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

    85% of soybeans are pressed for oil for human use.

    and those water use stats include things like the water it takes to raise feed crops. it would make sense, except that we mostly feed livestock plants or parts of plants that people won’t eat. for example, we raise cotton for textiles, and the seed would be industrial waste if we didn’t feed it to cattle. why do we count the water used to make jeans in the water used to make beef? it’s just dishonest.

      • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        I’m so glad you used the outworldindata link.

        do you see how most of what is fed to animals is soy meal? that is the industrial waste from pressing soybeans for oil.

        a soybean is only about 20% oil. if 17% of all the end uses of soybeans is oil, then about 85% of all soybeans are pressed for oil.

        • tetraodon@feddit.it
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          1 year ago

          But animal feed also contains soy oil, so even allowing for part of soybean production being used for human consumption, there remains a significant part of soy effectively produced for the benefit of livestock. Furthermore, animal feed production incentivizes the cultivation of soy. If there was no animal feed incentive, there would not be a need to expand soy cultivation into virgin land.

          Which bring us to animal feed causing increased land usage (which could be reforested if nothing else), methane emissions, and waste production connected with raising livestock.

          • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            1 year ago

            there is no reason to think that the land would be deforested, nor even that it would not have been deforested for some other reason, if everyone were vegan.

              • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                1 year ago

                what would change if everyone were vegan? what would change to MAKE everyone vegan? you can’t actually know what that world would be like. you’re guessing.

                  • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                    1 year ago

                    the nature article only talks about the impacts of producing the various foods in the current circumstance. if people shifted to eating less meat, then circumstances would be different, but it’s not clear that the environment would actually benefit at all.