People are used to seeing stark warnings on tobacco products alerting them about the potentially deadly risks to health. Now a study suggests similar labelling on food could help them make wiser choices about not just their health, but the health of the planet.
The research, by academics at Durham University, found that warning labels including a graphic image – similar to those warning of impotence, heart disease or lung cancer on cigarette packets – could reduce selections of meals containing meat by 7-10%.
It is a change that could have a material impact on the future of the planet. According to a recent YouGov poll, 72% of the UK population classify themselves as meat-eaters. But the Climate Change Committee (CCC), which advises the government on its net zero goals, has said the UK needs to slash its meat consumption by 20% by 2030, and 50% by 2050, in order to meet them.
Please focus on curbing your own satisfaction, so the oil industry can continue to be the biggest polluter AND make money hand over fist.
The Guardian is very much a neoliberal newspaper (some people confuse it with being Leftwing because, like most neolibs, they’re also liberal on moral subjects) so it is usually against regulatory solutions and heavilly favours using Nudge Theory to influence the masses.
So yeah, you’ll see a lot of articles about how people should become Vegetarian because of the emissions from livestock farming and very few demanding, for example, regulation of aircraft emissions (though there is a single Opinion writter there which does not suffer from profitability-prioritizing-thinking when it comes to ecological subjects).
The oil industry is, of course, doing all that polluting for the sheer fun of it. Our collective consumption habits, esp. in the PRIVILEGED western countries, have absolutely nothing to do with it.
There is no sustainable way to eat the amount of meat we do, no matter how much or how little capitalism gets involved. Even assuming the absolute best (aka unrealistic) stats for grass-fed cows, we’d still have to reduce our meat consumption to 1/7 of where it currently is. Do you think that is doable just by destroying some companies? Do you think people would just accept that???
Ban lobbying and see how fast the whole justification falls apart. There’s a reason why west is so car dependent and there’s no public transport in sight.
Since around 2018 we have known that agriculture, specifically the raising of cattle, spews out more harmful emissions than the oil industry does.
No, it does not:
😂 mind adding a source for that?
“My source is I made it the fuck up!”
The voices in my head
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Any study that also includes indirect greenhouse gas emissions such as methane, and not just CO2.
Methane is greehhouse gas which is included in the original link. But even if you ignore that section, there’s literally methane only section.
The same methane that can be greatly cut down just by changing the diet of the cows? That methane?
Except they don’t. They keep pumping out agricultural funded studies that say “a crumb of seaweed solves climate change!” but we’re always soon™.
Lol they never make the janitor sign an NDA. It works, figuring out how to lock down the patent is what’s keeping it from market.
Greed, just greed.
There are NO emissions from cattle at all! Cattle eat grass, then fart, then “emissions” precipitate and new grass grows up. It’s a closed loop. And since it’s a closed loop, there are zero emissions. Emissions only happen when you dig up oil, burn it and it and your smoke doesn’t get converted back to oil.
Thanks for giving me the dumbest shit I’ve heard today.
Lolwut?
It doesn’t.
Why not both?
lol but not on gas? Plastic?
Waste of money and time.
Not really. The meat industry makes INSANE amounts of GHG emissions. Whataboutism surely won’t solve climate change.
Calling something whataboutism won’t either. That’s just lazy and dismissive.
The CONSUMER is not going to make a difference. The change needs to happen on an industry scale.
Cattle don’t produce any emissions.
How so? Cow farts? The grass is going to emit the same gasses whether it decomposes in a cow stomach or in the dirt. I guess the solution to carbon emissions is to pave the earth! No more organics polluting everything.
Not necessarily cow farts, but manure, fertilizer, and landscaping.
Methane comes primarily from livestock digestion (known as enteric fermentation) and the way livestock manure is managed. It contributes the most to agricultural emissions of greenhouse gases.
The second largest contributor is nitrous oxide, which results mostly from agricultural fertilizer application to soils and from manure management.
Carbon dioxide emissions come from increased decomposition of plant matter in soils and from converting lands to agricultural uses. Those emissions are partially offset by the increased plant matter stored in cropland soils.
You’re not wrong about the same gasses being created by decomposing grass and digested grass, but like most things, it’s a multifaceted issue.
As they say, you can’t get snakes from chicken eggs.
