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There was a post of the front-page of reddit a few days ago saying that most Americans are lied to about the fish they are buying in restaurants and supermarkets. I think it hilarious when people like me, urban dwellers, tell me to my face they only buy meat from some small butcher because they only trust him, or some variation of that story. Truth is, we have no idea where our food comes from, labels lie, and sellers have all the incentive to manipulate the truth.

There is a simple solution to this: buy it local. It might solve all issues with the meat (how do they feed these animals, etc.) but you at least know where it comes from.

I know it's not possible for everyone, but there is currently a big surge in local farm shops. I'm lucky enough to have a farming cooperative in my town where i can order weekly food from local farms and shops. I eat mostly vegetarian, but it's nice to have an option for some decent meat once in a while.

Local does prevent harm to animals. Local also does not change the metrics on how resource-intensive the product is (lentils are so much more env friendly than meat it's not the same league).

> decent meat

In my world that does not exist. "Decent" is just the level of harm/destruction that you're willing to accept.

"I think it hilarious when people like me, urban dwellers, tell me to my face they only buy meat from some small butcher because they only trust him, or some variation of that story."

I bought half a pig some time ago; I have a copy of his (probably 'her'?) earmark here next to me on my desk. I get an invitation each year to go watch it when it goes out to pasture for the first time that year. I can choose to have the half delivered to me as a carcass, for me to do my own butchering, or I can choose to have it processed (and I can choose to give away the parts I'm not going to eat, like the blood sausage and the processed head, tails and ears (for which I don't know the English word - it's a grayish slab, often eaten on rye bread here in North-Western Europe; that is, when it's eaten at all, I don't know anyone under the age of 50 who eats it).

Anyway, my point is - it's very much possible to know exactly where meat comes from with small farmers/butchers, even for urban dwellers, to the point that I looked the animal that I ate a part of last night in its eyes several times.

> for which I don't know the English word - it's a grayish slab, often eaten on rye bread here in North-Western Europe

In British English, that would be "Head Cheese" or "Brawn", or at least head cheese is likely to be a similar product, made from the animal's head, that's the only thing I can think of. I've never eaten it and it's regarded as kinda gross.

Now blood sausage, that can be tasty :)

Fromage de tête in French, if you can get over the idea of it, it's well worth trying it. When it's well made with good quality ethically sourced meat (we used to do the same and buy a pig with neighbours and then process it), it's super tasty.

Oh, TIL! In Latin America we call that "queso de puerco" (literally "pork cheese"). Americans call it "head cheese".

I've always avoided it because it didn't look like cheese, but like fatty ham.

Yes that's it, after some Googling it turns out that the word I had in mind is a regional word and the 'official' word is the literal translation into Dutch of 'head cheese'.

I don't know about the whole world.

But in the small town I grew up, the butcher would buy live animals and kill them in the backyard.

You could even come and watch and he would tell you where he bought it then go to the farmer and look at the animals.

I think that's why the commenter qualified with "urban dwellers". Modern urban life abstracts away a lot of the realities of our industries.

Some butchers definitely have better meat, you can taste the difference, and the colour/texture of the flesh is notably different.

Some are Mennonites and often you can even pick up the meat at their farm, if you are willing to make the drive.

It was the same meat.

> However, the majority of meat we eat today comes from factory farming, and the majority of the feed for those animals comes from... traditional crop farming.

This is incorrect. Cattle is fed primarily on grass. They are grain finished to increase weight at the end. A lot of that space is unusable as crop fields. Also a lot of animal feed is based off of plant byproduct, corn husk, wheat

"What most livestock in the world mostly don’t eat is grain fit for human consumption."

"What most livestock in the world mostly eat is grass and other forages and crop ‘wastes’ and by-products."

Additionaly:

> This study determines that 86% of livestock feed is not suitable for human consumption. If not consumed by livestock, crop residues and by-products could quickly become an environmental burden as the human population grows and consumes more and more processed food.

http://www.fao.org/ag/againfo/home/en/news_archive/2017_More...

There is a legitimate usage of livestock, they can graze in areas not suitable for crop production (especially sheep and goats). They can consume and digest plant matter that we cannot (which is the whole point of utilizing livestock in the first place).

