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Tell that to your genetic predecessors.
"My predecessors did it" is not moral reasoning.
Tracking Illicit Brazilian Beef from the Amazon to Your Burger
81–90 of 295 posts
Re: Tracking Illicit Brazilian Beef from the Amazon to Your Burger
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's essentially what we do with cows. Do you see the hypocrisy? We don't inflict this on humans so why do it to other creatures which can know terror and pain just as we do?
Because empathy being applied to other species is an evolutionary bug, not a feature. Bug probably triggered by the luxurious abundance and the accompanying decadence acting on brains a bit too disconnected from the reality of the animal kingdom. And if you want intellectual justifications: because we're the apex predators and we do what we want when we want; that includes raising and eating beasts that are of no oth…
> Because empathy being applied to other species is an evolutionary bug, not a feature
I hope our eventual AI overlords do not feel similarly.
Re: Tracking Illicit Brazilian Beef from the Amazon to Your Burger
#83[flagged]
> There is no ethical meat Depends on your definition of ethical. Assuming you define it in terms of a lack of cruelty to the animals and their handlers then such meat does exist. However, the vast majority of meat is not that. The issue is it's cheaper to produce meat unethically than it is to produce it ethically. Because of that, at every step in the production to mouth there's a strong incentive to go the cheap r…
>a lack of cruelty
But doesn't this depend upon your definition of cruelty? I've seen vegans who define raising an animal for the purpose of eating it to be inherently cruel, even if it doesn't suffer any negative treatment until the day it is killed to be eaten.
Even this is just going with common enough definitions found in modern society. If we expand our scope of what ethics and what views of cruelty are allowed, there is no end to what results we see.
Re: Tracking Illicit Brazilian Beef from the Amazon to Your Burger
#84I grew up on a (very) small farm - so I knew where all the meat we ate (and eggs, apple, plums and jam) came from. One of the things I find most disconcerting as an adult is the disconnect with the food I eat. Even the local 'farmer butcher' - I don't actually know if the meat they sell me is what they say it is. I buy a lot of deer from a friend of a friend as it feels slightly more known to me - even if I have no i…
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/…
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Re: Tracking Illicit Brazilian Beef from the Amazon to Your Burger
#85Earlier 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 is extremely inefficient compared to plant-based food. We could sustain a far larger population with no loss in standards of living without it.
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Re: Tracking Illicit Brazilian Beef from the Amazon to Your Burger
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly, the US and Europe are free to reforest but choose not to for some unexplained reason. Brazilian beef is frankly way less deforested than anything from the U.S. or Europe. The three most forested countries in the world are Russia, Canada and Brazil in that order. In all honesty I’m perfectly fine with the bans / boycotts it keeps farmers here poor and beef cheap.
I agree with you on reforestation. As a matter of fact, Northern Europe was almost completely deforested only 100 years ago, and is now one of the greenest parts of the planet. Looking at old photographs from that time, you won't recognise places. It is disgusting listening to these Germans and French sitting on their high horses and trying to impose their will onto a country on the other side of the world, while not…
In Italy the amount of forest increased by about 75% in the past 80 years.
This is mostly due to the fact after WW2 lot of people stopped farming in the hills and mountains, and moved to urban areas. There are plenty of ghost towns in the Italian mountains.
[1] (link in Italian) https://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/in-italia-mai-cosi-tante-for...
Re: Tracking Illicit Brazilian Beef from the Amazon to Your Burger
#87I grew up on a (very) small farm - so I knew where all the meat we ate (and eggs, apple, plums and jam) came from. One of the things I find most disconcerting as an adult is the disconnect with the food I eat. Even the local 'farmer butcher' - I don't actually know if the meat they sell me is what they say it is. I buy a lot of deer from a friend of a friend as it feels slightly more known to me - even if I have no i…
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/…
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?
Re: Tracking Illicit Brazilian Beef from the Amazon to Your Burger
#88I grew up on a (very) small farm - so I knew where all the meat we ate (and eggs, apple, plums and jam) came from. One of the things I find most disconcerting as an adult is the disconnect with the food I eat. Even the local 'farmer butcher' - I don't actually know if the meat they sell me is what they say it is. I buy a lot of deer from a friend of a friend as it feels slightly more known to me - even if I have no i…
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.
Re: Tracking Illicit Brazilian Beef from the Amazon to Your Burger
#89[flagged]
No, there is no better protein
Re: Tracking Illicit Brazilian Beef from the Amazon to Your Burger
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
"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…
“Not suitable for crop farming” =/= “ecologically unimportant”