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Fairly damning report from the Washington Post today. BUT (thread on its way...) https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/05/10/farm-pollution-deaths/
For me this highlights the challenge of discussing animal ag’s long-term sustainability when the debate around meat production is so US-centric (and I’m seeing this a lot).
So much of the criticism being levelled at farmers in this report are things farmers in Europe are already doing (i.e. covered lagoons, careful fert application).
This isn’t saying European farmers can sit back and relax; it about improved sharing of best production practices globally, PLUS a wider public understanding of farming systems and their VERY different environmental impacts (NOT ALL COWS ARE RAISED IN FEED LOTS)
Another thing that needs addressing is the culture around meat consumption, and this is a MAJOR thing in the US. It’s not uncommon here to eat meat every day. Sometimes more than once a day.
My husband’s veggie, and I eat meat a couple of times a month. Veggie options - at least here in Arizona - are few and far between (at least ones that are reasonably healthy and not just fried cheese). It’s steak or nowt, here.
In states like Az though, it’s extra-complicated. Why? Well meat has got itself inextricably tangled up with politics. This article explains it well : https://heated.world/p/prepare-for-the-meat-wars?r=9ktdn&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&utm_source=twitter
And because it’s politicised, it’s become untrustworthy to liberal voters and young people. If you read the Meat War, you’ll see that livestock orgs and academics such as @GHGGuru come under fire for trying to advocate a rational, level-headed look at what the data says.
Industry research is automatically viewed as a big business-funded cover-up, instead of a genuine effort to enhance sustainability through genetic improvements etc. (Cow in the GIF is not genetically-enhanced, she's just fancy)
Unfortunately, there’s no clear solution, at least in the US. The sensible thing is to reduce consumption and only eat meat from sustainable - albeit more costly - production systems (this is what the WP article says would happen in the US of that happened:
But while this country is so hung up on the ‘freedom’ to eat meat (and I hear this spoken about A LOT amongst friends and people I meet) we’ll never make headway. And given the US’s loud voice in the debate, it’ll ultimately hit European producers hard.
