Plant-based 'beef' reduces CO2 but threatens ag jobs:
Plant-based alternatives to beef have the potential to help reduce carbon dioxide emissions, but their growth in popularity could disrupt the agricultural workforce, threatening more than 1.5 million industry jobs, new economic models show.
[...] By embracing meat protein alternatives, U.S. food production could reduce its agricultural carbon footprint by between 2.5% and 13.5%, mostly by decreasing the number of cows needed for beef production by two to 12 million, according to the paper.
[...] "Still, plant-based alternatives to beef are not silver bullets," he said, "with their impact on other environmental dimensions of the food system – such as total water use – ambiguous."
The researchers explored the potential disruption of plant-based beef alternatives by comparing the economic consequences under a range of scenarios, where plant-based beef alternatives replaced 10%, 30% or 60% of current U.S. beef demand.
[...] Acting to reduce climate change is important, the researchers said, but technological disruption can have many consequences – both positive and negative – across the economy, such as the issue of livelihoods, working conditions, human rights, fair wages and health equity.
[...] The adoption of plant-based beef alternatives could lead to other unintended consequences. For example, resources freed from contracting beef sectors – such as livestock feed – could allow the pork and poultry sectors to expand.
[...] "Nevertheless, a range of plant-based alternatives to animal products are under development," Mason-D'Croz said. "If these are adopted widely, then increases in animal numbers would be less likely, even as economic disruption and negative impacts on the livelihoods of those employed in animal-sourced food value chains would be much larger."
Journal Reference:
Daniel Mason-D'Croz, Anne Barnhill, Justin Bernstein, et al., Ethical and economic implications of the adoption of novel plant-based beef substitutes in the USA: a general equilibrium modelling study [open], The Lancet, 6, 8, 2022. DOI: 10.1016/S2542-5196(22)00169-3
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Immerman on Wednesday August 10 2022, @03:25PM (16 children)
So I can only assume this plant-based "beef" manifests fully formed from the aether with no human labor required?
Because otherwise it seems to me it's not eliminating jobs, just replacing them.
And while I'm sure the beef industry is going to invoke a stream of images of poor, hardworking ranchers being put out on the street - the reality is almost certainly that it will be the massive industrial farming corporations who ruthlessly minimize wages-paid-per-pound that will suffer most. After all they're the ones who control most of the market, and as demand for their ethically atrocious product falls, the small farmers with their (almost always) much more ethically farmed "boutique meat" are likely to be far more strongly positioned. It's a lot easier for a pseudo-meat to substitute for the probably-beef in a McDonalds hamburger than for a nice juicy premium steak from a happy, healthy, free-range cow.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday August 10 2022, @05:16PM (3 children)
I'm vegetarian and have enjoyed a plethora of new choices as far as meat alternative products lately. What with the Beyond Meat, Impossible burger, etc. coming into the market. I also very much like the "new" Ripple milk that's made with pea protein. As it replaces a very rich and creamy tofu milk that is no longer produced. Drinking milk products really affects my breathing (I suffer from Asthma). Not sure, if the milk directly or some sort of intolerance to it exacerbates the Asthma. Generally, I don't notice any issues with Ice Cream or Cheese.
People are going to eat, whether it's cow, chicken, fish, peas, tofu, corn, wheat, etc.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday August 10 2022, @05:19PM (2 children)
Okay, I should have said drinking dairy milk products affects my breathing. I.E. it's the dairy that I generally have problems with drinking. I've noticed it doesn't happen anywhere near so much, if I drink chocolate milk. Which leads me to suspect that it's some sort of enzyme or what not that is eliminated/reduced with additional processing. As you would see in chocolate milk, ice cream, or especially cheese.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 5, Informative) by HammeredGlass on Wednesday August 10 2022, @05:44PM
Look into the problem being the synthetic Vitamin A Palmitate.
