All 10 of the largest U.S. meat and dairy companies have lobbied against environmental and climate policies, resisting climate regulations, including rules on greenhouse gases and emissions reporting. This is according to a study by New York University, which examined the political influence of the 10 largest meat and dairy companies in the United States.
100% of the top 10 meat and dairy companies.
That should be in the title—otherwise it implies that every family dairy in the country has its own team of lobbyists.
Closer to the truth though. Most are part of organizations that include lobbyists that would oppose anything that negatively impacts the industry. I don’t find that particularly nefarious of course.
It’s not that the title isn’t still mostly true—it’s that the impossible statement discredits the rest of the article.
Precisely this, if you’ve got a point to make, don’t sensationalise the headline, it only makes it easy for people to discredit and ignore without even reading the article.
…and that the rest of the article has virtually nothing to do with the environment or lobbying.
The title is misleading, however the top companies take up such a huge market share that it might as well be a true statement. I know there are companies trying to make some difference and I hate media sensationalism
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Just the 4 largest make up 85% of the beef sector in the US. Dairy is a similar situation
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For more context for you and @trash80@lemmy.dbzer0.com, this is fairly emergent.
The dairy industry has been a loss-industry for a few decades thanks to pro-big-ag government intervention. Very few farms are able to keep from consolidating because of that.
It’s a mass-scale hostile takeover, and THAT is a much more meaningful headline than us forgetting about the smaller farms that fight to prevent this whole thing from becoming a panopoly
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It is a sensationalist title, sigh
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Well I promise they aren’t upset with having their industry lobbied for.
And it would imply companies that make lab-grown meat and animal products, which are often companies formed explicitly in support of environmental sustainability goals, also.
100% of the top 10 US meat and dairy companies
Context.
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IDK why corporate lobbing is still legal, wtf outlaw it asap
It’s legal because the people who benefit from corporate lobbying are the same people who determine what is legal.
Yup! And it’s exactly why the system will never change on its own. The people in power will never voluntarily give up that power. Why does Congress get to vote on its own salary?!
Ah, what you are missing is that the people who make those laws are the same ones being lobbied, and lobbying means giving money to them.
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I’ve got $20, will that do it?
It exists because it’s ridiculous to expect government to know about every industry’s ins and outs. Sometimes we benefit from lobbying as because some old law is affecting new processes or we need to support funding for something that we didn’t know about.
The issue is when shit is mundane and worthless like the topic op presented. Lobbying against climate policies just means you’re part of the problem. We understand enough to know the policies need to exist and it’s a waste of everyone’s time and money for these giant corps to lobby against them.
Furthermore, for a lot of issues, there are a select few people who have a big enough incentive to vote solely on one issue, and the rest of people don’t care because the harm is does to them is relatively diffuse.
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I don’t care about corporate lobbying because I think its useful. Lobbying is useful because its just keeping your issues to people who can do something about it.
What I don’t get is why regular people don’t organize and create their own lobby. I know wealthy individuals who do it to change things they don’t like.
They don’t stand in streets and burn energy screaming right before they get their heads caved in by police. You know what’s better, paying $5 into a pool and hiring a firm to develop research and a report that you can give to a lawyer who can start to bring it to representatives.
There’s a reason you never see wallstreet bankers or tobacco executives in the streets. Its not how anything gets done
You’re all down voting but you know lobbying is for anyone right. Check out the link below to see an example. Would you want to remove groups like this from bringing their cause forward. Lobbying itself isn’t bad. What is bad is that more people aren’t using it which leaves only the corrupt ones
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2021/05/abortion-rights-up-lobbying-with-roe-threatened/
Lobbying is useful because its just keeping your issues to people who can do something about it.
Actually, lobbying is hurtful because it puts a goddamn pricetag on getting anything done. What happens when I have a million fucking dollars and you don’t, but your need is far greater? Go fuck yourself until you get more scrilla!
SHUT THE FUCK UP UNTIL YOU HAVE THE MONEY – that is what you’re supporting right now.
What I don’t get is why regular people don’t organize and create their own lobby.
