Summary
A new H5N1 bird flu variant has become “endemic in cows,” with cases detected in Nevada and Arizona, raising concerns about human transmission.
Experts warn that without intervention, the outbreak will continue, but Trump has cut CDC staff and halted flu vaccination campaigns.
The virus’s spread coincides with a severe flu season, increasing the risk of mutation.
The administration has also stopped sharing flu data with the WHO and shifted its containment strategy away from culling infected poultry, raising fears of inadequate response.
I try to buy local fruit and veg only. Fun fact: if we all went vegan, we could free up 70-80% of the land currently being used for animal ag. We could rewild that land and still have excess food. We currently grow enough plants to feed 15B people, but we feed that to the animals instead.
a lot of the plant matter fed to animals is parts of plants we can’t or won’t eat.
and a lot of the land used isn’t crop land, but grazing land
and they’re is no reason to believe the land would ever be rewilded.
It’s mostly corn.
Granted, it’s not processed in a way to be fit for human consumption.
But still, most of it is corn. Some of it is corn cobs and stalks but most of it is kernels.
Outside of that, other grains are very common. Oats for example.
So, they are right. Raising plants to feed animals so we can eat the animals is less efficient than raising plants for us to eat. Especially in regards to cattle. Which is one of the most inefficient things in the US food system. The only reason it’s so cheap is because of subsidation, both of the cattle and the corn that’s grown to feed them.
And countries much larger than our own survive on rice and beans just fine. As queerminest eluded to in her comment.
As far as local food, I have a co-op. So I buy local vegetables and fruits when I can.
if that were the situation, you might be right. but since we actually feed livestock mostly crop seconds and byproducts, it’s actually a conservation of resources in a lot of situations, with minimal competition with human food sources
beef cattle spend most of their life grazing.
it’s not mostly kernels. livestock are fed the entire plant, and the kernels are a slim minority of the weight.
Weight matters not even a little compared to the caloric content. If cows got more calories out of corn stalks than corn kernels, then they wouldn’t even finish growing the corn and would just feed them stalks. The fact you have to grow a corn stalk that weighs hundreds of times more than the kernels doesn’t mean the kernels aren’t what the farmers are after for livestock feed purposes. The stalk just gets tossed in for efficiency’s sake because the cows can also digest it.
you literally don’t know anything about feeding cows. just stop.
I don’t think so. they may get more calories from silage, but they prefer the kernels, which would help the feed go down easier.
You’re accusing me of not knowing how cows are fed when you’re inventing a world where farmers spend extra time growing crops to make it taste nicer to cows. Be real.
one of us is right.
Even just replacing 25-50% meat with plants in the US would have incredible outcomes for the people. I guarantee we would be a far healthier population. The cheap meat being served up to Americans is not good.
Maybe this is bias from 20ish years of not eating meat, but most of the time it just smells foul to me, like an overly sour smell that only goes away if you spice the fuck out of it. Beef and chicken are the main offenders for this for me.
My point is, you try to… I try to also, but in the dead of winter there’s no a local fruit and veggies. I’m also not vegan/vegetarian, I eat meat. Fish, and chicken primarily but I don’t raise either, so I have to rely on someone else to do that for me.
We do actually get probably half our eggs from someone at my wife’s work, and some. fruits and vegetables at the farmers market down the street in the summer. But they’re closed now and have been most of winter.
It’s harder than just saying “just stop” was my point. I’d love to be part of the solution where I can but there’s zero chance of me not eating meat if it’s available.