Top 5 Issues in the Beef Industry

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• This page: https://world wide web.globalissues.org/article/240/beef.
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On this page:

1. Diverting resources to environmentally destructive uses
2. Wasteful utilize of resources likewise contributes to hunger and poverty
3. Creating mass consumption of beef
4. Fast food and beef industries promote each other.
5. Intensive farming and shortcuts cause BSE and other Wellness Problems
   1. Side annotation on vegetarianism and/or reduction in meat consumption
   2. Meat Production, Consumption and Climate Change
6. Farm subsidies: creating economic and ecology waste
7. Industrialized meat production: shortcuts create more health and environmental bug

Diverting resources to environmentally destructive uses

Consider the following (notes for stats are at the bottom of the page):

• More than i third of the earth'due south grain harvest is used to feed livestock. ¹
• Breaking that down a picayune bit ⁱⁱ
  • Almost all rice is consumed by people
  • While corn is a staple food in many Latin American and Sub-Saharan countries, worldwide, information technology is used largely as feed.
  • Wheat is more evenly divided betwixt food and feed and is a staple food in many regions such as the West, China and Republic of india.
• The total cattle population for the globe is approximately ane.3 billion occupying some 24% of the land of the planet ^three
• Some 70 to 80% of grain produced in the United States is fed to livestock ^four
• Half the water consumed in the U.Due south. is used to grow grain for cattle feed. ⁵
• A gallon of gasoline is required to produce a pound of grain-fed beef. ^six

Junk-food bondage, including KFC and Pizza Hut, are under attack from major environmental groups in the United states of america and other developed countries because of their environmental impact. Intensive breeding of livestock and poultry for such restaurants leads to deforestation, land deposition, and contamination of water sources and other natural resources. For every pound of carmine meat, poultry, eggs, and milk produced, subcontract fields lose about 5 pounds of irreplaceable top soil. The h2o necessary for meat breeding comes to nigh 190 gallons per fauna per mean solar day, or ten times what a normal Indian family is supposed to utilize in ane solar day, if it gets water at all.

… Overall, fauna farms utilise nearly 40 percent of the world's total grain production. In the United states, about 70 percent of grain production is fed to livestock.

Vandana Shiva, Stolen Harvest, (Due south Finish Printing, 2000), pp. 70-71.

Images: Amazon woods cleared for agronomics (meridian). Another expanse turned into cattle ranch (bottom). (Source: NASA)

The bear on of beef covers many bug today.

Not only is country used upwards to grow grain to feed cattle, simply boosted state is of course required for pastures and grazing.

Furthermore, overgrazing leads to land degradation while top soil loss and h2o wastage and depletion are also extremely urgent issues.

With industrial agriculture, more than petrochemicals are used. More than free energy is required to create fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, etc, to abound the grain that is used to feed cattle.

Deforestation of big amounts of forests, including the Amazon, has occurred due to timber industries, industrial agriculture and as well meat manufacture/cattle grazing:

Cattle raising has likewise been criticized for its role in the destruction of tropical forests. Hundreds of thousands of acres of tropical forests in Brazil, Guatemala, Republic of costa rica, and Honduras, to name just a few countries, have been leveled to create pasture for cattle. Since near of the woods is cleared by burning, the extension of cattle pasture also creates carbon dioxide, and, according to some environmentalists, contributes significantly to global warming.

Richard Robbins, Global Bug and the Culture of Commercialism, (Allyn and Bacon, 1999), p.220

Additionally, full-bodied country ownership (equally also described in this site'southward poverty and hunger section), leads to inefficient use of that land. With the forest clearing mentioned above, sometimes the cattle industry will not be the direct reason for forest clearing, merely an indirect reason, because they displace others who then may clear resources for their survival, as Food First highlights:

In the late 1990s the dynamic of forest destruction has been driven by a combination of cattle ranching, increasing soybean acreage, and commercial logging. … Landless Brazilians are forced to articulate new areas not because of insufficient land elsewhere in Brazil but because relatively few own most of that rich resource [of cropland].

… Further aggravating the trouble is the pervasive use of prime agricultural lands for pasture and the portion of idle land among the country's largest land holdings. Overall, 42.half-dozen percent of agricultural land is not cultivated, and among Brazil's largest land holdings (of i,000 hectares or more) 88.seven pct of arable land is left permanently idle.

… The astounding concentration of state buying in Brazil has left iv.8 million rural families completely landless, not to mention millions of impoverished families who abandoned the countryside for the infamous urban favelas out of economic desperation. Moreover every bit the mechanization of big soybean farms spreads through the state, farmworkers lose their jobs. Then e'er more landless workers must compete for fewer jobs.