Oh boy, you sure are clueless, which is pretty lame since you’re pushing some bullshit opinions here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_action_committee
In the United States, a political action committee (PAC) is a tax-exempt 527 organization that pools campaign contributions from members and donates those funds to campaigns for or against candidates, ballot initiatives, or legislation.[1][2] The legal term PAC was created in pursuit of campaign finance reform in the United States. Democracies of other countries use different terms for the units of campaign spending or spending on political competition (see political finance). At the U.S. federal level, an organization becomes a PAC when it receives or spends more than $1,000 for the purpose of influencing a federal election, and registers with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), according to the Federal Election Campaign Act as amended by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (also known as the McCain–Feingold Act).[3] At the state level, an organization becomes a PAC according to the state’s election laws.
Contributions to PACs from corporate or labor union treasuries are illegal, though these entities may sponsor a PAC and provide financial support for its administration and fundraising. Union-affiliated PACs may solicit contributions only from union members. Independent PACs may solicit contributions from the general public and must pay their own costs from those funds.
Who can create a PAC?
An individual or group can set up a “nonconnected committee” when it wants to set up a political action committee (PAC), and that PAC is not one of the following: A political party committee. A candidate’s authorized committee. A separate segregated fund (SSF) established by a corporation or labor organization.
here ya go bud: https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/registering-pac/
There’s a reason you never see wallstreet bankers or tobacco executives in the streets. Its not how anything gets done
you fucking moron. The reason you never see them in the streets is because they’re the ones who built the goddamn system to favor THEMSELVES. That’s why they DO join us on the streets, just above us – to laugh at us pawns who are fucked from the start.
Lastly, you’re 100% wrong about the streets not solving a goddamn thing.
Huh, well imagine that. The biggest sources of the problem is against doing anything about it.
What I find pretty wild is that our government even helps them do more of it by boosting terrible diet choices, including pushing it onto children.
It’s all about profit. If some new discovery magically made dairy climate friendly but also increased profits by 12%, every producer would be on board tomorrow. They don’t give a fuck about climate one way or the other, just profit. It’s just that one position allows them to keep making their profits without having to make any changes. No points for guessing which position it is.
https://www.c2es.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/cait-global-emissions-sector.png
Agriculture contributes approximately 10 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions (not including emissions from onsite fossil energy use).
https://www.rff.org/publications/explainers/agricultural-greenhouse-gas-emissions-101/
Breaking down this share, production of animal-based foods — meat, poultry and dairy products, including growing crops to feed livestock and pastures for grazing — contributes 57 percent of emissions linked to the food system. Raising plant-based foods for human consumption contributes 29 percent. The other 14 percent of agricultural emissions come from products not used as food or feed, such as cotton and rubber.
https://www.greenbiz.com/article/how-much-do-crops-contribute-emissions
agriculture is only about 20% of global emissions, but I would be fine with it being 100%: we need to eat.
Except it’s mostly animal agriculture that’s destroying the planet. Animals are not at all efficient in converting crops to meat, dairy and eggs. It can take up to 16 kilograms of plants to create 1 kilogram of certain animal products. 77% of agricultural land is used to farm animals, despite it providing just 18% of the world’s caloric intake. Researchers at the University of Oxford have found that if everyone went vegan, global farmland use could be reduced by 75%, the size of the US, China, Australia and the EU combined. Just imagine how much land could be rewilded.
And no, you absolutely don’t need animal products in your diet to be healthy and thrive.
77% of agricultural land is used to farm animals, despite it providing just 18% of the world’s caloric intake
so?
So it’s inefficient like hell and causing a shit ton of greenhouse gasses. Have a look at the impact of some of these foods: https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food#explore-data-on-the-environmental-impacts-of-food
So it’s inefficient like hell and causing a shit ton of greenhouse gasses.
agriculture is only about 20% of our emissions and we need to eat. i’d be fine if it were 100%.
You’d be fine with it being 100% even if it only needs to be 3% or 4% instead of 20%? Nice.
if we eliminate every other sector’s emissions, then agriculture would necessarily grow as a proportion, even if the absolute emissions stayed the same.
there is no reason to believe lands would be rewilded, even if they “could” be
If you could free up a land mass the size of the US, China, Australia and the EU combined, don’t you think we could plants some trees?
just because we could doesn’t mean we would. why wouldn’t we turn it into shopping malls?
