While the initial reasoning is respectable, veganism is t without it's flaws, several plants are not ethically sourced and either cause a lot of pollution, destroy habitats to be grown, or are grown via slavery, or a combo of all 3. The real issue is the systems that are in place across the food industry, plant and animal based.

[–] usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That being said, they still come out ahead in comparison to animal-based foods due to the fact that you need to grow massive amounts of feed crops to raise other creatures. It turns out that pretty much every environmental metric comes out ahead

Transitioning to plant-based diets (PBDs) has the potential to reduce diet-related land use by 76%, diet-related greenhouse gas emissions by 49%, eutrophication by 49%, and green and blue water use by 21% and 14%, respectively, whilst garnering substantial health co-benefits

[...]

Plant-based foods have a significantly smaller footprint on the environment than animal-based foods. Even the least sustainable vegetables and cereals cause less environmental harm than the lowest impact meat and dairy products [9].

https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/8/1614/htm

In terms of workers, the meat industry is arguably worse on that front. It's one of the most dangerous industries anywhere for workers

US meat workers are already three times more likely to suffer serious injury than the average American worker, and pork and beef workers nearly seven times more likely to suffer repetitive strain injuries

[...]

Amputations happen on average twice a week, according to the data

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/05/amputations-serious-injuries-us-meat-industry-plant

And there's great risk of PTSD from the workers that you don't see for harvesting crops

There is evidence that slaughterhouse employment is associated with lower levels of psychological well-being. SHWs [slaughterhouse workers] have described suffering from trauma, intense shock, paranoia, anxiety, guilt and shame (Victor & Barnard, 2016), and stress (Kristensen, 1991). There was evidence of higher rates of depression (Emhan et al., 2012; Horton & Lipscomb, 2011; Hutz et al., 2013; Lander et al., 2016; Lipscomb et al., 2007), anxiety (Emhan et al., 2012; Hutz et al., 2013; Leibler et al., 2017), psychosis (Emhan et al., 2012), and feelings of lower self-worth at work (Baran et al., 2016). Of particular note was that the symptomatology appeared to vary by job role. Employees working directly with the animals (e.g., on the kill floor or handling the carcasses) were those who showed the highest prevalence rates of aggression, anxiety, and depression (Hutz et al., 2013; Richards et al., 2013). https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/15248380211030243

[+] Tak@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Grass-fed doesn't really scale and entails a number of other environmental issues from higher methane to higher deforestation. Even for Ireland in particular, it's got quite a number of issues

Increased methane emissions

Grass-fed production requires longer growing times leading to more lifetime methane emissions overall. It also requires more cattle overall due to lower slaughter weight

Taken together, an exclusively grass-fed beef cattle herd would raise the United States’ total methane emissions by approximately 8%.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aad401/pdf

Not enough land to meet demand even if 100% of grassland was used

We model a nationwide transition [in the US] from grain- to grass-finishing systems using demographics of present-day beef cattle. In order to produce the same quantity of beef as the present-day system, we find that a nationwide shift to exclusively grass-fed beef would require increasing the national cattle herd from 77 to 100 million cattle, an increase of 30%. We also find that the current pastureland grass resource can support only 27% of the current beef supply (27 million cattle), an amount 30% smaller than prior estimates

[…]

If beef consumption is not reduced and is instead satisfied by greater imports of grass-fed beef, a switch to purely grass-fed systems would likely result in higher environmental costs, including higher overall methane emissions. Thus, only reductions in beef consumption can guarantee reductions in the environmental impact of US food systems.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aad401

Problems in countries that have tried to scale it up

New Zealand has tried to scale up it's grass-fed production and often touts it. To do so, they end up using heavy amounts of fertilizer in their production so much so that some regions need a 12-fold reduction in their dairy industry size just to have their water meet safety thresholds

The large footprint for milk in Canterbury indicates just how far the capacity of the environment has been overshot. To maintain that level of production and have healthy water would require either 12 times more rainfall in the region or a 12-fold reduction in cows. [...] The “grass-fed” marketing line overlooks the huge amounts of fossil-fuel-derived fertiliser used to make the extra grass that supports New Zealand’s very high animal stock rates.

https://theconversation.com/11-000-litres-of-water-to-make-one-litre-of-milk-new-questions-about-the-freshwater-impact-of-nz-dairy-farming-183806

Keep in mind that this is the case with New Zealand still using plenty of feed because their definition of grass-fed still allows for plenty of supplemental grain. A fully grass-fed system would fair even worse in that regard

