Climate-friendly Foods: Chart (beef is the worst)

[amborin]

snip

"Swedish effort grew out of a 2005 study by Sweden’s national environmental agency on how personal consumption generates emissions. Researchers found that 25 percent of national per capita emissions — two metric tons per year — was attributable to eating.

The government realized that encouraging a diet that tilted more toward chicken or vegetables and educating farmers on lowering emissions generally could have an enormous impact.

Sweden has been a world leader in finding new ways to reduce emissions. It has vowed to eliminate the use of fossil fuel for electricity by 2020 and cars that run on gasoline by 2030..."

snip

<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/23/world/europe/23degrees.html?_r=1&hpw>

[wtmusic]

1. Prepare for carnivore onslaught: CHECK

:popcorn:

[Craftsman]

6. I am doing my best to help, I am eating the cows

[wtmusic]

11. You're not eating fast enough.

Dig in.

[Craftsman]

14. Vegan = ancient Indian word for lousy hunter

[wtmusic]

17. Y'know Sarah Palin loves that quote

I'll bet you have a lot in common.

[Craftsman]

31. Here in TX we've been using it for decades

Heck if it is help I also help keep deer and hogs from polluting as well. Got 2 sows 2 weeks ago.

[wtmusic]

33. I enjoy hunting sows too, but only for the sport

Them deer run too damn fast.

[damntexdem]

46. How did those Indians know about ETs from Vega?

But we don't have a chart of the carbon footprint of meats from hunting.

[smalll]

56. Carnivores are awesome!

[amborin]

2. why would anyone un-rec this?

[unpossibles]

4. because they disagree and are afraid to admit it.

I recommended it to bring it back, fwiw.

[wtmusic]

7. They can't disagree with the science

It's like arguing cancer with a smoker, and why the title "An Inconvenient Truth" is so apt.

[vadawg]

10. why argue with the science, id just rather eat the beef than the vege soup

id rather eat the chicken than the vege soup, though i would have the soup as a starter or use it as a base and add beef or chicken to it...

[wtmusic]

15. That's fine

IMO the point is that your eating the beef has environmental consequences for everyone.

I have my own set of practices which are not very environmental. Always working on it.

[vadawg]

20. i guess your computer your using right now has no environmental impact

everything has an impact, even a dude living in the middle of the amazon trying to avoid stings phone messages impacts the environment... glad to see you realise this and are working on it...

[amborin]

43. red meat poses risks to longevity:

"Among women, those who ate the most red meat were 36 percent more likely to die for any reason, 20 percent more likely to die of cancer and 50 percent more likely to die of heart disease. Men who ate the most meat were 31 percent more likely to die for any reason, 22 percent more likely to die of cancer and 27 percent more likely to die of heart disease. "

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/23/AR2009032301626.html?hpid=topnews>

"The National Cancer Institute recently published a study of more than half a million people that found that those who ate 4 ounces of red meat a day — the size of a small hamburger — were more likely to die over the next 10 years, mostly from heart disease and cancer."

<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/09/opinion/l09burger.html?scp=5&sq=red%20meat%20health&st=cse>

[vadawg]

44. so what, do you totally avoid anything that may kill you

whats your plan to live to an age where you have to wear diapers and dont even know who you are, sorry id rather live life to the full, enjoy the good things and die happy..

[amborin]

47. within the next 10 years?

that's what the study shows...

[vadawg]

48. funny ive been eating meat for the past 30 years so the numbers must be fecked up

otherwise no one would make it past their 10th birthday....

[damntexdem]

50. If we aren't meant to eat animals, why are they made out of meat?

Of course, so are humans. Yikes, Soylent Green! ;-)

[Kalyke]

19. Um... try arguing smoking-related cancer with a scientist

One of my colleagues expresses the situation in this way: If it has not been proved that tobacco is guilty of causing cancer of the lung, it has certainly been shown to have been on the scene of the crime. The American Cancer Society, along with a growing body of professional and scientific opinion, has taken this position: Although the complicity of the cigarette in the present prevalence of cancer of the lung has not been proved to the satisfaction of everyone, yet the weight of evidence against it is so serious as to demand of stewards of the public welfare that they make the evidence known to all.

SNIP
Thirdly, cancer of the lung is commoner by a factor of more than 2 among white males living in cities than it is among country dwellers. The differences are much less marked for women, but are nonetheless discernible.

