Steaks Could Soon Become Champagne-Like Luxury, Says Boss of Europe's Top Meat Processor (bloomberg.com) 214
The boss of Europe's top meat processor said beef will become a luxury like champagne because of the climate impact of producing it. From a report: "Beef is not going to be super climate friendly," Danish Crown Chief Executive Officer Jais Valeur said in an interview with Danish newspaper Berlingske. "It will be a luxury product that we eat when we want to treat ourselves." Valeur said pork would be a more climate-friendly protein. Danish Crown is one of Europe's largest pork producers, although it is also a player in the beef market. Meat companies are coming under pressure to curb greenhouse gases, with 57% of all food industry emissions coming from making animal products, according to one study. Tackling methane emissions from livestock is one of the most critical climate challenges for producers.
Piggy bank rattling. (Score:2)
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Well unless that drought out west has gone away there may indeed be a shortage of beef.
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I think we'll see the hit in avocados and nuts (almonds is it?) first as that those are the most thirsty plants they have out CA way.
Sliding scale. (Score:3)
Beef has traditionally been the more expensive meat, with chicken being the cheapest. Pork falling somewhere in the middle. Seafood depending on what kind and location also being expensive.
Re:Sliding scale. (Score:5, Informative)
Beef has traditionally been the more expensive meat, with chicken being the cheapest.
Not quite. In the 1800s, beef was much cheaper, and chicken was a luxury food.
Chicken farming became far more productive during the 20th century. Chicken became cheaper than beef in the 1960s and continued to fall in relative price.
Chicken: A brief history of America's most consumed meat [westonaprice.org]
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Herbert Hoover used the phrase "a chicken for every pot" in the 1928 Presidential campaign because chicken was a premium food. It might have been available to a farmer, as they could safely eat roosters without impacting egg production. But unless you were on a farm, it was much more expensive than beef. Cows were just easier to process. Chickens had to be processed by hand, and there was little meat on each bird. Until they were bred for uniform size, chicken was the premium meat over beef.
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Are you sure it's not because it's an obvious reference to a saying attributed to Henri IV of France?
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Beef has traditionally been the more expensive meat, with chicken being the cheapest. Pork falling somewhere in the middle. Seafood depending on what kind and location also being expensive.
Steak being the most expensive form of beef. A good steak is probably my favorite thing on this earth but I haven't had one in years just due to the price. I've also now given up pork ribs, chicken wings, and crabs as the prices have doubled in the past year.
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If I were you, I think I'd look for a better paying job...?
Eating fine foods is one of the central pleasures of being a human being, and we are not on earth for that long.
Enjoy it while you can.
Sure, prices have gone up a bit, but they aren't outrag
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The first few bites are where it's at anyways. Soloing a 24 oz porterhouse is something I'm better off not training my stomach to handle.
And forget ordering one at a restaurant. There are many things they can prepare much better than I can, but grilling a steak is too easy to pay for.
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Beef has traditionally been the more expensive meat
People were apparently quite happy with this. In England, you had the tradition of the Sunday roast, with various recipes made from the leftovers during the rest of the week. If you could afford a Sunday roast, you were financially comfortable.
Nowadays, some people expect to eat enormous steaks every day, and the meat industry is geared to that demand. The environmental cost is significant, with a great deal of agriculture being devoted to animal feed. Apart from people liking the taste of meat, there is a
Not unless.... (Score:2)
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Or you may see an increase usage of meat extenders. [wikipedia.org]
Again, urban vs rural (Score:3)
People who live in urban areas might very well find meat to be unavailable.
For those in rural settings, it will never be unavailable - it's just too easy to fence off a field and get a calf.
It's really common for people to chip in and buy half a cow, for example. Farmer get a little easy cash from an extra cow, and families get a freezer full of super high quality meat.
Another divide between those in high and low population density areas. I'm not seeing many positives to urban living these days...
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Yes, but I will say that for small scale agricultural production, it's still more efficient to do pork. My grandparents had about 6 or 7 acres of land and lived a very modest life - he worked when he was younger but was "retired" (moreso just stopped working) by his 50's. He had enough saved to pay the power bill and property taxes but for food he pretty much had a small farm that he'd raise crops and animals on.