It's considered a tertiary ingredient when 2%, 1%, or Skim is used as an ingredient in other food stuffs, so it won't be listed on those items aside from the mention of 2%, 1%, or Skim.
Anyways, Vitamin A Palmitate is added to lower fat content milks to make up for the loss of that natural vitamin which is naturally found in full fat milk.
Some milk producers will make all of their milk like Skim and then will add fat to their other products to bring them up to the fat content of the labeled milk, e.g Whole, 2%, or 1%. This is how the synthetic Vitamin A Palmitate sneaks its way into seemingly normal milk products. Asking the grocery about it challenging as they often buy a local label for a larger production houses which slap labels differently based on what store or region it's going to.
You can see what dairy your milk actually comes from using the lot number on the carton: https://www.whereismymilkfrom.com/ [whereismymilkfrom.com]
You can then inquire as to the nature of the milk you are drinking.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Wednesday August 10 2022, @05:46PM
if you feel wheezing in your lungs, it could be either an autoimmune (e.g., asthmatic) exacerbation or a non-allergic/autoimmune miscellaneous inflammatory response. But usually when it's food-related allergies/asthma, it's autoimmune. If it's phlegm or swelling in your throat or windpipe, it may be a related condition that isn't asthma proper.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ilsa on Wednesday August 10 2022, @05:22PM (7 children)
What is preventing these Ag companies from transitioning to support these plant-based alternatives? I imagine the farms themselves may run too lean to afford the necessary changes and couple probably do with a helping hand.
But processing plants shouldn't have any issues at all. Doing a quick check for example, shows Maple Leaf Foods have _already_ successfully transitioned a large part of their business to plant-based protein.
Not being involved in the industry, I can't tell if there are genuine issues, or if it's just another case of businesses unwilling to embrace change, similar to restaurants that would rather put up signs lamending "people don't want to work anymore" rather than pay a living wage.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Wednesday August 10 2022, @06:09PM
Nothing's preventing them, but it's going to unavoidably cost them money and risk. Even best case scenario they take a hit in the transition due to sunk capital costs and the necessity of new capital expenditures. And there's always the risk they won't make the transition successfully.
Which is why my money is almost always on it being a case of businesses unwilling to embrace change.
Meat processing is a tiny portion of the industry - it takes minutes to process a cow that took years of maintenance to grow.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 10 2022, @07:05PM (3 children)
BEEF. it's what's for dinner.
The folks who work the cattle industry aren't what you'd call: easily retrainable.
Also, they have some legitimate beefs with repurposing of their land. Grazing use isn't exactly interchangeable with row-crop use, and you're going to be creating a new set of negative impacts on the surrounding ecosystems when you convert grazing land to crops, with very little positive impact resulting from the conversion.
Plus: what kind of rodeo can you have based on plant husbandry? Rope that corn? Ride that soybean?
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday August 10 2022, @08:42PM (1 child)
For the most part grazing land is unsuitable for farming. Too dry, too steep, too nutrient poor...something. The profit per acre for beef is terrible - if you could farm the land it would be more profitable to do so, and then if you felt so inclined feed a small portion of the crop to a similar number of cows who now spend their entire lives in cramped pens.
That means most land abandoned for ranching is unlikely to get repurposed for anything else, and the millions of acres of land these huge agribusinesses have accumulated will become so much worthless capital left to lie fallow. Which would be a huge ecological gain, but one the current owners of that land have a huge vested interest in preventing from happening.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 11 2022, @01:09PM
You are, of course, right - for the most part. My thinking was more focused on Central Florida, and the Amazon. In Central Florida the row-cropping is so intensively irrigated, fertilized, plastic lined, etc. that it doesn't really matter what "soil" lies beneath, which is good because it's basically sand. So, conversion of cow-calf operation grazing land to tomatoes, or strawberries, or ornamentals or whatever is pretty common. Of course, in Florida "Highest Best Use" is always residential, the higher density the bigger the return. Funny the exact correlation between dollars per acre yield from the land and negative environmental impacts on the land itself and surrounding areas.