While deforestation is ofttimes blamed on small farmers, in fact, large-calibration wood conversion for ranching and increasingly for soybeans is far more than widespread. In one of the few studies that really compared big—vs. small-scale clearing (in the neighboring Bolivian Amazon), 80 percent of the clearing was carried out by large holders. The forest is, mostly, not being cleared to feed the hungry.

Frances Lappe Moore, Joseph Collins, Peter Rosset, Earth Hunger: 12 Myths, (Food First and Grove Press, Second Edition, 1998) pp. 47—48 (Accent is original)

Notation also how deforestation is often blamed on overpopulation which is also sometimes attributed equally the crusade of hunger. Still, as shown throughout this site, and with immense item in the in a higher place book, World Hunger, it is politics, economics and then on are affecting the utilize of our resource, which are more than than acceptable for all (for now), as well equally existence the causes of hunger.

(Meet also this February 27, 2001 radio interview on Democracy Now! for more than nigh deforestation of Amazon for McDonald's and more than.)

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Wasteful use of resources also contributes to hunger and poverty

As seen in the above statistics, a large amount of grain is used to feed livestock, while people go hungry. Of form, meat and other products from livestock are important. However, as we shall see with the example of beef, the amount of consumption of meat such as beef and its purpose (equally seen in convenience such equally fast foods) has raised much criticism considering of the plush inputs, which could exist largely used to help feed hungry people while reducing meat consumption to healthier levels.

[B]eef is terribly inefficient every bit a source of food. By the time a feedlot steer in the United states of america is ready for slaughter, it has consumed 2,700 pounds of grain and weighs approximately 1,050 pounds; 157 one thousand thousand metric tons of cereal and vegetable poly peptide is used to produce 28 metric tons of animal protein. … [B]eef in the quantities that Americans consume it is unhealthy, existence linked to cardiovascular disease, colon cancer, chest cancer, and osteoporosis. Yet Americans are among the highest meat consumers in the earth and the highest consumers of beef.

Richard Robbins, Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism, (Allyn and Bacon, 1999) p.221

We can see numerous problems here, for example:

• If we add these input costs, together with additional costs such equally the costs of the health issues and environmental degradation and then on, we see that many resources are expended for this consumption, while at the same time, many effectually the world become hungry.
• As mentioned in the structural aligning section of this spider web site, International monetary fund/World Bank/The states policies of structural adjustment force poor nations' governments to cutting back their expenditure of things similar health and education and even nutrient support programs for the poor.
• At the same time, the rich nations besides promote an increase in production of cash crops such as fruits, vegetables, grains and so on for export, while fifty-fifty the farmers themselves go hungry.
• In the meanwhile, much of the wealthy world protect their own farming sector and subsidize their agribusinesses making it difficult for the poor countries to compete fairly.
• Today's increased and excessive meat consumption has come near through numerous political and economic mechanisms. Beef, like saccharide and many other things we consume, are a large office the result of turning luxury items into necessities, to increase profits. In add-on some wealthier governments and their agribusiness lobbies take strong influences over global agricultural methods and standards as well as economic agreements (such as the higher up-mentioned SAPs) to favor food product that they benefit from but may not always be good for everyone. For example, their policies encourage market distortions that favor production of unhealthy products. In addition, these subsidies in wealthy nations also results in dumping of excess nutrient on the poorer countries, which has actually increased hunger, although it is described as food assist. Some accept argued that at that place are foreign policy objectives for this while others say information technology is a result of market distortion.
• Sometimes world hunger is attributed to just over population as it fits the observations of over-simplified Malthusian theories, where it is assumed that there are too many people and food production cannot keep up and hence we have hunger. While it is true that i mean solar day we could accept so many people that we cannot feed and therefore population bug are important, it doesn't mean that today we are reaching those limits. These examples of beef, of carbohydrate, of SAPs that divert resource use due to economic policies rather than due to human numbers, or demands of the big number of poor in the globe, are more than impacting on hunger, as discussed in detail in this web site's population section.

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Creating mass consumption of beef

And so how did beef consumption increase so much?

The answers [as to why and so much beef is consumed in spite of such environmental impairment] involve understanding the relationships among Spanish cattle, British colonialism, the American government, the American bison, indigenous peoples, the automobile, the hamburger, and the fast-food restaurant.

