“We were a victim of propaganda, so we asked Fortune to print our own propaganda”
Honestly good for them though. It sounds like they are looking to make healthier burgers. I like that they’re moving away from palm oil, although I’m not sure that avocado is much better for the environment. Either is leaps and bounds ahead of real meat though.
The criticisms facing plant-based meat might be justifiable, I’m not a nutritionist. Intuition suggests that they’re almost certainly better than meat, but if they’re dressing it up with a bunch of oils and such then maybe it’s not a supremely healthy meal.
All that to say, it sounds like plant-based meat should be consumed in moderation. Just like regular meat. Or, heck, anything you put in your body
Beyond does make a pretty decent burger, I’d be interested in trying one when the avocado oil variant hits the shelves
First up, the principal is sound - meat production is very inefficient even if meat consumption is “efficient” just from the narrow perspective of getting adequate protein quickly and conveniently.
If demand for meat decreased then there’d be more food in the supply chain for humans.
We don’t actually have a food production problem, we have a food distribution problem. Ie we do not need to produce -more- food.
Much of what’s grown for animals is not readily edible by humans, corn being the big one - it’s not corn you or I would want to eat.
One of the problems that’s literally never mentioned is that growing produce for humans can either depend on artificial fertilizers from fossil fuels or natural fertilizer from animals. Less animal production for meat, while a very good idea on so many levels, presents a generalized fertility problem.
I don’t really have any answers for #3… just bringing it up as something to consider.
One of the problems that’s literally never mentioned is that growing produce for humans can either depend on artificial fertilizers from fossil fuels or natural fertilizer from animals. Less animal production for meat, while a very good idea on so many levels, presents a generalized fertility problem.
This is the “manure argument”, and it is mentioned, typically by the Big Meat lobby.
While the argument has merit in principle, it neglects the issue of scale. The amount of manure produced by a meat industry of a scale needed to feed billions of omnivorous humans is massively excessive to any possible needs in terms of crop fertilizer. The vast majority of that sh*t ends up in the environment, completely untreated. So, not only does it function as a pathogen that leads to overuse of antibiotics and thus pandemics, it also “fertilizes” rivers and groundwater with nitrate pollution that kills off everything that was there already.
The issue is not just about distribution, it is about type.
The amount of manure produced by a meat industry of a scale needed to feed billions of omnivorous humans is massively excessive to any possible needs in terms of crop fertilizer.
This is true.
Edit to be more clear and add some nuance because re-reading everything I can see how you interpreted my comment the way you did.
The context was essentially replacing animal feed with human food, in whole or in part. I did say “less animal production” but to try to be clear - I am completely discounting industrialized production and CAFOs. I do not consider them legitimate methods. That is really the source of your pollution and excess. I didn’t specify this and I should have.
We can argue that there is some large reduction in animal production where we can find a balance but the debate is always one or the other and dominated by militant vegans who want fresh veggies and NO animal production. Currently that’s not possible.
But another issue that relates to CAFOs is that so much of the manure is not available for composting. We’re not set up for that because there are so many fewer organic operations. So if you reduce animal production across the board without regard to type of operation we absolutely will see a fertility deficit.
It’s not possible without trying. There are other ways to move organic matter from from freshly dead to soil without the accelerated processes of digestion through some warm blooded animal’s intestines.
The problem is the lack of imagination and knowledge on the part of the “organic” types.
And if you don’t understand the laws of physics and how there’s no free energy, no magical cycles of C, N, P, K, S and others, let me know.
The problem is the lack of imagination and knowledge on the part of the “organic” types.
Rest assured, farmers in general are not actually lacking in imagination or knowledge.
And if you don’t understand the laws of physics and how there’s no free energy, no magical cycles of C, N, P, K, S and others, let me know.
Absolutely, please regale us with your outstanding wisdom and intelligence. Do tell us how we can “move organic matter from freshly dead to soil”. I’m not sure what that means but perhaps you can educate us.
I’m still not an expert, but I like to speculate and dream of a better world
I have no disagreement with point 1, I’ve heard that before. But gosh, it’s a tough pill to swallow when you’re not food secure. I think maybe it’s easier for people to accept “there isn’t enough food” than “there is food, but I can’t have any.”
Point 2: I imagine we’d probably grow different food there. I suppose there might be some concern for biodiversity loss, but if we were suddenly gifted a ton of arable land to grow food on we could probably get better variety.
