Interesting! I recently had gator jerky I enjoyed. I'm not one of those "off-put" by what animal meat comes from. But I often want to know why I should try it. As you can see in my other replies, I'm a foodie and I like to truly understand what goes into the food I consume both literally and figuratively. To the extent I learned how to distill my own whiskey when I learned it was legal/decriminalized where I live.
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I’ll admit I’ve never had a single steak that was more than $30 uncooked, I simply do not have the disposable income to justify spending $120 on a single meal, so I’m not really sure what I’m missing out on there.
Luxury food has a logarithmic value increase. A $120 steak is as much better than a $60 steak as a $60 is than a $30, and so on. Compare the best steak you've had (about $30?) to the worst steak you've had (about $15?). A $60 is that much better than the $30, so a diminishing return. A $120 steak is that much better than the $60. It's incredible, but not something you would want to eat every day even if you were wealthy.
I love meat in other contexts, but I’m not super into it on its own if it’s lightly seasoned
That's understandable. We cannot know how much is simply different tastes or how much is the quality you have never tried.
I have had steak from a local grass fed farm (Vermont), which, I have to imagine, was a very high quality piece of meat
I, too, am from New England. There's a lot of gamey cattle around in the grass-fed world for some reason. I would wager what you had is better than some, still. Anything is better than frozen stuff that came out of a warehouse.
It was good, but… Overall, I found the complexity of flavor to be lacking, as I do with any lightly seasoned meat
Interesting. You talk about steak the way so many people I know talk about Scotch. An A-B test could perhaps be a world-changer to you. That said, steak flavor is a little simpler in general. Expensive steak is usually more about texture, the balance of umami, and what flavor profile the cut has shining enough that you can tell the cut on taste alone. A good filet mignon has this tendency to melt in your mouth just a bit, like a marshmallow. No fat, no veins, no inconsistency in its silky texture. A good prime rib could be tougher, because there's that specific flavor you look for in the middle, and that specific marbling on the sides where you get these crunchy bacon-like ends sandwiched between paper-thin layers of fat, so thin as to not be off-putting to eat generously. The people I know who swear by Rib-Eye will drive 100 miles and pay $100 for the top tier rib-eye. I'm not a Rib-Eye guy, so as much as I enjoy it, I can't speak for it quite so well.
For me, a regular old steak can’t compare with heavily seasoned and flavored meat like BBQ pulled pork
That's understandable. And I can imagine BBQ Pulled Cauliflour (or whatever) is a closer match to BBQ Pulled Pork than any vegan dish is to the meat dishes I like. My favorite pulled pork is marinated lightly in wine, so you're still tasting pork first, not some BBQ. We have a local meal in my area called cacoila, and it's both amazing with the spices supplementing the meat... and dirt cheap.
I feel like you’re doing the thing you premptively accused me of wanting to do.
I disagree. You're bringing up those same other issues "in the context of land use" and I'm trying to respond as best I can while sticking to land use.
You’ve put forward an arbitrary unsourced number asserting that 2/3 of the land used for animal agriculture is otherwise useless for food production
Are you saying you contest the 2/3 number straight out? Because your previous reply seemed to be trying to gather ammo to object to it with supplemental data.
with the implication that we would need to use more high quality land to meet human food needs
I actually didn't make that implication. As "it's ok to keep eating meat" is the defacto winner, I'm simply pointing out that anti-meat advocacy has not resolved the marginal land issue with their land use objections.
That number is undiscussable until you can actually demonstrate to me how you’re arriving at it
Alright. So is your position that there is no such thing as marginal use land, or that there exist no cows on it? If we "undiscuss" that number for a moment, are you willing to concede the only point I made - that livestock on marginal use land is perfectly fine from an environmental point of view?
We can’t have a discussion if you’re asking me to work out the specifics of your claim and then disprove them, you have to actually make a specific claim.
My claim is that the vegan argument on marginal land hasn't defended their claim. I have argued that claim, and you're harping on a number you both believe enough to try to argue around and disbelieve enough to pretend it's impossible to discuss marginal land use without me somehow proving the number is exactly correct.
Does the 2/3 number matter to you, or doesn't it? Do you believe it, or don't you? If the former, maybe we can have a discussion on exactly how we can determine how much livestock is on marginal land. If the latter, perhaps we can focus on whether livestock on marginal land is horrible for the environment or not.
