keitha
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Post by keitha on Jan 26, 2022 13:39:45 GMT
26% of green house gas emissions come from food 58% from Animal products 50% from beef and lamb combined
So in reality 15% from Animal products 7.5% from beef and lamb
So I could cut my impact by switching from meat to sprouts and Beans, sorry no that's gonna increase my personal emissions
if 11% of global emissions come from plants grown as food for us to substitute plants for meat will increase the 11% from plants significantly. In my opinion eating Lamb that is allowed to roam free and browse in a natural way is probably a low impact meat.
We could probably have a significant impact by growing more ourselves, and eating food in season not importing strawberries at Christmas. We could improve the situation by eating more things like Haggis, and one I remember from being a child a proper pigs fry with Belly Pork, liver ,kidney, heart, curly fat ( I hated that ) was a great meal ie using the whole animal, I can remember being told by my father the only thing wasted on a pig was the squeal. Our Parents and grand parents ate Brawn, Chitterlings etc etc. How much meat today is trimmed so it has no fat, a roasted piece of beef with fat on or in it is much moister and tenderer than something trimmed
seriously when did anyone last see a pigs trotter, or a ham hock, or a breast of lamb with the bones in for sale
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corto
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Post by corto on Jan 26, 2022 15:10:19 GMT
I appreciate your food nostalgia but beside that, misleading statistics indeed. The fact that cows eat grass is included in the 58% If you eat less meat, it will reduce green house gas emission because to produce 100g of animal protein generates a multiple of green house gases than 100g of vegetable protein, more than 10 times as much. Milk, chicken etc look better but are still far from pure vegetable products. (eg www.ox.ac.uk/news/2018-06-01-new-estimates-environmental-cost-food). The 58% could be reduced quite massively by behavioural changes, how much depends on how many have an insight. Of course producing more plants needs more space for them, but as the cited article also shows, that, too, is by far outweighed by space freed from animal cultivation.
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keitha
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Post by keitha on Jan 26, 2022 16:12:23 GMT
Of course producing more plants needs more space for them, but as the cited article also shows, that, too, is by far outweighed by space freed from animal cultivation. Not necessarily, here in the welsh Valleys Sheep roam the hillsides the land is totally unsuited to growing crops it's far to steep and lacks fertility. What I was intimating was lets say 1000Kg of CO2 is produced raising a a bullock for beef,and let's say the animal weighs 1000kg If we as humans only eat the best meat lets say 400kg then that's 2.5Kg of CO2 per Kg eaten, if however we eat more of the offal etc lets say a total of 600Kg from the animal then that's 1.66kG of CO2 per Kg a very significant reduction. Without animals I would need more artificial fertiliser on my allotment to produce food, currently it is fed with cow and Horse Manure. without manure the humus level in soil drops this leads to lower crop yields and the need for more artificial fertilisers which then find their way into the water system.