He always had plenty of chickens and hogs - sometimes various other stuff like ducks or geese -
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A cow will be perfectly happy on an acre of land. If you're willing to take careful care of its diet, then on much smaller land. Your grandpa just didn't like cows.
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You make my point though - "A cow will be perfectly happy on an acre of land": you can keep 5-6 pigs in a 15 sqft pen - and you don't need to watch their diet you can basically just throw your leftover scraps to them and they'll eat whatever.
A whole acre is a lot of land and is better served growing beans or corn. That's not to say what one SHOULD do with land, but if you're going for maximum efficiency cows ain't it.
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My point is that your grandpa didn't like cows, and it wasn't because of space.
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Hell, I dunno where you live, but down here there's MORE than enough feral hogs out there you can kill and eat, pretty much no limit, any time of year.
My friends and I are actually using this as an excuse to buy more guns....450 Bushmasters are what we're going to play with next, on an AR platform.
Here's an interesting VIDEO [youtube.com] about the round and showing taking some hogs with it.
You can skip to about
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People who live in urban areas might very well find meat to be unavailable. For those in rural settings, it will never be unavailable - it's just too easy to fence off a field and get a calf. It's really common for people to chip in and buy half a cow, for example...I'm not seeing many positives to urban living these days...
This is unrelated to urban vs rural. I assure you plenty of people in cities participate in cow-shares. Once the meat has been divided up and packaged, the incremental cost to ship it anywhere is insignificant next to all the other costs. That said, the cost of meat from a cow-share is currently a fair bit higher than the cost of bulk cheap meat from the supermarket. I do cow-shares, and I view them as a luxury.
What you're talking about is the divide between paying someone to do the work, vs doing it yourse
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People who live in urban areas might very well find meat to be unavailable.
For those in rural settings, it will never be unavailable - it's just too easy to fence off a field and get a calf.
It's really common for people to chip in and buy half a cow, for example. Farmer get a little easy cash from an extra cow, and families get a freezer full of super high quality meat.
Another divide between those in high and low population density areas. I'm not seeing many positives to urban living these days...
Plus, rural people hunt and fish, something that city folk rarely do, if at all. Deer, rabbit, and wild turkey are all plentiful in the South, and if you're brave enough, wild hog is beyond plentiful and is now becoming such a nuisance that some areas are paying bounties to kill razorbacks. So win-win on that one (Florida authorities are also paying bounties on pythons, but I'm not brave enough to eat invasive snake). Southerners have always supplemented their store-bought meat and groceries with wild game
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UGH...I lost everything in my fridge, my fridge AND my big big chest freezer that was filled to the brim with meat from hurricane Ida.
(that bitch).
I was lucky, however, in that while my power was out for at least 7 days...maybe a bit more, it was one of the first in the NOLA area to actually come back on...looking at Entergy map, my little area was green early and surrounded by red outage for mil
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Hmm. I dunno about that.
I get plenty of prime grade beef at Costco pretty much anyone I hit in the "middle" an
Artificial scarcity (Score:3)
So they want to make more money and climate change is (again) the pretext.
Cheaper Alternatives (Score:3)
Beef won't be a luxury just because it will be more expensive. It will be a luxury because the alternative will be SO CHEAP.
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Beef won't be a luxury just because it will be more expensive. It will be a luxury because the alternative will be SO CHEAP.
Some products are desirable because they are expensive. I believe the term for this is Veblen goods.
People don't go to a fancy restaurant to save money. And maybe most people don't go to fancy restaurants because the food is really good. To some extent, people go to restaurants to show off.
People won't eat cheaper substitutes for meat, because no matter how good the emulation, they are "the real thing".
Speaking as a vegetarian, I don't want my food to imitate meat. I use a processed soybean product that is
Carbon Pricing (Score:2)
Once people get on board with paying for the internalized and externalized cost of a product this will be not so politicized.
