I heard something to do with Nitrogen and …cow farts(?) I am really unsure of this and would like to learn more.
Answer -
4 Parts
- Ethical reason for consuming animals
- Methane produced by cows are a harmful greenhouse gas which is contributing to our current climate crisis
- Health Reasons - there is convincing evidence that processed meats cause cancer
- it takes a lot more calories of plant food to produce the calories we would consume from the meat.
Details about the answers are in the comments
The basic problem is that to get 1000 calories of beef, you need to feed the cow something like 10,000 calories. So growing a cow is actually growing an entire field of wheat/corn/etc., then feeding it to the cow, then eating the cow.
Farming all of those crops for the animals takes up a lot of land, consumes fresh water, produces wastes, and uses oil/gas (for farm equipment directly, or to produce things like nitrogen fertilizers) which produces co2. Cows also produce methane (that’s the fart thing) which is a bad greenhouse gas.
You could just eat the wheat/corn/etc. directly (most of the time) and skip the meat step therefore saving a massive amount of environmental impact.
Meat sure is tasty though.
I remember driving through Iowa and seeing vast fields of corn and learning that the majority of that corn was not even destined for human consumption. That kinda blew my mind.
You wanna know another fact? Not all corn can be consumed by humans. There is actually corn that can only be eaten by animals like cows.
But growing a cow that eats the grasses makes it for I get the meat and the vegetables all at once and it tastes great /s
Plus is the fact that not all plants have the right amount of vitamins and minerals necessary to maintain the human body like meat does. Although it is possible, it does require research and monitoring to ensure that your getting all the nutrients you need. And yes, meat just tastes good.
What kind of bullshit are you peddling?
If you’re discussing complete proteins then all it takes is rice and beans. Not particularly difficult given that about half the world population survives on that without much meat.
Your edit is actually missing the biggest reason–all the energy and water it takes to raise the meat. It’s just not sustainable.
A lot more water to make the food for cows than what humans consume.
A lot more food to feed a cow than what it would take to feed the human the same type of food.
And the growth of that food to keep feeding these animals in large batch is pretty much creating dead areas of land that gets ruined if it’s not carefully monitored. And the run off into the water supply is a problem. This is why industrial level of farming is really really bad for the environment.
You’re supposed to move cattle around in pastures for regrowth and not entirely decimate it. The capitalists do not care about that until a court summons tells them to care about that.
Currently there’s some better methods however the consumption stays high.
Health wise : all meat diets (meat at every meal) can produce issues in your body.
Cured meat or heavy salted meat can lead to heart issues and kidney stones.
You should mix in some fruit and vegetables and maybe even substitute some entire meals so that meat is consumed only a few times a week if only for your body’s sake. Your taste buds aren’t the same organ as your heart. They aren’t the organs that make your body stay alive.
The core issue is soil quality. Without sufficient organic content in the soil, all our food, whether it be plant or meat, has drastically reduced nutritional content meaning we need to consume more for the same effect. We’re heading for a global food shortage because of the one key issue. Healthy soil also sequesters an enormous amount of carbon from the atmosphere. So instead of fighting the beef vs tofu wars, we should be focusing on encouraging agricultural practices that enrich soil rather than destroy it. We have about 50 years of crop cycles left before the majority of arable earth turns to sand.
Shifting your diet to be more plant-based is a good idea, but it’s not the crux of the issue.
I think everything has been addressed. I just wanted to clarify that the methane is from cow burps, not farts.
One other thing I think is worth mentioning: meat is good, but it’s not even that good. As a child I was a very picky eater and largely carnivorous, having to purposefully supplement the occasional vegetable. Now I’m essentially pescatarian because honestly, most meat isn’t really good. It can be low quality, bland, and boring. Innovative chefs seem to be realizing that, and I personally agree that Eleven Madison’s food is better now that it’s fully plant based.
Meat can be such a crutch, and when it’s not, it requires quality cuts and good preparation. And yet many people would rather eat a tough, poorly seasoned mediocre steak than a vegan dish, even if it’s genuinely a bad experience, but I’m pretty sure it’s a misplaced pride thing.
Finally, working with meat can be a lot harder than vegetables, especially chicken. Dominique Crenn has a wonderful cookbook featuring incredible plant based dishes, and of course Atelier Crenn is one of the most convincing arguments of plant superiority.
I find that, for those who simply don’t care about the world around them, an appeal to taste and ease is far more effective than trying to introduce humanity. It also prevents the knee jerk reaction to plant based diets— “sure, I like my meats too, but it’s just too boring/doesn’t taste good enough” shifts the discussion from tribalistic hatred of vegans to something that directly impacts them, largely the only way to actually get some people to listen.
Because the amount of resources required to raise the livestock required to support the free market of meat is unsustainable. Also the impact of all that livestock is a huge contributor to climate change. So besides the moral argument of it being wrong to eat another living beings there is a very real danger to ourselves in the future.