Point 3 is a tough one, it’s something I haven’t really considered before. However, I suppose that raising animals for fertilizer could potentially be more humane and lower impact than raising animals for flesh. For instance, you’re no longer incentivized to slaughter the animals at a young age, and older animals might actually have a lower caloric requirement. Plus you wouldn’t need to raise the mega polluters like cows, you just want whatever gives good fertilizer.
I’m quite sympathetic to the ideas of veganic farming - most of it is just agro-ecological minus the animal contribution.
I knew a farm that was run by vegans. They literally, I kid you not, were running it on an animal sanctuary that had lots of manure which they refused to use. Great big piles of compost I would have cried over.
They drove 4 hours one way to get a load of veganic compost, which if you know anything about moving such things around, was probably enough for a raised bed or two. So when the veganic people talk about “maximizing local plant-based fertility” and “minimizing off-farm inputs”, well, that ain’t exactly what they meant.
This is an extreme example but it illustrates how sometimes the adherence to dogmatic principles in food production results in no production.
Growing vegetables without animal manure -and- without synthetic fertilizers works on a teeeny-tiny scale where you already have sufficient fertility and enough land do basically grow grass for compost. It’s completely untenable for actual high-intensity food production.
Firstly, my general approach to this problem is to worry about it later, because obviously it’s not a problem at all in a world of 8 billion humans all wanting to eat meat every day.
But, since you seem to know what you’re talking about, what do you think would be the minimal amount of animals and land required to feed those 8 billion organically? Assumptions:
animal manure is absolutely required in the absence of synthetic fertilizer (if true, I did not know this, I assumed that a forest could renew itself without the help of fauna)
all 8 billion are willing in theory to go vegan
A rough picture of what that would look like? Lots of cereals and legumes and so on, plus a couple of chickens per hectare?
Um… Mostly the way it’s being grown now? Did you miss the part where that’s already farm land being used to feed our food?
Edit: the last sentence was unnecessarily rude, sorry about that… Also, reading some of your other replies, I see more what you meant. I still think it’s a very solvable problem though.
I also think it’s a very solvable problem. But there are a lot of complex moving parts in our food production system. I’m thinking of this in the context of the current highly industrialized state of agriculture and the current demands of consumers and how do you make a shift toward sustainable agriculture while also reducing meat production and animal exploitation.
So for me, the way it’s being grown now isn’t actually an option. 5000 acres of feed corn on dead soil that’s continually pumped with synthetic fertilizers is a thoroughly bad idea and turning those acres into corn (or anything) for humans is every bit as bad.
Believe it or not, it’s actually rather hard to get quality manure inputs for many farms. Depends on where you are of course. But the stuff weighs a lot, is never where you want it and the largest quantities are from CAFOs which are decidedly NOT high quality and require a lot more work to be useable in a sustainable context. That manure is sold, sure, and ends up in food production, but not to the exclusion of synthetic inputs. If you eliminate CAFOs then there’s even more demand for manure such that sustainable operations which require high quality compost because they don’t use synthetic fertilizers are going to have a hard time getting enough fertility.
So it’s easy to generalize and say there is excess manure from so much animal production, but the reality is that much if not most of that manure is not where you need it. I think a lot of folks don’t realize that sustainable meat production that isn’t integrated with sustainable vegetable production adds a lot of complexity, and yet that’s where we are at right now. The integrated food systems (e.g. rotational grazing etc) of times gone by were much more efficient but are relatively uncommon today, mainly because of market forces.
Hopefully this is a better summary of the point I was trying to make yesterday.
Admittedly I stopped working in food service well before the Beyond came out, but I definitely had people order the veggie burger because “they were trying to be healthier” that day.
And I guess that means different things for different people, and I don’t think Beyond is actively marketing specifically as a health food or anything. But my lizard brain is always going to assume that the plant is healthier than the meat.
I haven’t looked into it but I think the more classic veggie/garden/bean burgers are at least somewhat healthier than their meat or faux meat counterparts
The sad reality is that most people don’t care enough about the environment or animals to change their eating decision on the basis of those things alone. Yes, the selfishness and apathy pisses me off too, but we just have to accept it.
Three things will move them: taste, price, and healthiness. Hence the importance of this pivot.
Yeah, I think anyone who eats it thinking it’s healthier is missing the point.
I think it’ll be healthier by not having the issues associated specifically with red meat consumption, but from a nutritional standpoint overall, yeah… The same moderation should be exercised as with regular hamburgers.
The point is removing animal meat from the equation to decrease our dependence on massive cattle lots and moving our intake to preference much more efficient plant based calories.
