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

  • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    animals are fed parts of plants that people can’t or won’t eat. all of the studies about the ecological impacts ignore this fact and then attribute the water used to produce, say, cotton to beef.

    • fubo@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Today in the developed world, meat animals such as cattle and hogs are mostly fed fodder — not a byproduct of human food, but rather crops grown specifically as animal feed. Farmers who grow those crops know how much water they’re using, because they keep track of their irrigation needs.

    • matlag@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Just how many times did you copy-paste that comment?! Are you a bot or a lobbyist by any chance?

      You think that we started producing some grains, and one day we realized we had too much by-products and one smart guy said: “let’s start a cows herd so that they’ll eat these”. Sounds legit. Especially if you consider that eating beef the way we do is very recent in human history, and still inexistent in many parts of the world. Poor folks must be buried under the by-products…

      So, since I don’t think farmers are total morons, I would rather imagine they would produce different kind of food, such as leguminous.