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Comment by verisimi | Hacker News Reader

It's a threat, because meat replacement is so heavily promoted, no doubt with government mandates coming.

I'm personally a vegetarian, but I can't stand the government interference in food, I sympathise with meat eaters. I hear of farmers having to keep cows in sheds to protect orchids, and other nonsense. (As if it is a kindness to do this to cows, and feed them grains, etc.) Obviously this is a prelude to making meat a scarce product, cows being dangerous to the environment apparently, so people will be forced to eat artificial, human-designed, frankenfoods.

I don't think we can even conceive of the diseases and behavioural issues that a non-natural diet will cause. They aren't going to be positive though :(

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>Obviously this is a prelude to making meat a scarce product, cows being dangerous to the environment apparently, so people will be forced to eat artificial, human-designed, frankenfoods.

Loads of cultures have good plant based foods and dishes. It’s only when I started living in a western country did I experience the bizarre need to make meat analogues. Just cook vegetables better.

> no doubt with government mandates coming

> Obviously this is a prelude to making meat a scarce product, cows being dangerous to the environment apparently, so people will be forced to eat artificial, human-designed, frankenfoods

I've seen this conspiracy mentioned before on the internet, can you give me a good source that led you to believe this?

I can't imagine any reasonable world where there would be any real political will for a government to mandate the replacement of meat.

I could imagine subsides similar to what the meat production industry already receives, but I can't imagine any mandates.

I could also imagine the occasional far left politician call for that some level of reduction in meat production, but I don't believe the US government would ever have the will to force people to eat meat alternatives

> I can't imagine any reasonable world…

What gives you the impression that we live in a reasonable world?

>I'm personally a vegetarian, but I can't stand the government interference in food

Funny, because I'm a meat eater and I can't stand the government interference in making meat artificially cheap through subsidies when it is clearly the immoral and environment-hurting food option.

Both can be true at the same time.

Wait what Frankenfoods?

At least current processed meat is usually more "Frankenfood" and comes with more unnatural additions then plant-based alternatives like e.g. Beyond Meat?

I can't speak for the US, but a few cuts of steak don't have the 10+ ingredient list a few meat alternatives have here.

Alternatively, processed meats are just as much 'Frankenfoods'.

The steaks have 10+ ingredients, they’re just a step removed. Plenty of plant protein, supplements, etc. in them. The cows just do the processing.

Traditionally processed meats like German sausages are hardly frankenfoods. That proverb about seeing how the sausage is made is true though.

> I hear of farmers having to keep cows in sheds to protect orchids

Sounds more like the government intervention here is actually to protect wild flowers. The farmer in this story has then concluded it's easier/cheaper to do that by keeping the cows in the shed than to fence off the field.

Going for a walk in the countryside near me, you know, in the real world, cows are often outside in fenced fields.

Cows view fences as polite suggestions. That saying “the grass is greener on the other side of the fence” is based on direct observation.

It also costs us the much better solution of just making meat production better. There are multiple small projects that appear to be raising meat in a carbon net sequestering manner because doing stuff like intensive but brief with multiweek regrowth phases appears to dump a ton of carbon Into the soil, creating more high quality soil. They really need to be expanding those to the whole meat industry, not getting rid of meat. There is this synergistic spot in ag for meat production that likely increases plant yields while giving animals wonderful living conditions while sequestering carbon in a much less fire prone way than growing trees that we arent even really talking about right now.

> Obviously this is a prelude to making meat a scarce product, cows being dangerous to the environment apparently, so people will be forced to eat artificial, human-designed, frankenfoods.

It's already beginning. This is what the farmer protests (barely covered in the US) in the Netherlands are about. Their government is forcing thousands of cattle farms out of business.

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