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Major Beef Supplier Sells Feedlots to Invest in Plant-Based Proteins

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Major Beef Supplier Sells Feedlots to Invest in Plant-Based Proteins

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The name Cargill might not be familiar to your average grocery shopper in the United States, but they are the largest privately held food and agriculture company in the world. Cargill has managed to gain this status primarily from their agricultural commodity business, working in trading, purchasing, and distributing goods like grains, palm oil, and common food ingredients like starch, vegetable oils, glucose syrups and other items. While these different business dealings have helped Cargill amass an enormous amount of wealth, one of their largest endeavors is raising livestock and producing feed. This company is one of the nation's four largest beef producers that collectively control more than 70 percent of the U.S. beef market.

As such a powerful force in the global agro-economy, Cargill has been the subject of much criticism in the past. From their ties to deforestation in their palm oil business to the abject devastation wrought on the Gran Chaco region of South America for livestock feed production, Cargill has been the target of many environmental campaigns.

Knowing the stake Cargill has in the livestock industry, their recent move to sell off two of their cattle feedlots in the U.S. comes as a huge shock. According to a press release in Reuters, Cargill Inc announced it will exit the business of feeding cattle to direct capital toward other investments, the latest transformation for the global commodity trader.

Back in July of 2016, Cargill sold its feed yards in Bovina and Dalhart, Texas, and now they have made another move to untangle themselves from the livestock business by selling the two remaining cattle feedlots in Kansas and Colorado. Effectively, Cargill is done with raising livestock for slaughter - although reports indicate that they will continue to purchase livestock from the two companies that have taken over these feedlots, for processing.

While this move is significant in itself, what is possibly even more shocking is where Cargill plans to redirect their investment: plant-based protein. In a statement, spokesman Mike Martin explained that Cargill wants to expand its North America-based protein business by exploring plant-based protein, fish, and insects, along with other opportunities linked to livestock and poultry.

John Keating, president of Cargill's Wichita, Kan.-based protein business operations and supply chain, echoed this sentiment in an interview with the Star Tribune: "Selling our two remaining feed yards aligns with our protein growth focus by allowing us to redeploy working capital away from cattle feeding operations to other investments."

When it comes to expanding their focus on protein and growing into new sectors, choosing to invest in plant-based protein is plainly a smart business move on Cargill's part. Increasingly, consumers are demanding more clean, plant-based sources of protein - especially considering rising knowledge and concern over animal welfare and environmental impact of meat consumption. Not to mention, from a personal health standpoint, concerns over high levels of antibiotics and hormones in animal products, in addition to reports linking meat consumption to cancer, people are starting to view meat as a less than ideal protein source.

With an evolving definition of protein and a growing consumer base that is already spending around $600 million on meat alternatives annually, there is a huge opportunity for meat companies to expand their offerings to include plant-based proteins.According to some estimates, the plant-based meat market is set to reach $5.2 billion by 2020 and could make up one-third of the market by 2050. The fact is people want products that are better for them and better for the environment, and they are redefining the future of protein in the process.

One of the world's largest meat processors, Tyson Inc, has already started incorporating plant-based protein options into their portfolio, taking five percent ownership over Beyond Meat, and it was only a matter of time that other major meat producers took notice. Cargill may not be getting out of the beef production game, but this move signals a growing realization that the future of protein as we know it is changing - and by and large, it is becoming increasingly plant-based.

Image source: SkyLynx/Shutterstock

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Major Beef Supplier, Cargill, Sold Off Their Last U.S. Feedlots to Invest in Plant-Based Proteins

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The name Cargill might not be familiar to your average grocery shopper in the United States, but they are the largest privately held food and agriculture company in the world.

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In which we administer rhetorical herbicide to a perennial argument

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Bill Nye on Climate Change: We Could Engineer Low-Methane Cows — or Eat Less Meat

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Make all the jokes you want, says Bill Nye, but methane is a very potent greenhouse gas, and as Earth's population increases so too does the size of the meat industry that caters to it. Demand for meat is growing steeply in developing nations, according to the Heinrich Böll Foundation, and the methane emitted by livestock is undoubtedly contributing atmospheric gases and accelerating global warming.

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Plant-Based Protein Same as Animal-Based Protein for Muscles

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Plant-Based Protein Same as Animal-Based Protein for Muscles

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If you're vegan for any length of time, you may hear this common question: "Where do you get your protein?" Well, according to science, plants will do you just fine. The long-standing myth about the necessity of meat for building muscle has been disproven as a new study found plant-based proteins benefit muscle health the same as animal protein.