Have you stopped and wondered how big a land mass the size of the US, China, Australia and the EU combined is? I am not sure how many shopping malls you have in mind.
i don’t see why you think we would rewild the land instead of making money on it.
And no, you absolutely don’t need animal products in your diet to be healthy and thrive.
you don’t know what i or anyone else needs, so kindly stop patronizing.
It’s not patronising. It is just stating a fact.
people need more than nutrients.
Like what? What do people need that they can’t get from a vegan diet?
some people might be able to meet all their needs with a vegan diet. i would bet most people cannot.
the american dietetic association no longer exists. it’s now the academy of nutrition and dietetics. this is no longer their position.
American Dietetic Association (ADA) position adopted by the House of Delegates Leadership Team on October 18, 1987, and reaffirmed on September 12, 1992; September 6, 1996; June 22, 2000; and June 11, 2006. This position is in effect until December 31, 2013
I know they’ve changed their name, but they’ve not changed their position.
that position expired 2 years ago.
2018 poore-nemecek doesn’t say you should go vegan. it says the industry needs to change and make less animal products.
Ok, you wait for the industry to change, while making the planet and its inhabitants die in the mean time. Take no responsibility and complain about large corporations fucking up the planet, while simultaneously funding them.
you can’t shift the blame onto me. i know whos fucking up the planet.
Nice projection. I am not shifting blame, but since you’ve said this it shows you’re obviously dealing with some massive cognitive dissonance. I have only been providing facts and sources dude. Animal agriculture is a massive source of problems for the planet. Besides all the things I have already told you: what do you think the leading causes of mass extincition, deforestation and global ocean and freshwater eutrophication are? Right…
I have only been providing facts and sources dude.
that’s a lie. the comment to which i was responding was pure rhetoric.
since you’ve said this it shows you’re obviously dealing with some massive cognitive dissonance.
wrong.
Besides all the things I have already told you: what do you think the leading causes of mass extincition, deforestation and global ocean and freshwater eutrophication are?
industry.
Except it’s mostly animal agriculture that’s destroying the planet.
that’s a lie.
what i said was true and your link doesn’t contradict that.
I meant it in the context of agriculture. Out of the 20% global emissions caused by agriculture, most of it is caused by animal agriculture. I believe the stat is 18%.
do you have a plan to eliminate animal agriculture?
Animals are not at all efficient in converting crops to meat, dairy and eggs.
livestock mostly graze on plants we can’t eat or are fed parts of plants that we can’t or won’t eat.
Globally livestock consume about 6 billion tonnes of feed annually – including one third of global cereal production – of which 86% is made of materials that are currently not eaten by humans. Producing 1 kg of boneless meat still requires an average of 2.8 kg human-edible feed.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211912416300013
and most of this 86% could be converted to other uses, including human-edible feed.
what i said was true. what you said doesn’t change that.
Yes it is true, but it still is a moot point because “producing 1 kg of boneless meat still requires an average of 2.8 kg human-edible feed.”
it’s not moot. it’s absolutely true.
Holy misleading headline, Batman!
I’m not saying that there isn’t a problem with the industries, but the 10 largest in one country is NOT “100% of all meat and dairy companies” or anywhere near that!
A sample size of the 10 largest in a country where it’s literally impossible to get to the top 10 anything company without truly despicable practices is some supercharged selection bias!
The 4 largest companies control 70% of the market. Markets tend to be one to three companies taking the lions share and then a long tail.
The top 10 will easily round up to 100%.
I’d also be hard pressed to find a meat producer that actually supported climate initiatives and wasn’t some super small farmer.
https://www.reuters.com/business/how-four-big-companies-control-us-beef-industry-2021-06-17/
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And wheat, corn, basically anyone who grows anything. Lol.
Go look it up and find the same results and that they’re mostly the same companies.
They couldn’t be top 10 if they supported those initiatives. It’s selection bias. Only the ones who couldn’t possibly support those policies and still be in their position are counted. It’s pretty misleading, even if it’s a large portion. Besides, it’s the 10 largest US companies. There’s a bunch not in the US, obviously the US doesn’t make up 100% of the industry. It’s just the place that’s most concerned with profit over anything else, it seems.