Feeding cows takes up a lot of land, which often requires deforestation.
because you have to kill a living thing for it
I swear there was another reason why the practice was considered bad. Something about nitrogen and sustainability. I never really understood that part, hence the question.
Because it’s speciesism. If we started giving birth to humans to eat them, that would be absolutely outrageous, but to do that to animals seems perfectly fine to most people. Animals have the same desire as we do not to be killed or abused, and to live a happy life.
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It is indeed about morality. Morality is about what is “good” and “bad”, so it’s perfectly in line with OP’s question “why is the consumption of meat considered bad”.
Religions have arbitrary morality so it doesn’t seem very interesting to discuss why these religions allow or forbid to eat their specific set of animals, unless you’re studying these religions.
Moral philosophy on the contrary tries to study morality with real arguments. In almost all cases they agree it’s bad to harm others while it’s not necessary. Even with our intuitive morality most people would agree with that. And in most cases eating animals products contributes to harming them and is not necessary. It was not necessarily the case in the past, but today it is. So eating animal products nowadays is immoral.
The environmental problems only adds additional harms on top of that by causing harms to even more animals, including humans.
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In your example the “bad weather” means “bad for me/us” (a farmer would probably disagree, for example, as would some animals). Indeed morality is about what’s “bad to others” or to everyone. But since OP didn’t specify to whom, I considered it meant “bad in general”, for the one eating and for the others.
OP included “Ethical reason for consuming animals” in the accepted answer, so answering about morality doesn’t seem wrong.
There is a lot of waste from the agricultural process that needs to be considered as well, like fertilizer run off into rivers, etc.
Which applies even more to meat production. You have to grow massive amounts to feed livestock, more than if we just grew and ate the food directly.
Exactly my point. We can’t just look at the meat. We have to look at the entire process.
Even if we stopped eating meat agriculture in its own right is a big problem.
If we stopped eating meat we’d have to grow a lot more crops to make up for it which will only cause other problems instead of fixing the root cause.
If we stopped eating meat we would have 50% more land for farming human food than we currently do (we currently use 33% of cropland for feed alone). Raising cattle is not efficient at all, it is a waste of energy and land and water.
It’s not like the land we used to grow the feed we’ll just evaporate. This is why so much lobbying has gone into pushing the narrative that we all need to eat a ton of red meat.
I am not disagreeing. My whole point is that agriculture in itself is a problem. Simply getting off meat doesn’t solve the problem.
We need a way to make agriculture not so wasteful and damaging to the environment. Cutting out meat reduces the need for agriculture but doesn’t eliminate it. As long as agriculture is around we will be destroying our environment.
Downvote me all you want.
IMO what’s bad is not meat consumption itself, which we were able to do sustainably for millennia and it was never really a problem. The problem is that now you’re getting too much of it way too easily. Eating too much meat is a problem because it perpetuates demand for unethical mass-production of meat and livestock are made to suffer as a direct result.
Take a look at the global human population chart over the last few millenia. Things can seem sustainable when there are a million people on the planet. When there are 8 billion things are a bit different.
I think humans are the fucking biggest problem on this planet, not cows
For the methane issue. Apparently adding seaweed to their feed reduces that by up to 82%:
It would be such a small but significant thing to pass a law requiring adding seaweed to their feed. Even if they passed the cost on, it would raise the price of meat insignificantly. It’s crazy that we haven’t done it yet. Same with making new roofs white to reflect light instead of absorbing it.
EVEN at 18% it’s way too fucking high
I guess my only follow up would be that if we reduce our meat consumption to a more sustainable level, that would mean that we would have to replace our protein source with something more sustainable.
Seafood maybe out of the question as I hear concerns about overfishing as it is.
I would assume that would leave plant protein, like Peanuts or something similar. Are there other sources of protein that are in development (Also major assumption that Beyond and those other meats are also based on the plant protein)
Beans dude. They’re good and good for you. Also lentils are great
We do not mention beans lightly here…
DID SOMEONE SAY BEANS?
Meat is actually not a good source of protein compared to plant proteins. Meat was a good way of turning stuff we couldn’t eat into stuff we can, but now they just feed livestock grains anyways.
Lentils have waaaayyyyyy more protein to weight.
Lentils have waaaayyyyyy more protein to weight.
I’m not sure I understand you correctly, but lentils have ~20g protein per 100g while chicken has ~50g. Do you mean compared to grains?
Everything I can find says that lentils have waaaayyyy more protein. Maybe it’s the difference between cooked and dry? The water is going to add a lot of weight and zilch protein.
Can you post a source? I’d like to believe this but it seems incorrect considering the protein content I googled.
people have lots of different reasons. some don’t like the idea of killing a big animal with feelings and expressiveness. some because of how farms abuse or torture animals in some countries. some think Anibal farming is worse for the environment. some have religious prohibitions. some think it’s bad for your health. some people don’t like the taste or can’t afford it but don’t want people to think they are weird so they tell people they have a principled argument for it.
