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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

#91

Post by lukas099 »

BoingBoomTschak wrote: post #37
emptysongglass wrote: post #19

Earlier 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…

Ah yes, might makes right, the pinnacle of moral thinking…

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

#92

Post by asoneth »

quonn wrote: post #48
emptysongglass wrote: post #19

Earlier 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?

Most of the human suffering in this concept comes from being able to think, compare and ideas about the good life and then those thoughts create the suffering. The actual physical suffering is limited, although present. Cows can‘t do that and don‘t have the point of reference to compare. I doubt even humans could unless they are raised to be taught all the cultural norms and what‘s good and bad.

> Cows can‘t do that and don‘t have the point of reference to compare. I doubt even humans could unless they are raised to be taught all the cultural norms and what‘s good and bad.

By that logic, would it be ethical to eat humans who do not have a point of reference to compare and have not been taught cultural norms and what's good and bad?

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

#93

Post by cogman10 »

SkyBelow wrote: post #83
cogman10 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

Totally agree. And I don't fault people for taking such a position about livestock, it's not unreasonable. I don't land there myself but can see why others would.

It really just comes down to definitions.

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

#94

Post by walthamstow »

cogman10 wrote: post #61
ljf wrote: post #34

I 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/…

Money is speech, but photos are not apparently

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

#95

Post by rmbyrro »

_3u10 wrote: post #18
willcipriano wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read the first one. The second has a lot of spin that is obvious once you have the context from the first article. The entire planet is greener. Everywhere. The planting did little. > Results showed that carbon dioxide fertilization explains 70 percent of the greening effect One of those Inconvenient Truths.

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.

If the Amazon was in the US or Europe, there'd be nothing left of it today.

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

#96

Post by mtnGoat »

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #69
saintfire wrote: post #63

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

It’s simple… harvesting more than the population you are hunting can sustain. A lot of animals outside or deer are regulated through a lottery system, if everyone who wanted to hunt a bear, mountain goat, or cougar did every year, we’d have none.

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

#97

Post by debacle »

cogman10 wrote: post #74
jonahbenton wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell that to your genetic predecessors.

Turns out the model of the primarily meat eating ancestors may be wrong. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... Which sort of makes sense when you consider our closest relatives are primarily plant eaters.

If 30% of what they ate was meat, then roughly 3/5ths of their caloric intake was meat. And as the study you posted states, they were eating mammals not fish or birds.

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

#98

Post by lukas099 »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #62
emptysongglass wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is nothing wrong with eating meat and breeding cattle. You're not doing a whole lot to explain why there is nothing wrong with eating meat and breeding cattle. I can think of a whole host of reasons why it is wrong in matters of ethics and mercy. Who is there to advocate for the cow? We know cows feel a gamut of emotions just as we do. They are not insensate. Most humans, when given a knife or a captive bolt…

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'.

We are omnivores and we have plentiful sources of plant nutrition. Eating meat is mot necessary for either health or happiness, and any appeal to it being “natural”, even if true (primitive human diets varied enormously) is irrelevant.

One could argue that meat eating is necessary for taking part on some people’s culture, which is true, but also shifting. And spreading the idea of vegetarianism is helpful in making that shift happen.

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

#100

Post by [deleted] »

jdietrich wrote: post #46
mytailorisrich wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an uneeded "optimisation". There is nothing wrong with eating meat and breeding cattle. Again, the issue is that the environment has a limited, finite capacity, which we exceed when we are 10 billion with good standards of living. To reduce quality of life (because it's not limited to meat, it's comprehensive restrictions) simply to accomodate ever more humans on the planet is madness and unsustainable, anyway…

If you think there are too many people, remember that you are people.

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