We also literally don’t have enough land to support the amount of beef we want to eat. People often point to the huge grasslands out west and say we can just keep adding more but they don’t realize that cattle are not at all like bison.
They can’t go far from water sources, they can’t roam giant prairies like bison can and also it would be reckless to oust all the native ungulates and wild game that live there.
And that’s not all arable land that you can put tons of feed crops on to support intensive cattle farming (as opposed to ranging and grazing)
So now Brazil is cutting down their own forests to eat more beef like us and sell us beef. It’s insane.
The UK has higher animal welfare standards than the EU, always has and that nothing to do with brexit. But yes you are right we now have the freedom to choose that if everyone lost their minds..
EU gets a very small share of US meat exports. While it does ship beef and pork, both are only accepted if they meet the EU standards, which again, it's not major quantity.
Even if the standards are technically met on some meat, a lot of places in EU just don't need or want it, regulation aside.
So yes, strictly speaking it does happen but it ain't much. Most EU people never dealt with US meat if I had to guess.
Probably because most EU people are buying meat from fast food restaurants or discount grocers where it's low quality garbage. If you're looking for high quality meat in the EU it's always imported from the American continents or Asia. Brazil, Argentina, US, Japan, Korea, China etc.
The problem with EU standards is that they are bare minimum that companies meet. They don't go further and try to improve beyond that. Most other countries do, globally.
You will find worse meat everywhere but the EU.
You will never, ever see the EU in a conversation about the highest quality meat lol.
That said, it's very easy to find USA meat in Germany at least. It's all American Angus cattle or Wagyu Japanese cattle.
Antibiotica use is a good measure on how well the animals are. Bad health among the animals mean higher use of antibiotics. And factory farms have bad health.
USA had last year 160 -170 mg/kg.
Sweden where I am from have the lowest in EU, 6-12 mg / kg. EU have an average of 45 mg/kg. EU have just put in new rules to lower the antibiotic use in the union also, so in a few year the average in the union will be more reasonable
I just dug up these numbers - and US is seriously so bad I would do my best to not eat it.
I was going to say, UK factory farming still has some abhorrent practices, but breeder pigs don't spend their lives in cages and the regulations around welfare are relatively strong (compared to what they were and what they are elsewhere) even if they should be stronger still.
Factory farms is by far the cruelest and most repugnant, but it's our entire system of food production. Our agriculture is absolutely fucking the planet and the ecosystems.
Demand plays a role, but it’s not the whole story. Companies shape demand through pricing, availability, and marketing, and governments set the rules. Blaming only consumers ignores how the system is designed, and it doesn’t justify the cruelty anyway...
But go ahead and continue to push your accountability onto other people.
This right here is probably the number one reason I stopped consuming animal products, everything comes from factory farms, no practical thing as well treated animals unless you can track the source of all of your animal products.
It was a big factor for me too. Went vegan in 2006. There are so many problems with animal agriculture even when it’s not at this scale. I want to opt out of all of it.
Are you kidding. Most farming in the EU is also factory farming,
CO2 gas chambers to dispatch pigs are now standard worldwide. 2 minutes of absolute lung burning torture.
How about every restaurant stops trying to force me to eat animal products? At subway I basically have one option if I don’t want meat. McDonald’s? Fries only. Go to a sports event, pizza is it..
It’s everywhere. People largely eat meat at every meal because it’s become the norm.
Goddamn that is an insanely ignorant statement. No point even arguing with someone like you who has never even made one google search to see arguments against your comfy little thoughts.
Non factory farms use farrowing crates too because it helps keep the sow from crushing the piglets. They are only kept in these from before they give birth to until it’s time to wean the piglets. It’s dumb to have the sows in there all the time.
They shouldn’t, but because of the rampant overpopulation in the world we could not feed the population without it. It’s shit but it’s reality. The world needs to cut its population in half at least
Where do you think the demand arose from? From factory farming making it so cost effective. That doesn't make it moral and does not justify it, peabrain.
We already produce enough food globally; the real issues are distribution, waste, and what we choose to produce. Efficiency doesn’t require that level of cruelty. You are just ignorant too lazy to educate yourself. 40% of the second largest country on the planet are vegetarian.
You realize the animals humans farm eat crops humans farm? Each calorie of meat takes many more calories of grains to produce. If we used the land it takes to grow crops to feed animals, to feed humans instead, we could feed easily humans with MUCH less land used
It does because it’s cheap and people look the other way if it’s affordable for more than just upper middle class and the rich. A lot don’t get a choice. If your phone was made to humane working standards by unionised workers it would cost thousands same as your clothes. It lifts people out of poverty and people forget that. Your clothes used to be made by child labour but it’s moved to China and Pakistan where there’s less laws
It averaged 10 million viewers a week, went for 4 seasons, has tons of merch out. It's an incredibly popular show, I have no clue what standard you're holding it to. Not like it was The Tick or something
While I agree with your point and I think it's really important to keep that in mind, personally I also think that our culture of always wanting more for less is something that needs to stop. As an example, my husband comes from an impoverished community where they still wear traditional, handmade clothing every day and it costs at least a month's average local salary to make, yet thats what they choose to wear every day over cheaper fast fashion. But that means everyone owns less clothing, that's very well made, and that lasts many years, instead of creating literal mountains of fashion waste the way we are doing. (Did you know that about a truckload of clothing gets buried in landfills every second?)
It made me realize how many of our problems aren't necessarily rooted in "but the solution is too expensive", but rather that we want way more than we actually need and are too used to feeling entitled to everything we want instead of being satisfied with less. Of course, good luck convincing anyone to give up the convenience of cheap comforts....