Getting into the weeds on the details of soy and hashing over the whole by/co product
I really didn't. You made the claim that soy represents secondary land use, one I took seriously enough to reply while pointing out how the reply can lead to tangents, so we can stick to the argument. ANOTHER person, in response to me (and maybe you) provided far more tangential, but effective, an argument against you, but I am not that person.
So please, make that claim
Which claim are you asking me to make now? Can we finish the claim "vegans haven't proven that livestock on marginal land is terrible for the environment" first?
Wouldn’t both of those scenarios be better outcomes than a meat eater that doesn’t care about reducing their carbon contributions at all?
Better outcomes in terms of what? If we only focus on the environment, then the only thing that matters is total environmental impact. While intelligently choosing your foods may reduce the environmental impact of your diet, naively reducing meat eating alone simply doesn't.
Disagreeing only slightly with Dr. Hannah Ritchie from OurWorldInData (steelmanning the less-meat side IMO), transport arguably counts for J>7% of the environmental impact of food, so eating locally-sourced chicken every day is clearly better than ordering out from the vegan joint every day, especially after accounting for the caloric quality.
I asked the previous commentor for takes on the specific scenario to start to depolarize her position. Many vegans here have this polar position, and won't stand beside me as an environmental advocate because I don't agree with them on quitting meat being a necessary or even good environmental decision. Challenging her with the decision of what's environmentally right and what's "morally right" (to her) is a form of deprogramming. It usually fails especially online, but I still do it.
You perhaps can see why it is important to help give and get context from people in that situation?
The strongest environmental advocates I know are small-town farmers in rural-but-liberal areas. But approximately zero of them are vegans. I still want them fighting for the environment.
EDIT: I saw your update. The irony is that your graph comes from the same article I was referring to myself. There is an argument in the vacuum if you focus on beef-herd and lamb only (but you have to understand those are world averages and the methane production from cattle in most countries is a lot lower than that number)... but I'd like to point out that 1kg of poultry is simply a superior food product to 1kg of rice. Eggs are arguably the perfect food for those not allergic to them (like me). Replacing many crops with egg-laying chickens is a no-brainer from that graph (and sorry, but you DO get some chicken meat in every egg coop if you're being efficient).
That does introduce a significant conflict of interest in regard to research, though.
I disagree because their research is largely about improving sustainability, not about proving to vegans (who will never win anyway if we're honest) that meat is okay.
The meat industry is not going to advocate for its own demise
For that to be meaningful to a discussion about UC Davis' research, there needs to be a meaningful possibility that humanity is doomed without everyone going vegan. No matter how we coerce numbers, that's simply not the reality. If and when there is reputable research showing that meat is unsalvageable, then we can start the hard discussions. Until then, the idea that the industry that most benefits from research would be unable to ethically fund said research is just silly. Please check out the chain that led to an essay from one of the senior researchers of UC Davis' CLEAR center for more context.
if that portion of the institution is dependent on the industry liking what the research is saying
None of UC Davis is dependent upon the meat industry. They receive some funding for some of their research from it. Because sustainability means lower cost and the meat industry likes lower cost. It's the same reason solar has started to win in the business sector. Better environment is good business. Yes, if there's a secret gotcha where the 1 millionth cow will suddenly explode with anthrax, there might be an argument. But despite some mild disagreements with "how much GHG is bad", there's not really much to criticize them for. And as a reminder, ALL food sources hit the environment in various ways, and many plants do the same worse than many animals. There's no smoking gun, so I would be incredibly hesitant to disqualify reputable science over it.
Any study that is funded by the same people befitting from a positive outcome doesn’t mean its bunk, but it should automatically, at the very least, be viewed with a highly critical and skeptical eye.
What about studies paid for largely by sustainability groups, but backed by businesses because the outcome isn't "positive" as much as "here's how you can reduce the methane impact of your livestock allowing you to efficiently scale your operations and produce more food for less money"? You can understand why the latter, far more common in research, is worth it to everyone.
As someone who grew up eating meat, and still eats meat for various reasons (though I’m trying to cut down), I’m not sure I agree with that statement.