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pikestaff
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Post by pikestaff on Jan 26, 2022 16:40:52 GMT
26% of green house gas emissions come from food 58% from Animal products 50% from beef and lamb combined So in reality 15% from Animal products 7.5% from beef and lamb So I could cut my impact by switching from meat to sprouts and Beans, sorry no that's gonna increase my personal emissions if 11% of global emissions come from plants grown as food for us to substitute plants for meat will increase the 11% from plants significantly. In my opinion eating Lamb that is allowed to roam free and browse in a natural way is probably a low impact meat. We could probably have a significant impact by growing more ourselves, and eating food in season not importing strawberries at Christmas. We could improve the situation by eating more things like Haggis, and one I remember from being a child a proper pigs fry with Belly Pork, liver ,kidney, heart, curly fat ( I hated that ) was a great meal ie using the whole animal, I can remember being told by my father the only thing wasted on a pig was the squeal. Our Parents and grand parents ate Brawn, Chitterlings etc etc. How much meat today is trimmed so it has no fat, a roasted piece of beef with fat on or in it is much moister and tenderer than something trimmed seriously when did anyone last see a pigs trotter, or a ham hock, or a breast of lamb with the bones in for sale I agree 100% that those of us who choose to eat meat should eat more offal and cheap cuts. I also largely agree about eating food in season, but I do allow myself imported produce if it's come by sea or road. There's nothing misleading about the statistics you open your post with, although the figure of 26% for total food emissions is at the low end of the range. Estimates vary between 1/4 and 1/3, depending on the methodology used (see eg ourworldindata.org/greenhouse-gas-emissions-food). I think your figures come from the Oxford University study discussed here: www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46459714 . As noted in the article, meat and other animal products provide only 20% of the calories we (meaning the world, not the UK) eat and drink. If 20% of our food is responsible for 58% of food emissions, this means that on a per calorie basis animal products are responsible for more than 5.5 times as much carbon emissions as vegan foods. Put another way, if we all switched to a vegan diet, food emissions would (all other things being equal) be cut by a whopping 47.5%. That's not going to happen, I know, but we should all make some effort. I have cut down my meat and dairy consumption considerably, in line with the Planetary Health Diet (see eg www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/what-is-the-planetary-health-diet). I now aim to have just 1 small portion of fish, 2 of poultry, 1 of red meat, 1 of cheese, and 1 of offal per week. I still have semi-skimmed milk in my tea, but I find oat milk just as good, if not better, on my cereal. I have also cut out some things that are particularly bad for the environment, notably avocados and farmed prawns. While grass fed British lamb is much lower impact than (for example) Brazilian beef it's still not exactly low impact. Moreover, much of it is reared on uplands which ought to be rewilded - both to sequester carbon in trees and to reduce catastrophic flooding by slowing water runoff. Edit: crossed with your later post. As you say, the Welsh hillsides are totally unsuited to growing crops. But they used to grow trees. They could and should do so again. Edit 2: There is some data on UK carbon footprints for meat and dairy here: ahdb.org.uk/knowledge-library/carbon-footprints-food-and-farming . Even the "best" lamb (presumably extensively reared on grass) has over 5 x the footprint of pork per kg of carcass weight. Having said that, the footprint per kg of retail weight may be more relevant. The last table indicates that, on average, lamb has over 3 x the footprint of pork on this basis, and sits between beef from a beef herd (the worst) and beef from a dairy herd (which is less carbon intensive because a proportion of the emissions are attributed to the milk). I calculate that the "best" lamb beats the average dairy beef on his basis, but is still nearly twice as carbon intensive as pork. These days I will not buy premium beef, which I know will have come from a beef herd. The cheaper beef in supermarkets could be from either beef or dairy herds. I understand (because I asked) that the proportion of dairy beef has risen in recent years and is continuing to do so.
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adrianc
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Post by adrianc on Jan 26, 2022 22:24:46 GMT
It's all very, VERY difficult, because you also have to weigh in animal welfare. Which is why I don't buy supermarket meat, only from local butchers and producers. Better quality, better welfare, AND cheaper. What's not to like? Yes, there are strong arguments in favour of moving from hillfarming to rewilding - but we also need to think of the human socioeconomic effects, too. HUGE swathes of the country would be either depopulated or simply turned over to tourism, with all its own negatives. There are no easy answers - but one thing I do know for sure. Vegan ultra-processed foods and meat-substitutes are far worse than eating natural, local meat. ...and I'm just going to put this here... aeon.co/essays/if-you-care-about-animals-it-is-your-moral-duty-to-eat-them