Richard Robbins, Global Problems and the Civilization of Commercialism, (Allyn and Bacon, 1999), p.222

To summarize his detailed account:

• Every bit Spanish colonization of the Americas took concord, cattle were introduced in places like Argentina, Central America etc.
• By the seventeenth century cattle was then arable, that one could be killed for the hide and the remaining meat left to rot.
• Around the Industrial Revolution, England was the beef-eating capital of the world. Not simply to increase nutrient for a growing population, but also to continue wages down, and due to the influence of wealthy meat industry leaders and landowners, beef consumption was made affordable to more and more than people.
• The British Empire distributed much rum and meat to its military forces, thus helping to subsidize the sugar and meat industries.
• To support an increasing need, United kingdom would look to its empire, its colonies and other areas for boosted beef and back up of grain product.
• American meat industries, eager to make profits from the British demand looked to increase their cattle production.
• Still, they had to overcome bug including available rangeland and meeting the specific taste requirements of the British which, involved having fatter cows.
• But Indians and buffalo were in the lands that cattle producers needed for rangeland.
• Hence, this led to the famous near extermination of the bison, which would also deal with the Indian problem.
• From just 1870 to 1880, millions of buffalo were reduced to virtual extinction. (The famous Buffalo Beak and others profited from hunting expeditions.)
• This destroyed the Indians of the Plains, to whom buffalo were central in their civilization every bit both a major food source and spiritual ability. They were moved off to reservations and other lands simply no means of real chance of continued meaningful beingness.
• To meet demands of fatty beef by the British, corn was increasingly fed to cattle. Furthermore, the price of grain was and so inexpensive, information technology was advantageous to feed corn to cows. Thus, this formed a symbiotic human relationship to the extent that even today, the price of corn is closely linked to the demand for the price of cattle (p.227).
• After World War II, the surge in auto use (helped by a $350 billion project to construct 41,000 miles of highways in the U.s.) led to the growth of the suburbs and fast-food restaurants that were making beef, and in particular, the hamburger a prime choice. (See likewise, for case, Eric Schossler's Fast Nutrient Nation: The Nighttime Side of the All-American Repast (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001), a New York Times bestseller. It provides a lot of details most the ascent of the fast food industry and its various impacts.)

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Post World War 2 has seen globalization and consumption of fast foods such as McDonald'south spread around the world, not simply to the relatively wealthier West, merely even in wealthy parts of the developing world. With the disastrous poverty and hunger-increasing structural adjustment policies, as well as various other trade and economical agreements, many resources (economic every bit well equally environmental) take been diverted to such unproductive uses.

The fast-nutrient restaurant, made possible by the popularity of the automobile, put the last touch on the clout of beef. Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald's, tapped into the new temporal and work routines of American labor. … time and efficiency [and convenience fabricated] the hamburger patty [become] more than popular. Thus equally with carbohydrate, our taste for beef goes well across our supposed private food preferences. It is a consequence of a culture in which food as a commodity takes a form defined past economic, political and social relationships.

Richard Robbins, Global Problems and the Culture of Commercialism, (Allyn and Bacon, 1999), p.230 (Emphasis Added)

Talking of the fast food manufacture and of McDonald'southward, here are some interesting statistics from Eric Schossler, author of the New York Times bestseller, Fast Food Nation; The Nighttime Side of the All-American Meal, (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001), from p. four:

• McDonald's is at present responsible for xc percent of the United State'due south new jobs
• It has about 28,000 restaurants world wide, opening around 2,000 new ones each twelvemonth
• It provides jobs to around one meg people in America
• It is the nation'south largest purchaser of beef, pork and potatoes, and the second largest purchaser of chicken
• Information technology is the largest owner of retail property in the world
• It earns almost of its coin non from selling nutrient, merely from collecting rent
• It spends more on advertising and marketing than whatsoever other brand, replacing Coca Cola as the globe's virtually famous make
• It operates more playgrounds than anyone else and is one of America's largest toy benefactor

The demands and influence of the fast food industry on the globe's food supply, its impacts on lodge and the surroundings, its interests in global economics, are therefore considerable. Amy Goodman, introducing a radio broadcast, explains:

Information technology'southward a public health nightmare: The number of people in this country [the United States] who are obese doubled from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. Over one quarter of adults, and more than 12 percent of children in the United states of america are obese.

The food manufacture spends around $33 billion a year in advertising and promotion to persuade people to eat more nutrient. A New York human is suing McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, and KFC, saying that their marketing tactics are responsible for his obesity and two heart attacks.

Companies like Coca-Cola, Procter & Take chances and Slim-Fast sponsor university-based research and diet journals. American Dietetic Association fact sheets on food and nutrition are sponsored by Monsanto, NutraSweet and Campbell.

At the World Nutrient Summit in Rome final month [June 2002], the US stood alone amid 182 nations in opposing the right to food. The Bush administration pushed for a narrow globe-hunger agenda, emphasizing a greater function for the private sector and biotechnology firms.

The food industry spends millions lobbying Congress and regulatory agencies. Information technology pays off. Concluding calendar month President Bush-league signed a $190 billion farm bill. Under the 10 year program, taxpayers will pay farmers $4 billion a year to grow more corn. The people who benefit from the production of corn are not the farmers, merely the processors, factory farms, snack and soft drink makers, who have switched from using saccharide to corn sweeteners.

