Animal agriculture is a massive contributor to some of the largest problems in the world

It’s at least ~15-17% of climate emissions and is enough to make us miss climate targets on its own even if fossil fuels are immediately stopped

~73% of the world’s antibiotics go to animal agriculture, leading to antibiotic resistance diseases. It’s directly attributed to at least 50% of all zoonetic diseases since 1940

It’s one the most dangerous and exploitative industries to work in. There are multiple human right watch reports on working conditions in just the US (“When We’re Dead and Buried, Our Bones Will Keep Hurting” and Blood, Sweat, and Fear). And this is not limited to the US, here’s just a handful of reporting from The Guardian Revealed: exploitation of meat plant workers rife across UK and Europe, ‘The whole system is rotten’: life inside Europe’s meat industry

The rates of factory farming globally are far higher than most people think. It’s around 74% of all globally farmed land animals, and 90% of total global farmed land and marine animals. It’s around ~99% for the US. The number of animals slaughtered each year is immense at ~80 billion land animals / year, >100 total animals per year. The sheer number of individuals who go through that makes the level of suffering hard to parallel

And that’s just some of the harm the industry does, but I don’t want to ramble too long without talking about how to go about solving this

There is more we as individuals can do here than we can for 90% of other issues. With the laws of supply and demand, simply reducing our collective demand makes the industry smaller. That’s doable at the induvidal level: simply reducing (and ideally eliminating) our individual meat, dairy, etc. consumption can have a real impact. This is more achievable than people think. For instance, Germany has seen a 12% decline in per capita meat consumption over the last ~10 years. We don’t need wait for any institutions to make changes before that can work by doing collective action

There are also some systemic changes we can push for in the near-medium future to help make that happen faster. For instance, just making plant-based foods the default tends to increase plant-based consumption by several orders of magnitude. NYC hospitals implemented plant-based defaults and made their plant-based consumption rate go up to 51% of meals and reduced the average cost of a meal by 59 cents. If that sounds interesting to anyone there are campaigns with real successes to get more institutions and companies to implement those. There groups like the Better Food Foundation, Greener By Default, the Plant Based Treaty is running a Related Campaign, No Milk Tax which has gotten hundreds of chains to drop their plant milk up charge, among others

Plus why does cost of transport have inconsistent spacing between lines and inconsistent scale movement? The scale is neither linear nor log. It sometimes doubles, and then sometimes just adds 0.2, 2, or 20. And also still a scale that’s flipped from (at least my) expectation would be with more efficient towards the top and less efficient towards the bottom. Sometimes there’s a minor grid line, sometimes there isn’t. And sometimes the minor grid line isn’t even at the half mark

At least the body weight keeps to a consistent log scale

Is there a data is ugly community?

marinara is a fruit sauce

I see which side of the is tomato a fruit or vegetable discussions you fall on

Plus you can get Aquafaba pretty much for free by using it!

Aquafaba is the water they are cooked in (which is also the water in a can if you buy them canned). It can be used as a good egg white substitute for baking and meringues

Technically all legumes can make aquafaba, but chickpeas are usually considered some of the best for it. Also aquafaba can be frozen so you can save for later use

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquafaba

Hmm this is a serious counter point. Plus if we count lentils as beans, what do we do about split peas which kind of feel similar. Besides making some really good dishes like this. Quite complex indeed and adds evidence to the legume is legume idea

I have also had a new conundrum: how far away from a bean form does something is for it to no longer considered to be a bean dish. Does tofu count as a bean dish because it’s from soybeans? Falafel because it’s from garbanzo beans / chickpeas. I’d feel like the answer should be no on both fronts, but where does the line start

You make a compelling point, but have you considered this: does the word end with beans in English or whatever language has the right vibes? If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be eating my JavaBean

Also consider expanding to:

C O N S U M E    L E G U M E

It’s really fun to say

Wow look at you asking a lot of question here. Questions like: wow did you lazily find an image that was already lazily made because you were so excited about the concept of beans that you fell into a trance at the sheer quantities of beans on the screen and didn’t even look at the lentils because they aren’t really beans and thus weren’t worthy of the same attention?

