Bro, Vox cannot be serious with this one.
Seriously, is this a psyop by Vox to get me to like universities?
Nope, it's actually just Vox claiming that researchers doing research on agriculture at universities have somehow "hooked" us on meat.
Yeah, they really think this is why we like meat. Because researchers told us to.
Vox implies that academia's close relationship with the agriculture industry, dating back to 1862, is somehow a bad thing, even though agriculture is something humans have studied and relied on for more than 10,000 years. They point to advances in livestock production after the crop failures of the Great Depression era as somehow a bad thing.
The livestock sector began to thrive via all kinds of advancements in farming methods made possible by the work of university scientists. Dubbed the 'first great biotechnology' by one researcher, modern artificial insemination — the process of collecting sperm from a male animal and depositing it in the reproductive organs of a female — arose after work from extension program researchers at Cornell University (one of seven private land-grant universities in the US) and public university faculty at the University of Minnesota, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and others. Today, the technology is ubiquitous across the meat and dairy industries, giving farmers an unprecedented level of control over the reproductive lives of animals and allowing for rapid production speeds …
Okay, so scientists created technology that made the production of animals faster and more efficient, which has allowed us to have an abundance of cheap food for the first time in history. Got it.
Publicly supported scientists affiliated with land-grant universities also contributed much of the early research into poultry genetics, nutrition, and health, propelling the US chicken industry into the behemoth that it is today. The use of medicated feed and new research into poultry diseases created a booming chicken industry that helped increase American chicken production almost 30-fold in the last century.
Science made inexpensive Costco chickens that can feed the whole family for a few bucks. Got it.
Genetics research transformed the chicken from a ‘backyard scratch, hunt, and peck animal into, essentially, a technology,' said Paul Josephson, an environmental historian at Colby College who has written a book about the history of chickens. High-profile contests in the 1940s, resulting from partnerships between the poultry industry and extension programs including at the University of Delaware and the University of Arkansas, sought the ‘Chicken of Tomorrow,' a breed that would have a larger percentage of breast, leg, and thigh meat.
This research done at universities led to more livestock production, and that is bad because, well, I guess global warming or something. They really only have global warming to rely on here for their argument. Otherwise, producing more food at a cheaper price is usually a good thing.
They do point to some of the antibiotics and hormones given to the animals, which has led many of us to buy organic. A few of these hormones have been banned, but some remain in the food.
Good for Vox for at least pointing out something relevant?
Here's something interesting: Vox also seems upset at modern public universities, which,
continue to develop methods that push animals to their biological limits to allow the US to produce ever more animals at higher speed and lower cost. A 2015 New York Times investigation, for example, found that the US Meat Animal Research Center, a cooperative program between the USDA and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, was breeding female pigs and cows to give birth to ever more offspring, leading to mass mortality and severe animal welfare problems. The USDA told the Times that the center follows federal animal welfare rules.
Bro, none of us are advocating for animal cruelty. But they leave behind the argument that universities got us hooked on meat, and simply begin to complain about low meat prices and unethical treatment of animals.
Here's Vox's argument in a nutshell:
The supercharged growth of the livestock industry has brought huge consequences for the environment, for the public, and for the animals themselves …
[T]he livestock industry still depends on university research to maintain conditions where disease thrives, ecological issues are rampant, and animal welfare violations persist.
I haven't met a person on the Right or Left who doesn't want healthier, cleaner, better treated animals and farms. But I'm starting to think this is a push for veganism and "give all our money to politicians to fix the weather."
Meat and dairy production account for 14-20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, while fertilizer and manure runoff from concentrated animal farms has created widespread water quality issues in the US Midwest, particularly for disadvantaged communities. Forcing animals into crowded spaces also heightens the risk of zoonotic disease spillover — as we're seeing now with bird flu infections among US dairy herds and dairy workers.
They mix these topics together with this particular narrative because they just want us to stop eating meat.
I also found this interesting. After four years of "following the science" for Pfizer, Vox threw in this line without consulting the experts.
One 2018 study of research across multiple STEM fields found that corporate sponsorship of research 'can drive research agendas away from questions that are the most relevant for public health.'
Man, where was this kind of thinking in 2020, 2021, and 2022?
Last thing: If universities got us "hooked" on meat, then why doesn't this chart look like it's climbing a mountain?
Maybe meat just tastes delicious and has been eaten as a core staple for human survival since the dawn of history?
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