Amy Goodman, The Politics of Food, Democracy Now! Radio, July 26, 2002

(We will also discuss a bit subsequently the ramifications of this on resources, capital, labor, and wealth in general.)

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Intensive farming and shortcuts cause BSE and other Wellness Bug

Prototype: cattle existence fed in closely confined conditions

Factory farming of animals is as well leading to wellness problems in the animals when they are so closely packed together. Pressures to cutting costs etc are resulting in shortcuts being taken. The increment in things like mad cow disease and the human foot and oral cavity epidemic, largely starting in Britain but as well seen in other places around the globe (partly due to globalization too) is likewise a result of taking brusque cuts in agriculture/food production. Eric Schossler, mentioned to a higher place is worth quoting at length:

A nationwide study [a ground beefiness microbiological survey] published in 1996 by the USDA [Usa Department of Agriculture] constitute that … 78.6 percentage of the ground beef contained microbes that are spread primarily by fecal textile. The medical literature on the causes of nutrient poisoning is full of euphemisms and dry scientific terms: coliform levels, aerobic plate counts, sorbitol, MacConkey agar, and and then on. Behind them lies a simple caption of why eating a hamburger can now brand y'all seriously sick: There is shit in the meat.

…

Far from their natural habitat, the cattle in feedlots become more prone to all sorts of illnesses. And what they are being fed often contributes to the spread of disease. The ascension in grain prices has encouraged the feeding of less expensive materials to cattle, especially substances with a high protein content that accelerate growth. Nigh 75 percentage of the cattle in the United States were routinely fed livestock wastes—the rendered remains of dead sheep and dead cattle—until August of 1997. They were also fed millions of dead cats and dead dogs every yr, purchased from animal shelters. The FDA [U.S. Nutrient and Drug Administration] banned such practices subsequently evidence from Bang-up Britain suggested that they were responsible for a widespread outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalothapy (BSE), also known equally mad cow affliction. Nevertheless, electric current FDA regulations allow dead pigs and expressionless horses to be rendered into cattle feed, along with dead poultry. The regulations not merely allow cattle to be fed dead poultry, they allow poultry to be fed expressionless cattle. Americans who spent more than six months in the Uk during the 1980s are now forbidden to donate blood, in order to prevent the spread of the man variant, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease [CJD]. But cattle blood is still put into the feed given to American cattle. Steven P. Bjerklie, a former editor of the trade periodical Meat & Poultry, is appalled by what goes into cattle feed these days. Goddamn it, these cattle are ruminants, Bjerklie says. They're designed to consume grass and, maybe, grain. I mean, they accept four stomachs for a reason—to consume products that have a loftier cellulose content. They are non designed to eat other animals.

The waste products from poultry plants, including the sawdust and old newspapers used every bit litter, are also beingness fed to cattle. A written report published a few years ago in Preventative Medicine notes that in Arkansas lonely, three meg pounds of craven manure were fed to cattle in 1994.

Eric Schossler, Fast Nutrient Nation; The Dark Side of the All-American Repast, (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001), pp. 197, 202 (Bold Emphasis Added)

Schossler goes on at length with many more examples, in his chapter titled What's in the meat. (One might recall the famous case a few years back when Oprah Winfrey commented in public later on hearing some gruesome details that she would not eat a hamburger, and the manufacture managed to sue her for it!)

Reading the in a higher place, one could think more than nigh reduction in meat consumption, or even becoming vegetarian!

Side note on vegetarianism and/or reduction in meat consumption

The bug here raise another perspective on things like vegetarianism, or reducing meat consumption, from practical, social, environmental and economic angles:

• Vegetarianism (or a big reduction in meat consumption) indirectly would help free up land for other uses such as growing food for others to eat as well—or in the instance of beefiness consumption, help to reduce the pressures on natural forests such as the Amazon.
• Vegetarianism (or a reduction of meat consumption etc) in an indirect mode, could exist a pick for those wishing to play a role in helping combat world hunger, environmental degradation etc.
• Too, reducing or eliminating tobacco and booze consumption can also be seen as indirectly helping address world hunger and environmental issues.
• This is considering as those demands subtract, those lands could exist used to grow other things such as food to feed the local people etc.
• Of course, it is more complex than that, as political aspects of state control and its use still demand to be addressed. (For instance, there is obviously the risk of using that land to encounter other demands such as drugs.)
• Even so, tobacco for example, is very water and nutrient-thirsty, hence less tobacco demand in theory would aid stave off some environmental deposition if positive alternatives are appropriately supported, both politically and economically.
• All the support industries to promote, market and sell the consumption of such products, is, paraphrasing J.West. Smith's book title, wasted wealth by what he describes as wasted labor due to wasted majuscule. (See World'southward Wasted Wealth II, Found for Economic Republic, 1994.)
• Of grade, these alternatives cannot work in isolation. Economic alternatives also need to be addressed for the farmers and others who would lose out, and hints towards the demand to address systemic and deep changes at the cadre, but this could be a starting point for people to inquiry into issues of causes of world hunger, poverty, inequality, of additional anti-tobacco campaign themes and so on!
• This site's section on the economic system and merchandise issues has more on these concerns.

