Eating meat with lower carbon footprint often means killing more animals
Consumers face trade-offs between animal welfare and environmental impact when choosing meats. Different livestock and farming methods offer varying compromises. Balancing personal values is crucial. Research on farming systems could help mitigate trade-offs.
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Consumers face trade-offs between animal welfare and the environmental impact of meat consumption. Opting for lower carbon footprint meats like chicken over beef can reduce environmental impact but requires killing more animals. Different livestock and farming methods present varying trade-offs between environmental protection and animal welfare. For instance, caged hens have a lower carbon footprint than free-range ones, but their welfare is compromised. Similarly, grain-fed cows emit less greenhouse gases than grass-fed ones, but their welfare may suffer. Pigs also exhibit trade-offs between environmental impact and animal welfare, with better welfare often leading to higher emissions. Consumers must navigate these trade-offs based on personal values and priorities. While reducing overall meat consumption can benefit both the environment and animal welfare, some trade-offs remain inevitable. Research focusing on balancing environmental impact and animal welfare in farming systems could provide insights to mitigate these trade-offs.
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12 comments> Gone whole hog: Here's what happens to the rest of your Easter ham: Pig parts are used in everything from gelatin to fabric softener.
* https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thefridgelight/gone-whole-hog-here-...
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Electric car? Less pollution, more lithium mining (for now)
Avoid plastic? Glass jars are heavy (and added emissions to transport), and more likely to need replacing.
Avoid clothing with microplastics (like polyester)? Cotton is one of the most water-intensive crops, and production of bamboo cloth requires heavy chemicals usually, polluting the local environment
etc ...
Depending on the efficiency of the economy, if something is expensive, it required more energy or time or resources to produce. Producing (and buying) organic small batch things yields lower _net_ efficiency than mass-produced stuff.
Now, increasing efficiency may mean that _net_ impact is minimized, but tradeoffs are pretty wild. For example, we trade off pollution for cheaper energy production, etc...
Of course this is only fully realized in a spherical economy in a vaccum, but still, some of this is applicable to the real world.
People who only care about the ecological aspect don't care about killing more animals
Also, how do you even quantify that ?
Is killing 30 cage raised chicken better or worse than killing a single grass fed free range cow ?
Are all lives worth the same ? If so bug based food would be extremely problematic
TL;DR: Pandas and koalas are the most ethical source of meat.
Instead people should focus on the real super polluters: https://www.vice.com/en/article/dyv5mm/5-of-earths-power-pla...
Calculating "carbon footprint" is just calculating astrology, a narrative to scam their customers. Canada's wildfires last years polluted more than all antropic emission combined https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/27/canada... similarly Darvaza gas crater pollute much more than all flatulence and methane leaks from animals and humans together.
The point is that to feed enough human we need enough land for enough livestock and actually the current food production systems can't adapt to the climate change, huge number of humans AND BUSINESS so they try other ways to remain in business instead of evolving.
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