But yeah, if they’re using palm oil they should move to something more sustainable, but I don’t know that it’s any less sustainable or polluting than meat lots.
“We were a victim of propaganda, so we asked Fortune to print our own propaganda”
Honestly good for them though. It sounds like they are looking to make healthier burgers. I like that they’re moving away from palm oil, although I’m not sure that avocado is much better for the environment. Either is leaps and bounds ahead of real meat though.
The criticisms facing plant-based meat might be justifiable, I’m not a nutritionist. Intuition suggests that they’re almost certainly better than meat, but if they’re dressing it up with a bunch of oils and such then maybe it’s not a supremely healthy meal.
All that to say, it sounds like plant-based meat should be consumed in moderation. Just like regular meat. Or, heck, anything you put in your body
Beyond does make a pretty decent burger, I’d be interested in trying one when the avocado oil variant hits the shelves
Or we could just use the 70% of farm land to feed us instead of the animals that make up 10-20% of a diet.
Vegans have to jump trough hoops to fix issues with the environment while meat eaters happily destroy it.
Have you worked out how that food will be grown?
I’m not the expert, but I believe we’re currently growing that food for the animals.
If demand for meat decreased then there’d be more food in the supply chain for humans.
First up, the principal is sound - meat production is very inefficient even if meat consumption is “efficient” just from the narrow perspective of getting adequate protein quickly and conveniently.
I don’t really have any answers for #3… just bringing it up as something to consider.
This is the “manure argument”, and it is mentioned, typically by the Big Meat lobby.
While the argument has merit in principle, it neglects the issue of scale. The amount of manure produced by a meat industry of a scale needed to feed billions of omnivorous humans is massively excessive to any possible needs in terms of crop fertilizer. The vast majority of that sh*t ends up in the environment, completely untreated. So, not only does it function as a pathogen that leads to overuse of antibiotics and thus pandemics, it also “fertilizes” rivers and groundwater with nitrate pollution that kills off everything that was there already.
The issue is not just about distribution, it is about type.
This is true.
Edit to be more clear and add some nuance because re-reading everything I can see how you interpreted my comment the way you did.
The context was essentially replacing animal feed with human food, in whole or in part. I did say “less animal production” but to try to be clear - I am completely discounting industrialized production and CAFOs. I do not consider them legitimate methods. That is really the source of your pollution and excess. I didn’t specify this and I should have.
We can argue that there is some large reduction in animal production where we can find a balance but the debate is always one or the other and dominated by militant vegans who want fresh veggies and NO animal production. Currently that’s not possible.
But another issue that relates to CAFOs is that so much of the manure is not available for composting. We’re not set up for that because there are so many fewer organic operations. So if you reduce animal production across the board without regard to type of operation we absolutely will see a fertility deficit.
It’s not possible without trying. There are other ways to move organic matter from from freshly dead to soil without the accelerated processes of digestion through some warm blooded animal’s intestines.
The problem is the lack of imagination and knowledge on the part of the “organic” types.
And if you don’t understand the laws of physics and how there’s no free energy, no magical cycles of C, N, P, K, S and others, let me know.
Rest assured, farmers in general are not actually lacking in imagination or knowledge.
Absolutely, please regale us with your outstanding wisdom and intelligence. Do tell us how we can “move organic matter from freshly dead to soil”. I’m not sure what that means but perhaps you can educate us.
I’m still not an expert, but I like to speculate and dream of a better world
I have no disagreement with point 1, I’ve heard that before. But gosh, it’s a tough pill to swallow when you’re not food secure. I think maybe it’s easier for people to accept “there isn’t enough food” than “there is food, but I can’t have any.”
Point 2: I imagine we’d probably grow different food there. I suppose there might be some concern for biodiversity loss, but if we were suddenly gifted a ton of arable land to grow food on we could probably get better variety.
Point 3 is a tough one, it’s something I haven’t really considered before. However, I suppose that raising animals for fertilizer could potentially be more humane and lower impact than raising animals for flesh. For instance, you’re no longer incentivized to slaughter the animals at a young age, and older animals might actually have a lower caloric requirement. Plus you wouldn’t need to raise the mega polluters like cows, you just want whatever gives good fertilizer.
You don’t need animals for fertilizer you can follow the veganic farming way of doing things to reduce nitrite runoff and e-coli contamination.
This is the comment I was waiting for.
I’m quite sympathetic to the ideas of veganic farming - most of it is just agro-ecological minus the animal contribution.
