I keep receiving emails from a fast-food joint claiming they are offering ‘a sustainable beef burger’. This would be laughable if it was not dangerous, misleading people into believing the absurd idea that stuffing cows with seaweed will make one of the most polluting businesses on the planet harmless.
Polluting industries like big coal and big meat are frantically trying to bamboozle customers into thinking their acts of greedy vandalism are not the cause of environmentally catastrophic climate change, and the latest is this Frankenstein-esque idea of stopping cows belching and farting, as if that is the only issue. But reducing methane output while breeding still more animals ignores animal suffering, pollution from transport and excrement, deforestation, and the increased risk of diseases (including zoonotic viruses), all associated with animal agriculture.
Some 58 per cent of Australia is used for grazing. Over a five-year period, 94 per cent of land clearing in Great Barrier Reef catchments was attributable to the beef industry. These Band-Aid solutions are intended only to prolong an industry that is fundamentally unsustainable.
These spin stories are reminiscent of the ads last century claiming that tobacco was good for people, even as lung cancer rates soared.
Consumers have the power to end environmentally catastrophic and cruel factory farming by removing animal products from our diets. And, with medical professionals increasingly espousing the virtues of a plant-based diet, there’s never been a better time to transition.
As the grass dies, it rots on the ground releasing methane. Sticking it in a cow to rot releases no extra methane. Kangaroos release masses of methane, and for the same reasons.
Incorrect. Methane is released by anerobic decomposition. The grass rotting on the ground has access to oxygen so does not release methane.
Ruminant animals release methane. Kangaroos are not ruminants and release negligible amounts of methane.
Oh I see. Thank you.
So what you are saying is that seaweed rots anerobicly in the water, so if we harvest it and feed it to the cows, they will only be releasing the methane that the seaweed would have released when it rotted. Or are you saying we should eat all the Kangaroos?
I wonder if humans eating seaweed reduces bullshit. Worth a try and tasty Japanese meals may assist transition.
Well actually, the grass and roo poo only mechanically break down on the surface. The molecular break down happens in the soil anaerobically, but I didn’t want to overload him. As for you, I suggest looking up why ‘Beefeaters’ were such a big deal and why they were such an effective control system against the obsessively vegetarian British population. Maybe look up when hominids started eating meat and what it did to us. Then there is the massive difference the primary meat and grain of each civilisation had on development. I’ll stick to wheat and beef thanks.