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Depends on the additives, stimulators, pesticides and GMO. I’m comfortable with ingesting a limited amount of certain ones, knowing that my overall diet and lifestyle are within my standards for health and QOL.
No need for the insulting tone. Raising high concentrations of animals to the minimum age of slaughter requires feed, land/space, chemicals/antibiotics, waste formation and disposal, water - all of which puts a higher cost on its consumption compared to the equivalent in a more plant-based diet. This will be exacerbated as emerging economies start consuming more meat as part of their regular diet.
As I said earlier, higher production on less land benefits the environment. Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO) do pose some problems in waste management, given that 1000 cows produce just as much manure on a one acre feed lot as they do in a 600 acre pasture. That requires some specific handling requirements, but produces no more "waste" (all natural- BTW) than a pasture setting.
CAFOs have become more prevalent over the last 45 yrs for the same reason assembly lines for auto manufacturing replaced the cottage industry of hand- built auto works-- economy of scale.
Placing cattle on feed (corn/soy mostly) improves growth efficiency. Plowing natural prairie- a biome dominated by natural grass- to grow corn (another grass) replaces one dominant species by another similar one. That changes the biodiversity but not the basic biome. (Personally, I would like to see more row crop acreage returned to pasture- a closer approximation of natural prairie. But then our meat would cost more without the feed lots.) We raise cattle now where bison used to roam-- another change in the species but not the basic paradigm.
Criticisms have been made about the water requirements of raising cattle-- but that's pure BS (no pun intended). First off, the water is not "consumed & destroyed." It's re-cycled. And just as much water falls on a pasture as the neighboring field of kale. In fact, more water is wasted in irrigation in CA's central valley (and increasing salinity of the soil, ruining it).
Cattle can be grazed on marginal land not suitable for raising veggies.
More petroleum is used to raise crops than cattle. You can raise cattle without machinery, but commercial size crops require tractors. Smaller operations without machinery couldn't feed us all.
Then there's the silly complaint about "methane." The total population of ungulates in the pre-Columbian America was ~80 million-- the same as it is now-- so no more methane produced than before. Secondly, methane is fairly rapidly oxidized in the atmosphere to co2. Carbon Cycle. Only the mobilization of sequestered carbon (by burning fossil fuel or making cement) increases GHG levels.
On every point, meat production beats crop production.
Compare how much input of energy, resources and time goes into the formation of one pound of meat to that of near nutritional equivalents in plants.
Just the formation of the corn, soy and animal byproducts (and all the chemicals required) needed to feed the animal over the duration of its life costs more than one season of growth needed for plants, which require only trace nutrients, water and sunlight - plants that could have been grown in place of the corn and soy. Responsible farming utilizing co-planting and crop rotation combined with efficient irrigation methods further reduces the cost as compared to raising animals for meat.
All of this is drifting from my original post regarding the potential for lab grown meat as a viable alternative/supplement to traditionally grown meat for mass consumption. This will also depend on the feasibility of large-scale production, which may present a whole new host of problems. But the idea is intriguing.
Compare how much input of energy, resources and time goes into the formation of one pound of meat to that of near nutritional equivalents in plants.
Just the formation of the corn, soy and animal byproducts (and all the chemicals required) needed to feed the animal over the duration of its life costs more than one season of growth needed for plants, which require only trace nutrients, water and sunlight - plants that could have been grown in place of the corn and soy. Responsible farming utilizing co-planting and crop rotation combined with efficient irrigation methods further reduces the cost as compared to raising animals for meat.
All of this is drifting from my original post regarding the potential for lab grown meat as a viable alternative/supplement to traditionally grown meat for mass consumption. This will also depend on the feasibility of large-scale production, which may present a whole new host of problems. But the idea is intriguing.
Pick your own favorite nutrition info site and evaluate a diet that consist of 1 lb beef, one potato, four slices of Italian bread, a serving of peas and a tomato salad plus 3 glasses of milk every day vs equal portions of corn, beans & rice to provide a mere 60 gm of protein (a small amount; 40 gm/d is considered just barely enough to keep you alive). … by my calculations, the former will provide you with 80 gm protein (enough for all but professional football players or old fashioned lumberjacks), about 1800 cal and all the vits & minerals you need to meet RDA....The latter will be deficient in several vits & mins, while providing 3200 cal/d-- enough to make most people obese.
Meat is a more concentrated form of nutrition than plants. Much less energy goes into the production of meat than plants. Plants need to be planted into soil that has been worked, then periodically cultivated and sprayed with herbicides & pesticides, probably irrigated and then harvested-- all with tractors.
If you don't grow corn, what will you grow there? Kale? --great for vit A & C, but lousy in everything else, like all veggies-- low nutrient density.
