LQD: Monbiot: Meat a worse crime than biofuels. | 102 comments (102 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: LQD: Monbiot: Meat a worse crime than biofuels (4.00 / 11)

It's not just a problem of animal production (meat, dairy, eggs) but the intensive mode of production, and the integration of crops into the process -- practically speaking, the maize (corn) and soy system is almost entirely (bar biofuel use) pointed at intensive poultry, pork, beef and dairy production. So we have a top-heavy system of factory farming (batteries, feed-lots) and a great deal of arable land dedicated to industrial inputs into that system. The outcomes are pollution by the different industrial stages of the process, and poor-quality but "cheap" products.

Compare this to a system where animal production is extensive (using grasslands and marginal lands) and less arable is used for "intensifying" inputs like maize and soy. There'd be a lot less pollution, and better-quality products. There'd also be a lot less in terms of quantity, and the price would be higher. Personally, that's the way I think things should go. Eating less, but better-quality and more expensive, animal products is fine by me, it's what I do.

However, the mass marketing of "cheap" factory-farm products has an appeal that (though it is easy to argue against) is hard to persuade against. In almost all human cultures, eating meat has a festive aspect, and when people can get meat cheaply they go for it. Eating vegetables and cereals appears humdrum by comparison and above all confers no prestige: you're "eating spaghetti" (or rice, or bread, or potatoes) meaning you're too poor to do better. Having meat on the table daily means you're doing well. The mythology is more important than the reality (of the nutritional quality of the intake, of the environmental problems caused).

So there's rising demand for meat in emerging economies where urban populations are seeing average incomes rise. And, to accompany this, the growth of environment-unconscious factory farming. And who are we in the developed world, who invented the intensive production techniques used and have had more than our fair share of glutting on meat, to stop them?

We might at least change our own consumption and production to show that things can be done differently, but we're still a long way from that. Intensivist-productivist methods are in fact gaining ground, with the introduction of GM crops in particular -- backed by the argument that we have to "feed the world". (Read: feed intensive animal production).

What may seem obvious to us doesn't appear so to the vast majority, and the commercial forces are formidable. Things don't look too hopeful.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Wed Apr 16th, 2008 at 03:14:33 AM EST

Re: LQD: Monbiot: Meat a worse crime than biofuels (4.00 / 2)

The obvious thing to do is to smear cheap, industrial meat as only being suitable for the poor. I happen to think it's not really even suitable for my dogs.

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Wed Apr 16th, 2008 at 03:31:29 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: LQD: Monbiot: Meat a worse crime than biofuels (4.00 / 2)

It's a tricky one. I like my food, and cooking and offering taste experiences to others is an important part of my life. But since I went semi-Montignac, I've made a lot more veg dishes. With a full collection of spices, it's possible to make a huge range of dishes. I'm currently experimenting with new ways of serving spinach.

My meat or fish portions tend to be very small - but sort of indespensible - except for sushi where a slab of fresh caught salmon tends to disappear rather quickly.

I also buy a lot of pulses from the Indian shops in Helsinki.

I had a client making soy chunks a couple of year ago and tested a lot of different recipes using their product. But I found the texture really hard to handle. I still occasionally test new recipes but I've ever been happy enough to offer soy chunks to my guests.

Milk I'd find hard to be without. The perfect cup of tea, for me, needs a splash of milk. Other that use that I maybe use 500 ml max a week of dairy products in sauces etc.

I guess I could really cut down on meat, but I don't regard myself as a major offender.

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Wed Apr 16th, 2008 at 04:56:35 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: LQD: Monbiot: Meat a worse crime than biofuels (none / 1)

500 ml. a week?

wow. Let's see - about 2 l. of milk, 250-300 ml of cream, 350g. of butter and 1.5 kg of cheese.

Meatwise - 1-1.5 kg, including seafood.

by MarekNYC on Wed Apr 16th, 2008 at 05:04:10 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: LQD: Monbiot: Meat a worse crime than biofuels (none / 1)

No butter for me - just rape seed oil. I've moved off olive oil since I've tasted virgin canola (made in Finland). However I do use Ghee in my Indian dishes.

