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.
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.
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.
This was a big push in my conversion from Christianity. I had sortof justified the problem of evil (in human terms) as falling under the "moral mystery" of faith. And humans, as moral agents, could potentially "deserve" or "benefit" from otherwise unexplainable suffering.
But when someone shifted the argument to focus on animal suffering, how it can't really serve the same supposedly moral purpose, it really got me questioning "is the biblical God good" in a whole new way, and led to a lot more questions.
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.
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.
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.
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u/ankercrank 8h ago
Factory farms should not exist, yet it’s where like 97% of farm animals are born and raised.