and the biggest one imo is dietary choices. Our meat consumption has lead to pasteurization of forest land to raise and feed the huge amount of livestocks needed to satisfy our meat craving.
We're not going to turn marginal grasslands into crops for human consumption, but using cattle to turn inedible grass into calories for human consumption is possible while maintaining that land as it was when bison roamed through it.
I also don't think that the US, for example, has to manage its land the same ways as other countries. If the US can effectively manage pasture and raise lots of cattle to eat, then we should be able to do that, and if other countries can't, then they should manage their land in a way that is optimal for their country. The US has a lot of grass pasture land that evolved over time to support the massive number of ruminants that roamed the US in the not too distant past.
Maybe the US should stop exports of beef and dairy and just focus on feeding its own people from well-managed land. But that would not be very popular, especially with our cattle industry.
You mean pasturization. Pasteurization would also be unfortunate though.
Where? France has increased its forest surface since 1840, while increasing population and meat consumption.
> Forest area replaced by cattle accounts for 36 percent of all agriculture-linked tree cover loss worldwide
https://research.wri.org/gfr/forest-extent-indicators/defore...
When the land is only suitable for grass, it's grazed for awhile, after which it's basically desert.
South America also has some of the richest cattle land in the world in the Pampas, which has sustained beef production for hundreds of years on land which is otherwise unsuitable to food production.
Pressure on one company could stop the conversion of rainforest into soybeans. This doesn't solve the problem in a single stroke, nothing can, but it would help, and it doesn't require influence over the government of Brazil.
Most meat, at least in France, is raised on land that couldn't support other kind of agriculture. The calorie intake of that land, without cows grazing on it, would be 0.
French beef and dairy-cattle-finally-eaten-as-beef eat 2/3 grass.
> French beef and dairy-cattle-finally-eaten-as-beef eat 2/3 grass.
Cow grazing is a thing of the past unless you do milk for AOP cheese or premium meat. By the way cheap beef in supermarket is actually old milk cow
France, for example, has been pulling a lot of their beef from south america rather than eating locally raised cattle.
https://www.thelocal.fr/20180117/french-farmers-fear-ruin-ov...
> The source of his worry is a huge trade deal being negotiated by the European Union and the four Mercosur members Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay — an accord whose signature seems closer than ever.
> The new imports would represent just one percent of Europe's total beef production, and 4.5 percent of France's output.
So the deal hasn't been signed and wouldn't represent much.
From another article (https://www.franceagrimer.fr/fam/content/download/66996/docu...)
> Issues à près de 92 % de l’Union européenne, les importations de viande bovine chutent de 16,8 % sur un an, pour atteindre près de 283 milliers de tec en 2020
Which rougly translates to "92% of beef imports are coming from the UE. They fell by 16.8% to 283k tec in 2020".
There's a total in "tableau 2", page 3. 28.4% of the total meat is imported, 18.9% for the beef. The total non EU beef is thus 8% (100% of total beef imported - 92% of UE beef) * 18.9% (percentage of imported beef). Rounded up, it's 1.6%. I would hardly call that "outsourcing their diets and problems" and "pulling a lot of their beef from South America". More than 80% of the cattle eaten is localy raised, less than 2% comes from outside the EU.
South American beef is not a thing in France. We surely have plenty of other issues, but South American beef is not one of them.
Yes, let's blame the consumer. First of all, the consumer has no idea how their specific spending habits contribute to an issue. For instance, an educated consumer (many consumers are not educated btw) might understand that eating meat causes deforestation, but they have no way of knowing if their specific purchase is contributing to that. Second, blaming the consumer makes any solution almost impossible because organizing a very large group of disinterested people is very hard. It would be much more effective to regulate the relatively small number of meat producers that are perpetuating deforestation and let the market work out decreasing consumption through increased costs.
Yes, let's. I don't think an argument can be held against this. As a meat eater, I understand I'm the driving force of this issue. It's an inconvenient truth, but it is the truth nonetheless. I'm rooting for alternatives like lab-grown meat to thrive, but no amount of wishful thinking allows me to skirt the fact that eating less meat would probably be not only good for the planet, but specifically for my own health.
> the consumer has no idea how their specific spending habits contribute to an issue
Let me point it out: in the developed world it's almost 100% guaranteed that it contributes significantly. You have to go to pretty far edge cases to find really sustainably produced meat. A case can be made that not all industrial farms contribute to deforestation per se, but they are all part of a system that has a high cost for our environment. Deforestation is bad, but it's not –and should not be– the only issue.
How did you come to that understanding? Did you dedicate your free time to studying the impact of meat eating, or was it part of your legally mandated education? A lot of people scrape by, barely able to make ends meet. They have children that require attention, or problems that require immediate action. They may have debts to pay, and no social safety net to help. At a fundamental level, they may have poor critical thinking skills. It's not realistic to expect every consumer to take the time to understand the consequences of every purchasing decision.
> A case can be made that not all industrial farms contribute to deforestation per se, but they are all part of a system that has a high cost for our environment.
But the package says it was humanely raised by family farms? Your trips to the grocery store are going to take a very long time if you need to do a supply chain analysis of every purchase.
If a person cuts down a tree for profit, and the removal of that tree is problematic, then that person is to blame. It doesn't make sense to blame someone many steps removed from the crime just because they, in a very indirect way, provided a very small incentive to commit the crime. The impact of the individual's consumption on the entirety of the industrial farming system is so small that, even if the individual consumer were to blame, they would be guilty of nothing more than the tiniest infraction. The issue with industrial farming arrises from the collective sum of demand, and thus requires a collective solution, i.e. centralized regulation.
But the parent commenter has an important point that should not be dismissed. It is far more effective to regulate/improve centrally at the producer side rather than "wait" for the goodwill of consumers.
You can't flood the world with cheap unsustainable meat (or other products), next put a far more expensive sustainable option next to it and think all of this will just magically play out.
Ideally, there should be no unsustainable goods being offered at all. The very word unsustainable pretty strongly suggests that ending the practice is a must.