Study shows how the meat and dairy sector resists competition from alternative animal products

[hunter]

A new Stanford study reveals how meat and dairy industry lobbying has influenced government regulations and funding to stifle competition from alternative meat products with smaller climate and environmental impacts. The analysis, published Aug. 18 in One Earth, compares innovations and policies related to plant-based meat alternatives and lab-grown meat in the U.S. and European Union.

"The lack of policies focused on reducing our reliance on animal-derived products and the lack of sufficient support to alternative technologies to make them competitive are symptomatic of a system still resisting fundamental changes," said study lead author Simona Vallone, an Earth system science research associate in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability at the time of the research.

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https://phys.org/news/2023-08-meat-dairy-sector-resists-competition.html

I look forward to the day when the most popular burger at the local fast food places don't have any meat in them and cost less than the meat versions too.

Our local McDonalds and Burger Kings serve meat free alternative burgers. They cost more than the meat burgers.

Why are we subsidizing the meat and dairy industries in any way? It's as bad as subsidizing fossil fuels.

Cheap ground beef, bacon, and gallon jugs of milk are not necessities. Do we need factory farms? They are bad for the environment, bad for the workers, and bad for the animals. ( I do think meat and dairy animals can be raised in an ethical manner. )

I'll confess, I'm mostly vegetarian in my daily life, and my wife is vegetarian approaching vegan. I do the cooking and cooking without meat doesn't seem to me any kind of hardship at all.

I will cook with meat for those in my family who expect it.

[mopinko]

1. ya know, the unit price of milk-

the premium you pay for a half gallon makes me nuts. irks me every time i pay it, but i rarely use up the whole gallon.
not to mention smaller quantities.

agree about the burgers. level the playing field, ya?

[hunter]

5. My wife is lactose intolerant and our kids quit drinking milk in elementary school...

... favoring instead the soy and almond milk their mom drinks and pours on her oatmeal.

The gallon jugs of milk in our fridge were going bad so I quit buying milk.

My wife buys eggs from a coworker who has a small farm on the edge of the city. The chickens roam about freely. She sells the live chickens too, mostly to recent immigrant families who are wary of plastic wrapped supermarket chicken.

When I was a kid powdered milk and government cheese were a large part of our diet. That was when the government bought "surplus" milk to support the dairy industry. Back then powdered milk and five pound blocks of cheese cost less than the regular supermarket sort. My parents, as artists with day jobs, had to be frugal because they had more children than they could comfortably support.

We ate a lot of fish my dad caught too, and animals family and friends had killed themselves hunting, or as farmers and ranchers.

I didn't grow up thinking that meat came from the supermarket neatly wrapped up in plastic.

When we subsidize industrial scale meat production we are undercutting farmers and ranchers who can produce meat and dairy products in sustainable ways that are not abusive to workers or the animals. Huge meat packing plants and industrial scale dairies and feedlots are horrible places.

I know I'm a hypocrite in a lot of ways. Our dogs are probably eating a lot of chickens "retired" from the factory farm egg industry and turned into kibble.

Our catahoula dog would love to hunt wild pigs with me and share the meat with the rest of our pack, and these pigs are certainly an invasive species here in California, but it's not likely I will. It feels like too much work. My great grandmas would have done it. They were enthusiastic hunters.

[Auggie]

2. Of course they'e going to resist

Ideally, they'd face facts and move towards greener products ... and increase market share even more.

[Think. Again.]

3. Thank you for posting this...

The meat and dairy industry is yet another example of the multitude of ways we could (should) be focusing efforts to mitigate the damage we causing to the near future.

This quote from the article stands out to me:

"The lack of policies focused on reducing our reliance on animal-derived products and the lack of sufficient support to alternative technologies to make them competitive are symptomatic of a system still resisting fundamental changes,"

Biden's 2 initial efforts, the IRA and the Build Back Better Act are phenomemoal successes so far and will continue to have a massive impact toward the transition.

But when we will see the hundreds, thousands, of other actions that it will take to move us closer to his promise of a fossil fuel free America?

[OKIsItJustMe]

4. There's no surprise that an industry is fighting against their competition

One problem with “faux meat” is that the more it tastes like “meat,” the worse it is for the consumer and for the planet.

Thinking about it for a moment, clearly, to turn “plant-based protein” into something resembling animal flesh requires processing (which requires energy, chemicals…) the more it is changed, the greater the processing required.

To make products taste more like animal flesh, the “faux meat” industry does things like boost saturated fat and sodium content. (The more it tastes like “meat” the more it resembles “meat” nutritionally, with all of “meat’s” drawbacks.)

The most “meat like” substitute is lab grown meat (AKA “cultured meat”) where animal tissue is produced in a “bioreactor,” rather than in a factory farm. Naturally, lab grown cells still need to be “fed” and kept disease free.

Recent estimates suggest that while lab grown meat may be more ethical (by eliminating “factory farms” & slaughterhouses) it presently uses a great deal more energy than the “traditional” methods of meat production.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.04.21.537778v1.full


A traditional vegetarian diet is better for people and the planet than a “Western Diet” which simply replaces industrially produced “meat” with industrially produced “meat alternatives.”


Check out this report:
IPES Food: The Politics Of Protein: Examining Claims About Livestock, Fish, ‘Alternative Proteins’ and Sustainability