No, because most people wouldn't care.

That's nonsense. China and Russia are exploiting development countries as best they can (too). I wonder how you got the idea that it'd be only the US?

Websearch for "china cobalt mines congo" for example.

Interesting about McDonald's anyway

We aren't doing anything intensive, and we don't have chickens or pigs. I did the math, and it doesn't really seem like you can have chickens or pigs just range, you have to supplement their diet in some way. Geese on the other hand are like...the best animals for regenerative ag, maybe next to sheep.

We will probably get chickens at some point (unless we miraculously can range enough ducks for eggs), but we will have to buy in their feed.

Let's not make assumptions about quality when we don't have enough information from each country to make an educated guess. I will point out that Brazil is the largest exporter of agricultural products in the West, and we comply with very demanding markets, including the US. The problem being cited is not about quality—we are compliant with the FDA—but the ethics of ranging cattle in previously Amazon forests

Nobody does that, it’d be way too expensive. People here on HN have absolutely zero knowledge of how industrial cattle farming operates and have some really bizarre beliefs about the process. Largely because their only experience with it is the supermarket meat section and passing those massive stinky feedlots along the CA I5.

For everyone else: After a calf is raised and weaned from their mother, they are sent to “background” on pasture and the last few months a cow spends packed in a feedlot is just to fatten it up for human consumption. These are usually steps done by different companies altogether. The whole point of beef is utilizing marginal land that can’t grow human food. It converts tons of grassland to usable farmland, and that pasture makes up 2/3 of the total agricultural land in the US.

The entire planet is greener. Everywhere. The planting did little.

> Results showed that carbon dioxide fertilization explains 70 percent of the greening effect

One of those Inconvenient Truths.

Many western states have much stricter views on property rights and trespassing than the coasts. The penalties are generally higher even if not dealing with this specific scenario. Even regular ID trespassing law can carry 6mo-1y jail time depending on the circumstances, etc.

One often overlooked thing that isn't particularly applicable in this case is the biosecurity aspect involved in agricultural trespassing. Even trespassing in agricultural areas without taking pictures can carry higher penalties in many states.

Likewise these "secrets" aren't something valuable like an algorithm that's in the interest of society to protect. The secret is their monstrous and unethical practices which lower their sales when their prospective consumers learn about them. Keeping it secret doesn't protect competition, it just hides something from consumers that would allow them to make a more informed choice.

Muckraker journalism like this is one of the main reasons the US has regulations for things like food safety and working conditions. Should a journalist go to jail for revealing that a slaughterhouse is hiring 8 year olds, or that there is a mass contamination of a food product that the company still intends to sell? Those can be "secrets" too.

We're seeing with Boeing what happens when law-breaking is swept under the rug for too long.

This is mostly due to the fact after WW2 lot of people stopped farming in the hills and mountains, and moved to urban areas. There are plenty of ghost towns in the Italian mountains.

[1] (link in Italian) https://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/in-italia-mai-cosi-tante-for...

  Russia 49.78%
  Canada 38.70%
  Brazil 59.42%
  US     33.87%

More importantly, we have ideals and principles that supersede the will of the public. Arguably the most sacred ideal in America is the First Amendment with respect to protections about speech & this is pretty adjacent in that the law is criminalizing speech for something that should arguably be a civil matter at best. Laws like this are not dissimilar to passing a law protecting employers from employees trying to document unsafe working conditions.

So the idea that the law is purely an expression of the wishes of the constituents is nice but not borne out in the structure of modern democratic governments, not borne out in practice because of how power & money intermix, & invalidated by the idea that we have principles that supersede the wishes of those constituents.

[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...

1) equivocating hunting with breathing? One is necessary for life, the other is done by less than a quarter of people, and for most of them it’s just a hobby.

2) slavery has also been done probably since humanity began millions of years ago, so that clearly is not sufficient for something shoulding be legal.

Sustenance hunting yes, but the rules about selling wild meat are to prevent market hunting. There are more humans by weight than any other land animal. If the general population started eating hunted meat, any wild population would be wiped out. So we have careful rules to ensure hunters do not hunt simply to sell the meat.

The penalties in these laws are higher than just generic secret recording.

Grain finishing is another matter. But it's not a 1 grain : 1/10th beef type situation.

Now chopping and burning down the amazon to create grazing land for cattle? yeah that's going to probably kill us all.