Some scoff at the notion of being vegetarian or reducing meat consumption thinking it is a sign of weakness or whatever. The indicate is that the correct proportions are not only good for the surroundings, but good for 1's health. At that place are also other political issues that are affected by nutrition choices, and it should exist remembered that excessive meat consumption is not unremarkably just a free choice, but a choice influenced (knowingly or not) by many cultural factors that take been around in some form for decades.

Meat Production, Consumption and Climate Change

Although the majority of this article was written in the early 2000s, into 2008, Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, suggested people should consider eating less meat every bit a way to combat climate change.

Meat product produces more than greenhouse gas emissions than transportation with directly emissions from meat production bookkeeping for some 18% of world's total. (This includes emissions generated from clearing forests and state, making and transporting fertilizer, burning fossil fuels in farm vehicles, and the forepart and read end emissions from cattle and sheep.) By dissimilarity, transport accounts for 13% of total global greenhouse gas emissions.

So, as well equally potential health benefits from reduced meat consumption/production, there tin be significant environmental benefits, tackling climate change peradventure being the most urgent.

New York Times food writer Mark Bittman discusses what'due south wrong with the way we eat now (too much meat, too few plants; too much fast food, too piffling dwelling cooking), and why it's putting the entire planet at risk looking at the combination of bug explained here on this web site:

Mark Bittman on what'south wrong with what nosotros consume, TED Talks, May 2008

Towards the end of June 2003, McDonald's best-selling that the heavy employ of growth-stimulating antibiotics past the meat industry threatens human wellness. It advised its poultry suppliers to phase out the practice or risk losing its business. McDonald's is America'due south largest buyer of meat products. This was detailed by William Greider for example, in The Nation mag, who also noted that hogs and cattle are probably on observe as well. Greider noted that McDonald'due south tried to spin this as taking social responsibility and listening to its customers (following the adage of the customer is always right and the supposed exercise of major brands to mind to their customers). However, many campaign groups should probably accept most of the credit for this as Greider also details.

Greider besides quoted a campaign leader from the Union of Concerned Scientists who said, It's definitely not perfect and it's an unfortunate substitute for police force, just people do take the ability to change things. In a sense, McDonald's is playing the role of what would be the USDA inspectors. If in that location'due south going to be a choice, I would definitely rather have the authorities exercise it, but right now we don't accept a choice.

But Greider also noted a contradiction of industrial agriculture, and the external costs associated with it:

• The antibiotics trouble is widely understood though not yet candidly addressed by manufacture scientists or the federal government.
• Their egregious overuse encourages the development of resistant strains of leaner that then may drift into the environment at large, including possibly human bodies.
• The supposed efficiency of corporatized agronomics is riddled with many such contradictions
  • the visitor cuts costs and boosts profits by growing the chickens or hogs faster, often in brutal conditions,
  • then somebody else (unremarkably the taxpayers) pays to fight newly created strains of disease.
  • Given market competition, each company typically claims information technology has no pick but to adopt the various practices of so-called efficiency that also produce collateral damage to guild, wellness and the environment.
  • So they hear from their customers—not just scattered objections now and then, simply in concerted, coordinated, well-informed waves.

(The annotation above near companies saying they accept no pick just to do what their competition is doing, to avoid losing out, is prevalent in many related industries. For example, in the beginning of Baronial, 2003, the BBC reported on a health alarm about certain other foods and drinks, and amongst diverse interviews, an industry spokeswoman also pointed out that they take these concerns seriously but that they have to exist realistic because of the pressures of competition.)

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Farm subsidies: creating economical and environmental waste matter

Enormous farm subsidies seen in some rich nations crusade predictable issues, resulting in what some depict as privatized profits; socialized costs. For example,

• Market distortions changes price and consumption habits
• Unhealthier foods go cheaper
• Health, environmental and other costs increase, and are borne by the denizens
• Agribusiness and related industries benefit

And so, the cycle continues. Products from the industries who benefit from this unequal arrangement are far cheaper than they should really exist. Accept for case the hamburger:

If h2o used by the meat industry [in the United States] were not subsidized by taxpayers, common hamburger meat would price $35 a pound. You lot need 25 gallons of water to produce a pound of wheat—2,500 gallons to generate a pound of meat

Simone Spearman, Eating More than Veggies Can Help Relieve Energy, San Francisco Relate, June 29, 2001. (Accent Added) [Previous link is to a reposted version at Commondreams.org]

This truer price of $35 per pound is only based on accounting for water. If other costs and effects were factored in, the likely price would surely exist staggering.

