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The Meat Lobby Outspent Animal Rights Groups, Climate Groups, and Scientists, spending around $200 million in 2023 (medium.com)

submitted 2 months ago by Sunshine@lemmy.ca to c/politics@lemmy.world

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[-] aniki@discuss.tchncs.de 37 points 2 months ago

[removed by mod]

[-] commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 2 months ago

can you give me a compelling reason?

[-] ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca 38 points 2 months ago

It is the largest positive impact a single person can have on the environment. Kurzgesagt video with the analysis.

As a vegetarian for decades, it's also cheaper, often healthier, and isn't difficult at all once you find some new recipes you like. You also don't need to switch all at once. Ease into it by cooking one vegetarian meal a week and then increase it as you find ones you like.

[-] BallsandBayonets@lemmings.world 7 points 2 months ago

Infinitely incorrect. Not reproducing is the greatest lack of a negative impact a single person can have on the environment (which is all going vegan can do, not eating meat will never have greater than a zero net impact on emissions).

[-] capital@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago

Infinitely incorrect. Not reproducing is the greatest lack of a negative impact a single person can have on the environment

Don't stop there. You can end all your emissions now by killing yourself.

NOTE: I would not like anyone to kill themselves. I am pointing out the logical end to this particularly stupid argument.

[-] itslilith 4 points 2 months ago

Not having children can also at best have a net zero impact. If we're taking opportunity costs for future actions into account, the single highest reduction in emissions for an individual is to die.

In day to day life, veganism has the single highest impact. Still, I'll never have (non -adopted) children, emissions are a part of it, but mostly because I don't want to bring someone into the world that's so thoroughly fucked at the moment

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[-] azertyfun@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 months ago

Vegan ≠ Vegetarian.

Veganism starts and ends with "no animal exploitation". And due to some weird ingroup/outgroup dynamics Extremely Online Vegans will get batshit insane radical with it and refuse to feed meat to their cats or insist that eating honey is fundamentally unethical.

I eat very little meat, mostly for environmental and partly for ethical reasons, but bringing up the environmentalist side of vegetarianism to defend veganism (a radical dogma based on a specific ethical stance) is missing the mark entirely.

With all that said, everyone should eat less meat, and way less red meat.

[-] CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

I do agree the zeal of the recently converted veg*ns are not very helpful in messaging. Wagging your finger at people as individuals for a lifestyle and notions about nutrition ("but where do you get your protein from") they were likely born into/just accepted as a truth is not too helpful. Yelling at people for a dab of honey or egg or butter in something served to them....not really helping. Who has ever had their mind changed by such behaviors? If anything, this will make people double down in their delusions about how the SAD is good for them.

Yes, most animal proteins are probably setting you up for diabetes, cancer, heart disease. And it's not really hard to discern this from looking at the evidence. Honest actors in the medical profession are already saying this, if they aren't compromised by the SAD industry complex. They are, IMHO, not saying it nearly enough. Far too many people still think they need "protein" (in their minds, meaning dead flesh which also happens to have lots and lots of fat, too, but they don't call this "a fat", they call it "a protein", lol) to live.

In my opinion, if you compare the crazy levels of animal protein consumption in America with the arc of Big Tobacco and the levels of denialism also associated with it, we are maybe in the 1980s phase - when everyone but the most reactionary knew that using tobacco AND secondary smoke were life-threatening, but just before much was being done about it - the bans on indoor smoking only started in the late 1980s.

Many people are starting to wake up from the Big Tobacco-esque levels of carnist propaganda...we'll see what action is going to be taken by governments, institutions, etc...

[-] azertyfun@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 months ago

We're like 1960s tobacco industry at best. I don't see the subsidies on red meat going away in the next 10 years, and probably not the next 20 if I'm honest, short of a catastrophic food crisis that would cause us to re-evaluate the number of human calories produced per hectare of agricultural land.

I'd like to be wrong, and change does come in waves so maybe 10 years from now I'll change my mind. Maybe. But right now the idea of not subsidizing red meat production is fringe even within the left of the left – and the left hasn't exactly been making electoral strides in most countries recently.

[-] commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 months ago

I'm not watching your YouTube video. if you can't articulate a compelling reason, just say so.

I find it hard to believe that it is the biggest impact a single person can have. can you enumerate the other strategies it is weighed against?

you also aren't supporting your claims about affordability, health, nor ease with anything but anecdotal evidence.

[-] xmunk@sh.itjust.works 20 points 2 months ago

I'm not watching your YouTube video. if you can't articulate a compelling reason, just say so.

What absolutely trash reasoning. "Please type up a compelling reason just for me, I don't want to watch a well researched and produced discussion on the topic." It's bordering on sealioning.

[-] ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 months ago

Please type up a compelling reason just for me

Here's another video just on that!

[-] commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I did watch that video. probably a dozen times. it gets posted often. I shouldn't be expected to debunk an argument that isn't made.