Wow nothing gets past you.
70% of the market (…) easily round up to 100%
That’s some real special math you have there, willfully ignoring probably millions of people as irrelevant and probably just as bad as some of the worst in the world 🤦
and wasn’t some super small farmer
But I thought you just said that such a thing doesn’t exist! 70% being 100% and all…
Besides, you know that sustainable farming co-ops exist and many of those deal in meat and dairy, right?
Some of them are quite large, in spite of your insistence on eliminating them to defend a headline that reads as something a crazed PeTA activist would shout at people 🙄
Can you read? He said 4 companies make up about 70%, he didn’t say 4 companies make up 100%… he said 10 companies would round up to 100%. You are illiterate
It was super early and I hadn’t had my coffee yet, so I missed that detail. My overall point still stands.
Ok sorry for calling you illiterate, but yeah I do agree the title shouldn’t just be a blatant lie (even if it’s close to the truth in terms of market share)
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That’s some incredibly misleading editing of my comment which is already above so why bother. It’s just weird. I do hope you get better.
I got some hippy-ass, “one bad day,” native grass open pasture, keep the calves with their moms until they wean naturally, one cow per acre, priced to reflect the true cost of meat cattle ranches where I live. I don’t think they were part of this survey.
And as such, the headline is wrong 🤷
Same. My farmer, Justin, also makes sure the animals don’t travel far to the abattoir. That said, I feel like (though hope I’m wrong) our farmers do not make up a significant part of the industry. I wouldn’t even consider our guys part of the same “industry” that the big shops are part of
It’s pretty niche. The place I go started a program to help breed pigs back down to a reasonable size. Apparently they have painful problems from being over bred, like hip dysplasia. They are networking with other small farms to breed their pigs progressively smaller and healthier.
But yeah, not really putting a dent in the factory farming problem and not accessible to most.
More important, as long as people keep looping all the small farms with “big ag”, especially in the US, there will never be a reasoned discourse.
We all hate big ag. More agricultural subsidies than people realize are paid by small farms (not individuals) and received by big ones.
Wtf is with quality on lemmy world these days. How is a medium article written like an ethics 101 student using ai assistance news worthy. It’s formula 1 sentence summary linked to an article source, with one sentence over generalized conclusion… Over and over and over.
Easy content to make. That simple.
Very dishonest click bait. Moderators should clean this stuff up in order to prevent redditification.
Not sure how it is clickbait - it’s just the headline is overstating the case by claiming 100%, when it should say 100% of the 10 largest companies - which are responsible for how much of the nation’s market of meat and dairy? If it’s like just about every other market, a few top players grab up most the market share and set the overall agenda.
Are they top 10 of dairy, meat, or both? What share of the market do they hold in each respective field, and combined fields? It’s pretty arbitrary for claiming 100% of. Would you consider the same concept acceptable elsewhere with different subject like…
100% of Rappers and Democrats voted for Kanye in 2020. Top 10 selling rappers and Democrats on Spotify voted for Kanye.
Obviously I made that up… but I think you’d consider it dishonest clickbait.
I did look around earlier and saw that the top 4 companies controlled more than 50% of the market…add in the other six, and that is only going to increase.
https://www.iatp.org/companies-dominating-market-farm-display-case
I agree, which is why we should have a problem with articles that pretend the rest of farmers are the same as them. It just helps them because nobody is left to side with small farms.
I mean, how about this. Did you know that many of the meat and dairy subsidies that people get up-in-arms about are paid as meat- or dairy-specific taxes by farmers, and only the bigger farms reap the benefit?
Those big farms profit from the fact that they and vegans have a common enemy… small meat/dairy farms.
How do you think that translates to Meat and Dairy market? I’d imagine adding more market, that 50% is going to shrink. Definitely makes that 100% in the title seem a lot click baitier
They are 100% of the 10 companies this investigation started with.
Not only is the headline dishonest, but the article tries to maintain the dishonest attitude of the headline. And then, the article doesn’t really talk about environment lobbying at all, it talks about why the author thinks people should be vegans.
100% somehow equals 5%
So fight to fix that instead of helping Tyson throw small family farms into the meat grinder.