If you look at Google maps satellite view of the western Amazon, you'll probably notice that every road is a logging opportunity, which have been exploited to varying degrees but usually at least 100m+ either side for the length of the road. There, they could be growing row crops in the relatively fertile and naturally irrigated soil (at least it's naturally irrigated until they strip enough of the forest cover to lose the rains...), but it's quicker and cheaper to throw up some barbed wire and let some cattle graze on whatever they find. The U.S. was no different in the 1800s. Our Central Florida land was stripped of its old growth pine to 2000' back from the river, so they could float the logs six miles downstream to a sawmill, which built the town from ~1890 to 1905, when the town burned down.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 10 2022, @09:12PM
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/country-girls-make-do [knowyourmeme.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Joe Desertrat on Thursday August 11 2022, @12:52AM
Big Ag is probably waiting for the same sort of help they got to take over "organic" farming. Get government to change the rules so that those who were genuine organic farmers were pushed out of the way by corporate entities that could now label their products as "organic" even though they could not pass muster as such under the previous rules.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday August 11 2022, @04:38PM
Agricultural companies in the US growing PLANTS?!?!?! What is this, commie Russia!
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Wednesday August 10 2022, @05:57PM (1 child)
No - but nor does cattle feed. Cattle are machines for turning unappetising/indigestible plant matter into meat - replace them with something more efficient (and probably highly automated) and you don't necessarily create a proportionally large new market for plant matter.
I'm guessing the premium 100% year-round grass fed cows with their own names and Twitter accounts will be the last to go.
Change is coming - both for ecological reasons and the march of automation - and governments and corporations are just going to have to knuckle down and rethink the way employment works.
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Wednesday August 10 2022, @06:02PM
" Cattle are machines for turning unappetising/indigestible plant matter into milk and meat " - fixed that for me.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 10 2022, @06:55PM (1 child)
Raising cattle for beef requires, depending upon what you read, 15-30 pounds of plant feed for every 1 pound of beef. So anything that reduces beef consumption in favor of directly consuming plants dramatically reduces resource usage - including, but not only, labor.
But every efficiency improvement cuts jobs. Vacuum cleaners reduce the need for people with brooms. Washing machines reduced the need for people that washed things by hand. 10 people driving trucks can transport more materials than 20 people with horses or oxen pulling wagons. Power tools reduce the need for people cutting lumber by hand.
"Threatens Ag Jobs" - who wrote the article, an anarcho-primitivist? Or a meat industry shill?
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday August 10 2022, @08:54PM
My money is on a shill.
It's also worth considering: it's almost certainly more resource efficient, but is it more job efficient?
How does the amount of human labor required to produce one pound of beef compare to the amount of human labor required to produce a nutritionally equivalent amount of not-beef?
If not-beef takes at least as much *human* labor then switching to it will create net jobs, even if it eliminates some specific jobs.
(Score: 5, Funny) by kazzie on Wednesday August 10 2022, @05:17PM (1 child)
Exactly what imapct will this have on the silver industry?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 11 2022, @03:00AM
(Score: -1, Troll) by HammeredGlass on Wednesday August 10 2022, @05:46PM (13 children)
Fuck all of the greenies that push this vile swill on the public.
(Score: 3, Touché) by cmdrklarg on Wednesday August 10 2022, @06:26PM (1 child)
That's absolutely wrong that the "greenies" are force feeding you insects; how are they getting away with that?
Oh.... they're not? Sorry, I misunderstood your hyperbole. Carry on!
Answer now is don't give in; aim for a new tomorrow.
(Score: 2) by HammeredGlass on Friday August 12 2022, @03:48PM
Like that isn't the dream of every petit tyrant which celebrates every onerous new regulation, tax, and restriction placed on people's freedom as everyone is moved closer to being a sardine in a pod in a densely packed urban hellscape.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 10 2022, @07:00PM (4 children)
1. It's plant-based.
2. You WILL eat the bugs, you WILL live in the pod, you WILL own nothing and be happy...
(Score: 3, Informative) by boltronics on Thursday August 11 2022, @11:31AM (3 children)
You're already eating bugs. Unless you're paying attention, you just didn't realise it.
