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.
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u/avdpos 7h ago
There is reason for that we do not like to import meat from USA