My thoughts on veganism
A vegan is someone who doesn’t consume animals or animal products. This includes eggs, honey, milk, fish, meat, and other animal products. Many studies show that being vegan lowers the risk of chronic disease and heart disease. Emissions would decline by 70% if everyone went cold turkey on turkey, but that’s hard to do. I’ve thought that if the government could suggest to people to only eat meat 3 or 4 days a week that would still make a huge impact on the emissions. If we can lower a number of animal products being eaten each day by half there would be half the demand which leads to half the number of farms. With all this space forests and grasslands could be restored, reducing our carbon footprint.
You may think that a lot of people would lose jobs, and it would be a hard time. Moving to just agriculture would hurt many people in rural areas, but farmers could find careers in agriculture, bioenergy, and other things. Keeping livestock wouldn’t be completely taken away; keeping livestock to graze on plants is important for the ecology of some parts. The main reason people aren’t vegetarian or don’t eat many vegetables is the price. If there are more farmers doing agriculture that would lead to prices lowering.
Reading about veganism and how much of a carbon footprint we’re leaving right now really surprised me. I believe that making any difference whether it’s small or large is important and I think trying to limit the amount of red meat or fish I’m eating. I think I’m already doing well, my father has a rare red meat allergy that’s derived from ticks, therefore we eat less beef, but I encourage you to look at your own diet and see how you can make a difference.
Interesting post. I'm not sure how the government would be able to convince citizens to eat less meat. Maybe they could help fund companies who produce protein alternatives to drive their prices down. This would decrease the demand for meat products and subsequently lower their prices, forcing some meat producers to cut production or go out of business.
ReplyDeleteThis is an interesting idea. However, I'm not sure that this would work out the way you say. For starters, most farms do not house livestock. Most farms today grow crops such as corn, soybeans, cotton, etc, with only a small belt of the country (including Texas and 3 other states) focusing on producing cattle. So most of the farms, especially around here, would be largely unaffected by a mass transition to veganism. The main group of people that would lose jobs would be people who worked low-pay jobs at meat-packing factories and stockyards. I also have a feeling if meat became less popular, there would be a much larger ripple effect that would affect many more people than just farmers. Fast food companies and their huge amount of employees would be one example of a group affected by this change. Going off of that, your statement "If we can lower a number of animal products being eaten each day by half there would be half the demand which leads to half the number of farms. " I think is not quite true either. After all, most meat these days is produced on a small number of very large stockyards. 84 percent of beef slaughter is currently controlled by four companies. It is unlikely that any of these companies would shut down their business if meat consumption went down. Even with their audience being cut in half, they would still be making billions, so there would be no reason for them to shut down. They would simply cut down some of their production, leading to roughly the same amount of pollution being produced. Another thing I would like to point out is that a majority of pollution from the meat industry comes from the processing plants, not the actual farms themselves as you said. If you think about it, farms produce relatively little pollution (methane released from large amounts of cattle as well as whatever fuels are needed to power a more industrialized operation), while factories (which need a constant supply of power for their machines) burn lots of fossil fuels and produce lots of waste. Reducing the amount of meat eaten would likely cause these factories to lay off some of their employees, but would by no means put them out of business. These factories would stay open, and continue to burn fossil fuels and produce waste as they had before.
ReplyDeleteSo while I do agree with your larger point that it would be better if more people were vegan, I think I disagree with many of the points you made about why.
That aside, I still think this was an interesting post, and it certainly got me thinking (hence the blog-length comment) Nice!
This was a really interesting post! The only problem is that the government won't be able to convince the rural farmers to switch to jobs in STEM, and there would probably be a huge backlash, but it's really important to think about. I also think we should be mindful about our carbon footprint.
ReplyDeleteAlthough a bit short this blog post touched on many issues that may be plaguing your mind. I don't agree with your idea completely but when I read @Jack comment it made a lot of sense and convinced me a tad bit more then your argument. I would like to see how this progresses, keep me informed :D.
ReplyDeleteYour post reminded me of this:
ReplyDeletehttps://water.usgs.gov/edu/activity-watercontent.php
If you check out this link, it takes 500 gallons of water to have 1 pound of chicken meat! For 1/4 pound of cow meat it takes 650 gallons! That's super crazy to me. The hamburgers we eat take up so much water.
I still really like meat and eat it and also eat animal products like honey, eggs, milk, yogurt, proteins, etc but after reading around on the internet I am definitely wondering if I should cut down on meat. Maybe not cold turkey but just eat less. There's a good doc called Cowspiracy that I've been meaning to watch but haven't. Good post!
There's a lot of reasons besides just carbon emissions to reduce the amount of meat we eat (although it's been shown that this would happen). Reducing the amount of meat we eat would also help redistribute grain and plant-based foods to different parts of the world. Also, economically speaking, if a trade "disappears" from the economy, those jobs are only lost in the short-run but are eventually shifted to different markets (like you said they could get jobs in other industries, it just doesn't happen immediately). If you wanna read more about change in job industries, here's a table that has approximations in growth of nonfarm sectors (decline in agriculture concerns a lot of people): https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2000/12/art1full.pdf
ReplyDeleteThis topic is very important and our continued meat consumption as the world experiences population growth will be one of the most important developments of this century. There are so many inefficiencies and negative impacts caused be our meat consumption. This being said, I don't see myself going vegetarian any time soon because eating meat is so ingrained in my day-to-day habits.
ReplyDelete