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Page added on January 13, 2018
Are we ‘Beyond Meat’?
With the world’s population increasing, we’re increasingly seeing pollution and the mass consumption of land jeopardising the earth’s future for generations to come. Can we help? Slowly, people are realising the importance in nurturing the earth and what can be done to positively progress.
Start-up ‘envirotech’ companies are using their knowledge of global warming to make a positive imprint on the earth. Many have gained the interest of some of the richest people in the world, allowing them to push their business further and create more awareness. Read on as we look at whether meat-free life could solve some of our problems.
The global demand for meat
A quarter of the world’s emissions are a by-product of the global food industry, part of that being meat production. With livestock being responsible for 18% of greenhouse gases and playing a large part in water usage and polluting, the increase in meat consumption can only mean a negative impact to global warming as we know it.
Backed by Bill Gates, Beyond Meat is a Californian-based company that have set out to change global warming one burger at a time. Rather than sourcing burgers from animal meat, Beyond Meat use plant based ingredients to produce a product that no only looks and feels like an animal burger, but also tastes and smells like one too.
Beyond Meat aiming high
Along with their burgers being set out to improve human health through refining and controlling ingredients and additives, Beyond Meat are attempting to positively impact climate change and address global resource constraints.
They believe that by producing plant based burgers, it will increase the awareness about global climate change, pushing others in the food sector to develop solutions to reduce the masses of pollutants created. This includes volatile organic compounds, which are ending up in our soil – as explored in the article ‘Volatile Organic Compound Screening in Soil Using SPME-GC/MS’.
Targeting animal welfare
Beyond Meat also ensure that through production of their products, they are implementing effective ways to utilise the world’s limited supply of natural resources on top of reducing the amount of waste, with the hope that others will follow in their footsteps across all industries. Their efforts in raising awareness of the need to decrease the dependency on animal protein also strives for the improvement on animal welfare, with the hope that the use of battery farms and inhumane animal living conditions will be stopped.
In 2017, the UK saw a 987% increase in the demand for meat free food options, which suggests that the population are recognising not only the health benefits of meat alternatives but also the positive impact it has globally. Could you trade favourite beef patty for a plant based equivalent?
23 Comments on "Are we ‘Beyond Meat’?"
Mad Kat on Sat, 13th Jan 2018 7:58 am
“People keep about 1,300,000,000 beef cattle worldwide (this excludes dairy cattle) (Table 1).
Over half the world’s beef cattle live in three countries: India, Brazil and China (Table 1).
People kill nearly 300 million beef cattle annually worldwide (Table 2).
Half the world’s beef cattle are killed in three countries: India, Brazil and China (Table 2).”
http://www.animalethics.org.uk/i-ch7-4-cattle.html
1,300,000,000 beef cattle require:
“…to produce one pound of beef is 1,799 gallons of water.” X 1,000LB X 1.3 billion = WHEW!
https://foodtank.com/news/2013/12/why-meat-eats-resources/
“U.S. could feed 800 million people with grain that livestock eat, Cornell ecologist advises animal scientists” (That is the equivalent of another 10 years of humait’s increase.)
http://news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could-feed-800-million-people-grain-livestock-eat
I eat fresh (frozen) beef from Australia, New Zealand, Japan (special occasions) and canned from Brazil and, occasionally, the US. Lean ground beef is about $3.50/lb. Steaks from about $4.00/lb and up. Beef is an occasional thing. Fish mostly, or chicken or pork. I have no use for mutton or goat. Rabbit is good. I’m looking forward to trying monitor lizard* The caretaker caught one on the farm last year and the neighbors had a feast. It was about 30 pounds dressed.
*The meat of monitor lizards is eaten by some tribes in India, Thailand and in West Africa as a supplemental meat source. ( Also in the Ps.) WIKI
Mad Kat on Sat, 13th Jan 2018 8:01 am
I might add that a laborer here in the Ps only makes about $10 per day. Obviously they do not at a lot of beef. lol
Sissyfuss on Sat, 13th Jan 2018 9:16 am
I gave up red meat a while back. That 987% increase in demand for meat free options has got to be a typo. Or else the UK has gone full blown vegan.
