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
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.
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The point is that you can grow a plant based diet for a human for much less resource cost than you could for a cow.
Multiplied by the amount our current meat industry runs at and you get decimation of large swaths of lands, much higher emission of greenhouse gasses, etc…
animals are fed parts of plants that people can’t or won’t eat. all of the studies about the ecological impacts ignore this fact and then attribute the water used to produce, say, cotton to beef.
Source?
poore, nemecek 2018
Maybe I’m misunderstanding your argument- as that publication back what we are saying about the beef industry having a massive impact on the environment
read the methodology and you will see cottonseed is fed to cattle, and the water to grow that cotton is attributed to cows instead of the textile industry.
Except cows are primarily fed corn in the US.
Still not getting it- if the cottonseed is fed to the cows why do you think the water should be attributed to textiles?
Cottonseed fed to cows is obviously not going to be grown into cotton and used in textiles…
Also I can’t find mention of cottonseed at all in there.
~This is simply false. Cows are often fed all or nearly all corn diets.~
Only once they are on the feed lot, then they are fed usually 70-80% corn based diets.
animals are fed parts of plants that people can’t or won’t eat. all of the studies about the ecological impacts ignore this fact and then attribute the water used to produce, say, cotton to beef.
~This is false. Cows in the US are primarily fed corn. Not the can’t/won’t eat stuff.~
Edit: I am wrong. They said only fed about 8% human edible grain.
most cows eat mostly grass most of their lives. they also eat silage. and yes there is corn, but that’s not the bulk of any cows diet
Not in industrial farms. There is no grass there. They don’t bring hay.
It’s literally a sales pitch in the US to disambiguate corn fed and grass fed cattle.
you just don’t know what you’re talking about. cattle are raised in the field and then finished on feed lots.
grass fed just means that the cattle were only fed grass. but all cattle eat grass
Only until they are weaned. Then onto the feed lot they go and corn they eat.
so you are now admitting that literally all cattle eat grass, but trying to pretend your akshully still right. I guess plenty of toxicity flowed off of reddit.
You know what. I went and read more about it and you are right about the grass.
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95% of all cattle feed is corn in the US. Raised to 600lbs or so before being put on the feed lot. Finishing in this case can be the final 400-600lbs fed on 95% corn.
About 40% of all corn grown in the US is grown exclusively for feed nearly all of which is used within the US.
Is not the point of the argument when we’re taking about what humans shouldn’t eat. We can’t cater to wants anymore when growing percentage are starving.
Which is bullshit. We didn’t invent their diet. we substituted it. They might eat grass but we eat plenty of other green substitutes. The amount we consume of it doesn’t come close to their needs though.
cows eat mostly grass but, for instance, poultry are fed a lot of soy. that soy is usually (almost always) in the form of so-called “soy meal” or “soy cake”, but that is actually a waste product from pressing soybeans for oil. it would be industrial waste if we didn’t feed it to livestock.
Soy oil is only one form of oil that humans can use. One of many. none of this argues the points put forward. It still requires much more water than if we stuck to humans eating less meat. And it not even requiring for people to completely cut out meat. Which has more pros for both humans and cows than cons.