The Global Dangers of Industrial Meat | Civil Eats
▻http://civileats.com/2017/03/29/the-global-dangers-of-industrial-meat
The world’s largest beef manufacturer is in trouble. Reports have emerged that employees in over a dozen plants knowingly packed rancid meat, covering up the smell with acid, slabs of which were then sold on to schools and Walmart.
All this happened not in the U.S., though, but in Brazil, headquarters to meatpacking giant JBS. Named for its founder, Jose Batista Sobrinho, the company turns over almost as much as the next three largest U.S. beef producers—Tyson, Cargill, and National Beef—combined.
In response, Egypt has already banned Brazilian beef, and U.S. Senator John Tester (D-Montana) recently introduced legislation to prevent Brazilian beef from entering into the country, even as JBS suspended meat production at 33 of its 36 Brazilian meatpacking plants.
But choosing “America First” for your steak misses two far larger points. The Brazilian giant is simply striving to adopt ideas from, and buy out companies in, the U.S. meat industry. Pilgrim’s, Cargill’s pork business and Smithfield’s beef operation have been acquired by what Bloomberg once called the world’s second largest packaged food company (behind Nestlé).
And even if you could stop the import of dodgy sausage, you still couldn’t avoid the bigger planetary impact of the beef industry, because it’s airborne. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), meat and dairy production alone now generates more greenhouse gas emissions than all the world’s transport combined.