Cloggie on Sat, 13th Jan 2018 9:31 am
I gave up on meat too recently, completely. Smoked salmon every now and then is a delicious replacement.
MASTERMIND on Sat, 13th Jan 2018 9:48 am
Clogg
you are going to end up being the meat in a cannibals pot soon!
Cloggie on Sat, 13th Jan 2018 9:54 am
Cannibals are no match for a triggerhappy adversary. Bring it on, that liberating conflict on the ruins of the US empire. It has been peace for too long already.
MASTERMIND on Sat, 13th Jan 2018 10:01 am
Wal-Mart to Cut Thousands of Store-Management Roles
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-12/wal-mart-said-to-restructure-store-roles-to-streamline-business
tahoe1780 on Sat, 13th Jan 2018 10:29 am
Are those “burgers” fortified?
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/7-nutrients-you-cant-get-from-plants
and https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-and-nutrition-loss/
baha on Sat, 13th Jan 2018 10:48 am
That article makes me hungry 🙂
Davy on Sat, 13th Jan 2018 11:12 am
Anyone who understands the reality of raising food will know that large expanses of the world will only support animal grazing. The problem is not with meat. The problem is with diet and taste. There is no reason to feed animals grains as a finishing process. This is where meat becomes detrimental to humans and
Animals alike.
Anyone who has ever had animals knows they have a place in the nutrient cycle. They are necessary for pasture management. The subject of meat is warped by a modern man who has distanced himself from where he gets his calories. Many of you here have no clue what raising animals means. You see red meat in the supermarket all wrapped and pretty that’s the extent of your experience with meat.
Someday many of us will be craving the dense nutrition of red meat when we have not eaten well for many days. Think again about meat and reality of a failing world. Diet today for many is discretionary but that will increasingly change to necessity.
JuanP on Sat, 13th Jan 2018 1:46 pm
This people have never been to Uruguay or other cattle areas of the world. We will never be beyond meat. I eat a little premium organic grass fed beef and I love it. I was a vegetarian for a while and so are most of my friends, but some people will always it meat.
Kenz300 on Sat, 13th Jan 2018 1:54 pm
Go Vegan !
Sissyfuss on Sat, 13th Jan 2018 6:31 pm
Davy, the corporate mentality is such that if the animals were grass and not grain fed they would still be pumped full of antibiotics and growth hormones. Growth in everything they do is their modus operandi.
GregT on Sat, 13th Jan 2018 7:09 pm
“Smoked salmon every now and then is a delicious replacement.”
I put up over 50lbs of the stuff this last fall. Vacuum packed in the freezer, it lasts for at least five years. Probably even longer.
Do you guys have salmon in the rivers of the Netherlands Cloggie? The last Coho that I saw in the river behind my property was about three weeks ago. The steelhead should be showing up in numbers soon, usually around the second week in February. Smoked steelhead is even better than smoked salmon.
Mad Kat on Sat, 13th Jan 2018 7:24 pm
Greg, I wish I was there to try some fresh salmon. I envy you. I buy it canned but it is not the same, obviously. I make salmon cakes with it or eat it just as it comes from the can. Yummy! The canned salmon is good for only about two years storage.
I do have access to the fishing port near the farm for fresh seafood at the ‘wet market’ when we get moved next month. Most just caught. Some still alive in tanks. I’m looking forward to having fresh, inexpensive fish, crabs, clams, shrimp, etc. Not bad for a 3rd world life. ^_^
Davy on Sat, 13th Jan 2018 7:26 pm
“Davy, the corporate mentality is such that if the animals were grass and not grain fed they would still be pumped full of antibiotics and growth hormones. Growth in everything they do is their modus operandi.”