Sorry couldn’t hear you over the beans I was eating

It was un-bean-lievable that it ever stopped

Honey production is not exactly exploitation free. For instance, queen bees often have their wings clipped or are intentionally killed to be replaced by another

Moreover, honey production also out competes native/wild bee populations which hurts them. Especially since honeybees are heavily used well outside their native ranges

We found compelling evidence that honey bee introductions indirectly decrease pollination by reducing nectar and pollen availability and competitively excluding visits from more effective native bees. In contrast, the direct impact of honey bee visits on pollination was negligible, and, if anything, negative. Honey bees were ineffective pollinators, and increasing visit quantity could not compensate for inferior visit quality

https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ecy.3939

First they fixate over protein metrics, and now they don’t want the actual protein synthesis? Having high intake of amino acids was already not doing most of what they claimed, but now we’re just gonna have our body not even use them? What a waste of resources. 0/10 (/s)

Do note that a lot of early reporting on Trump’s “deals” in the past have often been grossly misleading. Often counting existing agreements as new one or leaving critical details out

For instance, I recall a lot of people were questioning a deal with Mexico earlier as bending the knee that turned out to largely be just be puff agreements that they had already made before Trump

There’s a decent chance that this is continuing that pattern. Though I can’t say for certain of course

Indeed, factory farming is quite dominant globally. From one group’s estimate:

We estimate that over 90% of farmed animals globally are living in factory farms at present. This includes an estimated 74% of farmed land animals (vertebrates only) and virtually all farmed fish.[1] However, there is substantial uncertainty in these figures given the land animal estimates’ heavy reliance on information from Worldwatch Institute with unclear methodology[2] and limited data on fish farming.

https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/global-animal-farming-estimates

Plus beef is a large emitter to climate change. They’ve spread tons of disinformation on this to keep its consumption and production up. The industry is reaping what they’ve sowed

The US beef industry is creating an army of influencers and citizen activists to help amplify a message that will be key to its future success: that you shouldn’t be too worried about the growing attention around the environmental impacts of its production.

In particular, it would like you not to be especially concerned about how meat consumption needs to be reduced if we are to avoid the most violently disruptive forms of planetary heating (even if all fossil fuel use ended tomorrow).

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/03/beef-industry-public-relations-messaging-machine

You’ve heard of toxic negativity, get ready for toxic positivity

Not the person you are replying to, but that is severely underestimating the amount of factory farming. They are the dominant method of production

Based on the EPA’s definition of a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (i.e factory farm) and USDA census data:

All fish raised in fish farms were considered to be factory-farmed. More than 98% of hens and pigs. For chickens and turkeys, the share was more than 99%. Cows were a bit more likely to be raised outside in fields, with greater space and freedom. Nonetheless, 75% were still fed in concentrated feeding operations for at least 45 days a year.

https://ourworldindata.org/how-many-animals-are-factory-farmed

And even those that are not considered factory farmed don’t always look how one may think, for instance non-factory farmed cows still use plenty of grain feed

Currently, ‘grass-finished’ beef accounts for less than 1% of the current US supply

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aad401

None of this is not limited to the US by any means. For instance in the UK:

There are more than 1,000 US-style mega-farms in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, including some holding as many as a million animals

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/18/uk-has-more-than-1000-livestock-mega-farms-investigation-reveals

Factory farming is unfortunately what scales well. If we want less factory farming we need the industry itself to be smaller. That is no impossible goal. Germany, for instance, has seen its overall meat consumption fall over the last decade

In 2011, Germans ate 138 pounds of meat each year. Today, it’s 121 pounds — a 12.3 percent decline. And much of that decline took place in the last few years, a time period when grocery sales of plant-based food nearly doubled.

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23273338/germany-less-meat-plant-based-vegan-vegetarian-flexitarian

It’s far more global than people think. Here’s global estimates in 2019

We estimate that over 90% of farmed animals globally are living in factory farms at present. This includes an estimated 74% of farmed land animals (vertebrates only) and virtually all farmed fish.[1] However, there is substantial uncertainty in these figures given the land animal estimates’ heavy reliance on information from Worldwatch Institute with unclear methodology[2] and limited data on fish farming.

https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/global-animal-farming-estimates

Join global protests against Tesla in much of the US, various parts of Europe, part of Canada, etc.

(and there are multiple upcoming across the UK, if you are in the UK and disappointed at this graph)

https://www.teslatakedown.com/

There are also Tesla protests growing in Europe (and Canada, and more)! Musk’s influence threatens more than just the US, so we must all step up. The Tesla Takedown protest movement started in the US, but it’s now becoming international. Here’s a map of the latest ones in Europe

Here’s the site with that info along with a guide on how to plan one around you if you don’t see one

https://actionnetwork.org/event_campaigns/teslatakedown

There have been tons of protests and there have been some pretty widespread ones outside of Tesla this weekend. The media is just hardly covering it making them seem way smaller than they are

Here’s a map of recent Tesla Takedown protests alone

https://actionnetwork.org/event_campaigns/teslatakedown

Here’s just a handful of photos from yesterday

Most people within the US aren’t aware these protests are happening either. There are also broader nationwide protests planned on April 5th as part of the 50501 movement. This will be the 4th nationwide 50501 protest