Current Events > Would eating organ meat benefit the environment?

(+) Yeah! (+)

When my mother was growing up in lower class Liverpool, meat was much more expensive than it was today. As such, her family could only afford the organ meats, such as liver, kidneys and hearts (Mum would always go on about how much she loved Grandma's liver and onions). Now with factory farming more prevalent, muscle cuts are much cheaper and offal is far less popular, to the point that where I live the only way to purchase offal is through a specialty butcher. Now with complaints of how environmentally damaging the meat industry is, would it be beneficial for society to turn back the clock; where factory farming wasn't as big and meat cuts were much more expensive (and people would need to eat things like kidneys, liver and tripe instead)? Or is the only way to scrap the beef/ pork industry all together and eat soybeans and insects or something?

All that offal gets used to make other stuff. The meat industry is actually highly efficient, almost nothing goes to waste.

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I'm alf 'n alf. me dad's a muggle. mum's a witch. bit a shock for him when e found out
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Xavier_On_High posted...

All that offal gets used to make other stuff. The meat industry is actually highly efficient, almost nothing goes to waste.

It's less about the parts going to waste and more about just raising less beef, is what I'm getting at. Hence about going to the olden days when meat was much more expensive and most people could only afford offal. Or would that be unsustainable given the other things the beef industry produces like leather, soaps, cosmetics and pet food?

RaihotheXIV posted...

It's less about the parts going to waste and more about just raising less beef, is what I'm getting at. Hence about going to the olden days when meat was much more expensive and most people could only afford offal. Or would that be unsustainable given the other things the beef industry produces like leather, soaps, cosmetics and pet food?

I think about 70% of the edible mass of a cow goes to making human food, so yeah, there's another 30% up for grabs, but then you have to get meat for pet food from somewhere else.

I think people taking steps to reduce their meat consumption is the better solution. A lot of people eat meat every day, but nobody really needs to.

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I don't know but I'm not religious so I don't want to go meat shopping in a church... plus I don't think metal pipes taste very good...
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I think it gets ground up and put into hot dogs and bolonge and that sort of stuff, same thing with pork and spam etc.

ngl, I could go for some chicken hearts right about now. I've also always wanted to try Menudo.

Ivany2008 posted...

ngl, I could go for some chicken hearts right about now. I've also always wanted to try Menudo.

Its really good. I had a friend who made it homemade. Also pozole which isnt made with organs but is another Mexican soup is really good.

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Chicken livers are the fucking bomb. With apple, of course. Maybe some rice.

Ditto kidney, if its in a steak and kidney pie.

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Came in to preach about chicken hearts but Ivany already mentioned them. They're so good and quite cheap!

Anyway, as already been mentioned, if parts can be sold they're already sold. Companies would not throw away what can be used. However, such initiatives like this and "buy ugly fruit!" make little impact in the grand scheme of things. One major issue is methane produced by cows. The thing is that methane produced by cows can be greatly reduced through a change in diet, but farmers would rather feed them cheap corn and shit to maximize profits. It's a race to the bottom because changing the diet would slightly increase the price and they're afraid they'll be outcompeted by others who don't bother. We should have regulations on diet mix to reduce methane production.

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"food should be more expensive!"

That's what's happening here.