People are used to seeing stark warnings on tobacco products alerting them about the potentially deadly risks to health. Now a study suggests similar labelling on food could help them make wiser choices about not just their health, but the health of the planet.
The research, by academics at Durham University, found that warning labels including a graphic image – similar to those warning of impotence, heart disease or lung cancer on cigarette packets – could reduce selections of meals containing meat by 7-10%.
It is a change that could have a material impact on the future of the planet. According to a recent YouGov poll, 72% of the UK population classify themselves as meat-eaters. But the Climate Change Committee (CCC), which advises the government on its net zero goals, has said the UK needs to slash its meat consumption by 20% by 2030, and 50% by 2050, in order to meet them.
“how can we shift responsibility to the consumer today?”
Eh, in all fairness the meat & dairy industry is one thing that we as consumers really do need to take a bulk of responsibility for. I say that as a devout meat eater.
BUT, governments could go a long way by not subsidising dairy and meat and instead subsidising protein alternatives. It’s fucking nuts to me that it costs more for me to buy plant protein.
(Before the die hard vegans come at me saying you don’t need to eat pseudo (plant) proteins to eat less meat, please remember you’re trying to convert people that are familiar and enjoy one diet to another. You’re not going to encourage anyone by advocating a cold-turkey or 0% meat approach. I hate that I have to put this disclaimer here, but I’m fed up with arguing with puritanical vegans that overshadow pragmatism.)
United States federal government spends $38 billion every year subsidizing the meat and dairy industries
Apparently people consume a lot more meat than they need and even than it’s healthy to consume (though it heavilly depends on the country and the eating habits of the population) so there is room for huge improvement in greenhouse gas emissions from the industry AND health-outcomes by campaigning to reduce meat consumption (rather than the absolutist and rather moralist idea that people should become vegetarians or even vegans).
Also I’m quite weary about any proposed solution involving moving some of the current meat consumption to processed and ultra-processed protein alternatives: we keep getting study after study associating processed and especially ultra-processed food to all kinds of health problems.
the meat & dairy industry is one thing that we as consumers really do need to take a bulk of responsibility for
No, the capitalists that put profit before the well being of the planet, the consumer, and their products are to blame and should be held responsible, not the people just trying to live their lives under a system imposed on us for the benefit of a small few (and before the die hard vegans come at me - I am a vegan, I just don’t think the problems we’re facing are because other people eat meat, but because capitalism has made meat in to an industry).
The thing is, you don’t have to eat as much meat. If people cut their meat intake by 25%, we would cut GHG emissions from the food industry by 25%.
If people cut their meat intake by 25%, we would cut GHG emissions from the food industry
i doubt it. but do you have a plan to get there?
No, we don’t.
Good point, you’ve convinced me.
meat & dairy industry is one thing that we as consumers really do need to take a bulk of responsibility for.
wrong.
Nice, well-supported argument.
i presented exactly as much evidence as they did.
Do you need evidence to support the popular theory that no one has a gun to your head at the grocery store saying “buy that ground beef”?
whether i buy beef or not does not change whether the industry continues.
If no one buys beef, there would be no beef industry, they don’t produce stuff for fun.
deleted by creator
which one?
Whose responsibility is it what to consume, if not the consumer’s?
consumption doesn’t emit greenhous gasses: production does. who is responsible for production?
What method of producing meat that doesn’t emit greenhouse gases do you propose?
“Consumption doesn’t emit greenhouse gases, production does”, that doesn’t really make sense. If no one consumed meat one year, much less meat would be produced the next year, leading to less greenhouse gases.
it seems like you understand that all the emissions are in the production but you’re incredulous and proposing and impossible hypothetical to support your position.
This seems like rather an optimistic headline, seeing as the article also says that the results from the study were “not statistically signifiant”.
Considering how meat is in most things, you’d think that it would just oversaturate people with warnings, and they would just end up ignoring it. Similar to how people more or less ignore California’s Proposition 65 in the USA, because it’s so broad, and the thresholds are so low that basically everything has a label saying “This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer”. Anything significant gets lost in the noise.
Why dont we do this also every time someone buys a car?
Every car is the same shape and only comes in one shade of brown. They are required to have large, graphic advertisements across the sides warning about the environmental impact.
I actually think that would be very effective. It would also make every city very depressing to live in. However, we could mitigate that by populating the streets with colorful plants and art.
Please focus on curbing your own satisfaction, so the oil industry can continue to be the biggest polluter AND make money hand over fist.
The Guardian is very much a neoliberal newspaper (some people confuse it with being Leftwing because, like most neolibs, they’re also liberal on moral subjects) so it is usually against regulatory solutions and heavilly favours using Nudge Theory to influence the masses.
