The most damaging farm products? Organic, pasture-fed beef and lamb

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/16/most-damaging-farm-products-organic-pasture-fed-beef-lamb

by tmitchel2 • 4 years ago

7 6 4 years ago

quantified• 4 years ago

Considering how much of Scotland was forcibly converted into pasture for English mutton and wool, this is hilarious. Interesting definition of "damage", because sprawl of housing lowers biodiversity more.

Feedlots are far more damaging. Virtually all damage from animal-raising is due to the number of people eating these quantities of meat. Antibiotic-resistant pathogens are a damage we get from intensive meat-raising, and I think even the author of this piece might have to adjust their world view to sleep well while daily observing a US feedlot.

Fewer people, eating less meat overall, is how you reduce damages.

melling• 4 years ago

World population in 1970 was 3.7 billion. Today it’s 8 billion.

It appears to feed more people we need a lot more farmland. For example, “we” need to burn the Amazon forests for farmland.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/why-brazil...

tmitchel2• 4 years ago

Definitely feels like this article was written with a pre formed opinion.

carride• 4 years ago

The opinion piece is from an author of book on the same subject. I am not agreeing or disagreeing with the opinion. Though I have to consider that the statements have been well researched enough to publish in a book, not only this newspaper publication.

f1shy• 4 years ago

I really do not think you have to do good research to write a book. Not by any stretch of the imagination. Just too many examples of books written by people with not even the foggiest idea what they write about. I’ve no idea in this particular case, though. The article, as other commented, seems, at first read, not very credible.

ZeroGravitas• 4 years ago

He says he's not trying to shock, but without the word "organic" and maybe "pasture-fed" (I'm not even sure what that means, if anything) this would just be a no duh, statement.

Plus, do we have to simplify everything this much? Can't we just agree that we want to reduce GHG and animal cruelty and then look for the simplest and easiest way to do so? Eating less processed red meat like your doctor asked you to really doesn't seem that much of a stretch.

Looks like the easy wins for farming are:

- stop buying animal feed grown on cleared rainforests - people following healthy eating guidelines a bit better - using renewable energy more

But there's a bunch of others, better management of the cold chain is about 2% of the problem.

https://wrap.org.uk/media-centre/press-releases/meat-net-zer...

The most damaging farm products? Organic, pasture-fed beef and lamb

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