Check out the ingredients of your soft drink, breakfast cereal, candies, etc. and watch for any of the following labels:
* Colour 120 (AKA E120)
* Carmine
* Cochineal
* C.I. 75470
* Crimson Lake
* Natural Red 4
I'm vegan, and generally good with the plant-based beef products.
It's GNU/Linux dammit!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by deimtee on Thursday August 11 2022, @01:39PM
Or just look up the "permissible level of insects and insect parts in foods".
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 2) by HammeredGlass on Thursday August 11 2022, @01:57PM
You don't know me. I've been avoiding everything with an "E" number for a decade plus.
(Score: 5, Touché) by VLM on Thursday August 11 2022, @03:47PM
None of those are actual foods.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday August 10 2022, @09:47PM (1 child)
(in bestest Zoidberg voice . . .)
Relax already!
Soylent Green is not made of bugs.
So there.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Wednesday August 10 2022, @11:59PM
No. But some red food colour is made of bugs.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Wednesday August 10 2022, @09:50PM
A subtle difference between bugs and plant-based meat emulation... Bugs have been part of human diets since prehistory,.Solvent extracted plant protein isolates have a somewhat shorter track record.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 11 2022, @08:16AM
Uh, that turns out not to be the case. Virtually every human on the planet can digest chitin. It's an excellent source of protein.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday August 11 2022, @04:41PM (1 child)
Have you considered not eating it?
(Score: 2) by HammeredGlass on Thursday August 11 2022, @06:43PM
Do you really see a future where I will be given the option aside from starving?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ElizabethGreene on Wednesday August 10 2022, @06:35PM (3 children)
Turning a lentil or pea into a meat-like substance takes a significant amount of chemistry, and the last 5 decades have taught me to be exceedingly skeptical of the value of processed foods. Hydrogenated fats generally, and Margarine specifically, took thousands of years of healthspan from us. That's a cautionary tale worth heeding. I'll watch this space but have no plans to embrace plant-based meat alternatives as a dietary staple.
(Score: 3, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 10 2022, @07:12PM (1 child)
And, yet: Universities still turn out thousands of graduates every year with advanced degrees in food science / chemistry. These bright eyed 20-somethings have been taught all the basic tools for processing food, making tastier chips, low calorie drinks in seven flavors on one processing line, etc. The Deans of the Chemistry departments seem unlikely villains in the healthcare industrial machine, but they're the ones actively creating new problem for healthcare to "solve" - for a price. Not that they deliberately cause diabetes, cancer, obesity, Alzheimer's, etc. just that through their reckless application of their knowledge on the world's foodstuffs, they do it anyway.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Wednesday August 10 2022, @09:33PM
We are all prey for the law of unintended consequences, and I don't blame our food science colleagues for that. I think the lesson is more about testing and observation than anything else.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday August 11 2022, @12:03AM
There's been a massive reduction in the number of foodstuffs declaring hydrogenated fats on their labels. They have been replaced by "modified fats", which are produced by a different chemical process.
(Score: 2) by jimbrooking on Wednesday August 10 2022, @08:48PM
Can't wait to have my first Big Mac cooked on a concrete sidewalk. Think of the gas we'll save!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Opportunist on Wednesday August 10 2022, @10:39PM (2 children)
Hmm.... so I can either have a planet I can live on or a job? I have to figure out what I can rather exist without.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 11 2022, @03:35AM
This story is bogus, but it's worth keeping in mind that a bunch of poor, jobless humans tend to be high fertility humans. Keeping jobs helps keep that planet.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday August 11 2022, @03:47PM
Don't worry you won't be permitted either, if they have their way.