Nah I’d rather fight to end animal exploitation than help smaller exploiters not get gobbled up by the bigger exploiters.
That’s all I was looking for. An admission that this isn’t about the environment or about truth, and that you are 100% onboard with lying to get what you want.
You’re far more honest than most militant vegans I meet.
An admission that this isn’t about the environment or about truth, and that you are 100% onboard with lying to get what you want.
Sorry, where did I say any of that? I responded to someone making a sarcastic comment about the study only covering 5% of farms and it reminded me of a relevant statistic, so I shared.
Then you made a comment about how we should fight to fix farming so that smaller farms still have a chance, to which I replied that I don’t care about helping to save any farms that exploit animals.
Where, in any of that did I say that I do not care about the truth or that the environment isn’t a part of the reason I think that’s immoral to eat animals?
You’re far more honest than most militant vegans I meet.
Well, for one I’m not a militant vegan, I’m just a fuckin vegan person. For two, I don’t believe you meet that many militant vegans unless you’re intentionally seeking out interactions with vegans, in which case the fact that you characterize them as militant says less to me about them and more about how you probably made comments similar to the very antagonistic, mischaracterizing, lying comment you just made, attempting to misconstrue arguments because you have some sort of agenda against people who just wanna see less suffering in the world.
But hey, I know that for people like you, you just need reasons to hate vegans, so if pretending that I don’t care about truth or the environment helps you paint vegans as annoying bad people in your mind instead of actually considering the moral/ethical implications of your food, I’m happy to help.
Sorry, where did I say any of that?
After you acknowledged that big farms are in the process of regulatory capture in a way that’s causing phenomenal harm, you admitted that you don’t care about people maliciously grouping them with smalltime meat and dairy farmers because "Nah I’d rather fight to end animal exploitation than help smaller exploiters ". Your fucking words. You just called a lot of my best friends “exploiter” because you don’t like that they farms chickens to pay their bills. If you give a fuck about animals, stop spitting in people’s faces. It might surprise you, but we’re animals, too.
It doesn’t matter to you if small farmers are pro-environment or not. It works for you to put them in the same bucket as a completely unrelated class because you get to try to flush them all down at once for your own personal ethical reasons. And the ethics of everyone else? Well we are subhuman to you.
But hey, I know that for people like you, you just need reasons to hate vegans
Honestly, the only exploiters I know are big ag, and militant vegans. So yes, for “people like me” (as you’ve now categorized me with big evil businesses to), I do hate a certain category. But I don’t “hate vegans”. I won’t make the bad-faith move you just did. I don’t hate vegans. I hate when people try to hurt other people, lie and cheat, because they place non-vegans below the animals they fight to protect.
I got news for you
100%
10 of the biggest
Always handy when a pop-sci article discredits itself without having to read it.
100% is 10 out of all the 10 companies they investigated.
Part of the investigation were all Meat and dairy companies which had lobbied against environmental protection bills in the past
So those who had lobbied continued to lobby? Shocking…
The article tries to make it sound like all meat and dairy companies are guilty, and then goes on to make claims about health risks of eating meat and claims about animal rights.
It’s not a meaningful argument about the environment, it’s propaganda.
I also wonder how many of them also lobbied in favor of similar policies. It wouldn’t surprise me if it’s also 100% of them.
Oh no! Who could’ve known this? What’s next? Oil companies lobbying against environmental and climate policies?
Don’t worry, the headline is demonstrably false.
Well it appears to be the top 10 companies, so it is almost certainly quite close to 100%. Still not 100% though so it’s wrong of course, there’s no point saying something incorrect even if it’s pretty close to the truth.
Not really. Small farmers generally couldn’t care less about lobbying, and represent over 90% of the meat and dairy farms in the US. Literally, they cherry-picked Big Ag and the clickbait headline extrapolated conclusions about a completely different demographic.
The headline is clickbait. They are phrasing it as 100% because they mean all 10 of the companies they investigated lobbied against climate change.
As I replied elsewhere, I’d rather use the word “propaganda”. The article isn’t about the environment at all. It’s about throwing a bunch of reasons at the reader to become vegan. And clickbait headlines always put the full story in the body, but it continues to leave out the fact that 90% of the meat and dairy industry (the non-big-ag) isn’t represented in their 100% figure.
