"The Right’s ‘Natural’ Meat Obsession Is a Regressive Fantasy" by @sentientmedia

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Another component for Kennedy of what constitutes “natural” is taking on things like red food dye, seed oils and ultra-processed foods — while promoting tallow, raw milk and grass-fed beef.
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https://sentientmedia.org/mahas-natural-foods-obsession/

Vegans often are faced with fallacious arguments, and one of the most common is the Naturalistic fallacy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy

However, this is often a bad faith disguise. The use of naturalistic fallacies in these contexts, such as the claim that consuming animals is "good" because it's natural, is a disguise for another more insidious fallacy: the traditionalist fallacy or "appeal to tradition".

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_tradition

The traditionalist fallacy is, in this context, the argument that "consuming animals is good because we've done it for thousands of years".

Traditionalism is heavily political, as the people are finding out again in places such as the US. It's sometimes known as "paleoconservatism", and it should be no surprise that the popularity of the "paleo diet" culturally connects to this.

Conservatives, ever since the rise of modernity (end of 'traditional' society, end of monarchism and feudalism) have been trying to reinvent the past through pseudointellectual and pseudoscientific efforts. This has been at the heart of incredible amounts of suffering and horror since then. I have some notes on that on my pinned thread: https://veganism.social/deck/@veganpizza69/110813538364525265

Bullshit & snake oil are not vegan.

#MAHA #meat #grassFed #animalIndustry #CAFO #intensivization #extensivization #sustainability #fascism #ecofascism #conservatism #traditionalism #paleoconservatism #paleo #paleodiet #traditions #tradwife #pseudoscience #scam #antivaccine #antivaxx #grifters #sustainability #snakeoil

"Brazil's rapid expansion of soy production has meant an associated rise in pesticide use. Researchers found a statistically significant correlation between soy expansion and acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) deaths in children between 2008 and 2019, representing the first population-wide analysis of the association between indirect exposure to agricultural pesticides and cancer. "

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/10/231030194537.htm

<💬>"The Brazilian Amazon region is undergoing a transition from low-input cattle production to intensified soy culture with high use of pesticides and herbicides. The expansion has happened really quickly, and it appears educational efforts and training for pesticide applicators didn't match the growth in pesticide use. When not used properly, there are health implications," said Marin Skidmore, assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, part of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) at U. of I. Skidmore is lead author on the paper, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

"As this transition was happening, there were documented cases of pesticide poisoning of agricultural workers and evidence of chemicals in the blood and urine samples of non-agricultural workers in the surrounding communities," Skidmore said. "This indicates that this rollout had happened in a potentially dangerous way that was leaving people exposed."
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Of course, the 🤠🤡 will insist that this soy is magically disappearing into tofu and it's not animal feed.

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"We want to highlight that when changes happen fast, there are risks associated with that, and this is not isolated to Brazil. There is a lot of focus on agricultural intensification for global food security around the world. We need to find a balance where we get the productive benefits while mitigating any potential risks. When there is rapid rollout of these technologies in a new region, often an underdeveloped or poor region, how do we ensure there are guardrails in place to prevent another case like this?"
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Notice how this embeds the premise of "more meat = more food security", despite the opposite being closer to the truth, as these settlers are destroying food security for locals, especially Amazonian tribes.

#Amazon #MeatIndustry #animalFeed #feed #pesticides #cancer #soy #soybean #settlerColonialism #settlers #intensivization

"The infectious disease trap of animal agriculture"

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Conservation policies should be culturally sensitive, rigorously enforced, and have long-term community buy-in. However, a well-crafted conservation policy is still insufficient to spare land from agricultural pressures; additional land for rising populations and diets richer in animal-sourced foods must come at the expense of clearing native habitats somewhere.
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The largest increases in meat demand and production are occurring in developing, tropical regions. Meat consumption exceeds the dietary requirements in high-income countries and among increasingly urban and middle-class populations of most middle-income countries. As demand rises along with affluence in the coming decades in LMICs and high-income countries continue to sustain high levels of consumption and exports, additional land clearing and GHG emissions will occur even with ambitious levels of intensification.
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To meaningfully flatten the rising curve of animal-sourced foods, demand-side interventions should be implemented, tested, and scaled ambitiously. Even gentle changes to dining options and presentation can create large effects (64). Effective interventions range from these subtle “nudges” to more blatant rewards and incentives, as well as stringent regulations and restrictions. This spectrum has been described using the Nuffield intervention ladder, with lower rungs of “soft” methods or “carrots” (e.g., guidance, suggestions, education, and nudging) to higher rungs of increasingly forceful “hard” interventions or “sticks” at the top (e.g., taxes and bans).
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#conservation #climate #biodiversity #deforestation #zoonosis #zoonoses #animalfarming #pastoralism #herding #ranching #intensivization #extensivization #grazing #pandemic #CAFO

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.add6681