mindset for survival has so dominated the Global South for so long that nature is seen as a resource to be exploited, far below even the dignity of human life, due to unrelenting debt pressure from the IMF to create a wage slave class for harvesting cash crops and labor/resource-intensive commodities like beef.

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

#218

Post by righthand »

augusto-moura wrote: post #190
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 ra…

Doubtful that the mass ranched cattle is raised to the same quality standards as in America, especially if they know their beef is going to fast food. Ex. Grass fed, hormone-free

Also I understand what the article points out about illegal ranches supplying corporations but Who eats the food from the food chains?

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

#219

Post by righthand »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #212
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?

How would you even know where it came from?

Why would you continue when you found out?

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

#220

Post by adolph »

throwup238 wrote: post #184
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.

> 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…

I'm not here to police tone, but it sounded like you were disagreeing with the parent comment but your factual claims do not appear to disagree.

>> typically only spend about 2-3 months there after having very happy lives as calves on a ranch.

> 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.

The only difference is the introduction of "sent to “background” on pasture" which arguably is not different from "happy lives as calves on a ranch" given different interpretations of calf to distinguish between baby and adolescent cattle.

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