I’m pretty sure this headline is impossible
Also, medium is a blog.
Came here to say this. I have a friend that’s a meat and dairy company, and she (yup, 1 person for-profit farm) doesn’t lobby for or against shit.
That gets us under 100% already.
From reading the sub heading out looks like they mean 100% of the top ten largest
They just wanted the click bait headline
Personally, I think the moment they decided to use that picture of a cow with the headline it stopped being clickbait and started being propaganda.
And there are two reasons I know this, and can back it up.
- Not once do they mention small farms in the article to correct the obvious misleading nature. People who know nothing about agriculture will conclude the same thing as the headline. When an article is clickbait, the body is very clear about the truth of things. That didn’t happen here. Because this is about willfully misleading readers to push them towards misinformed action.
- Most of the article has nothing to do with the environment or climate. Instead, it talks about animal rights, hokey diets that involve veganism to allegedly end diabetes, and how meat is supposedly bad for you.
In summary, it’s anti-meat smut that leans on the usual 3-legged gishgallop, staying quick and shallow enough on all 3 topics to not draw an objection from readers on any of them.
Added to the filter! See yha never medium!
Medium is a blog, however in this case the article cites the sources they used and is well argued.
If someone wants to make the argument that their sources don’t say what they argue they’re saying, I’m open to removing it, but it will be because the content is wrong, not because of who is hosting the content. :)
Sources cited:
Citations:
[1] https://www.pcrm.org/news/blog/us-meat-and-dairy-companies-spend-millions-lobbying-against-climate-legislation
[2] https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22379909/big-meat-companies-spend-millions-lobbying-climate u [3] https://insideclimatenews.org/news/02042021/meat-dairy-lobby-climate-action/
[4] https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2021/march/meat-and-dairy-companies-slow-to-commit-to-net-zero-emissions--n.html
[5] https://as.nyu.edu/content/dam/nyu-as/ceh/images/recent-news-images/The meat industry is doing exactly what Big Oil does to fight climate action - The Washington Post.pdf
[6] https://www.greenqueen.com.hk/big-meat-dairy-firms-act-collectively-to-lobby-against-climate-action-new-study-finds/
I know a lot of people are new here but this kind of shit should be moderated better… Link to the study, not someone’s blog
Agreed, this is a blog post from 3 days ago but all of the sources they link in the footer are from early 2021… nothing new here and this article is a biased mess.
That said, there’s nothing surprising here anyway, lobbying in the US is just bribery and corruption by another term and obviously these companies are going to do anything they can to defend their profits
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Actually, vegan meats have won multiple blind taste tests over real meat. Google it, it’s happened on multiple occasions – in actual studies as well as DIY tests.
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Here’s an actual scientific study where participants chose fake meat over beef burgers: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0963996923003587)
While not a scientific study, we also have some funny events like:
Sausage expert, trying to prove that plant based sausage isn’t as good as the real thing, accidentally praises it: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/food/article-11485203/Sausage-expert-tricked-praising-vegan-alternative.html
Professional chefs were often wrong about which meat was real and which wasn’t in blind taste test: https://www.livekindly.com/professional-chefs-cant-tell-the-difference-between-vegan-and-animal-meat-in-blind-taste-test/
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Hey everyone, this person is brilliant. Let’s get cracking on making food less yucky and producing banana commercials. Gosh, what would the world do without this? The meat and dairy industry won’t know what hit them.
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I base my actions on historical precedence. Slavery in the United States did not end by marketing abolition in a friendlier way, nor was it halted for lack of better alternatives. Civil rights were not enacted because of civil obedience.
i endorse this message.
But I hate bananas. Can I get a peach instead?
I’m not sure it falls on the vegans to do any of this. What should really happen is that true costs are passed along for harmful diets and instead we subsidize foods that are good for you.
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I don’t know under which rock you have been living, but this is exactly what has been happening at a super rapid pace the last few years. I am not sure where you are from, but where I am from the vegan sections in the supermarkets are growing super fast with new and new vegan restaurants are popping up left and right.