The study, published last week in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found that the type of protein consumed - be it plant or animal - didn't matter to muscle mass or strength. Only the amount; those subjects who consumed the least amount of protein had the lowest levels of muscle mass, but type of protein had no impact on muscoskeletal health.

The University of Massachusetts Lowell researchers compared the health records of close to 3,000 adult men and women between the ages of 19 and 72, including detailed dietary questionnaires the subjects completed. Dietary habits, particularly the sources of protein (meat, eggs, fish, chicken, or vegetarian sources like legumes, nuts, or seeds), were compared with lean muscle mass, bone mineral density, and quadriceps strength, "all measures that are important for fitness, health, and better functioning, especially as we get older," notes Health.com.

The conclusion was that increased protein intake from any clean source is directly connected to healthier, stronger muscles, an important consideration as we age and begin to lose muscle mass.

Lead study author Kelsey Mangano, PhD, assistant professor of nutritional sciences at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, told Health.com, "As long as a person is exceeding the recommended daily allowance for protein, no matter the source in their diet, they can improve their muscle health."

Of course, plant-based proteins have numerous other benefits over animal products, including the added benefit of fiber, zero cholesterol or saturated fats, and whether legume, bean, grain, nut, or seed, plants are also loaded with antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals. Protein is also found in most vegetables from broccoli and kale to parsley and zucchini. Plant proteins are significantly less damaging to the environment than meat, which also comes under scrutiny over issues of animal abuse in the massive livestock industry.

Earlier this year the largest group of nutritionists found a vegan diet to be appropriate at all stages of life.

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The Meat Myth is Dead: Plant-Based Protein Builds Muscle Same as Animal Protein, Study Finds

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If you're vegan for any length of time, you may hear this common question: "Where do you get your protein?" Well, according to science, plants will do you just fine. The long-standing myth about the necessity of meat for building muscle has been disproven as a new study found plant-based proteins benefit muscle health the same as animal protein.

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Ever stare out into space and look for signs of intelligence? Well, we should be looking right here on Earth, primatologist Frans de Waal argues in his new book, "Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?" (He'll discuss it at a Smithsonian Associates event Wednesday.)

For centuries, scientists have been obsessed with finding the one big difference that separates humans from other animals - things like tool use, observational learning and the ability to plan ahead. Almost as soon as that line gets drawn in the sand, chimps, crows and octopuses step, fly and swim right over it. It's time to stop this fruitless quest, de Waal argues: Instead of trying to prove humanity's superiority, let's use our big brains to see the world from the point of view of other species.

Why is animal intelligence research taking off now?
I think we got tired of behaviorism, which was dominant last century. More and more phenomena are coming to the fore, of animals doing things that couldn't be explained by simple instinct or by simple associative learning. And the younger generation is much more open to seeing what animals can do on their own terms.

Why should scientists stop comparing animal intelligence to human intelligence?
Why would you want to judge a bat or an octopus on human terms? They don't live human lives. In their own contexts, animals do things that we could never match. There are birds that remember 10,000 locations for the seeds that they hide. An octopus can adopt the color of the environment. A bat can detect the location of very small items in pitch-black darkness. We should stop asking who is better and start trying to explain how animals can do these amazing things.

It seems like sometimes we set up intelligence tests that are rigged against animals.
It's not intentional, it's just we don't take into consideration the animal's umwelt, or world view. For example, people thought that elephants were unable to recognize themselves in the mirror, [because of] a study where they had very small mirrors. But when someone thought to give elephants a mirror that is their size, and they can touch and smell behind it, suddenly they can pass the mirror test.

When we compare apes to children, it looks to us like they are being tested in identical settings, but it's not identical for the ape. The child is in a lab, interacting with members of his own species, getting instructions in a language he understands, maybe sitting on his mother's ap. The ape doesn't have any of these things, and so the child is at an enormous advantage.

And even with these disadvantages, sometimes animals outperform us. Like when chimps beat humans on memory tests and in strategy games. And now it turns out that elephants have more neurons than us?
That was a bit upsetting to people because some scientists had said the best criterion for intelligence, regardless of body size, regardless of overall brain size, was to just count the neurons. Humans were always assumed to be at the top of that list. Then the elephant turned out to have three times more neurons than we do, so now we are stuck with the elephant being at the top of that list. And that's always the issue. People come up with these criteria for intelligence, for consciousness, that separate us from the other animals, and they don't know what to do if particular animals surpass us in certain ways.

If chimps are so smart, why haven't they invented the iPhone, or at least one of those first-generation Nokias?
The iPhone is the accumulation of maybe 5,000 years of scientific knowledge. That is our species' specialty, the accumulation of knowledge through language, and it took a long time for us to get to this point. For a million years, our ancestors used the same hand axes. Only in the last 10,000 to 15,000 years have we had complex societies and made technological advances. In the last two centuries, the pace has accelerated. But we didn't start out like that.

