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 Post subject: Re: Some Evil Stuff
PostPosted: Thu Mar 21, 2013 6:03 pm 
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Joined: Fri Sep 11, 2009 9:09 pm
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Location: Portland, Oregano
Crosscheck wrote:
I totally agree on the ground beef and avoiding *most fast food places (In-N-Out grinds their own beef every day and it's never frozen). Hell, I grind my own at home...nothing like a nice medium rare burger. I'd never order that from a restaurant.
I don't think the cost argument is a fallacy (specifically when talking about beef). Cattle take up a lot of land and land is expensive. Using more traditional methods to move and control a large population of cattle is expensive and labor intensive (as opposed to having them all jammed into pens). The industrial producers also get more lean meat per head from the feed and methods used.
So I don't see how you can argue it wouldn't be more expensive.

Now chicken on the other hand I think could be raised more humanely without much of a cost increase...they just need time outside and a little more space.

Hidden costs. They are there. Some you can observe now, like that smell of cattle country in California (I went there when I was 12 and I still remember it). Others we don't see offhand, but they are there. Think of what our cattle farming does to the land and water table. And you know humans working in these places probably don't have the greatest company morale. It must be just incredibly depressing and desensitizing to work in a slaughterhouse. And that leads to consequences that cost society like substance abuse and poor health, as well as emotional problems.

Not trying to argue that a different and better meat industry wouldn't cost more. But there is more of a cost to saving money. Just like with outsourcing. Companies in the long run are shooting themselves in the foot if they don't want to pay Americans, or anyone else, decent wages. Like it or not, most of those companies who outsource still need the American consumer to have buying power for their businesses to work. So eventually if they keep moving to places with cheap labor, there won't be enough Americans making enough money to buy their products and keep their businesses going.

Things that weaken the working class are quite a bit like things that harm the environment IMO in that ultimately they can't be long term solutions, people are just too greedy and short-sighted to see that.


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Crosscheck
 Post subject: Re: Some Evil Stuff
PostPosted: Fri Mar 22, 2013 11:17 am 
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Location: 2,568 miles from the F'n arena
I don't totally disagree with you. I was just speaking in terms of dollar cost alone, not human or environmental costs.
I guess the way I see it is we're a victim of our own success. The industrialization of our food chain and all the efficiencies that came along with that brought us to this place. For those efficiencies, we have some of the lowest food costs (as a ratio of per capita income) than anywhere on the planet. And because of those low costs we're also some of the fattest bastards anywhere on the planet.

I think a portion of our population is slowly coming around to the realization that small producers and locally produced food is worth the premium for health reasons, so at least that market is growing, and that's a good thing.
That said...McDonalds and their billions of burgers aren't going anywhere.

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