The national dairy industry [in New Zealand] is consistently the country’s largest consumer of grain and feed at approximately 75 percent (Figure 4). The majority of dairy farms are on non-irrigated pasture-based systems (75 to 80 percent), where up to 25 percent of the annual diet could consist of supplemental feeding. With the recently high dairy prices experienced of over NZ$9.30 (US$6.05) in the last two years (Appendix 2), farmers have looked to maximize milk yields by utilizing more “purchased” feed for conversion to milk solids

(emphasis mine)

https://apps.fas.usda.gov/newgainapi/api/Report/DownloadReportByFileName?fileName=New%20Zealand%20Grain%20and%20Feed%20Market%20Situation_Wellington_New%20Zealand_NZ2023-0003.pdf

Problems with grass-fed production in Ireland

In the UK and Ireland, the land that grass-fed cows are on is primarily actually not natural grass-land - its natural state is temperate rainforest

Most of the UK and Ireland’s grass-fed cows and sheep are on land that might otherwise be temperate rainforest – arable crops tend to prefer drier conditions. However, even if there were no livestock grazing in the rainforest zone – and these areas were threatened by other crops instead – livestock would still pose an indirect threat due to their huge land footprint [...] Furthermore, most British grass-fed cows are still fed crops on top of their staple grass

https://theconversation.com/livestock-grazing-is-preventing-the-return-of-rainforests-to-the-uk-and-ireland-198014

[–] Stovetop@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Almonds are a big one that I know of. The vast majority of the world's almonds are grown in California, a state that has been facing severe drought for years now (though maybe not so much this year), but somehow still finds hundreds of billions of gallons of water yearly to keep almond farms irrigated.

And eating almonds is one thing, but processing them into milk is an order of magnitude more wasteful. It takes about 400 almonds to make a half gallon of almond milk, and each one of those almonds requires a gallon of water to produce. So that's 400 gallons of water spent to produce a half gallon of almond milk. A single almond tree can make about 30 gallons of almond milk per harvest, so we're looking at 24,000 gallons of water consumed per tree, which yields a full shelf of Almond Breeze at a single grocery store.

And as farms keep expanding and conditions become drier and drier over time, it's going to destroy the ecosystems of the state. And all so that people can have a decent milk alternative to have with their morning coffee and cereal.

[–] usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The majority of California's water usage is going to beef and dairy. They are large producers of animal feed which are heavy water users. Per liter, dairy milk requires 628.2 L of freshwater vs almond milk requiring 371.46 L of freshwater. And if you use something like oat milk instead that gets you to 48.24 L

https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impact-milks

One graph even has California's animal feed water usage so large it actually goes off the chart at 15.2 million acre-feet of water (it is distorted to make it fit as it notes). For some comparison, the blue water usage of animal feed is larger than all of almonds water usage of ~2 million acre-feet of water

https://pacinst.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ca_ftprint_full_report3.pdf#page=25

This is true across the American West as a whole

Correspondingly, our hydrologic modelling reveals that cattle-feed irrigation is the leading driver of flow depletion in one-third of all western US sub-watersheds; cattle- feed irrigation accounts for an average of 75% of all consumptive use in these 369 sub-watersheds. During drought years (that is, the driest 10% of years), more than one-quarter of all rivers in the western US are depleted by more than 75% during summer months (Fig. 2 and Supplementary Fig. 2) and cattle-feed irrigation is the largest water use in more than half of these heavily depleted rivers

https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1064&context=wffdocs

[–] Stovetop@lemmy.ml -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't think anyone is arguing that, particularly when looking at how much devastation is done to the Amazon Rainforest all for the sake of livestock.

Just pointing out an example of how even food items that are vegan may also have a significant negative impact upon the environment (and as mentioned above, some also impact the rights of workers) that folks should take into consideration when deciding upon food choices. Even if something is technically vegan, it does not necessarily mean it is sustainable or ethical.

Personally, I prefer oat milk or rice milk over almond milk because those options have a significantly smaller footprint. If protecting the environment is a priority for someone who made the decision to be vegan, they might want to consider cutting out almonds (or at least almond milk), too.

[–] usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

I don’t think anyone is arguing that

There have been multiple people claiming the opposite on this very post. That is why I interpreted the original comment that way. The impression I see many people have is that almonds are the driver of water usage of the colorado river and they miss that dairy and beef are responsible for >50% alone

Are almonds great, no, but are they worse than dairy milk in terms of water usage as many people think, also no the opposite is true.