Despite the dilemma of drought and disease, no one is also mentioning how a lot of our materials that are being used to take care of the cattle are imported from another country. The vehicles, fencing posts, barbed wire, possibly medicine, parts for the vehicles, etc. Part of it costing more from buying materials to take care of the cattle, nothing is barely made in house and if it is, its once again coming from somewhere else to take care of what little product they have.
The details the article covers are interesting, but not one mention of what is causing record droughts and how the industrial cattle industry contributed to the climate crisis. The end of the article made it seem like a return to normal for the cattle industry is inevitable, but it really is not a sustainable feature of our culture.
I buy beef like once a year, if that. Its too expensive, horrible for the environment, and honestly, after so much time without it, I dont ever crave it.
This is good news to me. Reduce the market. I made a roast veg dish last night for supper using lentils and einkorn (a grain). My husband refuses the fake meat products, but has no problem with lentils, beans, and the uncommon grains I use.
I have seen cases of climate experts saying instead pushing large scale veganism a more realistic idea is just eating A LOT less beef. Outside of a random cheese burger I dont eat much myself. Don't want to end up constipated like Hank anyway
yeah exactly.
I am not vegan. Not even close. I used homemade chicken stock to cook those lentils and grains last night. But incorperating more plant based foods into ones diet isnt a bad idea. The bean is so powerful.
Is that because of the cultural kneejerk reaction to veganism? Kind of how people agree with the concepts of socialism and communism until you use those words in front of them?
Not sure. Personally I don't subscribe to veganism because I believe what we considering suffering is usually based on the concept of beings born with a spine/central nervous system. If youre born a vertebrae only you are worthy of not experiencing "pain". To me it seems as arbitrary as not killing a being because its considered cute
Maybe I'm not understanding your point about veganism or maybe your understanding of veganism is incorrect.
Also, it seems to me that all living beings, including insects, do not want to be harmed or die. Ever try squishing an ant and have it run every which way to avoid your thumb, or swat a fly that just won't be swatted? Egg-laying hens are tortured in the commercial egg factories. The dairy industry (probably as cruel as the egg industry, honestly) is why we have veal, which seems super cruel. I don't like being involved with it at all.
I'd like to be vegan, and I'm trying to work my way toward it.
I look at plants biological/chemical response to tissue damage as no different to our neurological response to it. Fundamentally all organisms avoid tissue damage to pass on their genetics to the next generation. Thats a fundamental aspect of all life. The only reason we look at plant/fungi pain differently is because we dont respond to tissue damage the same way as they do. Personally i dont see plants moving energy to areas of tissue damage or releasing chemicals as a distress response any different than vertebraes own responses to tissue damage through what we consider "pain". Its all based on a level of similarity we give certain organism to oursleves.
Here's my example. if a society that is a type 5 civilization on Kardashev's scale started to eat humans it would be along the same scale as us eating plants. Not eating beings with a gap so huge in intelligence isnt any different than not eating dogs because we find them cute. Its all arbitrary with no real logic. Limiting suffering based on intelligence or a nervous system is as arbitrary as limiting it based on cuteness or brain size. We just choose to give certain organisms more empathy because we consider them closer to ourselves but isnt that selfish? Youre only worthy if we consider you close to humanity
Edit: that being said id be more than happy to hear your thoughts on the flaws of my argument
Probably. It's the whole: let people enjoy things. But their enjoyment is pretty fucking sick.
But you could end up in a gallery showing in Dallas!
In other words, in spite of a worrying amount of consolidation, the beef market is (for now) still a functioning, competitive market, and the players within it do not have the power to unilaterally increase their margins. Huh.
I wouldn't tell you that Impossible Foods' "Ground Beef From Plants" is exactly like real ground beef. But it's pretty good. Unfortunately it's not cheap, either.
For ground meat, I've been going with pork, chicken, and turkey. You don't even have to drain them after browning usually (more so the poultry, though I've found ground pork is much leaner than beef, too). Price-wise they've all been creeping up and pork isn't that far behind beef (even saw a few times where the pork was the same price as the beef) but chicken/turkey are usually a few bucks cheaper per package.
My wife and I cut way back on red meat a few years ago, on doctors' recommendations. So yeah, we use a lot of ground turkey and chicken.
I wouldn’t tell you that Impossible Foods’ “Ground Beef From Plants” is exactly like real ground beef. But it’s pretty good. Unfortunately it’s not cheap, either.
This is all that I buy when I want something ground-beef-like for cooking. It's not cheap (not super-expensive either) but it's highly uniform and the taste and texture are fine with me. There used to be one or two other brands of plant-based "beef" at Winco but now there's only "Impossible" so I'm curious about what's going on in the artificial meat part of the market.
afaik it's because the cattle demand more money now for selling their bodies.
How selfish of them, they apparently don't care about DOW at all
I hear they are unionizing.
Monopolies or Oligopolies will do that, yes. Can't sell high because only a few players that all price identically; cant buy low because only a few players that all price identically. Capitalism without competition is feudalism.
There's plenty of competition at the rancher level. That's not the issue. The bottleneck is the meat processors. That's where the oligopoly is. All the beef at the grocery store goes through a couple of major processors.
You can get beef for cheaper wholesale or buying beef shares. Even with processing from a smaller place, you're looking at $8-10/lb for buying a whole beef, which is way cheaper than the grocery store. You just still need a place to keep 400+lbs of beef frozen.
Interesting you should mention this. There must have been a beef price "crisis" at the retail level back in the early-mid 70s, because now I remember my parents buying something like a side of beef, having it cut up and packaged, and freezing it at home. They might have actually bought a separate freezer just for this endeavor. I'd totally forgotten about this until now and have never heard of anyone doing a similar thing ever since. They really seemed to think they were beating "The System" at the time but I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't even break even given the freezer storage needed.
Capitalism always does this, this isn't feudalism this is just capitalism. There's so much pro-capitalism propaganda out there that our idea of what capitalism is supposed to be like is the exception to the rule instead of the rule itself.
This is just a long and drawn out way of saying “the meat industry is undergoing a lot of supply-side shocks”
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