As someone on the supply side, I agree the beef numbers seem questionable. I find it interesting that it's broken down by the number of "ranchers" supplying the market. I'd be curious to know what definition is being used for rancher (owner, manager, laborer, etc) and suspect that it's been specifically chosen so that it can be claimed that the average is 38 cows per rancher which is a much more comfy number for a burger consumer.
Oh man, Amy! This is an amazing insight. I love that we get to see all this from your POV. In the future episodes I might reach out to get your opinion on various "supply side" facts.
Could you clarify what you meant when discussing animal welfare? Were you saying that raising animals to one day be slaughtered is inherently cruel, abusive, and neglectful because of the motivation behind it? Or that these animals are day to day treated in ways that are cruel, abusive, and neglectful? Or neither of those?
As someone who eats meat I struggle with the ethics of that, and I often will reduce the amount or type I eat and choose to pay more for sustainable practices. Part of my personal justification is that my impact is small. I was trying to point out the thorny issue of McD being so large that they buy something like 800+ million pounds of beef, and nothing at that scale can be good... but OTOH, the fact that they are that big means that them imposing their own Animal Welfare Guiding Principles on their massive network of suppliers probably helps so much in the grand scheme of things. And I think the language that corporations use to remove themselves from the reality of how things work can also be problematic. The problem is scale... they are maybe too big! But then, because they have that scale, they can actually me the lever of real change. I can kind of work myself into circles talking about it...
I thought I was a "hamburger expert" after season one of Hamburger Business Review, but this season of the podcast we're expanding the newsletter, the social media, and our burger crew (shout out to Zach, Chris, Colette, Kriss) and I'm at the part of learning where you start to understand just how much you don't know... hamburgers touch every aspect of our modern era!
As someone on the supply side, I agree the beef numbers seem questionable. I find it interesting that it's broken down by the number of "ranchers" supplying the market. I'd be curious to know what definition is being used for rancher (owner, manager, laborer, etc) and suspect that it's been specifically chosen so that it can be claimed that the average is 38 cows per rancher which is a much more comfy number for a burger consumer.
I was so ready to believe my hamburger came from one cowboy driving his 38 heads of cattle across the plains
it does paint a pretty picture...
Oh man, Amy! This is an amazing insight. I love that we get to see all this from your POV. In the future episodes I might reach out to get your opinion on various "supply side" facts.
Sure, I'd be happy to help in any way I can!
Could you clarify what you meant when discussing animal welfare? Were you saying that raising animals to one day be slaughtered is inherently cruel, abusive, and neglectful because of the motivation behind it? Or that these animals are day to day treated in ways that are cruel, abusive, and neglectful? Or neither of those?
As someone who eats meat I struggle with the ethics of that, and I often will reduce the amount or type I eat and choose to pay more for sustainable practices. Part of my personal justification is that my impact is small. I was trying to point out the thorny issue of McD being so large that they buy something like 800+ million pounds of beef, and nothing at that scale can be good... but OTOH, the fact that they are that big means that them imposing their own Animal Welfare Guiding Principles on their massive network of suppliers probably helps so much in the grand scheme of things. And I think the language that corporations use to remove themselves from the reality of how things work can also be problematic. The problem is scale... they are maybe too big! But then, because they have that scale, they can actually me the lever of real change. I can kind of work myself into circles talking about it...
I thought I was a "hamburger expert" after season one of Hamburger Business Review, but this season of the podcast we're expanding the newsletter, the social media, and our burger crew (shout out to Zach, Chris, Colette, Kriss) and I'm at the part of learning where you start to understand just how much you don't know... hamburgers touch every aspect of our modern era!