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paying for the internalized and externalized cost of a product
Paying who? I don't get a check with a note attached saying "Sorry for all that carbon. Here's your $0.15" I suspect that a lot of it goes to helping third world countries most impacted by climate change. Which is to say into the pockets of totalitarian leaders skimming the wealth off their country.
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$0 is political, too. You can see the mess that pricing has gotten us in.
Population vs. Consumption (Score:2)
Says the person... (Score:2)
...who wants to sell more meat for higher prices.
That's ok, I'm not in Europe. My meat comes from 10km away. I can pet the cow (in-advance), and learn about its educational history if I choose.
Economical CO2 drawdown. Eat grass fed beef! (Score:2)
Cattle raised on grass growing on thick layers of soil sequestering carbon provide an economic incentive to draw down gigatons of atmospheric CO2. Feed-lot raised beef relies on diesel and factory farm soil-destroying mono-cropped soy beans and corn. Does not.
Really? (Score:3)
"Beef is not going to be super climate friendly," Danish Crown Chief Executive Officer Jais Valeur said in an interview with Danish newspaper Berlingske. "It will be a luxury product that we eat when we want to treat ourselves." Valeur said pork would be a more climate-friendly protein. Danish Crown is one of Europe's largest pork producers
Gee, I wonder what the vested interest is? How is this fucking news?
Chapagne? (Score:2)
Champagne $9.99 a bottle. You CAN pay more, most of it isn't worth the money. There are occasionally some really good champagne's that cost a fortune, but not often.
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I pay $8 a bottle for Prosecco and it's always a crowd pleaser. Serve it in a small dessert wine glass or white wine glass or a special Prosecco glass if you're one of those kinds of people.
Already that? (Score:2)
You can buy a $5 steak from a crappy chain store, and you can buy a $5 champagne, whoops, I mean 'sparkling wine', because it is from California, not the proper French county.
But most people are looking to buy a $50+ bottle and a $50 steak, both of which can easily be had a good NYC restaurant. Even more (for both) at a MICHELIN starred restaurant.
Isn't it already? (Score:2)
At least as far as my own experience goes, I'm drinking champagne far more often than I eat steak. Maybe because I'm more particular about steak than champagne :D
Missing an asterix. (Score:2)
*In Europe
Become? (Score:2)
It's $15 to buy a rib eye steak around here, and that's just for the store brand. This is not the good stuff.
About the only time I one now is if it goes on sale or is marked down because it's about to expire.
When you kill off your herds and dump the carcasses in a pit while getting your socialist payments from the taxpayers, it's no wonder beef costs so much. And the same goes for pork.
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Denmark is on "crazy and stupid" side of environmentalism, and has been for a couple of decades when it comes to PR messaging. All while the actual actions are slowly slipping to be the exact opposite, such as desperately trying to prevent closure of their aged out and extremely polluting due to lack of mid life upgrades coal plants, because without them, Swedish and Norwegian hydro can't react fast enough to keep their grid up any more. Too much wind in the grid.
You can chuck this to the same thing. PR mes
Re: First cars, then beef (Score:3)
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I"m trying to get AWAY from processed foods and I can't think of something more processed and chemical laden that 3D printed or artificial meat.
NOpe, I want something with a name that stares back at you.
Don't get me wrong, I"m a huge fan of vegetables, but I also didn't get to the top
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It doesn't even have to be real meat for me, just tasty and not too unhealthy.
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Denmark is on "crazy and stupid" side of environmentalism
Someone has to be to counter much of the rest of the world which is on the crazy and stupid side of fucking up the planet.
In real life, Denmark is one of the Big Ag nations, exporting things like pork abroad in huge amounts compared to their domestic consumption.
Pork pound for pound half the carbon of beef, 2/5ths of the nitrogen emissions, and only a tiny fraction of the warming effect thanks to largely reduced methane emissions. And it is precisely Denmark saying the prices will raise.
If you think this is just PR then you're clearly not paying attention to the world around you.
Also only 70% of Danish pork production is exported. In a country o
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Explain to me like I'm a small child how this *isn't* about conquest and subjugation.
Try changing the channel on your TV.
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Explain to me like I'm a small child how this *isn't* about conquest and subjugation.
