Meat! The ‘stiff’ pleasure of passive predation. Your ‘prime-cut’ tastes ‘offal’ to Gaia. Buynott
Let me disclose upfront that I still eat meat occasionally and that the purpose of this diary is not to focus on ethics or morality. While not ignoring them alltogether, my main thrust is to provide a reminder that our carnivore desires have run ahead of caution, becoming a major factor impacting our survival.
~~~
Quite a while back a close friend who’s vegan, began pushing me to
write about the environmental destruction caused by the meat industry and our appetite for flesh — the two colluding to feed primitive tendencies, which taking advantage of convenience encourage overconsumption.
I’ve been personally aware of the magnitude of direct and collateral damage caused by this ‘civilized’ carnage for a long time, but through a combination of interceding priorities and absentmindedness, have been remiss in following up.
It seems that in this I am not alone, for recently a fellow member of “Friends of Gaia”, ‘elenacarlena’, sent me this link to an article which points to the fact that as in most ‘issues’ these days, the MSM continues to fulfill the ‘fiduciary duties’ desired by their ‘wealth wardens’:
Meat is a leading emissions source – but few outlets report on it, analysis finds:
“Sentient Media reveals less than 4% of climate news stories mention animal agriculture as source of carbon emissions
“When you eat a burger, you’re not just eating a cow,” Grunwald said. “You’re eating macaws and jaguars and the rest of the cast of Rio. You’re eating the Amazon. You’re eating the earth.”
~~~
To get some level of perspective on just what we’re talking about here I asked ChatGPT
“Overall, what percentage of environmental degradation is caused by the meat industry?”
…and this was their answer (when I asked Google I got more or less the same statistics) :
Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHGs)
“The livestock (meat + dairy) sector is often credited with about 14-18% of global anthropogenic GHG emissions.”
“Rough Estimate of “Overall” Environmental Degradation from Meat Industry
“If you combine all major environmental impacts (GHGs + land use + water + biodiversity + deforestation etc.), meat and livestock probably account for something like 15-20% of global human‐driven environmental degradation, if by that we mainly mean climate change (GHGs) and land/land‐use change together.”
However, the Guardian article opens with this statement:
“Food and agriculture contribute one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions – second only to the burning of fossil fuels.”
… and then follows up with these sobering facts: “Meat production alone is responsible for nearly 60% of the food sector’s climate emissions and yet its impact is sorely underestimated: a 2023 Washington Post/University of Maryland poll found 74% of US respondents believe eating less meat has little to no effect on the climate crisis.”
A goodly portion of these emissions are due to the extraordinary amount of methane released by flatulent livestock, fed diets engineered not for the benefit of overall health, but rather to expedite their arrival at the table.
The historic singling out and wholesale propagation of domesticated animals for preferential prioritization over other wild species, has been a major factor in both biosphere and biodiversity degradation. Deforestation globally, has stepped up pace in the last two centuries in an effort to provide grazing and farming land to feed a growing population, with an increasing percentage of land usage being co-opted to ‘raise’ meat and the feed crops required to produce it.
“Animal agriculture uses over 70% of global agricultural land, with a large portion used for grazing and growing feed crops.” Google
With livestock comprising upwards of 60% by weight of the world‘s mammals, the logistics of producing and sustaining this level of consumption oriented biomass is bound to impact negatively in any number of ways on the environment.
As a perspective, humans comprise 36% by weight and wild mammals, a mere 4%. (ChatGPT)
Enabling this is a corporate minded approach to supply and the demand, catering to a largely self-centered consumer base that has both chosen and been conditioned to be oblivious to process and consequences, prior to purchase.
Overtime we’ve been ‘bred’ to be desensitized and selfishly voracious.
Furthermore,, ‘meat-eating’ remains entangled with masculinity, despite the fact that it is now largely divorced from hunting.
We are light years away from a native American hunter’s show of gratitude toward the animal that has given its life to sustain his.
~~~
Centralized into vast geo-ranges of birth-to-slaughter production, the victims of our gluttony are sequestered off into less populated areas through the need for requisite tracts of land. As such this provides the extra benefit of consumer disconnect, enhancing tastiness by eliminating distasteful reality.
Few of us have any direct exposure to what takes place in this semi-stealth leviathan industry — unless we work in it, live near it or per chance, come across it in our travels. This remove has abstracted meat production too such a degree that few look at a steak and connect it with a living steer, let alone have any idea which part of the body it was cut from.
In the defense of emotional comfort zones, should we catch a nauseous wisp of this ‘cold-cut’ butchery, we will quickly overcome revulsion and reset to a reductive view, corralled by such linguistic embellishment as “prosciutto”, “croquettes” and “fillet mignon”.
That we are actually dealing with the remains of a ‘slice and diced’ corpse is an appetite killer — and nobody wants that.