Now, why is this so? Suspicion falls first on substances which are inhaled, because almost all of the 400-odd cancer-producing substances discovered since Yamigawa provided the first demonstration of experimental cancer causation in 1915 exert their effect at the site of contact. What are we inhaling which is widespread, which is more prevalent in cities, which is recent, which is increasing, and to which more men than women are, or rather have been, exposed?

Prominent on the suspect list are industrial fumes; utility, industrial, and domestic soots derived from coal and fuel oil furnaces; exhausts from internal combustion engines (gasoline and diesel); asphalt or bituminous road surfaces; and cigarette smoke.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/195601/smoking

While I generally agree that one cannot "disagree" with science (particularly as it relates to the OP), science still has hypothesis which may or may not be proven correct. Science, itself, is an argument.

[unpossibles]

3. thanks for the link

Be prepared for several comments along the lines of "but I like bacon" and "god made meat tasty so we'd eat it" or something equally off topic, rude, and ridiculous.

But good info nonetheless. I think most people are unaware of just how resource-intensive modern cattle production is, or that much of it is subsidized by taxpayers to make it affordable.

[vadawg]

5. mmmmmmmmm bacon...

[amborin]

26. Smithfield: pork's dirty secret:

Smithfield Foods, the largest and most profitable pork processor in the world, killed 27 million hogs last year:

"Smithfield's pigs live by the hundreds or thousands in warehouse-like barns, in rows of wall-to-wall pens. Sows are artificially inseminated and fed and delivered of their piglets in cages so small they cannot turn around. Forty fully grown 250-pound male hogs often occupy a pen the size of a tiny apartment.

They trample each other to death. There is no sunlight, straw, fresh air or earth. The floors are slatted to allow excrement to fall into a catchment pit under the pens, but many things besides excrement can wind up in the pits: afterbirths, piglets accidentally crushed by their mothers, old batteries, broken bottles of insecticide, antibiotic syringes, stillborn pigs -- anything small enough to fit through the foot-wide pipes that drain the pits.

The temperature inside hog houses is often hotter than ninety degrees. The air, saturated almost to the point of precipitation with gases from shit and chemicals, can be lethal to the pigs. Enormous exhaust fans run twenty-four hours a day. The ventilation systems function like the ventilators of terminal patients: If they break down for any length of time, pigs start dying.
..."

snip

The drugs Smithfield administers to its pigs, of course, exit its hog houses in pig shit. Industrial pig waste also contains a host of other toxic substances: ammonia, methane, hydrogen sulfide, carbon monoxide, cyanide, phosphorous, nitrates and heavy metals. In addition, the waste nurses more than 100 microbial pathogens that can cause illness in humans, including salmonella, cryptosporidium, streptocolli and girardia. Each gram of hog shit can contain as much as 100 million fecal coliform bacteria.

snip

factory pigs are infused with a huge range of antibiotics and vaccines, and are doused with insecticides. Without these compounds -- oxytetracycline, draxxin, ceftiofur, tiamulin -- diseases would likely kill them. Thus factory-farm pigs remain in a state of dying until they're slaughtered. When a pig nearly ready to be slaughtered grows ill, workers sometimes shoot it up with as many drugs as necessary to get it to the slaughterhouse under its own power. As long as the pig remains ambulatory, it can be legally killed and sold as meat

<http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/12840743/porks_dirty_secret_the_nations_top_hog_producer_is_also_one_of_americas_worst_polluters>

[vadawg]

29. and this is exactly why i like my bacon crispy, very crispy

its the gift of the gods......

[amborin]

35. Smithfield's industrial pig farming in Poland:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZQiWf-KEgQ>

<http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2009/04/390977.shtml>

"Financial institutions like the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) use EU taxpayers' money to subsidise companies like Smithfield. The result? Small farmers disappear, food quality deteriorates, animal welfare suffers. Although it claims to be 'environmentally sensitive', the EBRD has joined with the Polish banks BRE and Rabobank Polska to provide a $100m loan to Smithfield's Polish subsidiary Animex...."

snip

Smithfield says it wants to produce 6 million pigs in Poland each year. Polish peasants currently rear 20 million pigs per year, and a quarter of them will have to lose their livelihoods to make way for Smithfield. The corporation is already squeezing the small farms. In Western Pomerania we found that the region's small slaughterhouses had already been closed, and that the remaining Smithfield-owned slaughterhouse would not slaughter pigs from small farms. The same will soon apply to the rest of Poland. Once Smithfield controls the slaughterhouses and has eliminated local markets, it will be able to control prices and, ultimately, the farms.

[imdjh]

53. rude, funny, but rude. Have you ever had deep fried bacon?