Ok. This is not some sort of conspiracy to harm you personally. For decades now, environmentalists have been warning that raising cows is worse for the environment than other animals or vegetables. It was true when the global population was less than 5 billion; it will be true when the global population is 8 billion.
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Ok. This is not some sort of conspiracy to harm you personally.
Good luck convincing [thedailybeast.com] him of that.
They aren't. That's a Fox News Fantasy (Score:3)
People trying to push this Green New Deal in the US, really had better NOT try this food angle, or they will get even more active push back then they are experiencing now.
Agreed. While many of them are personally vegetarian or vegan, they'd never push that on the populace. It's unpopular among Democrats as well as Republicans. Not only are you tangibly impacting daily lives of voters, you'll go after farmers and voters LOVE farmers, left and right. If the Green New Deal did that, they'd lose the majority of liberal voters and galvanize the right, for a legitimate reason for once.
It's not a thing. It's just a fantasy Fox News came up with for their nightly outrage por
Supply & demand is the only subjugator (Score:2)
Later chicken, eggs, single-family housing, etx
Explain to me like I'm a small child how this *isn't* about conquest and subjugation.
No one said anything about chicken, eggs, or single family housing. There are no mainstream or credible initiatives to prevent you from having those beyond basic market forces of supply and demand. Sorry, rantings from other nutjobs on Twitter don't count as serious movements. Why are you introducing such a disingenuous straw man? Any other pretend grievances? Are these fictional forces going to bad watching Star Wars as well? Oh, I heard they're banning white sneakers as well...hmm, what other imagi
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For single-family housing, you have it backward.
Many people would prefer to live in urban cores, but government-imposed zoning laws and building restrictions prevent them from doing so. In most big cities, it is nearly impossible to get a residential building permit for high-density housing.
SFHs and urban sprawl are the results of deliberate government policy.
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Sounds like you thought Soylent Green was a documentary.
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I've been hearing conservatives cry about one world governments and crushing oppression since I started paying attention in the 1990s. Well its 2021 and exactly nothing they have feared since then has come to fruition.
Re: First cars, then beef (Score:2)
Yeah. I mean it's not like western countries have confined people to their homes, closed borders, and deployed military to enforce these policies in the name of "safety and health."
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It is the opposite of conquest and subjugation. It is just about 8 billion people wanting to live comfortably.
Today, we simply can't all have cars and beef. The US and European population can because they have "conquered and subjugated" the rest of the world, and we were simply less numerous back then. Maybe in the future it will be possible but we need technological advancement or population control for that.
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That's more or less true. A study in Nashville [streetsblog.org] found that a mixed-use development "produced a total of $3,370 in public revenue annually, while costing the local government about $1,400 per year in infrastructure maintenance, policing, fire response, and other general fund obligations. In comparison, the traditional suburban development Bradford Hills generated only half the revenue -- $1,620 per year -
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I wouldn't say a scam, but yes there is a lot of data to suggest that the ongoing and eventual maintenance costs are never really factored into a suburb until it's generally too late. Then either the taxes go way up or if not the burb becomes one of those "It used to be a nice place to live" part of town.
In my personal experience I've seen both. Generally speaking if you have a smallish burb with a great school system and good level of public safety, the parents will pay out the nose in property taxes t
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It really depends on what you want. If you want excitement, then cities are way better than suburbs.
If you want peace and some space, then suburbs are way better than cities.
Neither one of these desires is better than the other.
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I'll offer a counter, but do know, I'm a to each their own kind of person. So if you like the suburbs, then you do you then, don't let anyone tell you that you're wrong there.
I've lived both in the city and in the suburbs for large stretches of my life and there's no comparison. Not having to chain shit up so it doesn't get stolen off your front door and not having to listen to street noise, construction noise, and police and ambulance sirens at all hours is worth not being able to walk around the corner to get groceries.
I've also done both people stealing things isn't a uniquely city issue. Depending on how out there you go, if rural poor are close enough to you, they'll steal your things just as much as any street urchin. As for the street noise, yeah, there's less of that, but you trade it up for neighbor gossip, people poking in your life when y
Re:Shutdown Datacenters instead (Score:5, Insightful)
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You could persuade me to try to be a bit greener in many areas....