So yeah, you’ll see a lot of articles about how people should become Vegetarian because of the emissions from livestock farming and very few demanding, for example, regulation of aircraft emissions (though there is a single Opinion writter there which does not suffer from profitability-prioritizing-thinking when it comes to ecological subjects).
The oil industry is, of course, doing all that polluting for the sheer fun of it. Our collective consumption habits, esp. in the PRIVILEGED western countries, have absolutely nothing to do with it.
There is no sustainable way to eat the amount of meat we do, no matter how much or how little capitalism gets involved. Even assuming the absolute best (aka unrealistic) stats for grass-fed cows, we’d still have to reduce our meat consumption to 1/7 of where it currently is. Do you think that is doable just by destroying some companies? Do you think people would just accept that???
Ban lobbying and see how fast the whole justification falls apart. There’s a reason why west is so car dependent and there’s no public transport in sight.
Since around 2018 we have known that agriculture, specifically the raising of cattle, spews out more harmful emissions than the oil industry does.
It doesn’t.
From a health perspective, absolutely.
From a climate perspective? Just tax carbon and give the proceeds back as UBI.
To the extent that health warnings work, it’s because it affects the consumer directly. A climate warning is saying “this burger is going to make life slightly worse for someone halfway around the world.”
It may change consumption slightly but also risks a blowback of denial. People don’t like feeling guilty and are perfectly capable of sticking their head in the sand so they can enjoy a steak.
deleted by creator
Carbon tax credits are not a carbon tax. Carbon tax is adding a tax to pollution. Gas for cars, methane (“natural gas” ugh) for homes, coal for power plants, etc. all get taxed. Keep raising the tax until we hit neutrality.
It’s a market-based solution so the right wingers will love it, just like they loved Obamacare. /s
But you can breath warning labels?
If we make them out of little bits of plastic, the answer is shockingly yes
lol but not on gas? Plastic?
Waste of money and time.
Not really. The meat industry makes INSANE amounts of GHG emissions. Whataboutism surely won’t solve climate change.
Calling something whataboutism won’t either. That’s just lazy and dismissive.
The CONSUMER is not going to make a difference. The change needs to happen on an industry scale.
How so? Cow farts? The grass is going to emit the same gasses whether it decomposes in a cow stomach or in the dirt. I guess the solution to carbon emissions is to pave the earth! No more organics polluting everything.
Not necessarily cow farts, but manure, fertilizer, and landscaping.
Methane comes primarily from livestock digestion (known as enteric fermentation) and the way livestock manure is managed. It contributes the most to agricultural emissions of greenhouse gases.
The second largest contributor is nitrous oxide, which results mostly from agricultural fertilizer application to soils and from manure management.
Carbon dioxide emissions come from increased decomposition of plant matter in soils and from converting lands to agricultural uses. Those emissions are partially offset by the increased plant matter stored in cropland soils.
You’re not wrong about the same gasses being created by decomposing grass and digested grass, but like most things, it’s a multifaceted issue.
As they say, you can’t get snakes from chicken eggs.
Good answer
Probably one of the best rebuttals I’ve ever read.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
you can’t get snakes from chicken eggs.
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Most cows eat soy which is produced on former rainforest grounds.
Additionally, we are better off eating/using what is produced on farmlands directly instead of feeding it to animals. That is much more energy efficient!
we are better off eating/using what is produced on farmlands directly
we do. what we feed to animals is mostly the parts of plants that people can’t or won’t eat.
No cows in UK eat soy.
Also idk about you, but I can’t eat grass
cattle hardly eat any soy at all
Cattle don’t produce any emissions.
Yeah it’s going to stop people from eating what ever shit that’s available for the cheapest price to continue living. I’m pretty sure this is just another bullshit study to talk about how people should eat healthy while they don’t have budget or means to…
Edit: It seems many of you missed the meaning of what I’m talking about! Poor people who eat fast food, chicken or whatever processed meat products available for cheap not going to give a fuck about what their meat is labeled. Meat just doesn’t mean the steak people buy from the market! If this is so hard for you imbeciles to understand without getting triggered because someone said something you don’t understand than there is no need for further discussion. Processed meat consumption (including all kinds of meat beef, lamb, pork, chicken even fish) is the cheapest protein source for poor people. This study is disregarding how poor people do their food shopping. Until so called I can’t believe it’s meat type of vegetarian alternatives come to the point of real meat poor people going to continue to eat meat. And all you butt hurt so called activist can’t even see the difference because you have your head up so high up your high horses to realize what the fuck is normal people going through. Now kindly please go fuck yourselves and don’t comment any more unless you have an actual and feasible solution.
have you seen the prices of beans and rice?? i save a lotta money by not eating meat. even with the outrageous subsidies poured into meat it can still hardly compare.
deleted by creator
It’s weird hearing my dad and sister complain about how expensive meat is. Today i shopped pretty cheap, although i didn’t have to buy meat.