Activist and academic, Raj Patel, besides points to enquiry from Bharat to highlight even wider set of costs for hamburger:

Researchers in India did some calculations a few years ago looking at what would happen if we started to include the environmental costs that are role and parcel of the production of that [$4] hamburger. If, for example, that burger is produced on land that once used to be rainforest, well, so you've lost the rainforest, you lot've lost the ecosystemic services that that rainforest provides, y'all lose the carbon, you lose the biodiversity. And all of a sudden, when y'all commencement inputing those environmental costs, it turns out that the price of a hamburger should be nearer $200 rather than 4. And that, of class, is just one element of the costs that are squeezed out of our food and pretty much everything else.

Raj Patel, interviewed by Amy Goodman, The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Republic, Democracy At present! Jan 12, 2010 (Emphasis added)

Also in the US, healthier foods get less subsidies and are also more expensive. Information technology could be argued that healthier foods do non need every bit much subsidizing but that would not explain the increase in excessive meat consumption in contempo decades, while subsidies have helped make those unhealthier options become cheaper:

Image: Why does a salad toll more than a Big Mac?, using information from chart in Health vs. Pork: Congress Debates the Farm Bill, Good Medicine, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, Autumn 2007, Volume XVI, Number 4

Side Note Note, the source for the above chart used a pyramid chart as an illustration to a food pyramid. However, pyramid charts are often segmented similar stacked bar charts, based on height proportion. But a pyramid adds an boosted visual dimension such as expanse (2D) or volume (3D) that should affect the segment size just often does not, so it can sometimes exaggerate, often unintentionally (even Microsoft Excel and other office suites practice this).

Physicians Commission for Responsible Medicine in the in a higher place article also note that the U.s.a. government purchases surplus foods like cheese, milk, pork, and beef for distribution to food assistance programs—including school lunches. The regime is not required to purchase nutritious foods. Despite some recent attempts to address this politics doomed the reform effort equally politicians were agape of losing seats in farm states.

Addressing health and environmental costs would announced to put a authorities at odds with itself! For case,

• Reducing the subsidies that create unhealthy consumption risks reducing the profits of the agribusiness industries that benefit from the electric current system, thus reducing their overall GDP and affecting a government's growth target;
• Improving health standards or increasing health expenditure can exist risky politically, either due to claims of big regime or because governments may not have sufficient resources to practice this effectively.

For years many governments accept been under pressure to reduce wellness and other such expenditures. Individuals are typically blamed past manufacture (unsurprisingly) and sometimes by authorities for the increase in obesity framing it equally mostly an individual choice issue, rarely albeit the distortions caused by decades of government and their own lobbying for such policies that makes the toll of healthy eating more expensive, as shown past the New York Times:

Image: The Cost of Salubrious Eating, New York Times via Derek Thompson, This is Why You're Fatty, The Atlantic, July 20, 2009.

As mentioned on the obesity section of this web site, manufacture also raises the fear of task losses or competition pressures as reasons not to change anything, while also proverb that information technology is individual responsibility regarding diet (knowing they can claiming a threat to their growth with advertizing, marketing, PR campaigns and government lobbying).

Recent notions to tax individuals when purchasing unhealthy foods, in this context, misses the point; there is already a class of taxation, or government intervention that creates and encourages an unhealthy issue with distorted prices, which all individuals already pay for.

Addressing that imbalance ways individuals can not just avoid paying additional taxes for unhealthy foods, just their choices are probable to be governed by better information and prices — information and price signals that markets would take into account in a more than balanced mode if those harmful subsidies are not there. Or, if governments have the backbone, they could remove existing subsidies just directly some (or all, or more than?) in a mode that encourages healthier choices and behavior.

The surroundings may do good from agriculture policies that are less intensive and livestock oriented. Additional benefits may include reduced health burdens and expenditure — which governments are already being pressured on — also every bit allowing health services to concentrate on other important issues.

This may exist an case where economical measurement of growth and GNP may not necessarily reflect actual aims and wellness of order.

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Industrialized meat production: shortcuts create more health and ecology problems

Schlosser, quoted above on the gruesome details of what cattle are fed, details the impacts that contaminated meat has on people's healths, the social costs, and and then on. He besides gives a hint to what could exist considered a plush way to bargain with this all:

Instead of focusing on the primary causes of meat contamination—the feed being given to cattle, the overcrowding at feedlots, the poor sanitation at slaughterhouses, excessive line speeds, poorly trained workers, the lack of stringent government oversight—the meatpacking industry and the USDA are now advocating an exotic technological solution to the problem of foodborne pathogens. They want to irradiate the nation's meat.