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pikestaff
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Post by pikestaff on Jan 26, 2022 23:49:03 GMT
It's all very, VERY difficult, because you also have to weigh in animal welfare. Which is why I don't buy supermarket meat, only from local butchers and producers. Better quality, better welfare, AND cheaper. What's not to like? Yes, there are strong arguments in favour of moving from hillfarming to rewilding - but we also need to think of the human socioeconomic effects, too. HUGE swathes of the country would be either depopulated or simply turned over to tourism, with all its own negatives. There are no easy answers - but one thing I do know for sure. Vegan ultra-processed foods and meat-substitutes are far worse than eating natural, local meat. Hmmm. I'm not sure about the local butchers thing. In principle I'd like to support local butchers. Unfortunately I am less confident of the meat from MY local butchers (on both welfare and quality) than of supermarket meat, so I don't use them. Every once in a while I go back but I'm quickly reminded why I don't trust them. Supermarkets may not be perfect but they do have systems and process in place to ensure minimum standards, and actually to drive up standards of sustainability (including carbon efficiency). I'm sure there are some excellent local butchers but I'd have to drive a long way to find one. As for the socioeconomic effects of moving from hill farming to rewilding, I'm sorry but hill farming is on the way out anyway. And it's not as if the numbers employed are very large. Better to pay the farmers to plant trees and help them either to move or to diversify. As for vegan ultra-processed foods and meat-substitutes, I don't agree that they are far worse than eating natural, local meat, although many are no better either and it always pay to read the label. I think these US links are reasonably even-handed: www.vox.com/2019/5/28/18626859/meatless-meat-explained-vegan-impossible-burgerwww.healthline.com/nutrition/is-plant-based-meat-healthyWhether to use them or not is a personal choice. They are absolutely not necessary, and I think fake "real meat" burgers are just sad. I have textured soya mince in the freezer, and use it perhaps once a month in a chili, but that's it.
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adrianc
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Post by adrianc on Jan 27, 2022 7:58:30 GMT
It's all very, VERY difficult, because you also have to weigh in animal welfare. Which is why I don't buy supermarket meat, only from local butchers and producers. Better quality, better welfare, AND cheaper. What's not to like? Yes, there are strong arguments in favour of moving from hillfarming to rewilding - but we also need to think of the human socioeconomic effects, too. HUGE swathes of the country would be either depopulated or simply turned over to tourism, with all its own negatives. There are no easy answers - but one thing I do know for sure. Vegan ultra-processed foods and meat-substitutes are far worse than eating natural, local meat. Hmmm. I'm not sure about the local butchers thing. In principle I'd like to support local butchers. Unfortunately I am less confident of the meat from MY local butchers (on both welfare and quality) than of supermarket meat, so I don't use them. Every once in a while I go back but I'm quickly reminded why I don't trust them. Supermarkets may not be perfect but they do have systems and process in place to ensure minimum standards, and actually to drive up standards of sustainability (including carbon efficiency). I'm sure there are some excellent local butchers but I'd have to drive a long way to find one. ...and that's a chicken-egg thing. People don't go to butchers, butchers close, people complain supermarkets are the only place to buy meat. I admire your optimism on supermarket meat standards, though, after their horse-ing around a few years back.
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corto
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Post by corto on Jan 27, 2022 9:59:51 GMT
It's all very, VERY difficult, because you also have to weigh in animal welfare. Which is why I don't buy supermarket meat, only from local butchers and producers. Better quality, better welfare, AND cheaper. What's not to like? Yes, there are strong arguments in favour of moving from hillfarming to rewilding - but we also need to think of the human socioeconomic effects, too. HUGE swathes of the country would be either depopulated or simply turned over to tourism, with all its own negatives. There are no easy answers - but one thing I do know for sure. Vegan ultra-processed foods and meat-substitutes are far worse than eating natural, local meat. ...and I'm just going to put this here... aeon.co/essays/if-you-care-about-animals-it-is-your-moral-duty-to-eat-themI just read that link. Utter bullocks. We give them life, therefore we can eat them. No, we even should! It's practically a moral requirement. It benefits them. It has been this way for thousands of years... .. and he even feels he needs to clarify that he means nonhuman animals .. ahh! .. blah blah blah blah blah ... Finally: "We can ask: ‘Why did the chicken cross the road?’ but the chicken cannot ask itself: ‘Why should I cross the road?’ We can. That’s why we can eat it. si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses In the abbatoir with him!
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