Meatwise about the same for me, but not counting guests.

BTW I use 7% fat cream and low fat yoghurts, buttermilk and Quark - whatever that mght be in English.

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Wed Apr 16th, 2008 at 05:19:23 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: LQD: Monbiot: Meat a worse crime than biofuels (none / 1)

How do you cook with 7% cream? I tend to use 'heavy' cream which is I think 30-35%. and isn't rapeseed oil completely tasteless?

btw quark - roughly cottage cheese.

by MarekNYC on Wed Apr 16th, 2008 at 05:23:27 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: LQD: Monbiot: Meat a worse crime than biofuels (none / 0)

I use this stuff. mixed with other dairy - usually plain yoghurt (remember to add at low temperature).

Virgin rape oil is very tasty!

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Wed Apr 16th, 2008 at 05:37:20 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: LQD: Monbiot: Meat a worse crime than biofuels (none / 0)

I guess it must be all the vowels they put in it.

by MarekNYC on Wed Apr 16th, 2008 at 05:43:09 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: LQD: Monbiot: Meat a worse crime than biofuels (none / 1)

"Vowels for the Bowels"

Did you not know this is the Finnish motto?

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Wed Apr 16th, 2008 at 05:45:50 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: LQD: Monbiot: Meat a worse crime than biofuels (none / 1)

Quark ;)

by Sassafras on Wed Apr 16th, 2008 at 05:25:37 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: LQD: Monbiot: Meat a worse crime than biofuels (none / 0)

I just don't cook with cream very often, but on those odd occasions I tend to find the richest organic farmhouse cream I can. Likewise with butter - we haven't had any in the house for weeks now, but I try to cook with the best I can find when I do. What's the point otherwise?

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Wed Apr 16th, 2008 at 05:26:37 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: LQD: Monbiot: Meat a worse crime than biofuels (4.00 / 3)

Cream and milk in cooking I find quite easy to substitute with soy or oat based substitute products. Good for the lactose intolerant guests too. Though I have yet to find any that works when the cream or milk is a central piece - say milk and cereals, or something or another with whipped cream. Then the nuances in texture and taste matters. But in cooking you can compensate more and after some experimenting and learning, it works just as good.

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by A swedish kind of death on Wed Apr 16th, 2008 at 05:26:30 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: LQD: Monbiot: Meat a worse crime than biofuels (none / 0)

Cream and milk in cooking I find quite easy to substitute with soy or oat based substitute products.

soy based cream sauces? ugh.

by MarekNYC on Wed Apr 16th, 2008 at 05:29:15 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: LQD: Monbiot: Meat a worse crime than biofuels (none / 0)

That just triggers my "make something else" alert. Like soy proteins (or whatever they use) pretending to be meat.

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Wed Apr 16th, 2008 at 05:39:06 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: LQD: Monbiot: Meat a worse crime than biofuels (none / 1)

It is quite easy to substitute in a spicey dish. You are mainly going for texture, thickness and moistness with these dishes when you add other creamers rather then the specific taste of the cream.

I like to use a lot of yoghurt in marinades and in mongol cooking (long and slow and sealed)

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Wed Apr 16th, 2008 at 05:51:53 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: LQD: Monbiot: Meat a worse crime than biofuels (none / 1)

But isn't yoghurt more-or-less authentic for mongol cooking? Assuming you don't have a herd of horses handy.

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Wed Apr 16th, 2008 at 05:55:49 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: LQD: Monbiot: Meat a worse crime than biofuels (none / 1)

It certainly can taste original with yoghurt - but you need the ghee. The main benefit of yoghurt is in how it breaks down the meat fibres, rather than the taste.

I got an old Danish iron casserole at the flea market, that has a perfect seal due to the weight of the lid. And though I cook on ceramic, it is easy to get the mongol pot to simmer minimally. It is an excellent type of coooking for those chefs whose sense of time may become distorted.

