Damn, this day is ruining me. Took me way too long to realize that the title has beef-less written, not bee-less.
Anyway, Fast Food-Franchises are IMHO the perfect breeding-ground to raise lab-grown meat to success. Most of their meat is processed to a degree, that you can't taste the original texture or figure out their real source of it. And they are one of the biggest sellers for meat. Removing this chain will be a big service for environment.
As a vegetarian, this is pretty dumb. I could see not serving meat at the company, but not allowing people to expense it? That’s just weird and feels overly dranconian. If they are so concerned with environmental impact, do their other company policies extend this level of control? (Require carbon neutral transport, environmentally friendly electronics? What about building materials? Furnishings?). I don’t think like they are going to convert anyone to vegan/vegetarian this way, and probably encourage the opposite.
Fast-food beef is retired dairy cows and flavorings made in a lab.
Gross.
Many people don't know or don't care.
There are enough people that do care to significantly impact their bottom line though. For better or worse.
Agreed but the only tangible and actionable issue I see with a fast-food burger is health. That should be addressed first and foremost. Consumption of beef is not going away otherwise. If we want to reduce beef consumption then get the government to recognize the national security risk of fast food and tax it to oblivion. Healthy beef is far more expensive. More expensive equals a reduction of consumption whereas shaming people will most certainly backfire.
If the governments started heavily taxing the fast-food grade beef then the demand will drop as a side-effect. When the demand drops we can focus on smaller, healthier regenerative farms and ranches thus reducing our dependency on fragile logistics of our current just-in-time shipping systems.
As a side note and a side benefit that I care about, this will mean less of the massive cattle ranches like Harris beef ranch in California. It is difficult to find the drone footage of these ranches because the cops will be on scene within 2 minutes of someone showing up with a drone attempting to exposing how cruel these animals are treated.
the economic argument has always been the strongest in my eyes, and it's unstoppable. animals are a huge liability health wise, pollution wise, environment wise, activism wise, logistic wise, etc. most companies don't care about all that stuff at the surface level, but it all translates into dollar signs, which they do care about.
as soon as the economic-taste-weirdness function reaches a certain point, i'll expect you'll see these cheap fast food options convert more and more fractions of their products (right now many use fillers already) to fake meat, eventually replacing it entirely alongside offering reduced prices for these products, while leaving meat generally as a higher priced option signaling disposable income (sort of like Argentinian beef or w/e is today)
Look, I honestly don't care --- I actually think it's laudable to put less commercially desirable meat to use, in the same way I think it's a good thing to use transglutaminase to stitch trim and offcuts into chicken nuggets --- but I can't find a single source that suggests culled dairy cows are a significant input to fast food. I can find direct statements from chains that preclude it. I've concluded that it's just not the case. We don't have to agree, but if you've got a source, I'll read it.
It already has happened. Fast food chains have at least had to apply some humane standards to the meat producers they buy from thanks to pressure from the public. And many of them are also rolling out meat substitutes due to customer demand.
Most social change comes from the ground up, not the top down. Companies like Tyson aren’t inherently evil, they just prioritize profits. Tyson is investing in meat replacements right now because customers have said they want them.
This is really about money. Big business is ramping up artificial meat and big farming is also shifting to growing vegetarian food crops. Real meat will be only for the rich. Just the way they like it.
Who cares if one dude wants to eat slaughtered meat? That is completely irrelevant. If fast food places like McDonalds and frozen food companies like Stouffer's get on board, it's going to make a massive difference. Plus, it means that meat will be cheaper for those who have difficulty affording it now. I don't see a need to change anyone's mind on this. Being a much cheaper product, capitalism will take care of everything.
I think that fundamentally this is just a sign of people realizing that the meat industry can't ever be ethical. I'm expecting society to become maybe 50% vegetarian/vegan in the next couple of decades.
So the target market for these products is people that want to eat real meat and actively seek it out? And they're catering to them by... replacing existing vegetarian options? They must not have read your comment. Sounds like a bad market fit.
The number of people who eat meat and don't care if their meat is made of meat has got to be in the 7 figure range worldwide. The number of people that don't eat meat and want their vegetables to taste like meat is probably larger, though still miniscule. It's failing because there's no market for it.
I must be vague, but my friend works at a fast food chain's corporate office and said that their strategy team was the one pushing for alternative meats for supply chain alternatives more than dietary preferences.
They probably see a coming PR storm of anti-meat sentiment as our environment and collective health goes down the drain. And going a more veggie heavy route just doesn't work well for fast food except in the form of heavily processed stuff like meat substitutes.
Is this really the thing you want to pick and argue about? About whether it is hyperbole or not to call the stuff that is NOT the subject of this article, low quality?
Why do you even care. They can "quality" up their meat all they want but in the end they are still a fast food chain that primarily sells buckets of meat. I don't need a citation to think that is disgusting, and if you don't then go take that argument somewhere where it's on topic. Jeez.
So they're actually doing the right thing in 2019 and replacing part of their product with non-meat. I hope it goes all the way, or at least make meat be the expensive "special occasion" option.
tldr: the US meat market is not a monopoly and there's nothing at the link but a book pitch and a link to a site where one can buy a book about Tyson Foods. No meat...
The idea isn't meant to appeal to us, as neither you nor I consume fastfood enough for it to matter.
But plenty of people do, and it drives the meat markets whose over abundance of meat related products drive other markets that keep this horrible cycle of slaughter going.
Weaning people off meat at the fast food level is great way to start IMO.
IMHO, this sort of thing is not really going to be a consumer-driven change.
If the commercials for meat alternatives are compelling enough even in the face of lobbies and subsidies, capitalism will drive the big fast food chains to market these more aggressively at more attractive price points and nudge consumer preferences in that direction.
Instead of addressing the problem of monopoly and factory meat, let’s drive towards Roman latifundia and pretend that soy, peas and coconut/palm oil are meat.
Anyway, Fast Food-Franchises are IMHO the perfect breeding-ground to raise lab-grown meat to success. Most of their meat is processed to a degree, that you can't taste the original texture or figure out their real source of it. And they are one of the biggest sellers for meat. Removing this chain will be a big service for environment.
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