I mean, this comment is wrong. The US has some of the world most stringent food standards in the world. FDA, USDA, OSHA etc. wield immense regulatory power. Is it perfect? No. You can't sell meat at scale in the USA without the government signing off.

It may not be up to your or mine standard, but it has proven successful at getting _quality_ meat into the mouths of millions.

Also, I would bet there aren't any cattle housed in a desert in the USA. They'd die immediately due to heat because no way anybody is paying for AC for _cattle_

> I mean, this comment is wrong. The US has some of the world most stringent food standards in the world. FDA, USDA, OSHA etc. wield immense regulatory power. Is it perfect? No. You can't sell meat at scale in the USA without the government signing off.

> It may not be up to your or mine standard, but it has proven successful at getting _quality_ meat into the mouths of millions.

The GP was maybe a little hyperbolic with "basically no food quality standards", but I don't think "regulatory agencies exist therefore you're wrong" is any better.

A lot of people would likely be alarmed at the lack of standards for cattle feed. You can't feed dead cow brains back to cows, for instance, but you can use lots of other parts of dead cows for feed for other animals, and then those animals (and their manure) can be used in feed for cows. And this distinction is almost entirely self enforced by workers whose jobs are largely only rewarded for throughput.

> Also, I would bet there aren't any cattle housed in a desert in the USA. They'd die immediately due to heat because no way anybody is paying for AC for _cattle_

You'd be wrong. There are a lot of cattle raised in the Chihuahuan Desert and surrounding arid regions, as just one example.

> There are a lot of cattle raised in the Chihuahuan Desert

The cattle in southern california (Corona) were moved en-masse to the central valley as conditions have changed. Grazing traditionally moves north against the global warming trend.

> The US has some of the world most stringent food standards in the world.

I can think of at least two issues I have with US food standards:

- Very few restrictions on pesticide use. There are nasty chemicals ending up on your food and killing off a lot of the biodiversity where it grows

- Antibiotics being fed to livestock. Not good for them, and practically begging for antibiotic-resistant pathogens to develop.

No, the most commonly consumed meats do not come from ruminants. Pigs and chickens are the most commonly eaten animals in the world by a substantial margin and they aren’t feeding on grass.

It's possible to graze chickens. They will eat grass (along with insects and anything else they find).

Search Joel Salatin for more info. He has a number of sustainable local systems for chickens, pigs etc.

It may be possible, but that doesn’t mean we could maintain anywhere near our current levels of output if we were to switch chickens over to grazing.

The only way to sustain this level of meat consumption is by utilizing the current industrial practices.

There _may_ be other ways but in general ya, I agree. Organic small plot won't feed the world at these levels and price points. No argument.

I just thought it was interesting that possibly chickens could be run on more marginal land as cattle are now.

This might become more attractive if fertilizer prices keep going up.

You can still use pig and chicken shit to grow crops, and indeed that's what they use a lot of round here.

Yes, but that is an entirely separate line of discussion. Your assertion was that “pretty much all meat comes from grassland”, which is very much incorrect.

If your point here is that manure from pigs and chickens makes up for the grain inputs needed to raise them, you would also be incorrect.