Right up until you start fucking with my food.!!
I'd take good steak over all social media and while it might be argued social media "might" be more green than my favorite proteins, I'd would posit that FB and the like are MUCH worse for your health, mental health than tasty dead animal consumption.
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Got any evidence for that stupid assumption on your part?
Change who you vote for (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Change who you vote for (Score:5, Interesting)
News flash, steaks are already a luxury item. By the way, just as a metric for how badly money is distributed among the US population, if you divide the US National Income value by the US population, you get about $66,000 per year per person, which works out to over a quarter million a year for each 4 person household. Not saying that's how it should be, but that is a good starting metric for beginning a conversation about what really is fair.
https://johnmoffett.substack.c... [substack.com]
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There is no "fair", there is only opportunity. As long as everyone has the same opportunities then life in this country is fair.
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Poor people who aren't born to rich parents don't have the same opportunities, and you are smart enough to know that. Now that we have that straight, how do you make sure some people who start out with gobs of money don't take unfair advantage of people who start out with nothing?
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Poor people who aren't born to rich parents don't have the same opportunities, and you are smart enough to know that. Now that we have that straight, how do you make sure some people who start out with gobs of money don't take unfair advantage of people who start out with nothing?
Possible trigger alert here.
I started out as a child of parents who got surplus butter, cheese and other foodstuffs. Nothing? I started out with hella lot less than nothing.
As much as people say there is no opportunity for the poor, I put the lie to that. I moved from poverty to somewhere a lot higher on the food chain.
The amount of wealth is not the metric.What you do with your mind is. Because there are many reasons a person who might be poor might not move up in life.
Now it isn't that I haven't lo
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When your the exceptional one, its easy to believe that the reason others fail is because they didn't work as hard as you did. Our own efforts and struggles are easily seen. Other people's efforts and struggles are hidden from us.
The 'opportunities' argument isn't just talking about that, though. It's talking about the fact that a rich person who lacks work ethic and 'gives up' not only can still end up in a better person than a poor person who works hard and 'succeeds', but is also more likely to. Temporar
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When your the exceptional one, its easy to believe that the reason others fail is because they didn't work as hard as you did. Our own efforts and struggles are easily seen.
How about the struggles of the wealthy?
Despite the popular narrative, they are human, they have problems. Their fecal matter is odiferous (just had to pop that one in there)
Other people's efforts and struggles are hidden from us.
Of course. Just like wealthy people's are.
The wealthy and the poor are just people. There are nice ones and utter jerks in each group. But they all cover the human spectrum. Given some more thought, your post got me thinking about adding one more thing to my list. I guess I never thought about it too much. I never spent any time
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Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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That all depends on how many of them know how tasty they are. I may not be rich, but tongue (or lengua if you prefer) and liver were a regular part of my diet growing up and I still like both of them.
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Steaks have always been luxury items. We'd get half a steer of cuts to fill up a deep freeze with because my grandfather raised cattle, but even then we didn't have steaks every day. Most of the time you had lesser cuts, ground beef, more liver than you ever wanted as a kid, and so forth. So while beef wasn't a luxury item, the good steaks were. How many rich people are dining on cabeza or tongue?
Although I can't talk my wife into it, both cabeza and tongue are pretty good. I grew up having pickled tongue.
And then there is Studzienina, which I refer to as Pig's foot Jello. Sounds horrifying, tastes good.
Only time I ever had steaks all the time was when I was on expense account living when I was around 19. Steak and eggs for breakfast, Steak for lunch, and steak for dinner. Got kinda boring.
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How many rich people are dining on cabeza or tongue?
Am I rich? Yes by some standards, no by others. I work in software for a large American company (in London): they pay well, not 1% well, but well above median. So no super or even normal-sized yacht for me, but I can afford a lot of steak if I want.
I don't know what cabeza is, but if I saw tongue in my local butcher I'd buy it in an instant. Somehow never occurs to me to order any. Last time I saw a big old bag of chicken feet I bought them. I like liver.