Good answer
Probably one of the best rebuttals I’ve ever read.
Truth be told the nugget about the same gasses being released from digestion and decomposition was news to me, so thank you for that. My knee-jerk reaction was to refute it but I realized that I truly didn’t know for sure. So I checked, lo and behold, I was wrong, and now I’ve learned something today.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
you can’t get snakes from chicken eggs.
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Most cows eat soy which is produced on former rainforest grounds.
Additionally, we are better off eating/using what is produced on farmlands directly instead of feeding it to animals. That is much more energy efficient!
we are better off eating/using what is produced on farmlands directly
we do. what we feed to animals is mostly the parts of plants that people can’t or won’t eat.
That’s just not true lmao. 90% of soy production is for animals. Not humans.
85% of all soy is put into an oil press. the byproduct of oil production is called soycake or soy meal.
that makes up the vast majority of the soy that is fed to animals.
So… What i said? Lmao what trap card. Your source doesn’t say anything about “soy humans can’t eat”. It’s just normal ass soy pushed into soy cakes.
lmao
soy is my favorite example
you’ve activated my trap card
No cows in UK eat soy.
Also idk about you, but I can’t eat grass
cattle hardly eat any soy at all
Most importantly cement. Believe it or not it’s a huge chunk of pollution and requires a lot of energy to produce. Even funnier is the fact we do have eco-friendly cements but they are not being used because they are a bit more expensive and no demand.
Absolutely. Lots of places have building codes, this should be one of them. When the demand goes up, the price goes down. Don’t even get me started on car tires.
This seems like rather an optimistic headline, seeing as the article also says that the results from the study were “not statistically signifiant”.
Considering how meat is in most things, you’d think that it would just oversaturate people with warnings, and they would just end up ignoring it. Similar to how people more or less ignore California’s Proposition 65 in the USA, because it’s so broad, and the thresholds are so low that basically everything has a label saying “This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer”. Anything significant gets lost in the noise.
Why dont we do this also every time someone buys a car?
Every car is the same shape and only comes in one shade of brown. They are required to have large, graphic advertisements across the sides warning about the environmental impact.
I actually think that would be very effective. It would also make every city very depressing to live in. However, we could mitigate that by populating the streets with colorful plants and art.
From a health perspective, absolutely.
From a climate perspective? Just tax carbon and give the proceeds back as UBI.
To the extent that health warnings work, it’s because it affects the consumer directly. A climate warning is saying “this burger is going to make life slightly worse for someone halfway around the world.”
It may change consumption slightly but also risks a blowback of denial. People don’t like feeling guilty and are perfectly capable of sticking their head in the sand so they can enjoy a steak.
Ughhhh UBI is flawed because it makes government spending astronomical even with a carbon tax. A Means Tested Basic Income works better than UBI because it prioritizes those who need help the most (e.g. those who are impoverished rather than everyone). I’m not an econ expert but the topic from the National Speech and Debate Association is on fiscal redistribution so I’ve been studying it a bit. I feel really pretentious saying this but UBI doesn’t work as well as Means Testing does.
I think this is a case where worse is better. For the sake of argument I am willing to assume that means-tested basic income creates better outcomes than UBI, but UBI sidesteps things like perverse incentives (“I can’t afford to work because I’ll lose benefits”), administrative overhead, and incentivizes support because it’s basically bribing everyone.
Means-tested will be fought because “why should my carbon tax pay for lazy/those people to not work?” UBI is about compensating everyone for the harm that is being done to the climate.
I can’t breath carbon tax credits.
They are also a colossal sham.
You can’t consume your way out of climate change.
Carbon tax credits are not a carbon tax. Carbon tax is adding a tax to pollution. Gas for cars, methane (“natural gas” ugh) for homes, coal for power plants, etc. all get taxed. Keep raising the tax until we hit neutrality.
It’s a market-based solution so the right wingers will love it, just like they loved Obamacare. /s
But you can breath warning labels?