What are the implications of humanity's dawning awareness that we are not the Earth's only intelligent life form?
Our relationship with animals is slowly changing. If you assume complex cognition and emotions in animals, you cannot treat them like garbage. Which is what people are doing in the agricultural industry, for example. It's also going to affect our way of looking at ourselves. We are going to stop seeing ourselves as totally divorced from nature, as some sort of totally unique brainy primate. Psychology, biology, all these disciplines are going to have to start rethinking their premises.
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Animal intelligence has been widely underestimated, says primatologist Frans de Waal

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Ever stare out into space and look for signs of intelligence? Well, we should be looking right here on Earth, primatologist Frans de Waal argues in his new book, "Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?" (He'll discuss it at a Smithsonian Associates event Wednesday.)

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What further questions do you have?

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lino is an online web sticky note service that can be used to post memos, to-do lists, ideas, and photos anywhere on an online web canvas. lino is a completely free service that runs on all popular web browsers.

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Cries of cruelty and injustice reverberate from the Western world each June as the Yulin dog festival transpires in China. Animal activist groups effectively draw awareness to the suffering of innocent canines, thanks to the concern of the general public, as visuals of the brutality endured circulate through countless media sources. Most individuals would recoil at the thought of eating roast golden retriever skewered on a kabob stick, but remain desensitized to the notion of consuming cow flesh squashed between two buns.

While victims and oppressors are easily identified and criticized from thousands of miles away, people experience far more difficulty critically examining their own practices and challenging the status quo at home. Cultural and societal practices are ever-evolving, so just because something is considered normal at a given point does not signify that a blind exception should be to be made to examining the ethics of a particular tradition.

People have a moral duty to challenge the unjust constructs perpetuated by society. After all, humanity must constantly evolve in order to progress. We must look beyond unconsciously adopting societal norms and instead consider our mindless consumption of animals here at home before calling for change abroad. We must be a part of the solution rather than continuing to contribute to the problem.

Two invisible forces primarily fuel the perpetuation of animal agriculture within society: speciesism and carnism. Speciesism serves as a belief system or ideology in which individuals feel they are justified in eating certain animals who are culturally considered lower in the speciesist hierarchy. Carnism, however, is a belief system which people are conditioned to eat certain animals. Carnism is considered a sub-ideology of speciesism or a " specific expression of a broader ideology."
Speciesism
Speciesism devalues sentient beings upon the basis of a lack of certain characteristics which are considered favorable to humans, often ignoring an animal's unique attributes, equally worthy of recognition in their own right. This discriminatory perception compels humans to consider the interests of certain species of animals as less important, dependent on the number of characteristics the being in question lacks in relation to humans. Such rhetoric essentially obscures the fact that all animals possess sentience - the capacity to feel and perceive emotions such as pleasure, fear and pain.

However, it is worth noting that several of the criteria employed to discriminate against animals are not exercised against human beings despite the fact that some humans lack some of these characteristics. For instance, humans lacking language comprehension or logical capabilities are deemed no less deserving of a right to life than those who possess such competency. We refrain from measuring the worth of human beings with the rationality that human beings possess consciousness and sentience. Although, such standards are rarely employed to assess the value of an animal's life when he or she has been deemed fit for consumption.
Carnism
First coined by Melanie Joy, a Harvard-educated social psychologist, carnism signifies a system of oppression "enabled by an unjust exercise of power that causes unnecessary harm to billions of individuals." Joy also contends that carnism "runs counter to human values, such as compassion and justice." People have consistently valued all creatures upon the basis of their utility to humans. Consequently, humans fail to contemplate the notion that an animal's respective right to life outweighs our right to use them for our own selfish desires.

An overwhelming majority of people would not consciously support the wielding of violence against defenseless creatures. Thus, carnism requires a set of "defense mechanisms that distort our thoughts and block our natural empathy so that we act against our values without fully realizing what we are doing." In essence, carnism desensitizes us to the deprivation of life. Such defenses hide the "contradictions between our values and behaviors, so that we unknowingly make exceptions to what we would normally consider unethical."

Seeing as carnism is both a dominant and invisible ideology, most individuals are unaware that eating animals is truly a choice. Dominant belief systems become so widespread within society that their principles are considered "common sense" as opposed to a collection of widely held beliefs.