[unpossibles]

32. good try but some will never listen

it's like trying to explain why Reaganomics failed or why Ayn Rand is full of crap to the average Republican.

:D

[Kalyke]

36. I haven't eaten pork in 15 years and don't miss it.

I've all but given up on red meat, now, too, opting for a steak or a burger maybe once every couple of months.

I do eat turkey bacon, turkey sausage and other poultry items - but I prefer my veggies. :)

[vadawg]

38. i dont eat as much pork as i used to, but i do enjoy bacon, i like a lot of the game animals

and a good steak, i think that no matter what you cant convince meat eaters to stop and meat eaters cant get the herbivores to stop telling the meat eaters to stop eating meat. I figure the more veggies they eat the more pigs, cows deer etc that there are for me to enjoy.....

[damntexdem]

52. My cardiologist has me off red meat, even pork, the other white meat.

But I do love a piece of bacon now and then.

[amborin]

61. it is

tasty

but the nitrites can cause stomach cancer

and after reading how pigs are raised, by Smithfield, as one example, i will never eat pork again

[imdjh]

54. Have you eaten fast food french fries?

[amborin]

8. you're right!

[hughee99]

9. Wouldn't these numbers vary from country to country

as the amount of transportation costs would vary.

[MidwestRick]

12. Absolutely

You'll notice the lowest item on the list is Apples from Sweden.

[unpossibles]

18. sure, but breeding and feeding far outweigh transportation

This doesn't even go into the amount of water or cropland required.

FWIW, even though I don't eat it, I don't have a problem with people eating meat, but I do think our culture places far too much importance on it as a meal staple, and it shows in so many ways.

[hughee99]

28. Does transportation also factor into the "feeding"?

Where is the feed produced and how does it get to the cows? The numbers seem to be for chicken, but is most of their beef produced in Sweden or elsewhere. I'm not saying this difference could make beef more efficient that locally grown apples, but the disparities could be larger or smaller based on the country.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

22. Sweden is a small country --

Those numbers would get much worse here in the US -- imagine all that good California fruit heading back east, or the off-season winter fruit coming in from Peru -- that is some serious transportation impact there.

[JVS]

23. Sweden is also a very cold country

That Peruvian fruit goes there too, and it takes even more fuel to get there.

[hughee99]

24. Regardless of the size of Sweden,

if some product is imported, how far away does it come from and what is the means of transportation? Is it moved by train, plane, truck or ship?

[unpossibles]

34. true, but then you also have to look at how many tons of feed have to be shipped

to the cattle farms. Beef is not an efficient way to eat, if for no other reason than the amount of vegetable matter and water it takes to produce would feed more people if that cropland was used to feed people. Same is true for larger fish and other things up the food chain.

[amborin]

40. exactly!

plus all the pollution, runoff, etc....

[Hell Hath No Fury]

13. Wow! Very interesting!

Thanks for posting that -- I am getting more and more into this type of information. More incentive for me to get doing what I am doing. :hi:

[InvisibleTouch]

16. Giving a Rec.

Our personal choices do have an impact. It doesn't sound like this study is saying "You can never eat beef again," but having the knowledge encourages us to make responsible choices.

[liberal_at_heart]

21. It's already too late

I really admire Europe and the Nordic countries for really leading the way in environmental conservation, but as far as food I don't see what we can do. We just have too many people on this Earth to feed. We are overfishing our oceans and we're cutting down forests to graze cows. Even if we all gave up meat tomorrow we would have to grow enough fruits and vegetables for 7 billion people.

[vadawg]

25. cannabilism????????? the other other white meat....

[Javaman]

37. Personally, I welcome our Soylent Green Cannibal overlords.nt

[skipos]

27. One of the many reasons I am a vegetarian

and I have to say, there is a lot of great tasting fake meat out there now. I like some fakes as much as or more than the "original" dead animal I was eating a few years ago.

[Xithras]

30. As a meat eating environmentalist, I support the elimination of grain fed beef.

There are two ways to raise beef

1. Use a hydrocarbon burning tractor to plow a field. Cover that field in hydrocarbon based fertilizers. Water that field using well-drawn electricity burning pumps. Harvest the resulting grain using a hydrocarbon burning harvester. Load the grain on a hydrocarbon burning truck to transport it to the cattle ranch. Feed that grain to the cattle. Inject the cattle full of dozens of various antibiotics and growth hormones to promote rapid growth. Load the cattle onto a hydrocarbon burning truck for transportation to the meat processor. Feed resulting cattle to people.

