Climate Change and Meat Eating

I totally saved reading this thread until dinner was ready: 1 lb of cubed steak.

[i]Heeey Jude
Don’t make it vejj.
Take a bison
And make a sandwich.

Remember,
to cook it medium rare
then you prepare
to make a burger.

Nom, nom, nom, nom-i-nom-nom! Nom-i-nom-nom! Con-suume!
[/i]

Grills steak

I think the point is missed here, by both those of you above who are clearly annoyed, and Paul McCartney & co who don’t understand.

It’s not about, no meat =/ no methane, a lot of the cattle are raised on grass, crops and other feeds which are supported by fertilizers. Naturally if you tried to raise the amount of cattle we do now naturally, on fresh organic grass and crops, the land will be exhausted. Overfarm the land, and it loses minerals such as nitrates, which takes time to replenish.

It takes a lot of energy and water to produce these fertilizers which feed crops, which is the energy dense part (it also messes up hydrological systems due to algae booms etc.). The UK even fed ground up beef as feed for live cattle; this led to the CJD and mad cow disease, which led to the ban of UK beef exports.

The answer to avoiding the energy dense part of beef, and one which you should be happy to choose anyway is organic grass-fed beef.

Oh ye, you might enjoy this: Uniquely Welsh - Eat Welsh Lamb and Welsh Beef

Click on Welsh Beef 2008!

[quote]pushharder wrote:
You ever seen a bison other than in the zoo or on the internet? Bison be a different breed of cat in more ways than one. Can’t be raised similarly enough to cattle to meet a huge demand.

Tidbit of trivia so that you can appear slightly smarter in this discussion: buffalo = bison. At least in North America.[/quote]

Yeah, I grew up “down the street” from a “buffalo farm”.

You’re right, they HAVE to raised the way bovine SHOULD be raised, and then they end up being far less destructive to the soil and the grass.

i’ve posted on this topic quite a bit. Bottom line is that eating lot’s of heavily processed red meat is unhealthy, unethical, definitely harmful to the planet because it’s unsustainable, and possibly harmful via Carbon Dioxide and Methane emissions.

There’s no question that processed meat, the kind that an overwhelming majority of Americans eat, is very unhealthy for people. The reason why is simple: if you eat an Animal that is sickly and malnourished you will become more sickly and malnourished. Processed grain fed beef contains much fewer antioxidants, omega 3’s, vitamins and minerals than grass fed beef and contains far more saturated fat than grass fed beef. It’s no wonder that the rise in popularity of grain fed beef in America seems to coincide with an equal increase of colon cancer and obesity.

Processed meat is universally unethical. Commercial slaughterhouses do not permit anyone to take pictures of their facilitiies because the scene is so horrid. The cows feed is usually mixed with feces, other dead cows, massive levels of pathogenic bacteria, and equally massive doses of antibiotics. Even though we use cows for food, it is not right to treat animals in this way.

I see a few people have mentioned sustainability here. good. We raise so many animals for slaughter in this country that they use WAY too many resources. Commercial farming wrecks the soil and causes massive levels of ground water contamination. Because many of these bacteria that contaminate the water around farms have been treated with antibiotics they are also drug resistant and dangerous.

I’m not going to start a GW debate, but I hope people get where this is going. We cannot continue to rely on commercial farming to provide us with meat in this country. In the near future, healthier and safer alternatives to commercial meat must arise.

Sky

Spartiates, Not to be a smart ass, but the grass and the soil don’t know the difference from a 1200 lb Angus and a 1500 lb buffalo. That is pure environmental crap. It is the management of the animal used that decides if damage is done. I don’t buy the whole methane thing either if ruminants grazing has serious implication for GW then lets take off to the Serengeti and wipe out the thousands upon thousands of farting animals down there.

Besides this, methane production from ruminants eating corn or other grain is less than methane production from the same animals eating grass.

[quote]handlebar wrote:
Spartiates, Not to be a smart ass, but the grass and the soil don’t know the difference from a 1200 lb Angus and a 1500 lb buffalo. That is pure environmental crap. It is the management of the animal used that decides if damage is done. I don’t buy the whole methane thing either if ruminants grazing has serious implication for GW then lets take off to the Serengeti and wipe out the thousands upon thousands of farting animals down there.[/quote]

Cows pull the grass out at the root, meaning you not only have to rotate where they trample, but replant it, assuming you don’t have tons and tons of land. Buffalo don’t, so while the ground will get trampled, the vegetation recovers much more quickly. They also just eat less, despite their size: they’re more efficient eaters, and will eat the weeds and such that cows won’t.

Just look at where American Buffalo are originally from versus where most cattle come from… one is brown and the other is green.

I think it only makes sense that indigenous animals are probably going to be lower-maintenance than imported.

Whatever, I think we can all file this into the “Who Cares” bin.

I’m not going to stop eating meat.

I am not sure where you are getting your info from but it is inaccurate. Cows and Buffalo have similar mouth shape and teeth pattern they do not graze differently. And as far as buffalo not being able to overgraze look at the acounts of early mountain trappers and reports from early US Calvary expidetions when thy came upon an area that had seen buffalo grazing there was nothing left. I had a chance to do some range work adjacent to a ranch in Nebraska that Ted Turner bought within 3 years the ranch looked horrible

I am not sure where you are getting your info from but it is inaccurate. Cows and Buffalo have similar mouth shape and teeth pattern they do not graze differently. And as far as buffalo not being able to overgraze look at the acounts of early mountain trappers and reports from early US Calvary expidetions when thy came upon an area that had seen buffalo grazing there was nothing left. I had a chance to do some range work adjacent to a ranch in Nebraska that Ted Turner bought within 3 years the ranch looked horrible

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]Schlenkatank wrote:

Sky[/quote]

You have just spouted a plethora of bullshit.

Even the fact that you use the term “cows” when your intention is “beef” gives evidence you’re just regurgitating some e-pamphlet that’s floating around on some PETA type website.

You do NOT know what you’re talking about.[/quote]

No, I actually know what the hell I’m talking about. I have a plethora of factual sources from peer reviewed studies to support what I’m saying. My guess is you do not.

I’ll post those studies for you later.

Edit: Your cow comment makes absolutely no sense. I only use that term in one point of my entire post when referring to the content of the feed they give to many commercially raised animals.

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]Schlenkatank wrote:

…Edit: Your cow comment makes absolutely no sense…
[/quote]

I understand why.[/quote]

push… when you wake up in the morning do you realize how ignorant you are? This is kind of an ambiguous comment, but it seem like you think rather highly of your blatantly unsupported opinion.

Anyway, for those of us living in the factual world I’ve attached several simple articles which outline the importance of grass fed beef. The first one discusses the effects of grain fed and grass fed beef on human health and clearly highlights the nutritional differences. I also have a Japan study in one of my scientific databases that shows that colon cancer and grain fed beef are correlated. Unfortunately I can’t post it because you have to pay to view it.

This next video supports pretty much the rest of my argument. It runs down everything from unethical treatment of animals, what they are fed, super bacteria that contaminate water around super farms, and the environmental impact of raising cattle like drones.

Happy ignorance push. BTW, the majority of my info comes from my sister who worked for the freaking Smithsonian Institute studying the environmental impact of commercial farming/fishing. You’re absolutely kidding yourself if you think you can hang with me on this one.