It really depends on what you want to maximize in your life, health and environment. Not everyone will agree, but here are some things to chew on.
* Animal products require an inordinate amount of water to produce compared to plant-based products.
* Animal breeding and grazing at scale creates a bunch of environmental issues.
- Methane production
- Dust bowl effect due to over-grazing
- Manure runoff and associated effects
- Crazy abuse and proliferation of antibiotics and the resulting antibiotic resistant bacteria
* Ocean dredging for seafood is horribly destructive to marine environments.
* Fish, due to other human-origin environmental issues, are loaded with methyl-mercury and arsenic. This trend is only getting worse.
* Animals have brains and the associated emotion, pain and fear responses to trauma.
* Outside of chickens, most animals we like to eat are higher order mammals that are arguably more susceptible to the kinds of pain and distress we feel ourselves.
* Animal rights standards for slaughterhouses, especially in the US, are abysmal.
* Food and food handling standards for meat, especially in the US, are abysmal.
* Meat production creates a lot of secondary waste products that wouldn't be market competitive if they weren't subsidized by super-high meat production. Used as fillers in all kinds of things from pet food to cosmetics.
- eg. Animal tallow, gelatin, organ meat, animal bone-meal
- some of these are inherently useful, but as meat consumption rises to meet demand, so do these byproducts' supply and they show up all over as they now compete with vegetable based options.
* Risks of parasites, improper cooking, spoilage, etc.
* Nutritional benefits exist, but there are nutritional issues with red meat, organ meat and associated fats as well.
* A lot of food "certifications" are industry-managed and opaque to consumers, pushing a lot of negative externalities under the rug and making these things worse, not better.
- "Grass-fed" is a "best-effort" thing and most companies that claim this are still only seasonally feeding their animals grass while also supplementing with diets molasses.
- Free-range, prairie raised, farm-fresh, cage-free... What this means depends largely on who you ask.
- etc. etc.
There are more bullets I'm sure too, I'll stop listing though. Hope this helps.
Just given the above, animal foods aren't required for adequate human sustenance and yet there are a lot of issues with them.
There are of course nutritional benefits to consuming meat and negative externalities from modern agricultural practices, but I think animal production has high costs for its benefits.
It doesn't have to be an all or nothing either. Everyone reducing their meat consumption by a little has an outsized impact compared to some zealots doing so. No one benefits if we treat this as some kind of morality food fight or religious crusade.
* Animal products require an inordinate amount of water to produce compared to plant-based products.
* Animal breeding and grazing at scale creates a bunch of environmental issues.
* Ocean dredging for seafood is horribly destructive to marine environments.* Fish, due to other human-origin environmental issues, are loaded with methyl-mercury and arsenic. This trend is only getting worse.
* Animals have brains and the associated emotion, pain and fear responses to trauma.
* Outside of chickens, most animals we like to eat are higher order mammals that are arguably more susceptible to the kinds of pain and distress we feel ourselves.
* Animal rights standards for slaughterhouses, especially in the US, are abysmal.
* Food and food handling standards for meat, especially in the US, are abysmal.
* Meat production creates a lot of secondary waste products that wouldn't be market competitive if they weren't subsidized by super-high meat production. Used as fillers in all kinds of things from pet food to cosmetics.
* Risks of parasites, improper cooking, spoilage, etc.* Nutritional benefits exist, but there are nutritional issues with red meat, organ meat and associated fats as well.
* A lot of food "certifications" are industry-managed and opaque to consumers, pushing a lot of negative externalities under the rug and making these things worse, not better.
There are more bullets I'm sure too, I'll stop listing though. Hope this helps.Just given the above, animal foods aren't required for adequate human sustenance and yet there are a lot of issues with them.
There are of course nutritional benefits to consuming meat and negative externalities from modern agricultural practices, but I think animal production has high costs for its benefits.
It doesn't have to be an all or nothing either. Everyone reducing their meat consumption by a little has an outsized impact compared to some zealots doing so. No one benefits if we treat this as some kind of morality food fight or religious crusade.