Take this for example: https://plantbasednews.org/news/economics/lidl-vegan-food-price-meat-equivalents/ https://plantbasednews.org/news/economics/plant-based-food-retail-sales-record/
Also, it’s always non-vegans who complain about what vegans should do. The world is dying, hundreds of millions of animals are killed each day and vegans are trying every fucking thing they can to try and stop the hurting. Let me tell you: vegans are out on the streets demonstrating, forming political parties and lobbying, transforming the food sector, doing medical research to show the (nearly entirely positive) effects of the diet, creating recipes and cookbooks, opening restaurants, helping people make the transition, doing critical animal studies, making documentaries, going undercover in slaughterhouses and factory farms, trying to get lab grown meat onto the market, arguing on the internet, etc. You’ve got no clue how much effort is being expended to try people like you to stop being part of the problem. How about you taking some responsibility? We’ll keep trying in the mean time.
Besides, there is nothing wrong with the planet… nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine… the people are fucked! Difference! The planet is fine! Compared to the people, THE PLANET IS DOING GREAT: Been here four and a half billion years! Do you ever think about the arithmetic? The planet has been here four and a half billion years, we’ve been here what? 100,000? Maybe 200,000? And we’ve only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over 200 years. 200 years versus four and a half billion and we have the conceit to think that somehow, we’re a threat? That somehow, we’re going to put in jeopardy this beautiful little blue-green ball that’s just a-floatin’ around the sun? The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through all kinds of things worse than us: been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drifts, solar flares, sunspots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles, hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages, and we think some plastic bags and aluminum cans are going to make a difference?
The planet isn’t going anywhere… we are! We’re going away! Pack your shit folks! We’re going away and we won’t leave much of a trace either, thank God for that… maybe a little styrofoam… maybe… little styrofoam. The planet will be here, we’ll be long gone; just another failed mutation; just another closed-end biological mistake; an evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet will shake us off like a bad case of fleas, a surface nuisance. You wanna know how the planet’s doing? Ask those people in Pompeii who are frozen into position from volcanic ash how the planet’s doing. Wanna know if the planet’s all right? Ask those people in Mexico City or Armenia or a hundred other places buried under thousands of tons of earthquake rubble if they feel like a threat to the planet this week. How about those people in Kilauea, Hawaii who build their homes right next to an active volcano and then wonder why they have lava in the living room?
The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we’re gone and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself cause that’s what it does. It’s a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed, and if it’s true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: The Earth plus Plastic. The Earth doesn’t share our prejudice towards plastic. Plastic came out of the Earth! The Earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the Earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place: it wanted plastic for itself, didn’t know how to make it, needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old philosophical question: “Why are we here?” PLASTIC!!! ASSHOLES!!! -George Carlin
Yep, you’ve summed it up. Earth will indeed be here forever. The question is whether it will be habitable. And humans don’t seem to give a single care, as long as their life span will be over before the environment /climate poops out. And as long as they can take in money with no concern about their child, grandchildren, great-,grandchildren, and on down the line.
We can change this, we can mitigate the damage, but the powers that be refuse to acknowledge their negative impact on the future of the planet, they do not care…as long as they rake in the money.
I’ve got children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and I CARE. Jesus Pete, how hard is it to see beyond the end of our own noses?
that doesn’t work
fucking meat factories are killing the animals and the goddamn planet
That’s only if you believe the bull shit op-ed articles.
Oh, there is no cost to it?
The FAO report found that current production levels of meat contribute between 14 and 22 percent of the 36 billion tons of “CO2-equivalent” greenhouse gases the world produces every year. It turns out that producing half a pound of hamburger for someone’s lunch a patty of meat the size of two decks of cards releases as much greenhouse gas into the atmosphere as driving a 3,000-pound car nearly 10 miles.
We should at least start passing on the true cost of harmful things like meat onto the consumer and putting subsidies behind better alternatives. That will start to shift things. Trying to tell people they are doing the wrong thing won’t matter to a lot of people who have no to little morals. But start to encourage them economically and it will have better outcomes.
Did I say there’s no cost to it? And no morals? Really? If you had an argument- you lost it right there.
The vegan propaganda campaign is back at it again.
Back at what?