2. Or: Let cattle roam freely on marginal lands that are not suitable for farming, eating the naturally provided grasses. When cattle get big enough, round them up using solar powered non-hydrocarbon burning farm transportation implements (horses). Load the cattle onto a hydrocarbon burning truck for transportation to a meat processor. Feed the resulting cattle to people.

Method #2 has been the standard for cattle herders for the past 2000+ years, and has far less impact on the environment, and yet most of our western beef today is created using the first method. The problem isn't beef, it's the way we raise it nowadays.

[KamaAina]

41. The second-largest ranch in the country raises grass-fed beef

Parker Ranch on Hawai'i's Big Island. The end product can be had at Foodland and other markets on O'ahu. Ono! (delicious)

Shipping corn out there wouldn't be economical, you see. The reason mainland producers use it? $$$$$$$$.

[GoCubsGo]

42. #2...

Those roaming cattle destroy riparian wetlands and trash streams running through those "marginal lands", which causes erosion and sedimentation that destroys habitat for native fauna. The native wildlife that live in those "marginal lands" have to compete with the cattle, who frequently graze the grasses down to stubble, because the ranchers almost always release too many cattle on those lands. They compact the soil and contaminate water wells. Desertification from overgrazing is widespread throughout the world. "Far less impact on the environment"??? Guess again.

[amborin]

45. and destroys the Amazon rainforest::

"what Amazon researchers have long known – that Brazil's rise to become the world's largest exporter of beef has come at the expense of Earth's biggest rainforest.

More than 38,600 square miles has been cleared for pasture since 1996, bringing the total area occupied by cattle ranches in the Brazilian Amazon to 214,000 square miles, an area larger than France.

The legal Amazon, an region consisting of rainforests and a biologically-rich grassland known as cerrado, is now home to more than 80 million head of cattle. For comparison, the entire U.S. herd was 96 million in 2008. ..."

<>

<http://news.mongabay.com/2009/0215-beef.html>

<http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/international/press/reports/amazon-cattle-footprint-mato.pdf>

"Between 2000 and 2007, the Brazilian Amazon was deforested at an average rate of 19,368 km² per year. Over this time, 154,312 km² of forest, an area larger than Greece4, was destroyed.

Brazil is the world’s the fourth biggest climate polluter5. Deforestation and land-use change make up 75% of all Brazilian greenhouse gas emissions. From this, 59% comes from loss of forest cover and burning in the Amazon region6.

Cattle ranching which has been expanding continuously since the early 1970s, is responsible for the majority of Amazon deforestation."

[Xithras]

51. Yes, far less impact on the environment.

You're talking about localized environmental damage vs. global environmental damage.

Besides, where do you think all of that new food is going to be grown when 6 billion meat eaters suddenly turn vegetarian and need to replace their meat-based caloric intake with veggie based calories? Those wetlands, forests, and grasslands are going to be laser leveled, irrigated, and converted into farms. You're screwed coming or going with that argument.

Most of the California Central Valley, where I live, was once an animal paradise of grasslands, wetlands, and natural meadows. Today it's a modern grid of farms and orchards belching out more fruits and veggies than any other comparable spot on the planet. It got that way by eradicating 98% of the original natural environment in the region (neither an exaggeration or a guess...that's the real number and you can look it up). They even drained Lake Tulare, a lake the size of Okeechobee that was once the largest freshwater lake in the U.S. west of the Great Lakes, just so they could use the lake bottom for more farmland.

Vegetable farming isn't all that kind to the environment either.

[amborin]

60. the culprit is industrial, capitalist agriculture, which you're describing!

yes, you can drive through the central valley and not see a single person for miles!

b/c it's capital-intensive, capitalist agriculture, using pesticides, etc.....

the US gov't subsidized these giant ag corporations, to the detriment of smaller farmers

small farms could be more plentiful, and they are less destructive

[Quantess]

64. are we up to 6 billion already?

[amborin]

62. that's the sad truth!

[XemaSab]

39. Only in Sweden would pickled herring make the list

:D

[Quantess]

59. It's pro-pickled herring propaganda!

Swedes call the dish "sill".

[Zomby Woof]

49. *kicks feet up*

:popcorn:

[flvegan]

55. C'mon DU. This should have been flames and tears a while ago.

Friday slackers.

[shanti]

57. but but but...

prime rib and rib eye steaks are soooooooooo yummy!

[spinbaby]

58. It depends on the beef

We eat locally-raised, grass-fed beef. It's no more expensive than store beef, although it's more inconvenient to aquire and requires careful cooking because it's so lean.

[fascisthunter]

63. uh oh...