I knew a farm that was run by vegans. They literally, I kid you not, were running it on an animal sanctuary that had lots of manure which they refused to use. Great big piles of compost I would have cried over.
They drove 4 hours one way to get a load of veganic compost, which if you know anything about moving such things around, was probably enough for a raised bed or two. So when the veganic people talk about “maximizing local plant-based fertility” and “minimizing off-farm inputs”, well, that ain’t exactly what they meant.
This is an extreme example but it illustrates how sometimes the adherence to dogmatic principles in food production results in no production.
Growing vegetables without animal manure -and- without synthetic fertilizers works on a teeeny-tiny scale where you already have sufficient fertility and enough land do basically grow grass for compost. It’s completely untenable for actual high-intensity food production.
Firstly, my general approach to this problem is to worry about it later, because obviously it’s not a problem at all in a world of 8 billion humans all wanting to eat meat every day.
But, since you seem to know what you’re talking about, what do you think would be the minimal amount of animals and land required to feed those 8 billion organically? Assumptions:
A rough picture of what that would look like? Lots of cereals and legumes and so on, plus a couple of chickens per hectare?
Um… Mostly the way it’s being grown now?
Did you miss the part where that’s already farm land being used to feed our food?Edit: the last sentence was unnecessarily rude, sorry about that… Also, reading some of your other replies, I see more what you meant. I still think it’s a very solvable problem though.
I also think it’s a very solvable problem. But there are a lot of complex moving parts in our food production system. I’m thinking of this in the context of the current highly industrialized state of agriculture and the current demands of consumers and how do you make a shift toward sustainable agriculture while also reducing meat production and animal exploitation.
So for me, the way it’s being grown now isn’t actually an option. 5000 acres of feed corn on dead soil that’s continually pumped with synthetic fertilizers is a thoroughly bad idea and turning those acres into corn (or anything) for humans is every bit as bad.
Believe it or not, it’s actually rather hard to get quality manure inputs for many farms. Depends on where you are of course. But the stuff weighs a lot, is never where you want it and the largest quantities are from CAFOs which are decidedly NOT high quality and require a lot more work to be useable in a sustainable context. That manure is sold, sure, and ends up in food production, but not to the exclusion of synthetic inputs. If you eliminate CAFOs then there’s even more demand for manure such that sustainable operations which require high quality compost because they don’t use synthetic fertilizers are going to have a hard time getting enough fertility.
So it’s easy to generalize and say there is excess manure from so much animal production, but the reality is that much if not most of that manure is not where you need it. I think a lot of folks don’t realize that sustainable meat production that isn’t integrated with sustainable vegetable production adds a lot of complexity, and yet that’s where we are at right now. The integrated food systems (e.g. rotational grazing etc) of times gone by were much more efficient but are relatively uncommon today, mainly because of market forces.
Hopefully this is a better summary of the point I was trying to make yesterday.
I didn’t know that the benefits were supposed to include health. I thought it was water and CO2 reduction and, ya know, less killin things.
But if they can make it healthier too, that’d be exciting
Admittedly I stopped working in food service well before the Beyond came out, but I definitely had people order the veggie burger because “they were trying to be healthier” that day.
And I guess that means different things for different people, and I don’t think Beyond is actively marketing specifically as a health food or anything. But my lizard brain is always going to assume that the plant is healthier than the meat.
I haven’t looked into it but I think the more classic veggie/garden/bean burgers are at least somewhat healthier than their meat or faux meat counterparts
The sad reality is that most people don’t care enough about the environment or animals to change their eating decision on the basis of those things alone. Yes, the selfishness and apathy pisses me off too, but we just have to accept it.
Three things will move them: taste, price, and healthiness. Hence the importance of this pivot.
Yeah, I think anyone who eats it thinking it’s healthier is missing the point.
I think it’ll be healthier by not having the issues associated specifically with red meat consumption, but from a nutritional standpoint overall, yeah… The same moderation should be exercised as with regular hamburgers.
The point is removing animal meat from the equation to decrease our dependence on massive cattle lots and moving our intake to preference much more efficient plant based calories.
But yeah, if they’re using palm oil they should move to something more sustainable, but I don’t know that it’s any less sustainable or polluting than meat lots.
I really don’t like imitation meat. It’s never going to be the same, so I don’t understand the point.
If you’re going to give up meat, why torture yourself with this garbage?
I prefer buying the veggie burgers that are just vegetable patties, or making my own.
Ita fine if you don’t like it, but the people who do certainly aren’t torturing theirselves.