this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
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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
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
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
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
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aad401/pdf
Not enough land to meet demand even if 100% of grassland was used
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
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
(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
https://theconversation.com/livestock-grazing-is-preventing-the-return-of-rainforests-to-the-uk-and-ireland-198014