Guardian UK: The hidden cost of our growing taste for meat

[marmar]

The hidden cost of our growing taste for meat
As the west's appetite for meat increases, so too does the demand for soya - used as animal feed by farmers. But the planting of huge tracts of land is causing deforestation and destroying eco-systems in developing countries. Juliette Jowit and Oliver Balch in Minga Pora, Paraguay, report

Juliette Jowit and Oliver Balch
The Observer, Sunday December 7 2008


To the European eye, accustomed to square hedgerows and neatly tilled arable land, the countryside of eastern Paraguay is unexceptional, almost pretty. The rolling hills spread out to the far distance. The sky is vast, the horizon broken only by the occasional homestead, leafy copse or bulky metal silo.

But to 47-year-old Melitón Ramírez, this is no paradise. It's a wasteland. Juddering down a farm track in a muddy Jeep, he points to a wide field by the road. It has been sown with soya and the green-leafed plants are sprouting. It looks like a huge bed of wild clover.

'Thirty years ago, almost all of this was woodland,' says Ramírez, who's been a farmer in Alto Paraná state all his life. He grew up surrounded by the Interior Atlantic Forest, listening to the sound of bare-throated bellbirds and saffron toucanets. Before the advent of commercial farming, 85 per cent of eastern Paraguay was forest. Now, with roughly 12 per cent of it still standing, silence fills the air.

'There used to be 2,000 families living here. Now there are only 30, if that,' he continues. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/dec/07/meat-soya-environment-paraguay

[Peregrine Took]

1. The very idea of eating an animal makes me want to throw up!

I haven't "indulged" in 13 years and 'know I never will again.

[Merlot]

2. I look at a steak like I look at Styrofoam peanuts

Why would anybody eat that?

It's been 25 years since I've eaten any beef, and a little less for chicken/turkey. Still eat fish. I tried to quit, but my body just wouldn't co-operate.

Well, we do what we can.

[Citizen Number 9]

3. Thanks for your opinion but that's a highly personal observation

I don't know what we can possibly do with it here.

Personally, I try to harvest and eat the animals that are out there consuming our green fields and forests.

If you think about it, I guess it reduces carbon emissions, doesn't it?

[stuntcat]

4. saving the waste is the biggest reason not to do it

When I first stopped eating it I did it for the animals (I'd visited a horrifying chicken farm, it was that simple to me then) but since then I've learned all the meat industry costs the entire rest of the world.. consuming much of it is just the most monstrously selfish thing. Farming is ruining the land everywhere and it takes at least seven pounds of grain to produce just one pound of meat.. and it's so subsidized by the govt, people aren't paying the true cost of it at the grocery stores, not by a long shot. If serious Meaties would just cut back by half it could make a difference to the entire world.

[Citizen Number 9]

6. Meat subsidies?

I'm not at all aware of this as being much of anything.

Can you supply a link to show us what the gov actually spends on "so subsidized" meat?

[stuntcat]

7. sorry I fail..

at looking up hundreds of sites. I've just been told over and over that our farmers are helped by the government. And I guess it's just a personal feeling of mine but I feel that if the consumers were actually paying the cost of all the production of the meat meant then it wouldn't be so cheap.. it's price would better reflect the luxury that it is.

(also I didn't say "meat subsidies" I was talking about the farming in that sentence)

[Citizen Number 9]

9. OK, I just assumed

that because the thread was about meat and because you referred to meat as "it" three or four times and your reference was sandwiched between "one pound of meat" and "serious meaties" that it was meat subsidies you were referring to.

You are correct in that there are farming subsidies, but I think they go generally to growing crops (or not) and maybe even to milk, although that may be over now; I don't know.

I think the price of meat does reflect the relative costs, however.

At $2.00 per lb for beef, with up to 40% protein, it is fifteen times more expensive than soybeans at about thirteen cents the lb for about 40% protein.

If you are looking at meat for even $4.99/lb, then it is approaching 50 times more expensive.

[stuntcat]

10. over 7 pounds of grain are "farmed" for each pound of meat

I've read a lot about how dirty the industry is, but it's stuff I've taken in for years.. The industry is responsible for as much greenhouse gases as automobiles are, and that's easy to look up, if you need me to find the studies let me know.
Livestock pollutes the water more than all other industries combined.. I was glad to see the article posted here today about people using the waste.
Land is being cleared all over the world to grow food but many times more land are required to support meat-based diets.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not putting down people who eat gobs of it, no one else I know is a vegetarian. But I consider all the waste a "cost", not the kind with a dollar amount, just a price we'll end up paying anyway. I wish we could find a cleaner way of consuming the animals. I don't know how much it's subsidized but it is.. the farming of all the feed definitely is.
Most 1st-worlders get twice the amount of protein they need each day.

[Dogmudgeon]

5. Lips that touch lizards shall never touch mine!

--p!

[eppur_se_muova]

8. Cattle evolved to eat GRASS. Feeding them corn and soy is a waste of food.

The only reason soy is fed to cattle is because they do not gain "enough" weight if fed only corn -- but if they are fed a little soy as well, they are able to convert more of the corn to meat and fat. The nutritive value of the protein recovered in meat is only about one third that of soy fed to the cattle. And the recovery of energy (carbohydrates) is even lower.

Check out Rifkin's "Beyond Beef" or Pollan's "Ominivore's Dilemma" to learn how wasteful the corn-to-beef conversion really is.

on edit : add author's name