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Wed Apr 16th, 2008 at 06:07:17 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: LQD: Monbiot: Meat a worse crime than biofuels (4.00 / 2)

If I cook Thai I use coconut milk, not cream. When I cook traditionally olive oil based stuff, I use that, not butter. But cuisines were developed on certain ingredients. You simply can't make French or northern Italian without butter and cream. Similarly it would be a bit difficult to make Chinese butter and cream based - you could try, and perhaps fiddling around you might make something edible, but why?

by MarekNYC on Wed Apr 16th, 2008 at 06:04:45 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: LQD: Monbiot: Meat a worse crime than biofuels (none / 1)

I ALWAYS forget to buy the coconut milk. I fool most people by tossing in some dessicated. I probably wouldn't fool you, though ;-)

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Wed Apr 16th, 2008 at 06:20:44 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: LQD: Monbiot: Meat a worse crime than biofuels (none / 1)

It's not that hard to make if you've got the dried stuff at home - or so it seems from what I've read, I honestly just always have a can or two around.

by MarekNYC on Wed Apr 16th, 2008 at 06:22:44 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: LQD: Monbiot: Meat a worse crime than biofuels (none / 1)

For some reason, coconut is not a big hit in Finland - but turmeric they can't get enough of. Ever since I heard that strep throat was almost unknown in India, and that turmeric has been identified as specific, it gets into a lot of my cooking. I don't think I've ever served white rice to my guests - thought might also be pink due to Sumach.....

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Wed Apr 16th, 2008 at 06:35:55 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: LQD: Monbiot: Meat a worse crime than biofuels (4.00 / 2)

You know, I find soymilk foams more easily for making capuccino than real milk does. And ripe avocado spreads more easily than butter and tastes better.

When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Apr 16th, 2008 at 05:53:07 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: LQD: Monbiot: Meat a worse crime than biofuels (none / 1)

haven't tried foaming it myself, I have tasted soy lattes from a friend - rather different taste. Avocado - fine for some things but in general I prefer butter. I generally eat avocado with bread on its own, or sometimes with butter ;)

by MarekNYC on Wed Apr 16th, 2008 at 05:57:57 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: LQD: Monbiot: Meat a worse crime than biofuels (4.00 / 3)

Soy milk is an inexcusable culinary tragedy.

Rice milk is the perfect substitute for cereals. Unfortunately I've never seen a rice cream. (Do they even exist?)

I buy organic milk for tea, and very occasionally organic cream. But I think dairy production is a relatively minor distraction from intensive meat farming.

If you have a dead cow someone might as well eat it. It's when you have millions of dead cows being farmed, killed, cut up, processed and shipped around the world that you have to start asking questions about efficiency.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Wed Apr 16th, 2008 at 09:19:07 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: LQD: Monbiot: Meat a worse crime than biofuels (4.00 / 4)

I find soy milk neutral in tea. If I now put dairy milk into tea, I find it has a strong "cow" flavour.

Modern dairy farming is very intensive and polluting. (It also feeds the meat market, most of the cheaper supermarket cuts being dairy cow or heifer).

Yet I'm not suggesting people should boycott cows' milk and derived products (unless for personal health reasons). What is objectionable is the amount of marketing/advertising/packaging/shelf space devoted to small volumes of low-quality milk turned into various yoghurts and other more or less fermented products, creamy desserts, and intestinal stimulants, sold at high prices : industrial dairy production feeding straight into a marketing-based food industry sector. I don't know what the ratio of raw material to abusively "manufactured" added value (the marketing, ads, packaging, merchandising) in the cost price is, but the continuous pressure to bring down the price paid to the dairy farmer leads directly to increased intensification and the debasement of the product. Better-quality producers and products, such as traditional cheeses, are increasingly marginalised (even in France).

But, as with meat, the marketing works. It's not easy to see how to turn the situation round.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Thu Apr 17th, 2008 at 04:15:25 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: LQD: Monbiot: Meat a worse crime than biofuels (4.00 / 2)

It's like almost any finite resource. Oil, trees, minerals...we've overconsumed, and now need the rest of the world not to catch up to our levels while we do a very poor job/no job at all of cutting back.