Yeah it’s going to stop people from eating what ever shit that’s available for the cheapest price to continue living. I’m pretty sure this is just another bullshit study to talk about how people should eat healthy while they don’t have budget or means to…
Edit: It seems many of you missed the meaning of what I’m talking about! Poor people who eat fast food, chicken or whatever processed meat products available for cheap not going to give a fuck about what their meat is labeled. Meat just doesn’t mean the steak people buy from the market! If this is so hard for you imbeciles to understand without getting triggered because someone said something you don’t understand than there is no need for further discussion. Processed meat consumption (including all kinds of meat beef, lamb, pork, chicken even fish) is the cheapest protein source for poor people. This study is disregarding how poor people do their food shopping. Until so called I can’t believe it’s meat type of vegetarian alternatives come to the point of real meat poor people going to continue to eat meat. And all you butt hurt so called activist can’t even see the difference because you have your head up so high up your high horses to realize what the fuck is normal people going through. Now kindly please go fuck yourselves and don’t comment any more unless you have an actual and feasible solution.
have you seen the prices of beans and rice?? i save a lotta money by not eating meat. even with the outrageous subsidies poured into meat it can still hardly compare.
Right? The price of animal products has SKYROCKETED lately. I save so much money by literally eating anything else.
meat simply has better protein options
what kinda high protein low fat and carb options are there for veggie folk?
id like to substitute chicken breast occasionally. i looked into tofu but its super fatty for pretty mid protein. beans high carb mid protein. lowfat plain greek yogurt and cottage cheese are NICE protein but taste like literal dogshit though its so close to being worth trying to stomach.
im on the search for more macro friendly foods that don’t taste like sour liquid chalk
Meat is cheap because of govt subsidies. And lab grown meat will soon be able to undercut slaughtered meat in price without those subsidies, so the whole “let poor people eat what they can afford” argument will switch sides in the coming years without new protectionist governmental policies.
How soon? Last I heard, they had insurmountable scaling issues.
Problems are always insurmountable until they aren’t. Scaling is one of the last challenges businesses face when bringing new products to market. I don’t have any inside information, but investment is still trending up and companies aren’t throwing in the towel, so they still think they will be able to solve it. Once they do, the industry will change incredibly fast, especially with a market estimated at close to $100b per year.
I’m watching with great interest.
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No it won’t
This is a salty comments section. Can’t even tell who’s salty or why, but they definitely are.
You should salt, generally season, your board, not the steak. Unless you actually brine/marinate the thing.
Ah, so that’s why this message board is so salty
Thankfully due to the stagflation I’m doing some austerity efforts regarding my grocery procurement. This has resulted in my diet having consisted of the majority of vegetables with some eggs here and there.
Weird, vegetables are more expensive than meat.
You must have been getting ripped off.
Who says I’m living in US?
YOU WILL EAT THE BUGS
…or plants.
No
I ate fried grasshoppers once and it was seriously good. The buggers tasted like shrimps.
🫘🫛
The cigarette warnings don’t do anything though. The shock images were scary to me as a child but by the time I was 18 I was so used to it that it was like I couldn’t see them anymore.
I was thinking this. There was an accompanying cultural shift in general. The labels weren’t telling them anything they didn’t already know. In the case of smoking, the data was unambiguous and directly impactful.
With meat, I’d suspect most of the target audience would roll their eyes and buy anyway. Especially since the labels would be on almost every package, and that asks folks to decide that every single food they’ve eaten their entire lives is a dire existential threat to humanity. That’s asking a lot of folks. While it’s occasionally tossed about in the media about meat having climate impact, it is nowhere near as ubiquitous as the smoking is bad. Besides, folks have been told again and again that fossil fuels are “the” problem, and that sounds nicer and easier and thus for most people there is an inclination to decide that is sufficient.
I hate this idea. My appetite can be ruined by stuff like this, and that would suck to throw away food since I can’t eat it
You probably wouldn’t buy it, which is the point.
I remember when these were introduced on cigarette packs. For a while there was a trend of “collecting all the pics”, while other found a nice business in selling “cigarette pack holder” that would just mask the pictures. I’m not sure any of that was the initial goal.
I wonder how applying this to food would turn out, seeing that a fair share of people are well informed of the effect we have on the climate already but simply don’t care.
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A hundred and twenty years from now: “officials announce plans to label beetle burgers for their high calorie counts in hopes that consumers begin to gravitate toward the more abundant and cheaper mosquito burgers”
“Vegan advocacy groups continue to lament the abuse of the beetle population. ‘Beetle lives matter’ says Sue Johnson of the group, while holding her designer luxury leather handbag”.
