[Tade0]

It's largely (heh) about their size and that they're not really as optimized for meat as e.g. pigs. They breed comparatively slowly and take longer to grow.

Moreover the weight of a cow carcass is no higher than 60% that of the animal, while for pigs the lower bound is ~78%. Poultry is also very efficient in this regard, especially turkey yielding 80%+.

Where I'm from domestically consumed beef comes mostly from dairy cows so it's not particularly good, but it appears to be the more environmentally sound choice than growing them just for the meat(not that this was the aim - it's just cheaper).

[autoexec]

The sooner we can get lab grown beef the better. I don't care if it's more expensive or even if it isn't as efficient in terms of energy input as growing, raising, and slaughtering actual cows. It'd still come with tons of benefits like reducing antibiotic use, taking up less land, causing less suffering, eliminating illnesses, etc.

[jononomo]

We're not about to run out of land. My recommendation is to use nuclear power to desalinate seawater and turn the Sahara Desert into a vast grassland on which we can raise a couple of billion cattle in order to feed the world. I think the same should be done in the Australian Desert.

[sprucevoid]

> We're not about to run out of land

We already did, in the sense that we'd need more earths to let everyone on earth eat the kind of diets prevalent in rich countries today. https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets

Current enourmous land use by meat industries has many negative effects. We should individually switch to plant based (if you haven't already) and in public policy rapidly remove all subsidies from meat and animal industries and fully price in all negative externalities (GHG, antibiotics risks, pandemic risks, air and water pollution). At the same time subsidize plant based alternatives. As a result plant based alternatives would be several times lower in cost than the meat versions, which in turn would drive consumption changes.

[Tade0]

Or just give up beef and mutton - it's responsible for most of the problem.

No need to get all radical - you won't gain much support for such ideas. Beef consumption already peaked in rich countries anyway.

[sprucevoid]

The problem with only reducing meat from cows and sheep is that other meat sources are still worse than plant based with regard to climate change and we're at a juncture where climate policy need to shift into full gear on all fronts. Not a time for half measures. Meat from chicken is also likely even worse than beef in terms of pandemic risk and perhaps also antibiotics resistance risk. In addition to that chicken meat industries cause much more animal suffering than all other land based animal meat industries combined which I think is a very strong argument to phase out chicken meat production - that industry wouldn't last a week if the type of animal protection regulation people in general think already exists for it would in fact be enacted, applied and enforced.

The idea that negative externalities should be priced in is the standard view in economics. I think most people, if provided the reasoning for it, would accept such pricing in when it comes to such serious global problems as climate change, antibiotics resistance, pandemic risk and air and water pollution.

[Tade0]

> Not a time for half measures.

Now is exactly the time for half measures - radical options proposed in the past largely failed due to their simplistic view of human nature.

We're actually getting there with electricity. Renewables - the very definition of a half-measure - are being deployed at a much higher rate than nuclear, which on the face of it is the ideal solution - but only in a world where megaprojects are delivered on time and within budget. Ironically China and Russia are doing great here - I suppose the secret ingredient is totalitarianism.

> I think most people, if provided the reasoning for it, would accept such pricing in when it comes to such serious global problems as climate change

That's a very charitable assumption.

There are many people who can't even begin to imagine, much less understand the issue at hand.

Going vegan because climate change and animal suffering is going to be a hard sell.