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News flash, steaks are already a luxury item. By the way, just as a metric for how badly money is distributed among the US population, if you divide the US National Income value by the US population, you get about $66,000 per year per person, which works out to over a quarter million a year for each 4 person household. Not saying that's how it should be, but that is a good starting metric for beginning a conversation about what really is fair.
https://johnmoffett.substack.c... [substack.com]
Distributed? You mean you don't earn your money? People just give it to you? Sweet.
Oh, and Fair? Does that mean that you're gonna start telling your Money Daddy to start giving me "distributed wealth" so that I can stop going to work?
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You know that rich people make money without working. They just buy and sell stocks or make other investments. Many of them start our rich from birth. So most rich people don't earn money, unless you count clicking on a stock trade as "earning". You will of course say that they have to know enough to click on the right stock, but that is BS and you know it. If you have millions, it is easy to make money on the stock market without working at all. That option is not available for most people. But you probabl
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You know that rich people make money without working. They just buy and sell stocks or make other investments. Many of them start our rich from birth. So most rich people don't earn money, unless you count clicking on a stock trade as "earning". You will of course say that they have to know enough to click on the right stock, but that is BS and you know it. If you have millions, it is easy to make money on the stock market without working at all. That option is not available for most people. But you probably don't care about those details, now do you?
What are your plans for seizing the means of production.
Consider being a whole lot less prejudiced.
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Q. How do you make $1 million on trading stocks?
A. Start with $2 million!
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And by the way, money is distributed all the time. When a large multinational corporation gets a contract with the government, the taxpayer's money is "distributed". When a corporation give dividends, money is distributed. When a bank gives a rich person a gigantic loan, money is distributed. Gobs of money gets distributed all the time, and you know that. You're just hoping other people don't notice. No bid government contracts amount to how much each year? Distribution baby. Distribution. This year, for th
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Bank bailouts in 2008? Maybe that's distribution in your book? Rich kids inheriting millions or billions of dollars without working? How about that? Don't get me started, I could do this all day.
Re:Change who you vote for (Score:5, Interesting)
Beef is a lousy protein. It takes enormous amounts of land, water and other resources to produce beef. Plus, it's not all that great for you.
That's why there are those "plant based alternatives" - because beef is very resource intensive to produce. The conversion rate is around 18 to 1, or 18 pounds of feed to 1 pound of beef. Add in things like water consumption and land and it's a huge impact. Think of it this way - most of the agricultural land in the US is used to basically produce feed for livestock. Most of the arable land that grows stuff grows to feed animals, and not for direct human consumption.
More land still is then used to raise those animals until they can be slaughtered for meat.
And beef cattle are among the worst proteins possible for it.
So yes, steaks and beef are going to be luxury items because a lot of land is wasted raising cattle, and a lot of land is wasted growing food for cattle .
It's why plant-based burgers are around - despite the processing, the amount of resources that go into making that patty are far lower.
Pork has a much better conversion rate of around 5 to 1. Not great, but much better than cows which take nearly 4 times more feed to produce the same amount of protein.
Chicken is probably the most efficient, where the ratio is a lean 1.7 to 1.
Plant-based chicken nuggets and such really make no sense - I doubt they would beat the efficiency all that much to be worthwhile.
It's probably going to be one of the biggest things about climate change - the usable land for raising beef and its feed will force it to become an even greater luxury.
Doesn't mean you need to give up steaks, but you probably will have to give up those huge honking 36oz steaks and be satisfied with 8 or 12 oz ones.
It's hidden a lot in the US because the amount of land the US dedicates to raising cattle is quite large (and quite cheap). But other locations aren't so lucky and won't be able to dedicate so much land or food to an inefficient food source.
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It takes enormous amounts of land, water and other resources ...beef is very resource intensive to produce...18 pounds of feed to 1 pound of beef.
Actually, it takes 0 pounds of feed to produce 1 pound of beef. Stop feeding the animals since they can feed them-dang-selves!
Beef is a 100% sustainable renewable resource. Cattle eat grass then fertilize that same grass. Cattle produce more cattle. All in an endless cycle powered by the sun requiring just a little bit of curating by humans to keep them from being killed or escaping. Cattle are basically plants that grow meat. This sustainability is why beef was such a major food source in the past.
