OT: Never complain about the cost of meat

[GuyOfDoom]

Imperator Fyron said:

In what way is meat "unnatural" today? The fact that they cut up the animals and package it, rather than selling you whole, live animals for your own personal butchery circa 1300 CE? A few growth hormones here and there that have no credible scientific studies indicating any potential side-effects to humans eating the meat? Growth hormones are perfectly natural. So what if the cows mature physically a bit faster than they normally would? It doesn't harm the meat in any way.

Alright while Physics might be your area, Biochemistry is one of mine. Starting from the top: Most food, beef is this instance is far from “natural.” Animals are consistently fed hormones, specially derived diets and antibiotics to keep them growing faster and bigger than ever. Those chemicals alter the animal on just about every level possible. The short version is that if it’s in the animals it makes it into us when we eat them. Even if I was being VERY conservative I’d could say we’re getting nanograms of various chemicals everytime we’re eating meat and it often takes less than that to affect a biological system. Then take into account how often people eat meat and how much they tend to eat. Do the math. If you’d like a few references for chemicals that have been PROVEN to show effects I can supply those for you. As for “no” evidence that comes from what it takes to conduct human studies. Again the short version is by the time it’s definitively “proven” in humans it’s 25+ years later and everyone has already been past dramaticaly affected. The FDA is about as good at regulating as the EPA {read WORTHLESS}.

Actually, it is one of the most asinine things espoused by some overly-political vegetarians that do not really understand food production and biology. While it is technically true that it "takes more time and resources to raise an animal for food," the claim is rather disingenuous because the food that is used to feed the animals is not suitable for feeding to humans, does not decrease the amount of human-quality grains grown, and in fact raising cattle and other livestock is an important part in the cycle of producing more demanding crops (most of the fruits and vegetables we eat).

Funny you should mention not fit for humans because guess who gets fed the old antibiotics were banned on humans for adverse side effects.

The land used for cattle ranching is not suitable for growing human-grade crops (without a ton of fertilizer and nutrients added to it, which comes from the cattle...). Only tough, hardy crops can be grown on it; crops that are really bad to feed to humans, but are fine for herbivorous animals that can actually digest them somewhat well. Most of the grains grown to feed cattle et all are of really low caliber, not suitable for human consumption (think millet, long grasses), which is grown on other tracts of poor quality arable land. Of course, some excess wheat and corn and such is fed to livestock, but this is only done because too much was produced and it can't be sold, and would go to waste otherwise.

If you think no potential crop land has been altered to make way for livestock you’d be gravely mistaken. If you’re referring to manure being good fertilizer, cow manure is actually pretty low on the scale. Some of the best fertilizer actually comes from bats.

There is no particular lack of arable land in the country (or the world as a whole), so any argument related to wasted land usage is completely non-sensible. Pretty much all of the high-quality land that can be used to grow crops for humans either is used to do so, or is left fallow due to not enough demand for more.

We can grow quite a lot of poor-quality grains and such to feed to animals, but we can't really use the land they are grown on to feed humans, without ending up harming them due to malnourishment in the process. If you actually look at the energy efficiency of the food production overall, it is in reality better to have animals processing all of those hardy, malnutritous (in human terms) grains and grasses, than to try to feed them to humans. We can make much better use of it by eating the animals afterwards, and we get huge amounts of natural fertilizer as a by-product.

Funny you should mention there is no lack of arable land because at present the demand for ethanol based fuels on top of the already high demand for High Fructose Corn Syrup is driving the demand for Corn through the roof. If you think the world is at 100% efficiency in terms of farmland as well you’re dreaming. There are plenty of plants that can be eaten by humans that can grow in all types of climates. You forget people have been eating plants everywhere before the invention of refrigeration. The plants that are currently considered “core crops” are often the worst for soil and the best for the corporate farming pocketbooks. As I mentioned earlier cow manure isn’t the best fertilizer and as referenced if the cow is eating plenty of chemicals you don’t want, the manure is going to have them as well.

[Fyron]

"If you’d like a few references for chemicals that have been PROVEN to show effects I can supply those for you."

References from credible sources would be appreciated.

"Again the short version is by the time it’s definitively “proven” in humans it’s 25+ years later and everyone has already been past dramaticaly affected."

Do you have credible evidence from studies showing that all sorts of "harmful chemicals" are present in efficacious quantities in meat brought to market (especially animal hormones that somehow turn into human hormones)?

"The FDA is about as good at regulating as the EPA {read WORTHLESS}."

