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
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.
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.
I’m not arguing that we should eat animal feed, but rather use that land to grow food for humans
we already do that. for instance, soybeans. over 80% of the global soy crop is pressed for oil for human use, but then the industrial waste is fed to livestock.
It’s funny how nowadays when a cow eats what is naturally supposed to eat we charge double price for it and consider it some specialty. It’s no wonder they have to jack them up with hormones.
cows mostly eat grass. the grain finish is just to fatten em up
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.
So we shouldn’t reduce the problem on one front because we can’t get rid of the impact completely?
Without agriculture we would all starve, you can’t say the same for beef.
Why not reduce the damage that agriculture causes AND reduce the impact and scale of beef production?
All I hear is excuses to keep eating factory-farmed hormone-laden beef.
I literally never said this. You are saying it.
I literally never said this either. You’re pulling this out of your ass.
There is nothing wrong with pointing out the flaws of current day agriculture. Sounds like you just want to argue and you’re injecting your own dialogue to accomplish that.