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How can you say such an unkind thing about pork? You've obviously never had some good southern bbq.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
There is a methane cycle, like the other cycles (Score:2)
Cattle eat grass, and in time produce beef. The cattle emit methane (incidentally, so do humans. And the reason why cattle emit a lot more of it than humans is that they eat grass - a vegetable).
"After ten years, methane is broken down in a process called hydroxyl oxidation into CO2, entering a carbon cycle which sees the gas absorbed by plants, converted into cellulose, and eaten by livestock.
"To put that into context, each year 558m tons of methane is produced globally, with 188m tons coming from agricult
Re:There is a methane cycle, like the other cycles (Score:5, Interesting)
This is an important point. Methane has a tropospheric half life of 9 years, which means it will be 99% gone in 60 years. What's more *agricultural* methane does not introduce more carbon to the atmosphere -- it is made from carbon taken out of the atmosphere.
The problem is that during its short time in the atmosphere methane is an extremely potent greenhouse gas. This makes methane emission reduction one of the few things we can do that might significantly slow the rate of climate change in the short term. The short term is important; it's the part of the future we'll all be living in.
Without a doubt waste and leaked methane from fossil fuel production should be a higher priority than getting rid of beef; not only is that pure waste, it introduces carbon to the atmosphere, which agricultural emissions do not. But reduction of agricultural emissions is still something we should be working on.
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Cattle (and all other "ruminants") produce methane in their stomachs by fermenting grass. This turns indigestible cellulose to starches and sugars which they can use for nutrition.
An unfortunate byproduct is lots of methane which they burp out their mouths. This is different from the small amount of methane gasses humans fart out the other end.
This methane is part of the carbon cycle but it is a potent greenhouse for the 20 or so years it stays in the atmosphere.
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Cattle eat grass, and in time produce beef. The cattle emit methane (incidentally, so do humans. And the reason why cattle emit a lot more of it than humans is that they eat grass - a vegetable).
"After ten years, methane is broken down in a process called hydroxyl oxidation into CO2, entering a carbon cycle which sees the gas absorbed by plants, converted into cellulose, and eaten by livestock.
"To put that into context, each year 558m tons of methane is produced globally, with 188m tons coming from agriculture. Almost that entire quantity — 548m tons — is broken down through oxidation and absorbed by plants and soils as part of the sink effect".
https://carolinestocks.medium.... [medium.com]
Yup - hard to convince people of that though. Seems a lot of people believe that cattle are transmuting elements into methane, or creating it out of no where.
All is a cycle.
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You can still have it. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you believe the hype from the "Boss of Europe's Top Meat Processor" then you are as stupid as he thinks you are. He wants you to panic and cause a ruckus so that the EU won't dare make any regulations that would require them to expend any money.
Here's a word of advice: don't believe corporations or their talking heads.
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Since I doubt you are living in the mountains of Colombia or the wet regions of India, that means your coffee or tea is cultivated and shipped across the world for you to consume, and you're worried about dairy for the environment? Top Kek
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and shipped across the world for you to consume
Shipping across the world is exceptionally efficient. The last mile to your door, not so much. I actually did the calculation a while back for white goods. It takes about as much carbon (slightly less IIRC) for the washing machine to go from a Chinese port to Felixtowe as it does to go from a warehouse to my house.
Container ships are an astoundingly efficient way of moving things.
"top kek" indeed.
Regarding Cheddar, You must have COVID... (Score:2)
In the grand scheme of things, the source of food is somewhat irrelevant to me. Cheap store brand cheddar tastes just the same as cheddar with a bunch of geographical locations on its label. If the experience of eating lab grown meat is equal to the experience of eating butchered meat, then what do I care?
...and it killed your sense of smell and taste if you think cheap store brand cheddar tastes as good as good sharp cheddar. The stuff for Taco Tuesday has a fraction of the flavor of the good stuff a few feet down in the same grocery store.
:)
Your general point is correct, but man...are you missing out on some good cheddar.