[mikestew]

Meanwhile I can see funny looking highland cattle grazing in the pasture from my window.

"Oh, I eat only pasture-raised beef" is all well and good, and I can commend doing so if one is going to eat meat anyway. But AFAICT, it unfortunately doesn't scale well enough to supply a burger-hungry world, and certainly is not an affordable option for all.

[jterrys]

A lot of it, imo, is cultural more than mass production. Chickens are kind of a prime example of that. Factory raise them for the breasts and maybe thighs and essentially discard the rest from a consumer standpoint. I'd wager the ratio of chicken raised primarily for chicken breasts far outweigh the added consumption of thighs and wings. Wings in particular are so funny to me... most places sell "boneless wings" alongside actual wings that are just cubed chicken breasts.

If culturally, there was more emphasis on using other parts of animals in our (presumably American diet) we'd definitely get more mileage out of every raised cow, chicken, and pig.

...but this actually brings it into a more 'chicken or egg' (pun intended) contradiction. Because farm raised animals typically don't make the base for good stock since they don't consume good food. They don't consume good food because they're mass produced on a budget. They're mass produced on a budget because consumers typically pick only a few cuts of an animal and discard the rest.

[rsj_hn]

You don't need to worry about it scaling to supply a burger hungry world. The market for burgers will clear, no central planner needed. Maybe they wont be available for $6 they will cost $12. Then again, not everyone needs to get the bulk of their calories from burgers.

The U.S. needs to stop trying to feed the world, especially with extremely cheap (and low quality) corn and soy that are exported primarily for use as feedstock or for biofuels.

We have created enormous imbalances in global food supply by driving out of business local producers, making many countries dependent on a small number of producers for global staple crops, which is a dangerous proposition that puts the world at risk of famine should trade be disrupted.

We pay the price for lack of nutritious food in higher health care costs and lower quality of life in our later years.

[olddustytrail]

That's a very extreme form of communism, where you believe that if a good is available to anyone it must be available to everyone.

Do you actually believe that or is it limited to burgers?