To you. But then, i do think it’s worse to eat pork.
Most of that land is rather dry and not suitable for crops. Also, ranches (and dairy farms, for that matter) are only lightly modified by their commercial use, and are reservoirs for native wildlife to a much greater extent than most economic used of land.
I’ve met chickens. (I’ve also met cows, sheep, goats, pigs, and other meat animals.) Chickens are nasty and stupid. While i also try to eat pastured chicken, both for animal welfare and for quality reasons, i don’t fret much about the treatment of chickens.
I dislike cruel conditions, there are absolutely plentiful stories of factories where workers don’t care if the birds are hurt. Obviously you can’t treat every animal like a pampered princess and cull it after a nice life in the pasture, but I would prefer better treatment even if my chicken costs 15% more.
That said, I don’t weep for a bird, or pig, or cow. Feel free to keep any as a pet. Like @SteveGrondin, I’d try dog (or cat, in the right circumstance), I just don’t expect it to be very good.
This topic is marketed blame shifting. The goal is to generate a feeling of guilt associated with the pleasurable consumption of a good. The consumer has little to no impact over the production methods of a good, yet the bulk of the problem being assigned to the consumer has to do with the methods used to produce the good. It is akin to blaming the consumer for wanting a warm house for causing the black lung in the coalminer.
Animal agriculture produces methane, plant agriculture produces nitrous oxide, neither have near the impact electricity, heat, and transport do. Here’s a better solution, only eat things that live within 100 kilometers of your house and demand your government hold producers accountable.
To be clear, i was joking, leaving the reader to infer i might try dog. I would have enough of an aversion knowing the meat is dog in advance to refuse it.
I will totally eat (and have eaten) alligator though. I resent their attempt at being apex predators.
Ah. It wouldn’t bother me in general - assuming we’re not ripping Timmy’s puppy out of his arms and throwing it in the oven. I doubt cat would be any good but same.
I plan to try horse when I’m able to visit Europe. I’ve had groundhog and squirrel (greasy and gross, but it was offered.) While I’ve noted my aversion to the worst of factory conditions, none of those animals bother me.
2 billion hectares, so 20 million square kilometers, or, larger than the area of Russia (17 million square kilometers) is currently used for cattle globally.
The grass in those lands is decomposed anoxically in cow guts creating methane. Just letting it be grassland not decomposing in an oxygen free environment would be a huge win.
Add forests being cleared for pasture and over-grazing helping increase the area of deserts, and this seems like such a dead simple win all around.
And to Spacelobster, the average Canadian eats 24.5 kilos of beef per year, so at 60 kilo of carbon per beef, and an average of 10.1 tonnes of carbon per capital in Ontario, that means beef is responsible for 15% of the average Ontarian’s carbon footprint.
I prefer the taste and texture of beef to chicken, and when out and about and need a quick meal, the beef options are more reliable / easier to eat while driving than the chicken options.
As for pork… I do like bacon, but I’m not a fan of ham, and my worst case of food poisoning came from some pork chops several years ago. Also, I was somewhat influenced from my high school years, where I tended to end up at the cafeteria table populated mostly by conservative Jews, who influenced some of my dietary preferences (although not enough to give up bacon). Finally, some former neighbors had a couple of pet pigs, whom I became fond of whenever they wandered into our yard to scavenge acorns…
Carbon footprint refers to CO2 so not really applicable in this case. Methane, although having a much bigger greenhouse effect, only stays in the atmosphere for around a decade (compared to centuries for CO2).
So I stop eating beef, and I save 10 tonnes per year.
Meanwhile cruise ships are putting out 150 tons PER DAY. Times 365 times 350 ships. That’s over 19 million tons PER year. And this is a worldwide issue, so narrowing the focus to Ontario is distracting.
Plus, they’re working on decreasing the impact of cows. Cruise lines won’t even pay for emission limiting tech. They’re doing nothing.
Cutting out cruise ships is orders of magnitude more impactful than my stopping eating beef. So why pick on beef? Railing on beef will do nothing. I feel like there’s a bias here where the concern is eating beef, not emissions.
I’ve started buying beyond/impossible burgers at the store. They taste great to me, even if they are not exactly identical. I also still buy subs/burgers from time to time… I’ve also just never eaten a whole lot of beef.
I can’t stop other people from taking a cruise. You can not take a cruise.
I’m not sure though why you’re so fixated on cruises…
One thing I worry about is that we are (finally) making 6 figures. Which naturally means more cross country / international flights.
We used to fly never. Now we fly once a year or so. But I could see that becoming 2 or 3 or 5 times a year, you know?
Which is a lot worse than any beef consumption I ever had.