I recently has a $120 filet from a premium steakhouse for a special occasion. I'm sorry, but in my lifetime of being an "try anything" foodie I've never tried a meatless dish that comes within $3-40 of creating a food experience worth that much money to me, and that includes some stuff created by amazing Indian or Lebanese chefs (where I got the best meatless food I've ever eaten).
And here's the thing. I can make that filet. If I hit a butcher and get a prime cut of angus filet, toss it on the grill, I can have that $120 filet in front of me. I went through part of a culinary degree, and my wife comes from incredible restauranteurs of two cultures. If I were to dream of coming up with a $120 non-meat meal, it would require such an immense amount of expertise and skill. That $120 filet I could have mostly managed wiith none of the experience I have since picked up.
Beef (the most environmentally unfriendly meat) is far and away more expensive than vegan or vegetarian substitute ingredients
On beef, I lean to the simplicity. You're right about the price, but a good steak is worth the price in terms of enjoyment. At least to this foodie.
All meat, at least without any seasoning, I personally find pretty darn bland
I wouldn't call a little salt and pepper complicated. Would you? I wouldn't ever put more than that on a quality cut of beef. Compare that meat prep with, say, falafel.
A good head-to-head was creating meat toppings and creating veggie toppings. The fanciest meat topping I created was a delicious liver pate. Prep took me about 20 minutes. My wife's family has a meat-based cheeseball recipe that's about 30 minutes. Both are amazing. Compare to the excuisite mustardas and chutneys I've made, and the effort difference is an order of magnitude. For me, I'm talking hours of work, sauteing each ingredient and letting it cook down carefully to maximize flavor. And the latter start requiring more and more pricy specialized ingredients. Liver for pate is dirt cheap around here, and devilled ham (cheeseball) is pretty cheap, too. My chutney required specific harder-to-find breeds of fruit.
From your explanation of meat, I think it's clear you're not a huge fan of meat in general or that you've often been stuck with bad cuts of meat. The way you described meat "absorbing other flavors" is the one thing we were taught in culinary school you never do with your protein. In French Style cooking at least, your protein is your star - it's the most important part of the dish, and it's the one thing whose flavor should SHINE. Properly cooked duck is perhaps the perfect example of that. Duck L'orange is one of my favorite dishes, but the orange sauce needs to be on it sparingly because the point of the dish is that amazing and irreplacable flavor of Duck. The orange is like a stairway to get the duck from "great" to "life-changing"
My wife puts it this way with scallops (the scallop industry is in our family, sorry). If you want to buy scallops somewhere far from the ocean, you buy fried scallops because the scallop is basically ruined and you're just trying to get a hint of the flavor you like and drowning it in flavors that are palatable. If you eat a scallop off the boat, you pan-sear it with a pad of butter and some crushed cracker crumbs for about 2 minutes.
BUT, I tried some premade frozen impossible patties from costco, and I couldn’t believe how delicious they were
I didn't love Impossible. But I like my food elevated. I will agree that Impossible compares favorably to a "Applebees" burger, but I haven't eaten at Applebees in 5+ years. If I compare it instead to some fresh 80/20 from the butcher, mixed with a little bit of pork, it's a different world.
I'll agree the best fake meats can beat the worst real meats. I don't think that's a concession for someone who teaches himself to cook things because he thinks good food is worth the effort.
You know who opposes livestock subsidies? Cattle ranchers. You know why? Because they pay for most of them.
A lot of people don't realize what's up with the livestock subsidies, and just treat them as a boogeyman. The biggest monsters are usually the feed subsidy and the LIP. The LIP is just like FEMA for food, and it applies to all farms to prevent disasters cutting off our food supply. The feed subsidy, otoh, is truly a monster. It's mostly funded by a tax levied on farmers when they put their livestock up for wholesale. Think of it as an "origination fee" or a VAT tax. For red tape reasons, virtually all of it goes to providing discounted or free feed to a few large corporations. You know, like Tyson.
Ask any farmer who owns a few cows. Killing the feed subsidy would be a massive windfall for local animal agriculture.
Of course, since they're the ones paying for it, people who discover it's not really hitting their own tax dollars stop complaining about it and that's why it never changes.
I mean, if we're looking at the graphs, beef really is the only "offender" (if you can call it that) and only in the current consumed amounts. If people ate a lot more chicken and less beef, the GHG effect from animals would be lower than the same number 500 years ago due to animal population culling and advancements in agricultural methane reduction.
