Very fair point, food supply chain are brittle! We saw that recently.
Of course the debate over the need for industrial meat farming is ongoing, and it involves complex trade-offs between efficiency, ethics, and environmental sustainability.
The latter is the kicker for me. I do care that we're building horror slaughterhouses for animals. But honestly not that much. I could live with that. What irks me it that it does not seems sustainable on the long run.
On a personal level I don't eat much meat. Like a handful of time a month? Mostly when I'm out. I don't buy meat when grocery shopping.
And when I do eat meat I either :
- kill the beat myself and then skin it. That happen less than once a year so it's anecdotal.
- Or it's hippie dippie meat raised close to where I live. You know, "pasture", "grass-fed" and all that shit.
I do use milk that is probably produce in detrimental ways to the cows and the environment. Maybe a gallon/month? To cook. I would love a better plug for milk.
I produce my own eggs, I'm blessed by a large yard and their is no city code. I think I could raise pigs nobody would care?
But that's just me.
At least I'm kinda opt-out of industrial meat? Still standing! But agreed: I'm a rich guy in a rich country, with too much time on my hands.
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To your point:
I can't find any data on the percentage of industrial meat in the US diet, compared to "hippie-dippie" meat. It's probably a staggering 90 to 10%. But I would love to find that data.
So, agreed. It looks scary to mess with that.
That being said:
I do think the way we were growing meat until ww2 is a decent way to do it. And that having less meat around would be just fine.
I get my protein from mostly plants. Yes it takes place to grow that too. But pigs, beef and chicken needs similar plants to be feed as well.
But correct. I can't prove that, it's anecdotal. And I know nothing about those subject for real :)
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> If you think you have a more humane technique that will produce meat just as efficiently, by all means, open a farm and use it.
Introducing Temple Grandin! She did it so much better than I could ever do. I'm a software guy, I can barely keep up with a food garden :)
Grandin produced lot of work geared toward exactly that,from within the industrial meat complex.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Grandin
She deserve some recognition. She proved that you can be less of a dick to your meat and actually have better yield
Her work is not theoretical, she consulted for Hormel, Cargill and Tyson. Those 3 might represent like, idk, 80% of meat production in the US? They were happy to adopt her recommendation.
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But the above is animal welfare. Again, I would be OK with immense suffering of tons of animals. ( really) I guess I'm not an emphat!
What I'm not ok in my personal book, is the risk that those concentration bring us. For our health, germ-wise, land-use wise, and all that jazz! It seems wise to tame it down. Eat more lentils, chickpeas and soy. That's all I'm saying.