The synthetic meat will require cloning -- ie- a GMO process, and then "fed" with nutrients artificially produced, or extracted from plants-- so you're back to the inefficiency of plant based nutrition. You will lose the by-products like leather and lard, used by bakers & in cosmetics; bones go into gelatin etc etc They use everything but the Moo.
I wonder what impact the emergence of lab-grown meat will have on the beef/meat industry. It will enable some consumers to bypass ethical concerns as well as health concerns, such as detailed in this thread.
The obvious obstacle will be marketing it to consumers who are “icky” about the thought of eating lab-grown meat, even if there are no discernible taste differences.
And of course resistance via industry politics.
It will be interesting
The industry of course will fight to keep the lab grown meat from being labeled as 'meat', much like the dairy industry is trying to stop plant-based milks from being able to use the name 'milk'.
Some people will probably be just fine with the lab grown meat and would like it since there would be less environmental impact from eating it and of course the ethical concerns would not be there. I'm vegetarian and would feel a bit strange eating it but would be okay with it as long as it was full lab grown.
I would think that there would still be some demand for animal-based meat as well for some people who are weirded out by the idea of lab grown but maybe it would be on a lesser scale and there wouldn't be the factory farm operations with the widespread antibiotic use and inherent cruelty.
lab grown meat …. there would be less environmental impact from eating it...
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Where will they get the nutrients from?-- Industrial, artificial production of amino acids, sugars, vits & minerals, or industrially refining crop plants.
What will be the environmental impact of that vs cattle ranching where cattle merely replaced the original, natural bison as the grazer on the Plaines?
RE: "cruelty"--that's a value word where the connotation is determined by the beholder. Is it more cruel to raise an animal in a controlled environment with an assured food supply, protected from predators & diseases and then quickly (humanely?) dispatched or for it to live in the wild, struggling to find food, unprotected from the elements, subjected to a life of constant vigil against predators and ultimately fated to a slower death by predation or the suffering of old age & disease? I don't know the answer to that one. You make the call.
[Personally, I want to die nice and quietly in my sleep like my uncle...not screaming in terror like all his passengers ]
Criticisms have been made about the water requirements of raising cattle-- but that's pure BS (no pun intended). First off, the water is not "consumed & destroyed." It's re-cycled. .
How does that happen when 95% of the water goes to irrigating?
I think you're wrong on just about every point you've made in this thread.
How does that happen when 95% of the water goes to irrigating?
I think you're wrong on just about every point you've made in this thread.
You're supposing that the water used in growing corn & beans for cattle is (a) irrigated (it rarely is) and (b) that nothing else would be grown in those fields if we weren't feeding cattle.
The cattle themselves drink 5-15 gal of water per day and give almost all of it back to the land the same day, if you know what I mean.
If you think I'm wrong, then you don't know much about biology or agriculture. Anybody can say I'm wrong. Can you defend the statement with facts contradicting me?
Depends on the additives, stimulators, pesticides and GMO. I’m comfortable with ingesting a limited amount of certain ones, knowing that my overall diet and lifestyle are within my standards for health and QOL.
Glad that you are, but lots of people are not OK with additives, stimulants, pesticides, GMO or antibiotics in our food. Most of that stuff is toxic or otherwise harmful for humans, and banned in over 100 countries. For reasons you obviously don't care about.
My own words, after a good deal of research & experience in the fields- both agricultural & medical.
Well, that explains...
Quote:
The meat you eat is STERILE. Only a sick animal (won't be slaughtered) would have bugs growing in its tissues-- therefore-- antibiotic resistant bacteria do not get to the consumer. PERIOD.
The topic of your thread is about antibiotic presence in meat. There must be a reason why F.D.A. banned the use of antibiotics for growth promotion in animals last year.
You might want to get familiar with this publication: https://www.fda.gov/AnimalVeterinary.../ucm535154.htm
However, ongoing tests show that crucial antibiotics are still used on US farms despite public health fears and FDA ban.
Yes, the GOVT (ie-politics & lobbying by TreeHugger Groups)) placed restrictions on their use. As I said earlier, antibiotic resistance in food sources has not been documented as a medical problem.( The groups are arguing it could be a problem, someday, maybe.) In fact, the only case of an infection with a resistant strain reported as an animal/human transmission was from human to animal.
You keep insisting that GMO, additives, pesticides, etc have bad effects on humans--that's simply wrong. There is no credible evidence that the ones regularly used have any discernable effects.
I find it more enlightening to argue the point this way: I concede--these things are bad. Now the question is "how bad?" Answer-- not bad enough to distinguish their effect on the data from "noise," ie-- statistically insignificant.
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