To reduce quality of life (because it's not limited to meat, it's comprehensive restrictions) simply to accomodate ever more humans on the planet is madness and unsustainable, anyway.

PS: Let's also remember, for example, that 50-60 million bisons roamed North America before European settlement, whereas there are about 28 million beef cows in the US today (according to Google).

Because they're the one who made the claim without evidence or argument.

> It's up to you to convince him (or others) that it is bad

Yes, that's what I did.

> the reasoning "according to MY ethics it is bad" is not a good argument.

That wasn't my argument.

You're making something of a jump there - not eating meat equates to a vegetarian diet, not a vegan diet. One can argue about the merits of a vegan diet over a vegetarian one, but a vegetarian, non-vegan diet is already a big step up over a meat-heavy one, and a vegetarian diet including eggs and dairy doesn't really have any challenges in being balanced/healthy compared to a moderate-meat diet.

All the behaviours that we have in common with other mammals are natural and eternal. They can never be legislated away, even though many have tried and they have died. Including kings trying to ban hunting certain game for commoners and having them for themselves.

I'm curious what you mean by "impose their views" with respect to meat-eating. Has a vegan ever tried to stop you from eating meat for example through physical force, threatening your livelihood, making meat illegal in their state, etc?

Don't get me wrong, I also dislike when strangers impose their moral, ethical, racial, political, or religious views on me.

But of all the groups that concern me, vegans are low on my list as their weapons mostly seem to be uncomfortably strong arguments on the internet and the occasional preachy Netflix documentary.

One could argue that meat eating is necessary for taking part on some people’s culture, which is true, but also shifting. And spreading the idea of vegetarianism is helpful in making that shift happen.

We aren't.

Every bit of evidence is that Human population is on the path to stabilizing. Developing countries plateau, and all that "India and china are going to outreproduce us!" rhetoric was stupidity; people extrapolating an S curve as if it were an infinite exponential curve.

All you have to do is give women an education and legal access to birth control and it turns out most humans do not want 50 kids. Women happily manage population control, with no moral problems.

WE should consider that in the equation of "overpopulation", the other variable, "resource consumption", is far easier and more ethical to reduce.

The issue, of course, is that option 1 hurts others that aren't us, while option 2 will require changes from US, like not eating meat, reducing personal cars, reducing consumption and infinite growth in general.

>> It is more natural because creatures in nature do it.

> "Creatures in nature" also "farm"

Thus "hunting" is not "more natural" than agriculture and domestication of other species.

If you don't find it interesting that non-human life has been performing behaviors humans think unique to themselves, well that's your problem.

Someone around here did clear the forests for farmland... and people are doing ok.

Its not that everyone died, as the comment I responded to said.

Solving the environmental crisis means reducing our consumption of resources. Solving global poverty means a significant increase in consumption of resources.

So the only way forward is to let the global population decrease ASAP so that we can both live well and preserve the planet.

Don’t understand why people want to play whack a mole to get to the end goal all while making everyone’s lives worse, esp on the lower income levels who can’t afford organic meat.

When if you want the trees saved then pay them to keep them and hold them to it. Like that’s the actual goal no? And easier than completely retooling society as a backwards way to cause that change.

I mean this is about the trees right?

We're seeing more than simply marginal decreases - if we can successfully transition our power. The gap in per capita CO2 emissions between developing, middle-income, developed is not nearly as great as what you are suggesting [0] and will decrease even further in the time that it takes to raise people in poverty now to developed-world standards.

> I never understand the insistence of some of ignoring population in the equation, which is the key parameter.

A few reasons: 1. Population is projected to peak in the coming decades. 2. "Slashing" population counts requires a global deployment of force that is both not practically feasible right now and incredibly unpopular. There is no practical path to "slashing" population. This is the primary reason, imo. 3. People in the West always imagine that it would be other people/nations slashing their population count when the biggest marginal impact (especially given climate lags) would be slashing their own population. These solutions are eugenicist in nature.

Also - taking a step back for a moment, I am confused as to how this in any way justifies beef. Beef contributes to the gap between rich and poor in CO2. If we reduce reliance on beef, it means we can support a larger population sustainably?

[0]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?t...

Honestly, if you just Google the search terms it’s easier for both of us because you can tailor your search to your level of understanding.