I heard something to do with Nitrogen and …cow farts(?) I am really unsure of this and would like to learn more.

Answer -

4 Parts

  • Ethical reason for consuming animals
  • Methane produced by cows are a harmful greenhouse gas which is contributing to our current climate crisis
  • Health Reasons - there is convincing evidence that processed meats cause cancer
  • it takes a lot more calories of plant food to produce the calories we would consume from the meat.

Details about the answers are in the comments

  • @BlameThePeacock@lemmy.caEnglish
    78•1 year ago

    The basic problem is that to get 1000 calories of beef, you need to feed the cow something like 10,000 calories. So growing a cow is actually growing an entire field of wheat/corn/etc., then feeding it to the cow, then eating the cow.

    Farming all of those crops for the animals takes up a lot of land, consumes fresh water, produces wastes, and uses oil/gas (for farm equipment directly, or to produce things like nitrogen fertilizers) which produces co2. Cows also produce methane (that’s the fart thing) which is a bad greenhouse gas.

    You could just eat the wheat/corn/etc. directly (most of the time) and skip the meat step therefore saving a massive amount of environmental impact.

    Meat sure is tasty though.

    • @goforliftoff@lemm.ee
      29•1 year ago

      I remember driving through Iowa and seeing vast fields of corn and learning that the majority of that corn was not even destined for human consumption. That kinda blew my mind.

      • @rog@lemmy.one
        11•1 year ago

        Luckily there is still enough left over to poison the population with high fructose corn syrup

      • @usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml
        8•1 year ago

        It increases methane emissions and doesn’t scale

        We model a nationwide transition [in the US] from grain- to grass-finishing systems using demographics of present-day beef cattle. In order to produce the same quantity of beef as the present-day system, we find that a nationwide shift to exclusively grass-fed beef would require increasing the national cattle herd from 77 to 100 million cattle, an increase of 30%. We also find that the current pastureland grass resource can support only 27% of the current beef supply (27 million cattle), an amount 30% smaller than prior estimates

        […]

        If beef consumption is not reduced and is instead satisfied by greater imports of grass-fed beef, a switch to purely grass-fed systems would likely result in higher environmental costs, including higher overall methane emissions. Thus, only reductions in beef consumption can guarantee reductions in the environmental impact of US food systems.

        https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aad401

        Taken together, an exclusively grass-fed beef cattle herd would raise the United States’ total methane emissions by approximately 8%.

        https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aad401/pdf

        Further, plenty of the land that grazing takes place on is not naturally grassland, and the “grass-fed” that you’ll see anywhere are still getting grain as well

        Most of the UK and Ireland’s grass-fed cows and sheep are on land that might otherwise be temperate rainforest – arable crops tend to prefer drier conditions. However, even if there were no livestock grazing in the rainforest zone – and these areas were threatened by other crops instead – livestock would still pose an indirect threat due to their huge land footprint

        […]

        Furthermore, most British grass-fed cows are still fed crops on top of their staple grass

        https://theconversation.com/livestock-grazing-is-preventing-the-return-of-rainforests-to-the-uk-and-ireland-198014

        Places that have tried to scale grass-fed production up have all kinds of problems. For instance, New Zealand often likes to tout its grass-fed production, but the production levels are so high that it’s a heavy polluter. It would require a 12-fold reduction in size in one region to meet the bare minimum standards for drinking water safety

        The large footprint for milk in Canterbury indicates just how far the capacity of the environment has been overshot. To maintain that level of production and have healthy water would require either 12 times more rainfall in the region or a 12-fold reduction in cows.

        […]

        The “grass-fed” marketing line overlooks the huge amounts of fossil-fuel-derived fertiliser used to make the extra grass that supports New Zealand’s very high animal stock rates.

        https://theconversation.com/11-000-litres-of-water-to-make-one-litre-of-milk-new-questions-about-the-freshwater-impact-of-nz-dairy-farming-183806

        • @Crisps@lemmy.world
          1•1 year ago

          This is nonsense.

          ‘Exception for male dairy calves, production is predominantly pastoral-based, with young stock spending relatively brief portions of their life in feedlots. ’

          https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6039332/

          Almost all cattle spends some time on feedlots, as grain improves the meat close to slaughter. Ignore these sites that give the false impression that almost all cows are raised in feedlots. It is blatantly incorrect and obvious to anyone that drives outside the city and looks out of the window.

      • @BlameThePeacock@lemmy.caEnglish
        4•1 year ago

        The number of cattle that can be raised this way is so small it isn’t a valid option to meet demand.

        Also, that land could be used for other things like goat farming which would be far more energy efficient than cattle.

        • Spliffman1English
          1•1 year ago

          No no no, we pack humans into polluted, crowded, vermin ridden cities with slums and ghettos, didn’t you get the memo?