At that point, the term "negligible effect" becomes unreasonably harsh. Even with the worst claims against the effect of livestock on the environment (many of which we might not see eye to eye on), it's simply objectively not an environmental issue if people are eating chicken and some pork as their staple proteins. You can call it an animal rights issue if you want. Considering chicken is almost objectively a correct and healthy food to eat, two thirds of the diet triforce (health, environment, animal rights) become non-issues.
And the cool thing, even if I disagree with the outcomes it's healthier for us to eat a bit less red meat as long as our meat protein intake stays reasonable from white meat and seafood.
What's the impact, if any, of any of these crops/livestock in non-water-short areas? Do other areas thousands of miles away cannibalize excess water if available to prevent draught, or are these numbers sometimes meaningless in the medium-term?
And don’t neglect the disease factor. Recent research shows that stressed animals (both human and non-human) have weakened immune systems. And as you might expect farmed animals are stressed in high numbers
Good news. Much of the livestock industry is incredibly incentivized to keep livestock stress levels down because it is the cheapest way to include meat quality and (as you say) keep disease down.
Diseases in non-human animals sometimes jumps to humans. There would be substantial overlap between climate activists and those valuing safety from pandemics
Couldn't agree more. Nobody with a brain is trying to deregulate the agricultural industry.
Thank god I'm not the only one. But then, I think there's more of us than people want to admit.
My local farm gives crop waste and fallow hay to my local ranch, who feeds it to cows and gives the manure to my local farm. When there was an illness and cow population needed to be culled, they burned the crop waste instead. But consistently I'm told I don't get to stay on the eco team because I eat meat and apparently burning corn is better than eating poor cute Bessie.
There's a lot of environmental protection degree-holders in my area thanks to several local colleges. There's also a lot of vegans. They're different people.
What's your take on a meat eater with a net-zero or net-negative carbon footprint? The same? What about a vegan that has to drive to work and can't quite get their carbon footprint to zero? Which one is better, the climate-hurting vegan or the climate-helping non-vegan?
Obvious solution is to start hunting if you want to eat meat.
While I disagree with the overall sentiment of the parent article, I'm 100% on board with your solution. In my area, deer are constantly overpopulated (unlike in your area), and it leads to starvation in the worst possible way. Predator populations skyrocket, kill off the excess deer, and then terrorize areas as they starve out.
If I had land in any of those areas, I'd take you up on it. I'd love to have the opportunity to do good and eat for a year.
I think you overestimate many of the people fighting on the vegan side of arguments these days ;)
And I mean that only half tongue-in-cheek. Too often, people who should be smart enough to know better put on blinders because "I love animals and don't want you eating them" mashes up with "what's actually good or bad for the environment and climate"
We absolutely should be making improvements to farming to continue to scale. Unlimited amounts of chicken or pork are indefinitely sustainable at the low-low price of perhaps making animal treatment vs climate decisions that might be difficult for some. I swear they hold on to the whole vegan thing because sometimes the most climate-friendly choice is a little less humane-seeming to some people.
Thank you :)
I always like fact backup in response to zealous vegan nonsense. I wonder if any of them will notice/read since you replied to me. I thikn they're tunnel-vision on me at this point.
Though, you might or might not have realized that in your reply to me, you quoted things I had previously quoted from another person. You're on my side (and I'm cool with that).
I answered how I would say that by actually describing my criticisms in some detail.
Grazing is terrible for the environment
Why do you say this?
and crops are specifically grown as animal feed
Generally speaking, this is untrue. A small number of crops are grown as animal feed, but it's a waste of money to grow human edible crops for a majority of the animal feed cycle. As I said above, 86% of animal feed is inedible to humans, and a majority of the remaining 14% are dead calories.
It wouldn’t be destroyed or burned because it wouldn’t be grown at all
I guarantee nobody is backing off on growing corn, wheat, rice, or soy right now, even if we suddenly stopped letting anyone eat meat.
Additionally there are plenty of other uses for inedible plant waste other than feeding to animals
Are there? Care to cite which uses exist for feed that are better than the efficient process of using livestock to create some of the objectively highest-quality human-edible calories that exist in nature?
A magic number is just slang for a number which has no obvious reason for its value.
Which number is a magic number to you? I thought I was clear in asking that question.