And i just sit there and think: oh man if only there was any alternative.meat simply has better protein options
what kinda high protein low fat and carb options are there for veggie folk?
id like to substitute chicken breast occasionally. i looked into tofu but its super fatty for pretty mid protein. beans high carb mid protein. lowfat plain greek yogurt and cottage cheese are NICE protein but taste like literal dogshit though its so close to being worth trying to stomach.
im on the search for more macro friendly foods that don’t taste like sour liquid chalk
Meat is cheap because of govt subsidies. And lab grown meat will soon be able to undercut slaughtered meat in price without those subsidies, so the whole “let poor people eat what they can afford” argument will switch sides in the coming years without new protectionist governmental policies.
When. Fullofshit.
Meat is not “cheap” it’s god dam expensive.
No one said meat is “cheap.” The word was used as a relative comparison, meaning slaughtered meat is cheaper than lab-grown alternatives.
Keep telling yourself that.
Meat is cheap
Wow you are dense
Meat is cheap
deleted by creator
Sure there’s people that just buy what’s cheaper. But there’s also people who consciously make the choice of eating meat having the possibility of not doing so. It makes sense to target that part of the population.
Now, if subsidies to the meat and dairy industry was redericted to plant-based farming, then the only reason left to consume animals would be people’s choice of personal pleasure over ethical and environmental factors
Meat is cheap now huh?
is that what you managed to understand what I’m saying here? If so please go away and waste oxygen somewhere else.
deleted by creator
Ha! Love it! Do it! Not like there is any lack of studies to show the health dangers of meat.
- Conclusion: Red and processed meat intakes were associated with modest increases in total mortality, cancer mortality, and cardiovascular disease mortality.
- The study found that people who ate two servings per week of red meat or processed meat had a 3% to 7% higher risk (respectively) of cardiovascular disease, including heart attack and stroke, and a 3% higher risk of death from all causes.
- observed strong correlations of dietary HCA intake and consumption of fried and processed meat with DNA adduct levels in breast tissue of 44 women
Won’t ever happen in the US tho. The meat industry is so protective that a lot of states have food libel laws, as well as gag laws that’s limit filming of slaughter houses. If something is so obviously safe, weird how you can’t talk about it’s risks or show its production.
We can’t forget how wasteful meat is as a food supply. Which is sorta obvious when you think about it for 5 seconds. Feeding cows edible food, drinkable water, on farmable land for several years to only get a handful of meals out of them is just silly inefficient.
And that’s just the data, not even going in to ethics. Which, come on. Cut a cow, they bleed, yell and flee. If you cut their young, they attack. Just like we do. Does it matter if they can’t talk? The question is, can they suffer? (yes)
I’m not going to argue with your sentiment, but your above arguments are either weak or factually wrong. This doesn’t help your cause.
A less then 10% increase in health risks is really a deciding factor, particularly against a cultural and dietary staple to many.
As for beef production, time to slaughter is often between 6 to 8 months, and not years.
I wonder who is your target audience for posts like this. People who made the choice to eat meat on the basis of rational deliberation but are missing some key facts?
Pretty much everyone hopefully knows that meat is not great for the environment, is more wasteful to produce simply due to thermodynamics, that red meat is not very healthy, and that the ethics of eating meat are pretty clear cut.
We just don’t care cause it’s tasty as fuck. No amount of facts and sound ethical arguments will make a steak not taste amazing.
edit: for what it’s worth, I don’t care if they put warnings on meat. Doesn’t make it any less tasty.
Yep. 100% this. I’m not going plant based. I’m well aware meat isn’t great for the environment, but my single personal choice won’t make any difference to the industry, and will only result in me hating the little food I eat even more.
Plant based in general is textures that are so repulsive to eat that I’d rather starve.
I wonder who is your target audience for posts like this.
Their own righteous self-aggrandizing ego.
No amount of facts and sound ethical arguments will make a steak not taste amazing.
You love to see it folks. Full support for your selfish, sadistic, nihilism in the face of science, empathy or reason. Long as you are enjoying yourself then who cares about the details?
Just gotta hope no one with more power, influence or capitol feels simmiliar when it’s time to consider others. Might be a rough world if everyone says “fuck it, lol idc”.
I take selfish and nihilistic but not sadistic. I don’t enjoy the fact that animals suffer for my enjoyment. It just doesn’t bother me all that much. It’s just part of life.
Feeding cows edible food, drinkable water, on farmable land
most cows eat mostly grass. the bulk of the water they get is the water in the grass.
I would love to know where you’re finding all that delicious grass fed beef, because here in America it’s almost all corn-fed.
Industrial beef production in the US is crazy and has tons of problems, not just the feeding of the cattle with something it would not normally eat (and which is actually not good for their digestive system) with the associated preventive use of antibiotics and such.