I think in general (as an American) we eat too much meat. And the consumption needs to go down (and it's been staying flat which is saying something). But I think that livestock has a very useful purpose of converting non-crop farmable lands and plant based byproducts into useful food.

What the OP is talking about mostly is factory farming, where cows will likely not eat very much grass, and where animals will not be free to graze.

I think most people would agree that traditional livestock farming is a much better system, ethically and environmentally, but it would struggle to meet global demand.

> but it would struggle to meet global demand.

Probably correct. I guess meat consumption should go down.

However as someone who has worked on farms and even studied farming at least here in Norway there is plenty of room for increasing meat production from traditional farming, it just isn't economically viable in most cases.

I personally could agree to see meat prices rise 10 or 20% overnight if I knew the price difference would go to the farmers and especially if more of it went to the ones who use their resources reasonably.

> A lot of that space is unusable as crop fields.

It may be unusable as crop fields, but grazing it often prevents it from developing into a richer ecosystem that might be able to support a greater variety of wildlife and sink more carbon dioxide.

A rather extreme example of this somewhat famously happens down in Brazil, but there's also a not completely off-the-wall hypothesis that this phenomenon also at least partially explains the Little Ice Age. IIRC, the basic goes that the American peoples relied heavily on a version pasture-based livestock agriculture, which involved limiting the growth of forests in order to ensure plenty of grassland for large bison herds. The wave of plague that killed people off after European contact meant that the pasture land was no longer being maintained, and began to revert back to forest. This, in turn, sucked so much CO2 out of the atmosphere that it altered the world climate.

I would argue that you can't point to a single source like that in ecology.

Grasslands are the way they are due to draught as well. They have dry periods, and during these they catch on fire and the whole thing burns down.

> "A grassland can become either a desert or a forest if conditions like temperature, amount of rainfall, how often fires occur and how many herbivores live in these areas change. As more and more trees grow in a grassland, it is sometimes called a savanna."

https://askabiologist.asu.edu/explore/grassland#:~:text=Fore....

I have noted that the best way forward would be to create stricter eutrophication laws and tax artificial fertilizers produced from fossil fuels. This would feel very contradicting to vegetarians and vegans, but factory farming would be hit comparable much harder and it would directly address the environmental factors of factory farming without harming biodiversity.

A complicating factor in this discussion is that a large portion of the feed to cattle comes as a by-product from ethanol production in things like bio fuel. The process result in about 1/3 of the original crop becoming fuel, 1/3 becomes feed, and the rest is waste/water. With more and more focus on producing bio fuel, a natural result is the creation of more feed as a by-product.

>and the majority of the feed for those animals comes from... traditional crop farming.

I don't know how to find data but I thought that "grain-fed" cattle largely don't exist outside the USA (chicken/pork are different), so the only crop farmed is hay. And that may not impose as heavy costs as other crops?

Netherlands is the 2nd largest argricultural exporter [1], and has heavy factory animal farming that are all fed farmed crops. Very little grazing for meat animals.

[1] https://www.deheus.com/articles/news/the-netherlands-are-alm...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

Interested in elaborating?

Factory farming is where the majority of our meat comes from, and I've seen no evidence that direct crop farming would result in more small animal lives lost than the meat industry in its current form. I also see little to no evidence that efforts to reform the meat industry are likely to succeed, the "ethical meat" movement is smaller than the vegetarian movement by most measures I can find, and far more susceptible to marketing lies (cage free eggs are not particularly much of an improvement over caged).

If you want to personally find a local butcher where you look your cow in its satisfied, well-lived eyes before it dies, and you want to argue with people about their ingredient supply chain every time you eat out or buy a frozen dinner or go to an office party, then fine, you do you. But I think it's somewhat naive to argue that's a model that can realistically work for most people. For the majority of consumers, vegetarianism would be both less expensive and less difficult.

And I just think it's strictly inaccurate to say that small animal deaths would increase if the meat industry in its current form went away. I don't see any evidence of that, not enough cattle/chicken/beef is raised on grass to make that a realistic claim.

I guess I should have been more clear.

I think the argument "all consumption of food kills animals, therefore no food is truly vegetarian/vegan, therefore there's no moral distinction between quote-unquote vegan food and factory-farmed meat" is a no-true-Scotsman fallacy.

In other words, I agree with you. :)

:) Apologies, I need to get better about not assuming intent on here.