It seems obviously false to me when we factor in the land used for their food production
I'm not sure what you're saying here. Cattle and most livestock can graze on marginal land. What land would be used for food production? Here's the land-use breakdown.
Like ~75% of the world’s soy is grown for animal feed https://ourworldindata.org/soy
That's not an accurate statement to the reference. 75% of soy crop is fed to animals. That's a very different reality. It still jives with the 86% of feed that is human inedible. How? Because a high percent of the soybean crop is inedible to humans, and there's been a huge influx (your link agrees) in demand for soy products in general. That soy waste a cheap option for feed. The alternative is burning..... but we cannot continue down this line without dropping the land use topic. 100% of the marginal use livestock diet COULD come from the marginal land. If we didn't need to get rid of this other stuff anyway.
What? How are you comparing me to flat earth, far right, and antivax for criticizing your one source in the original comment?
You attacked education in general, based entirely specialized view of a subset of its funding, and not based on the content of its research.
And I’m not sure why you’re bringing up the ASI, which as far as I can tell isn’t related to the CLEAR Center other than being based at the same college.
As I mentioned, I couldn't see much of the article. I only know where much of the research comes from, and that UC Davis is a reputable institution. I should have figured I'd get the wrong UC Davis department. CLEAR center has the same situation going for it, however. It's primarily funded by organizations who objectively care about sustainability, but as expected some of its funding comes from the industries that profit from its discoveries.
Here's the profile of the person being attacked by Mr. Hayek. He's an air quality specialist by background. Here's a fairly nuanced essay from him about this very topic. He actually agrees with some of the criticisms of private funding in research in general, but also points out that it's important to know why and how much financial interest is being provided. The CLEAR center, apparently, gets a lot more public money than most sustainability initiatives.
As he says in his penultimate line: "I welcome anyone to scrutinize our work; it stands on its own merits. In the meantime, my motivations are clear: to feed a growing world and to work with all stakeholders to ensure that we can do so without destroying our planet."
As you quote:
Almost everything that I’ve seen from Dr. Mitloehner’s communications has downplayed every impact of livestock
I do not get that conclusion from what I've read of him. I'm sorry, I just don't. Yes, it's not fair that I say "the people I know who have been involved with him think he's on the up-and-up", but it's also hard to give weight to one person who simply disagrees with him on this issue.
And Mr. Hayek is the more honest response. I simply cannot find anything but unreasoned discussion in "However, the use of that method by an industry “as a way of justifying high current emissions is very inappropriate,” said Drew Shindell". Accurately calculating and reducing the effect of argricultural methane is valuable for its own sake, whether or not there are "high current emissions". Do you disagree? Do you think we should start throwing out the research because it leads to outcomes where we still have cattle? He's literally complaining about research he will not criticize the validity of. I'm sorry, I'm not ok with that.
The Clear Center’s argument also doesn’t account for the clearing of forests for cattle grazing, for example, or emissions from the production of cattle feed, Dr. Shindell said.
This is why I referred to the gishgallop elsewhere. I see no reason why anyone without an agenda would demand accounting for the clearing of forests in research about measuring and reducing the methane impact on cattle. UC Davis is not, as it would sound, releasing a bunch of studies with no purpose but to attack vegans. They are working on agricultural sustainability. If there's a real attack on all their research just being ignored for propaganda reasons, it would be the talk of all of science (again, like the antivaxers).
I'm sorry, but I trust in research and peer review, its outcomes, and its discoveries. It worked for cigarettes. It worked for global warming denial. And now it's starting to work against vegans, and vegans are getting scared.
Oh some people are trying.
Many of the rest are trying to coerce people into doing things. From a legal/ethical point of view, people typically consider that a form of a forcing.
And I can feel or not feel however I want, but the fact that you decided to bring up my feelings doesn't change facts.
Most importantly, I have clearly explained why the original comment was justified in using the word "shit" and a vegan would be justified in using the word "shit". Heaven forbid vegans are on the same plane of existence as we mere mortals. No, you're right. Vegans can use cuss words, but we non-vegans must bow and say "I understand that only vegetables taste good and that meat is horrible, but I eat meat because I like to feel guilty and want to burn in hell. Please judge me"
Or maybe the top comment really was justified in using the word "shit". Please leave your reddit at the door. You'll track in mud.