One thing about which I've never been sure, though, is the practicality/viability of organic/non-intensive agriculture without animals as part of the mix? In crop rotation, haven't the nitrogen-fixers traditionally been used as animal food?

by Sassafras on Wed Apr 16th, 2008 at 06:09:28 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: LQD: Monbiot: Meat a worse crime than biofuels (4.00 / 3)

I don't think anyone's suggesting doing without animals - just that the industrial farming of animals is totally unsustainable. Animal farming used to be done by grazing on marginal land or, as you point out, by using marginal products as feed, as opposed to using prime land to intensively produce cattle feed.

When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Apr 16th, 2008 at 06:19:40 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: LQD: Monbiot: Meat a worse crime than biofuels (4.00 / 2)

One of the big agricultural progresses of the modern era (from the 16th century onwards) was actually introducing grass into the crop rotation, instead of letting the prime land fallow (see this wikipedia page...

Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères

by linca (antonin POINT lucas AROBASE gmail.com) on Wed Apr 16th, 2008 at 08:19:25 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: LQD: Monbiot: Meat a worse crime than biofuels (4.00 / 4)

It depends on the region and its climate and its weather patterns.

Generally speaking, a diverse farm operation, including animals, produces more food value/acre than a comparable specialized farm. That's because a diversified farm has more than one use for a particular piece of land, e.g., using the orchard for sheep grazing (grass & windfalls) and hay production.

To answer your question, yes. Typical nitrogen fixers are clover or alfalfa. Typically they are planted with grass to provide pasture/hay. The animals graze the pasture and their dropping help fertilizer the ground. An additional benefit to using the ground this way is that it helps to break disease and pest cycles.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

by ATinNM on Wed Apr 16th, 2008 at 11:00:53 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: LQD: Monbiot: Meat a worse crime than biofuels (4.00 / 4)

You're forgetting the nitrogen-fixing pulses: peas, beans, lentils, etc, that should be part of human nutrition even for non-vegetarians.

For our local food co-op, I deal with two organic farmers. One provides us with wheat flour, rapeseed and sunflower oil: he has beef cattle to feed manure into the system. His neighbours don't have animals, and put chick peas and lentils (that we buy from them) into the crop rotation.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Thu Apr 17th, 2008 at 04:29:36 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: LQD: Monbiot: Meat a worse crime than biofuels (4.00 / 2)

I did write, "Generally." :-þ

:-)

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

by ATinNM on Thu Apr 17th, 2008 at 07:58:55 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: LQD: Monbiot: Meat a worse crime than biofuels (4.00 / 6)

I posted this before, but I think it is important enough to post again. The factor in meat production that is often forgotten is water. This is from a book, by Gabriel Cousins, MD,thus no link and since the book has been published in 2000 the numbers might not be up-to-date.

Livestock use approximately 50% of all water consumption in the US. Livestock produce twenty times the excrement as the human population of the US. This increases the nitrate/nitrit water pollution. Extensive water use for livestock is pushing us closer t a clean water shortage. It requires 60-100 times more water to produce beef a pound of beef than a pound of wheat.

Livestock requires excessive water usage because the land needed to grow grain for livestock takes up 80% of the grain produced, and water is needed for the animals. When one considers the water needed for this extra grain and for the care of livestock, a flesh-food diet creates the need for 4500 gallons per day per meat-eater as compared to 300 gallons peer day for a vegan. A vegan saves approximately 1'500'000 gallons per year compared to a flesh- and diary eater.

We simply cannot escape the fact that raising animals for meat and diary has a disastrous effect on our ecological system. Us livestock regularely eat enough grain and soy to feed the US population five times over.

The total world livestock regularly eat about twice the calories as the human world population.

By cycling our plant protein through the beef, the conversion of beef protein is between one-tenth and one-twentieth of the plant protein yield. This is a 100% loss of complex carbohydrates and a 95% loss of calories, and calorie resources when so many people in this world suffer from malnutrition.

by Fran on Thu Apr 17th, 2008 at 01:47:33 AM EST
[ Parent ]

LQD: Monbiot: Meat a worse crime than biofuels. | 102 comments (102 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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