In the rest of the World were Corn Farming is nowhere near the powerful lobby as in the US (you know, the kind of country were they didn’t put massive duty taxes on the much cheaper cane sugar in order to make High-Frutose Corn Syrup competitive) and regulations on the agro industry are lot tighter, those problems are a lot less.
This not to say your point is not right, more to say that whilst your viewpoint definitelly applies to a large fraction of the industry worldwide, so does the point of the person you replied to.
your beef isn’t corn-fed. it’s grass-fed, grain-finished. they don’t label it grass fed unless it’s NOT grain-finished.
But “finishing” is most of the weight gain of the animal and all the flavor.
It’s like arguing all cows are milk-fed because they were calves once.
But “finishing” is most of the weight gain of the animal and all the flavor.
no, it’s not. its about 4-6 months of an 18-20 month lifespan. most of their growing is done when they get to the feed lot.
edit:
The US is highly unusual in just how much Corn dominates food production and that most definitelly impacts the beef production which does included the feeding of corn to cattle (it’s actually what creates the “marbling” in american beef) which would otherwise not be done because it’s actually bad for the digestive system of cattle (there’s a book called “The Omnivore’s Dilema” that’s well worth reading) and is linked to other problems like the preventive use of antibiotics with cattle because the animals are more susceptive to disease (which in turn affect humans because it leads to increased antibiotic resistance in bacteria).
However in countries were Corn is not so insanelly dominant, the cattle is actually grown the proper way, so mainly grass fed as per your illustration.
Both you and the other poster are correct, IMHO, it’s just that each is talking about a very different locally dominant version of the beef production industry than the other.
each is talking about a very different locally dominant version of the beef
no, we’re both talking about american beef.
That’s cool and all but I’m gonna keep eating meat lol
Are you a bot?
lmao
No. Just a vegan who has been around awhile and keeps a cheat sheet of sources. Poke around in my history, I talk to lots of people about lots of things.
This is a salty comments section. Can’t even tell who’s salty or why, but they definitely are.
You should salt, generally season, your board, not the steak. Unless you actually brine/marinate the thing.
Ah, so that’s why this message board is so salty
I hate this idea. My appetite can be ruined by stuff like this, and that would suck to throw away food since I can’t eat it
You probably wouldn’t buy it, which is the point.
I remember when these were introduced on cigarette packs. For a while there was a trend of “collecting all the pics”, while other found a nice business in selling “cigarette pack holder” that would just mask the pictures. I’m not sure any of that was the initial goal.
I wonder how applying this to food would turn out, seeing that a fair share of people are well informed of the effect we have on the climate already but simply don’t care.
removed by mod
A hundred and twenty years from now: “officials announce plans to label beetle burgers for their high calorie counts in hopes that consumers begin to gravitate toward the more abundant and cheaper mosquito burgers”
“Vegan advocacy groups continue to lament the abuse of the beetle population. ‘Beetle lives matter’ says Sue Johnson of the group, while holding her designer luxury leather handbag”.
I watched this video about how reducing meat consumption isn’t the silver bullet it’s made out to be. I’d really like to hear what other people think about it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGG-A80Tl5g
I haven’t watched this video, but I do wanna point out that this channel also made a video called “vegan diets don’t work”, which was full of correlation = causation, cherry picking or straight up misrepresenting data, and just generally going against the scientific consensus on several key issues in that video.
I’m strapped for time, so I’ll just paste one of the comments under that video here:
Veganism is not healthy because more than 50% of vegans quit -> following the same logic: exercising is not healthy because 90% of people quit after the first 3 months
- Bases knowledge of Western Prices almost century-old studies (1927 and 1939) instead of relying on the most recent state-of-the-art studies
- Refined foods = Veganism (folowing this logic, white bread is only eaten by vegans)
- Netherlands and Montenegro have the tallest people in the world and at the same time they drink a lot of milk, this is correlation and not causation.
- The study itself overlooked individuals and instead focused on average, this is an ecological fallacy. We could say the same about smoking, if you plot smoking and timespan per country we could say the more people smoke the longer their lifespan is, which is ridiculous.
See for yourself the remaining of the video, this continues on!
So probably take this one with a big grain of salt.
The video isn’t really about debunking veganism on an individual level. It’s more about the benefits of cows to society and avoiding waste.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=sGG-A80Tl5g
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
oh, god, it’s the “What I failed to learn” channel.
For everyone one of his meat shilling videos there are dozens of debunking videos. Doesn’t matter because people love to watch good news about bad habits.
Can you DM me a debunking video? I like to hear both sides
LOL. Big oil is hard at work. They want to get out of this one scot-free with their “mah quarterly profits”. Now they’re running after people’s food. Get the fuck outta here with this shit. I don’t care what they put on the package, I’m still eating my food. You go enjoy your private jets, yachts and billions of dollars and let me at least enjoy a fucking steak/burger. I hate this shit so much.