Stating uncomfortable facts about the world that people would otherwise gladly ignore.
You mean like the probably false article that started this discussion?
It’s clickbait but it’s also absolutely true. I get it’s easier for you to not do any research and continue to think it’s “probably false”.
My suggestion to you is instead of half-engaging, just fully close your eyes. Just continue living in your fantasy world and stop engaging with this kind of content, while the rest of us continue to try to solve these real issues.
And my suggestion to you is- read the other 50-100 or so comments where people provided factual rebuttals to this bullshit article.
Talk about fantasy worlds.
I’m going to block you now as I generally don’t entertain futile arguments with blowhard vegans.
If there was any actual evidence against it you would’ve said “false” and not “probably false”, but even in your own little make-believe world you couldn’t bring yourself to that point.
Sharing propaganda.
Yeah! Those filthy vegans trying to get people to quit killing animals and promoting less suffering! Fucking vegans!
Cool. Maybe you’ll get a bit further if you didn’t bullshit people. It’s disrespectful and insulting that you need to lie to get people to follow your bullshit.
No the real issue is you need to be told what’s the right thing to do.
Seems your issue is that you like to assume you have the authority to tell others how to live their lives.
You’re more than welcome to smell your own farts as much as you feel you need to- but if you think your smug bullshit has any sway here, you’re farting up the wrong tree.
If you can’t tell what’s morally correct then talk to your fucking mom and dad because they did a shit job of teaching you. It has nothing to do with being smug or thinking highly of myself. It’s that you lack the fucking basic functionality of thought to take information in, decide “hey this isn’t right” and then do something about it. I’m sorry you’re a piece of shit. I can’t help that.
ROFL… you’re why people hate vegans.
You know that this can’t possibly be true, because most meat and dairy companies do not have a lobbying arm, right? Right in the first sentence it says it’s the top 10 largest, but let’s go ahead and put some bullshit in the headline anyway right?
disclaimer in 1pt font: *100% margin of error
I think we need to slow down on placing all the blame on cows and other ruminants. It’s not the farming that’s causing problems, it’s the fact that we’ve gotten away from regenerative agriculture, and how to actually work with the land.
My Wife is a part of a farm that just got the USDA Climate Smart grant. The grant basically outlines how to sequester more carbon into the soil by using cattle and other ruminants and doing pasture grazing rotations, using trees, and some other things. The thing that blows most people away when she talks about it is that cows are and never were the problem – it’s Big Ag.
The way of farming cattle nowadays is very inefficient and a problem for the environment. This is because of the ways cattle are finished before processing. Instead of being grass fed - grass finished, farmers send their cattle’s out to feed lots in the Midwest. They are jam packed in areas where they can’t adequately space out, which leads to an excess of their excrements in one spot. THIS is the problem. But it’s just the tip of the iceberg.
This problem only stems from the larger issue that Big Ag doesn’t care how land is managed or farmed as long as it’s baseline is about production. But it’s not like non-GMO and organic is easy to do, both growing and the paperwork, so it’s just bad all around….
Grassfed Cattle needs an infeasible amount of land. The only efficient or environmentally ‘friendly’ way would be substituting them with plant-based alternatives. Cows obviously are not the problems. It’s us humans who breed them for the sole purpose of exploiting them when there are other, greener and more eithical alternatives
Edit: here a very informative video addressing most of the arguments in favor of grass-fed livestock
Edit 2: Another one by the same creator about regenerative grazing
You would expect conservatives to give a fuck about efficient use of resources but to them, being filthy rich is an efficient market too
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I have yet to see an assessment of the carbon footprint of lab-grown meat. It might be so energy-intensive that it is not a viable substitute.
Ex-ante life cycle assessment of commercial-scale cultivated meat production in 2030
This study concludes that the carbon footprint is much lower for cultivated meat when it is mass produced.
Environmental Impacts of Cultured Meat Production
Another one coming to a similar conclusion.
Good to know. Although I’m not sure how you can predict the carbon footprint if it is done at large commercial scale, especially without assessing where it is getting the energy from.
What is “Big Ag”?
Big Agriculture. Like Big Pharma or Big Tobacco
Got it, thanks. Thought you meant Big Silver (Ag on Periodic Table)