No doubt, sis but that was not my point. My point is strictly animals have a place in a more harmonious food system that is really a nutrient cycle. It is the best utilization of solar energy and natural resources next to a natural system like the buffalo on the Great Plains as an example. It can be a permaculture that is part of a polyculture not a monoculture. Significant parts of the world are not meant to be taken under the plow. Proper animal grazing can be done with low stocking rates and not destroy the land. The fact that man does not want to do this because of the profit motive is understandable. Everything is about profit today and it is not all greed it is also about survival. I know farmers around here that raise cattle in an industrial manner. They do not have much of a choice. This is really a systematic hijacking of all aspects of life by market based capitalism supported by liberal democracy. It is condoned as right and correct by society. This hijacking is more than just farming but farming has also been hijacked and in some ways it is the worst of the hijacking. What we are doing to animals today is subhuman. We do not deserve to be called rational.
Cloggie on Sat, 13th Jan 2018 9:59 pm
“Do you guys have salmon in the rivers of the Netherlands Cloggie?”
Nope, comes all from Norwegian fjords, artificial cultivation.
Canada is 250 times the size of the Netherlands and only twice the population. We have a lot of cows though… but not for me.
Regarding fish, hering is the Dutch specialty as well as the peculiar way to consume it:
https://goo.gl/images/ed95Ud
“Hollandse nieuwe” (“Dutch New”)
MASTERMIND on Sat, 13th Jan 2018 10:02 pm
I have you all beat. i live right next to lake michigan. we have some of the nicest fresh water salmon in the world! We just have to keep out that stinky nasty Asian Madkat carp! Thanks china!
Mad Kat on Sat, 13th Jan 2018 10:31 pm
MM, do you like your fish seasoned with sewage and mercury? Not to mention a few not on this list.
“• Since 2000, over 34 billion gallons of raw sewage have been dumped into Lake Michigan. (2013)
• Last year Cook County had 334 beach closings due to unsafe levels of pollution and bacteria.
• Over 50 beaches on Lake Michigan Tested positive for mercury, polychlorinated biphenyls (used in coolant fluid) and E. Coli in summer 2012.
https://environmentillinois.org/news/ile/lake-michigan-haunted-sewage-mercury
“BP is polluting Lake Michigan
BP, stop discharging toxic mercury into our water supply” (2013) It can only be worse now.
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-07-01/opinion/ct-edit-bp-20130701_1_indiana-regulators-mercury-refinery
Sorry, I’ll take Pacific Ocean fish anytime. They may not be pure, but they are definitely better. I’m not a fan of the sewage flavor of most American fresh water fish.
MASTERMIND on Sat, 13th Jan 2018 10:48 pm
Madkat
we have a multi million dollar fishing insdustry. the lake is gigantic. if it was so polluted we could sell fish out of it. and its where most of Michigan and other states get their drinking water from. If it was so dirty they wouldn’t use it for drinking water…West michigan where I live is beautiful.we have huge sand dunes you can take your SUV’S on and swim on the beach. And my state has over 10k inland lakes.
No sharks, no salt, no worries…-lake michigan motto
Mad Kat on Sat, 13th Jan 2018 10:58 pm
MM, you are very naive if you think they would not sell contaminated fish. Of course they will and do. Every day. All they can market. The EPA and the FDA are toothless and cannot/will not prevent it. They are bought off like any other government drone.
You live in a country run by the corporations and not by the elected government or the citizens. It is ALL about $$$ and nothing will prevent any profitable sale. There is all of the above contaminants in those fish you like. Just as there are antibiotics in the meat, traces of poisons in the veggies and fruits. They even admit to GMO tampering without any clue what the health costs are to you and other consumers in the future.
Try to prove that fish you ate last night made you sick. You better be a millionaire and have years to fight their army of lawyers. lol
MASTERMIND on Sat, 13th Jan 2018 11:18 pm
Madkat
GMO phobia? LOL GMO’S are perfectly safe…another tin foil hat conspricy!
___________________ on Sun, 14th Jan 2018 3:21 pm
Humans are meat and what meat likes to do is rot. So keep on rotting meat bags