I rewatched* it after I made my comment though, and it does not establish what they claimed. it doesn't cite sources**, and it's primary thesis is "it's complicated"

edit(s):

* i actually listened to it. but just now, after i made this comment, i scrubbed it and i found:

** they do some pretty hard-to-see and also hard-to-research citation in the form of citing academic papers in the bottom right of the screen around the time they are making the claim. and let me tell you, poore-nemecek is the basis of the lca analysis (which i could have guessed), and that lca analysis is flat out bad science. it's certainly not a compelling reason to be vegan.

[-] xmunk@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 months ago

Those are very fair objections and that video isn't perfect - I was only objecting to your apparent refusal to consume a video. A lot of content these days is produced in video form so it's not reasonable to reject an argument based on media - some topics just aren't well expressed in a written form.

But, TL;DR I wasn't criticizing your opinion or decision - just the common response of rejecting something based on the media it's presented in.

[-] SuperCub@sh.itjust.works 27 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

We need to greatly reduce meat consumption in order to make our planet sustainable for human life. You can start at your own pace, but it's easier than ever with all of the meat alternatives these days.

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[-] CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

If nothing else - your health.

[-] commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 months ago

your not my doctor

[-] CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

Never claimed to be. I sure hope your doctor has better nutrition training than the average doctor. That is if you are only going to rely on your personal doctor for anything nutrition-related.

[-] usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml 19 points 2 months ago

For anyone interested in supporting those going up against the meat lobby, look into the Agriculture Fairness Aliance

https://www.agriculturefairnessalliance.org/about/mission

[-] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 18 points 2 months ago

Like... No shit?

Meat industry makes tons of money.

Activist groups and scientists don't.

How are the poor supposed to spend more than the mega rich on anything?

[-] beansbeansbeans@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago

Save the animals, eat the rich.

[-] TheFonz@lemmy.world 15 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

It's not working and they have cause for concern. Mean consumption is on a downward trend

Edit: I meant to say in the United States it's slowing down.

[-] davepleasebehave@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago

which is why they are spending so much. it's a good sign in some ways.

[-] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 months ago

I love eating beef and whatnot, but my body seems to respond better to eating less of that in a given sitting. As someone growing up in the 80s, it seemed like that diet should be a 50/50 mix of beef and spinach...

I think they are going to have a hard time convincing people to feel crummier... it's much healthier and cheaper to stick to that old "pack of playing card portion"

[-] commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 2 months ago

Mean consumption is on a downward trend

can you show me some evidence of this?

[-] alucard@sopuli.xyz 2 points 2 months ago

I would love to see this too!!

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[-] CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

It also explains why Big Dairy was trying to make almond milk be labeled "nut juice" and protect the term "milk".

I really do think the SAD will be one of the last things to fall in our path toward progression - and that's assuming we steadily progress. Seeing donnie and his supporters doesn't exactly lead me to believe that about ~30% of this country wants any progress. The reactionaries have been doing nearly all they can to deride, mock and hold back any and all forms of reduction of our ridiculous levels of consumption of dairy and dead flesh for years and years. I even still run into some of them that think being a (male) vegetarian will turn you into a woman or something, because "protein", LOL.

There is a lot of propaganda to overcome on the path to getting Americans to eat a properly healthy diet AND to curb the massive global warming from their current diet already - and dumb fad diets like eating all-steak like Peterson or the "paleo" diet are not helping at all.

[-] capital@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

Unfortunately, I don't think that's true. Here's some US data I found with one quick search.

To add to that, as underdeveloped areas become more modern and income levels increase, it tends to follow that meat consumption increases along with it.

I would be very happy to be proven wrong on this.

[-] TheFonz@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

Sorry, I meant to say it's slowing down, not trending down as I wrote originally. Most stats show this trend.

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[-] wsheldon@lemm.ee 13 points 2 months ago

They're the only one of these groups that's selling something. That probably helps.

[-] Rapidcreek@lemmy.world 11 points 2 months ago

There are 5 companies that own meat producing in the US, which is the real problem.

[-] Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Why does meat need lobbying? Most people already consider it essential and like the taste.

It’s like lobbying for sugar…

Wait a minute…

[-] CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

When it comes to progress, the SAD will be one of the last things to fall, IMHO.

Even swapping out the same thing by creating clean meat has the anti-woke warriors all aflame and clutching their pearls about how they'll all turn into "soy boys" if they aren't killing something in order to "get their protein"...imagine going full plant-based, my word.

[-] MediaBiasFactChecker@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

Medium - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)

Information for Medium:

MBFC: Left-Center - Credibility: Medium - Factual Reporting: Mixed - United States of America
Wikipedia about this source

Search topics on Ground.News

https://medium.com/@hrnews1/the-meat-lobby-outspent-animal-rights-groups-climate-groups-and-scientists-spending-around-200-124face11f40

Media Bias Fact Check | bot support

[-] Default_Defect@midwest.social 3 points 2 months ago

The Meat Lobby would a good band name.

[-] hakase@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 months ago

As far as I'm concerned they're preaching to the choir.

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

Anyone have a look behind the paywall?

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this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2024

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