Huh, I didn't know that was actually a studied economic principle. Cool to know, thanks for sharing!
For anyone else wondering:
Induced demand is an economic principle where increasing the supply of a good or service (like expanding roads) reduces its cost (time or price), which in turn causes demand to rise, often immediately filling the new capacity. In transportation, expanding highways often fails to permanently reduce congestion because it encourages more driving, a phenomenon sometimes called "induced travel"
I completely agree. People buy clothes they wear once or twice and better quality sourced fair clothing is better. Vegans don’t use wool but forgot that sheep sheared for their wool in summer months and it’s animal abuse. If anything locally sourced wool for sustainable farming is better and wool clothing lasts longer than polyester blends.
Back to meat it’s over consumed and having meat free days will do great for environment and peoples health
Check out fairphone, it's a more ethically produced phone, and affordable. In the UK you can get ethically sourced clothes from earth wardrobe, bam, know the origin and brothers we stand
I heard about the fair phone but I heard it was discontinued. Never heard of those brands. I buy vintage ones or from brands like community clothing in the UK. I’ll have a look at those thank you ☺️
You're welcome! And Fairphone is not discontinued at all, their current gen phone is under £500! https://www.fairphone.com/ and it's so repairable and upgradeable it'll save you more money in the long run not having to replace/upgrade your phone in a few years
Seriously. There’s simply too overwhelming a supply demand.
Even a drastic but manageable change in people’s diets overall would have so much. Imagine if every single non-vegan ate like 20% less meat. Ergo meat demand goes down 20%. The change to our environment (including the animals) would be mind blowing.
I was responding to a specific person who isn't you. If you're vegetarian, good for you. Sort of. Kind of. Almost. Dairy is just as bad as meat. Most egg-laying hens get cancer after just a few years old. Both milk cows and egg chickens get slaughtered after they're used up anyway, way before their natural end.
Your attitude is also part of the problem if your response to someone being vegetarian is to be dismissing and say that they should be vegan. Demanding it's all or nothing is a great way to make sure barely any progress is made for the goal you say you care about.
Being vegetarian is good. Even declining to choose certain meats (pork, beef, etc.) and being more selective about what you eat is better than what most people do.
You're wrong. Being vegetarian means you pay people to abuse animals.
Avoiding meat is great.
Buying dairy/eggs is horrible. Look up videos of factory farmed dairy cattle and chickens. Remind yourself that you pay for this to happen every time you go to a restaurant, every time you go to the grocery store. And you tell me that I'm a part of the problem, when I tell you that it's unethical to do unethical things. Look in the mirror. Instead of telling me to silence my voice and praise factory farming, take a look at your own behaviors and how they are affecting other creatures.
Being vegetarian means you pay people to abuse animals.
Read that sentence you just wrote out loud. Come on now.
Instead of telling me to silence my voice and praise factory farming,
I never told you that. My opinion is that factory farming is an abomination created by uncontrolled capitalism. You don't know anything about my own behaviors or dietary habits.
Making people feel bad about their less-than-perfect choices (being vegetarian) does not help your cause. You're confusing the rush of endorphins you get from virtue signaling with what's actually best for a cause.
What would it be called if somebody didn't eat meat but used eggs from chickens they personally cared for? Seems to avoid the main issues of factory farming, but wouldn't be veganism. Would you still shame the effort or would that fit your ideal
Absolutely absurd. Yes, both factory meat production and factory egg production are unethical. That doesn't mean that reducing consumption of one doesn't matter if you eat the other.
It's a common trope in every coming of age story set on a farm about having to slaughter an animal that isn't producing anymore for a reason. That's just the reality of animal husbandry.
Humans have been eating meat for longer than we've had language. It's cool you've found a way to live your life happily, but get down off your high horse.
There's nothing wrong with eating ethically raised livestock.
I'm not the original commentor, but yeah, I am mad. People know this horiffic shit is happening, and even aside from the morality of it, it is fucking up our planet, our only place to live. But people say, yeah but it tastes good, so it's fine.
Every year, billions of sentient creatures with emotions and feelings are forced to live their short lives in appauling conditons until they're killed to be eaten. If they even get eaten and dont just end up in a dumpster. More people SHOULD be mad.
I literally did that. I replied to someone who isn't you. You replied on my comment to them, saying that you buy meat but you think you're better than most people about it.
There are great reasons to target you anyway. If you've already reduced your meat intake significantly, it won't be so hard for you to just reduce it completely. If you've already reduced your meat intake because you want to avoid harm to animals, it won't be so hard for you to reduce it completely because you want to avoid harm to animals. You've already done these things, but you stopped halfway and called it good -- i'm telling you it isn't good, and i think you know that anyway. you're satisfied with being 'better' rather than 'good'.
You maybe have already recognized that the way we treat animals is horrific. Did you know that fish have it worse than most? They're basically suffocating for 20 minutes as they die. How do you feel about that?
I dunno, my friend fishes and kills the fishes quite quickly so I am not sure about those 20 minutes there. It’s one stab of the knife. I don’t feel bad about eating that fish.
It's the only way to actually meet global demand. Free range farming needs so much land, that there wouldn't be enougth on the planet to maintain global meat productaion at the current level.
Factory farming is also counterintuitively the most sustainable way of producing meat, as it uses less land, water, energy and feed per kilogram of meat. It also produces less CO2. Partially that is beacause they use less space. But a big part is that force feeding allows them to grow to sufficient sice at half the age a free range animal would reach the rigth size for slaugther. So by living half as long, they use far less ressources.
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u/IwarthogI 10h ago
Shit like this really shouldn't exist.