… The American Medical Clan and the World Health Organization have alleged that irradiated foods are rubber to eat [merely introduction has been] impeded, however, by a reluctance amid consumers to eat things that have been exposed to radiation. … The Beef Industry Nutrient Rubber Council—whose members include the meatpacking and fast nutrient giants—has asked the USDA to change its rules [on having a special radiation label] and make the labeling of irradiated meat completely voluntary. The meatpacking manufacture is also working hard to get rid of the word 'irradiation,' much preferring the phrase 'cold pasteurization.'

Steven Bjerklie, the former editor of Meat & Poultry .. thinks it will reduce pressure on the meatpacking industry to make fundamental and necessary changes in their production methods, assuasive unsanitary practices to continue. I don't want to be served irradiated feces along with my meat, Bjerklie says.

Eric Schossler, Fast Food Nation; The Dark Side of the All-American Meal, (Houghton Mifflin Visitor, 2001), pp. 217—218

Hence without addressing some of the root causes of a lot of public wellness problems, more than resource are spent dealing with the impacts of outbreaks of things like E. Coli and other pathogens. Nationwide recalls of meat products can too bear on those who sell and distribute, and crave use of more resources. Children and adults can suffer terribly, even dice from such poisoning, to which no financial cost tin can be attributable. While radiation may be a practiced fix, the boosted bug of wasteful use of resource, etc cannot exist treated.

And it isn't only beef, but industrial agriculture in general which shows this blueprint of externalized costs, as summarized by the following:

The powerful myth that industrial food is cheap and affordable only survives considering all of these environmental, health, and social costs are not added to the toll of industrial food. When we calculate the existent toll, it is articulate that far from beingness cheap, our electric current food production system is imposing staggering monetary burdens on us and futurity generations.

The Editors, Fatal Harvest, Myth three: Industrial food is inexpensive, AlterNet.org, September 5, 2002

The British paper, The Guardian also reveals the extent to which companies will exert influence and political power:

The food industry has infiltrated the World Wellness Organisation, just as the tobacco industry did, and succeeded in exerting undue influence over policies intended to safeguard public health by limiting the amount of fat, sugar and salt we consume, according to a confidential report obtained by the Guardian.

The written report, past an independent consultant to the WHO, finds that:

• nutrient companies attempted to place scientists favourable to their views on WHO and Food and Agronomical Organization (FAO) committees
• they financially supported non-governmental organisations which were invited to formal discussions on cardinal issues with the UN agencies
• they financed enquiry and policy groups that supported their views
• they financed individuals who would promote anti-regulation ideology to the public, for instance in newspaper articles.

The piece of cake movement of experts—toxicologists in item—betwixt private firms, universities, tobacco and nutrient industries and international agencies creates the conditions for conflict of involvement, says the report by Norbert Hirschhorn, a Connecticut-based public health bookish who searched archives set upwardly during litigation in the US for references to food companies owned or linked to the tobacco industry.

He finds that in that location is reasonable suspicion that undue influence was exerted on specific WHO/FAO food policies dealing with dietary guidelines, pesticide use, additives, trans-fatty acids and sugar.

Sarah Boseley, WHO 'infiltrated by nutrient industry', The Guardian, January 9, 2003

This does indeed happen in peradventure all industries, whereby those in a position to wield their influence and power will understandably try to do and then.

And with fatty foods more than generally, the bug involved are numerous, more than than simply health issues, but matters of politics, economics, and civilisation, and how our tastes are influenced and shaped over fourth dimension:

Many bug are bundled in the politics of fat: government responsibility versus private responsibility; gratuitous enterprise versus government regulation; industrial profit versus public health. A fair debate is made more difficult because the media, influenced by the enormous revenue from fast food corporations, typically treat the consequence in a derisory style: It's all about greedy lawyers, a sue-happy civilization and irresponsible consumers. Notwithstanding there is more than to the fat issue than is suggested past these pre-digested media reductions….

But food preferences are and then personal and then emotionally charged that they are highly resistant to rational arguments most change. Dietary choices are developed from early babyhood through cultural, regional, ethnic, familial and commercial influences….

The balance of influences on our dietary choices has changed dramatically over the last 2 centuries.… The invention of the car, the evolution of superhighways and urbanization helped to spread fast food franchises, supermarkets, and convenience foods. Regional, cultural, ethnic and familial influences on diet faded equally all regional and ethnic preferences were homogenized past the universal presence of fast food franchises. Modern children's food preferences are more powerfully influenced by telly advertizing than by familial or regional influences. Moreover, modern parents, who were raised on boob tube, supermarket shopping, and convenience foods laissez passer on to their children the food preferences that they adult under these commercial influences. Eating cereal for breakfast, for example, is a manufactured food tradition created by industry and the media….