Why? Because you said so? Because some pundit-blogger says so?

"If you think no potential crop land has been altered to make way for livestock you’d be gravely mistaken."

I didn't say that; certainly there are instances of land being misused, but most of the land used for livestock is not of the high-quality soil variety.

"If you’re referring to manure being good fertilizer, cow manure is actually pretty low on the scale."

But still on the scale, and still used... Even if it is mostly used on low-quality crops used to feed livestock, it is still useful in the overall cycle, no?

"If you think the world is at 100% efficiency in terms of farmland as well you’re dreaming."

I'm not sure what post you read that from; I specifically said we were way below "100% efficiency."

"There are plenty of plants that can be eaten by humans that can grow in all types of climates. You forget people have been eating plants everywhere before the invention of refrigeration."

No, I don't. I was talking specifically about livestock feed grains versus human feed grains.

[Wade]

This nonsense always starts on forums when someone lightly mentions meat or animals as food(and other controversial subjects that can be argued over until we get bored).

I love animals. They're delicious.

I love animals in their natural habitats too.

I don't like them in small enclosures for most of their lives; aside from my aquarium where I did my best to create a natural habitat(Though I still have doubts about the practice of aquarium keeping sometimes). My cat regularly goes inside and outside; though cats are amongst the species that have been domesticated by humans over thousands of years.

Many of the pets and farm/domesticated animals and plants did not exist in their current forms until humans domesticated them and selectively breed(evolution) them over thousands of years. Many of them now would die off if left to the wild without civilization.

Plants are a life form too. I believe we should use plants and animals as food, materials, labor, and comfort as long as they're not tortured or endangered as a species.

As for chemicals, hormones, cloning, genetic alteration, etcetera; if this technology improves the quality of life for humans then use it. If this technology has irrefutable evidence harming quality of life for humans then improve it.

Quality of life is a balance between all advantages and disadvantages considered.

-Wade

[AgentZero]

Sausages are the best. But I always burn the outside before the inside is cooked.

Also, GuyofDoom, MasterChiToes and Will, consider yourselves all mightily smote.

[Will]

AgentZero said:
Also, GuyofDoom, MasterChiToes and Will, consider yourselves all mightily smote.

Well thanks, except it seems you did not really read what I posted. I'm fine with eating meat. I eat at least some daily. What I'm not fine with is the so-called "industrial farming" practices, which I believe will someday come to bite us all in the arse harder than it already has. And I do mean all, not just those of us who do eat meat... like I said, the heavy usage of antibiotics in livestock is just asking for the development of resistant strains faster than would otherwise have happened.

[GuyOfDoom]

As for sources Fyron:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q...arch&DB=pubmed

Vom Saal is one of the primary world researchers on effects of estrogenic compounds. He focuses mostly on BPA, which doesn't translate directly to beef, but is important none the less. I'll see if I can narrow down one of his papers in particular that highlights the particular trend of industrial research versus NIH funded research.

Shockingly enough industry rarely finds anything wrong with their practices. If you want a "real-life" example just look at Merck.

Industry has the luxury of being able to withhold their research findings because it comes from private funding. I'm personally of the belief that all scientific research should be public domain regardless of the source of funding.

It's clear that you share the common American mindset that "it can't hurt me" or "why should I change?" I'm not going to argue with you anymore past this post. If you'd like to continue the conversation more, I'll give you a email address or we can send messages to each other.

[aegisx]

I could sure go for a cheesesteak after all this talk.

[Renegade 13]

Indeed.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Sounds like you need a cattle ranchers' union.

[MasterChiToes]

Wade said:
As for chemicals, hormones, cloning, genetic alteration, etcetera; if this technology improves the quality of life for humans then use it. If this technology has irrefutable evidence harming quality of life for humans then improve it.

Do you live in a worker's paradise where "irrefutable evidence" is funded by mega-corporations that go out of their way to throw away easy profits?
I personally find myself living in a world where more often than not any research that might threaten profits will not only not be funded but will cost scientists their careers.

Note that recent news article about a scientist being offered a job if he guaranteed he'd come out against the existence of global warming.

Anyway, I consider myself largely indifferent to the extremes of the food debate, and don't really care about being mightily smote. But the whole call for proof thing is a tired refrain, because skepticism without a level playing field of inquiry is little different from the Inquisition dismissing Galileo. Skepticism is not blindly believing in something until someone else proves you wrong.

Eat what you want... we are all going to die anyway.