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
For the methane issue. Apparently adding seaweed to their feed reduces that by up to 82%:
https://caes.ucdavis.edu/news/feeding-cattle-seaweed-reduces-their-greenhouse-gas-emissions-82-percent
It would be such a small but significant thing to pass a law requiring adding seaweed to their feed. Even if they passed the cost on, it would raise the price of meat insignificantly. It’s crazy that we haven’t done it yet. Same with making new roofs white to reflect light instead of absorbing it.
Trials in Tasmania this year sadly did not reach anywhere near the original methane reduction goals.
I looked it up and it says a 28% reduction was achieved. That’s still a huge reduction and perhaps, with other feed formulations, an even bigger reduction can be made.
I mean, it’s better than nothing but seriously dairy is fucked long term. It will always be an inefficient system compared to consuming plant-based proteins directly, and lab grown milk protein is gonna be huge. And that is good news, because dairy farming sucks in terms of land use, fertilizer run off, animal welfare, and, here in NZ at least, the destruction of native tree based ecosystems to make way for grass monocultures.
EVEN at 18% it’s way too fucking high