The opponents of lawsuits against the fast food industry argue that anybody knows that McDonalds and Burger King sell high-fat foods and that those who eat these foods do and then by their own free choice. Yet, knowledge solitary is not enough to combat the power of life-long exposure to the media and to the omnipresence of fast food franchises and convenience foods. Partially hydrogenated oils have been used in American nutrient manufacture since the 1920s—time for several generations of Americans to incorporate trans fats into their everyday nutrition and to normalize the consumption of hundreds of foods containing trans fats. Precisely because food preferences are formed over time and are deeply ingrained in our lifestyle, it is difficult for people to change their dietary habits, fifty-fifty when information technology is revealed that some ingredients in these foods are unhealthy or dangerous.

What is really at stake in the politics of fat is the extent to which government should restrict corporate and media influences on the American diet. At that place is no option for consumers when every street corner and highway is crowded with fast food franchises and no good for you alternatives are bachelor. There is no possibility of informed consumer decisions, when saturation advertising entirely overwhelms the cautionary messages of doctors and wellness professionals.

Merely the nutrient manufacturers have the resources and the media access to balance their ain marketing and distribution ability with cautionary labels and informational campaigns. Just economic pressure can force food manufacturers to eliminate their apply of trans fats and other dangerous ingredients, especially in foods that are aggressively marketed to children.

Michael Stephens, The Politics of Fat, Alternet.org, July eight, 2003

Playing on the theme of the hit moving picture, The Matrix, the Meatrix spider web site includes an blitheness describing how agribusiness in general, not but for beef, has led to

• Animal cruelty from factory farming
• Antibiotic resistant germs by feeding excessive antibiotics to animals keeping them alive from affliction and other furnishings of cruel conditions animals are forced to alive in
• Massive pollution (including runoffs from excrement and other wastes into nearby waters, affecting local communities)
• Destroyed communities who suffer health effects, or, as minor farmers, lose out:

The Meatrix, 2003

Beef and the related industries therefore, provides a brilliant example of how our tastes are influenced, as well every bit giving an indication of the enormous input and output costs that are associated with it, while the reasons for those who are so influential in this surface area are typically in making a profit.

In short so, this is another instance of wasted wealth, by wasted capital, wasted labor and wasted resources.

The outlook for industrial agriculture isn't rosy. When the food system is only working normally, it is centrally responsible for climate change, ecosystem degradation and fatal levels of pollution. When it goes wrong, information technology incubates new and lethal diseases in Petri dishes of fauna feedlots.…. And this doesn't brainstorm to cover the man, let solitary animal, harm caused in the food system through depression wages, exploitation and fifty-fifty slavery.

Raj Patel, Stuffed and Starved; Markets, Ability and the Subconscious Battle for the World's Food System, Portobello Books, 2007, p.300

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As with sugar, beefiness related industries and its consumption at loftier levels has had enormous external costs which are usually borne by others, sometimes without realizing. We at present turn to yet another example of such enormous costs, only also goes further in that information technology creates unabridged economically dependent countries and regions, which ways that their poverty or prosperity, or just their own economic destiny, is oftentimes largely beyond their control. That example is of the banana industry, which is on the adjacent page.

Notes on stats:

1. Lester Brown, Michael Renner, Brian Halweil Vital Signs 2000, (Earth Spotter Institute) p. 34; Frances Lappe Moore, Joseph Collins, Peter Rosset, World Hunger: 12 Myths, (Food First and Grove Press, Second Edition, 1998) pp.8, 180; Richard Robbins Global Bug and the Culture of Commercialism (Allyn and Bacon, 1999), p. 220
2. Vital Signs, p.34
3. Encounter for example:
   • United Nations Food And Agriculture Organization statistics database on live animal numbers, last accessed March 21, 2010. These numbers have been reasonably consequent in the past 2 decades, only very slightly increasing, generally.
   • Devinder Sharma also highlights an interesting point that, Around ane.5 billion marginal farmers in the developing earth live in virtual penury and even so, cattle in the industrialised globe are reared in luxury, with a cow in the developed world receiving subsidies that amount to near twice the annual income of an boilerplate Tertiary World farmer. For years, many in the 3rd World have argued that the North heavily subsidizes and protects information technology agricultural industry while at the same time telling the poor to liberalize, which has resulted in poverty due to pushing down commoditiy prices and due to lack of market admission for the poor. (Above link is from Western cow vs Southern farmer: The applesauce of inequality, InfoChangeIndia.org, April 2002)
   • Likewise see What Price Beef? by Marguerite Hampton, with a list of many, many stats, including statistics on how much land, water, energy and so on is required to support cattle, and the various effects.
4. Robbins, p.220; Vandana Shiva, Stolen Harvest (South Cease Printing, 2000), pp. 70-71.
5. Ibid Robbins, p.220
6. Ibid

Author and Page Data

• by Anup Shah
• Created: Friday, September 07, 2001
• Last updated: Sun, August 22, 2010

carrexpron.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.globalissues.org/article/240/beef

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