Further physical processing morphs the carnage of perpetual massacre into ‘finger licking’ familiars like Jimmy Dean Breakfast Links, Big Macs and Spam — carving the reality of industrial scale ‘liquidation’ cleanly from the mind.
With the complicity of advertising, such products take on the status of individualized ‘entities’ of ‘salivation’, pulled from the ether to be plucked off of store shelves.
As a result of this seduction through enhancing metamorphosis, meat has been lustily embraced as an Alpha food, to then butcher the health of Americans —by both culturally ordained overindulgence and heavy-handed processing.
For Gaia, this 1-2 punch adds another layer of environmental stress, as the healthcare industry produces volumes of waste, further bloating the carcass of our modern ‘plaque pits’ and befouling jaundiced waters.
Through a variety of other vectors, the ‘die-products’ from meat consumption are tossed ‘out of mind’, hardening Gaia’s arteries and poxing her with ‘waste’ lesions caused by cultural malaise.
Agricultural runoff from the industrial scale feed production necessary for sustaining the sheer biomass of ‘tasty’ domesticated animals, is both well known and long studied. In various ways it wrecks havoc as it spreads chemical fertilizers — capriciously and efficiently — well beyond the boundaries of crop lands.
The pharmaceutical industry factors in as well, through its adherence to methods employed for raising livestock as quickly as possible, with the least loss and highest yield per capita. Blindly purposed drugs, designed to amplify these goals, filter into the environment bearing unwanted gifts. This generosity appears unbounded as it lavishes the Earth with pharmaceutical production waste, packaging waste and the toxic waste released by livestock bodily processes. The liberality of the dosages imposed by market demand provides ample residual contamination, which passes through consumers to be expelled and flushed away.
When asked, ChatGTP graciously provides scale, but I advise you sit down:
Quick estimate — how many domesticated, meat-producing animals in the U.S.?
• If you count the live inventory of the major large species (cattle, hogs, sheep, goats) at the usual USDA snapshots (early-2025): ~170 million head.
• If you count animals produced (slaughtered) per year, the total is dominated by poultry — the U.S. produced ~9.33 billion broiler chickens in 2024 (plus ~200 million turkeys). >That means annual meat-animal throughput (animals raised for meat each year) is on the order of ~9.5 billion+ animals, mostly broilers. <
Breakdown and sources (rounded, latest USDA/NASS figures):
• Cattle & calves (live inventory) — ≈ 86.7 million head (Jan 1, 2025).
• Hogs & pigs (live inventory) — ≈ 75–76 million head (2024–mid-2025 NASS reports).
• Sheep & lambs (live inventory) — ≈ 5.05 million head (Jan 1, 2025).
• Goats (all goats & kids) — ≈ 2.5 million head (Jan 1, 2025; meat goats included).
• Broiler chickens (annual production) — ≈ 9.33 billion broilers produced in 2024 (USDA Poultry Production & Value summary).
• Turkeys (annual) — ≈ 200 million turkeys raised in 2024.
Not to be overlooked is the fact that somewhere between 40 and 50% of the food produced in America never makes it to the table or when it does is only partially consumed. Collective interactive desire expands ‘eyes’ to many times the volume our stomaches can stretch, and as a result over-consumers gluttonously over-buy, making spoilage not just inevitable, but epidemic — all of which is viewed as normal by a society out of balance.
But for those without enough money, the basics of subsistence are a chronic problem. Deprivation trains them to buy only what is needed, which is for the most part food, and hunger disciplines them to be mindful of its consumption. It is rare indeed, when anything is allowed to spoil.
~~~
As I get older, meat has been slowly, somewhat unconsciously, phasing out of my diet. Its high cost has given perspective to transient pleasure, and I mostly use it now to ‘season’ dishes.
I mentioned this because my personal relationship with meat (and understanding of human nature) color my view that while full abstinence might be a laudable goal, it has little chance at becoming a reality in the short term.
Putting aside the moral implications of meat consumption to focus for the time being on health and environmental impact seems the most logical approach. While it may not overly fluff optimism, I’m certain it runs a higher likelihood of success than ‘cold turkey’.
Realistically, any success in this quarter will likely be due more to skyrocketing usury prices, as opposed to any sort of cathartic change in consumer buying habits due to health concerns — much less concern for the environment. Despite mounting awareness, the immensity of that ‘inconvenient’ problem remains too abstract for most people to process proactively.
Cutting back is key here, as it is with all of our runaway consumption.
This is the primary reason I promote ‘buynott’ for adoption as a lifestyle, and advocate cutting consumption back to necessities — not what we’ve been convinced we need.
So the next time you savor that bite of the barbecue, remember that Gaia’s on the grill… and that we’ll all live longer if you at least skip seconds. 🙏🏼