Joy eloquently articulates the societal implications resulting from this belief system, asserting that carnism limits the rights of both humans (the oppressors) and nonhuman animals (the victims). So long as we allow the implications of carnism to remain uncontested, we lack control over our ability to make choices in a truly candid manner.
Commodification
Animals are also often depicted as materials or machines, existing for the sole purpose of driving up corporate profits. For instance, a majority of baby chicks are genetically manipulated to grow 65 times faster than their natural growth rate, resulting in conditions such as heart failure. The poultry industry slaughters 51.4 billion chickens annually, at the average age of 42 days old. Keep in mind, a chicken's natural lifespan ranges from about 10 to 15 years.

The 200 million male chicks born to the industry each year are considered worthless to the industry due to their biological inability to lay eggs. Thus, these innocent creatures are deprived of their right to life by being savagely tossed into grinding machines or instead suffocated in plastic bags.

Even those who consistently purchase "cage free," "free range" and "organic" chickens are contributing to a system of exploitation and violence, as all of these sentient creatures were at one point seized upside down by their legs, tossed carelessly into transport trucks and hauled to slaughter.

Countless organizations such as Animal Legal Defense Fund, the Farm Animal Rights Movement (FARM) and Compassion Over Killing (COK) advocate on behalf of the voiceless victims enslaved to the animal agriculture system, providing educational materials to the general public in the process. Individuals with even the slightest of interest in learning of the practices endured by farmed animals are encouraged to visit these sources.
Our Moral Duty
Humans are charged with changing laws which are not in alignment with morality. Currently, animals possess a legal status equivalent to that of property. We ought to abolish this status altogether, expunging the institution of animal agriculture entirely, as animals themselves possess interests unlike property.

The division between law and morality becomes increasingly questionable as partisan agendas are shown to influence policy outcomes. Social change is the catalyst to any significant legislative shift. Thus, humans must consider the societal inconsistencies held in regards to the treatment of animals.

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Creatures, not commodities: Animal lives matter

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Cries of cruelty and injustice reverberate from the Western world each June as the Yulin dog festival transpires in China. Animal activist groups effectively draw awareness to the suffering of innocent canines, thanks to the concern of the general public, as visuals of the brutality endured circulate through countless media sources.

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Shutterstock

A quarter-pound hamburger at your typical fast food joint is probably only going to cost you a few dollars at most.

Good deal, right?

Not as good as you might think.

In terms of dollars and cents, you might not be paying much for that burger, but when you tally up all the resources - land, water, greenhouse gases - that go into or come out of raising the cow that produces the beef... well, it turns out the environment is actually paying a lot.

The numbers may vary depending on who you're talking to, as NPR points out. We've drawn from a 2012 study published in the journal Animals, comparing the environmental impacts of conventional beef, natural beef, and grass-fed beef in the US. (In turn, the authors of the study drew most of their numbers from other sources as well.) For this report, we're using the numbers associated with conventional beef, or feedlot beef, which is the vast majority of beef produced and bought in the US.

The study tallies the natural resources used per 1 billion kilograms of beef produced. We've crunched these numbers down to the amount of resources used per quarter-pound of beef. Here's what we came up with:

14.6 gallons of water

Water may be the resource that different sources agree on least. The Animals study authors reported that conventional beef production requires more than 485 billion liters of water per billion kilograms of beef produced. The researchers write that they included both the water the cows drink and the water required to irrigate the crops that they eat.

The number is low by other sources' standards, though.

The Water Footprint Network estimates that every kilogram of bovine meat requires 15,415 liters of water to produce. That comes out to 1,847 gallons of water per pound, or more than 460 gallons for a quarter pound of beef. The Water Footprint Network also reports that its estimate includes the amount of water it takes to raise the crops that feed the cow, as well as the amount of water the cow drinks.

The Animals study and the Water Footprint Network assessment draw their numbers from different sources, which may have used different calculations to tally the beef industry's water use. The Water Footprint Network also factors in service water, which is the water used to wash the animals, clean the feedlot or farmyard, and generally maintain the environment. This extra factor may help account for the large difference between the two estimates.

EVERYMAN FILMS LTD/Flickr

13.5 pounds of feed

energyauditing.net

Cows eat a lot, and their diet is controversial.

Under conventional beef production systems, cattle are fed primarily corn and grain. Some have argued that the amount of grain used to feed beef cattle would be better used to address human hunger. Sustainability advocates have pointed out that grass-fed cattle can take advantage of pastureland that isn't suited for growing other crops.

On the other hand, grass-fed beef tends to be more expensive than grain-fed, and the Animals study authors point out that if all the US beef produced in 2010 were grass-fed, the industry would have required an additional 52,200,000 hectares of land, or more than 200,000 square miles.

According to the Animals report, conventional beef systems require 54,476,000 metric tons of feedstuffs per 1 billion kilograms of beef produced. This comes down to more than 13 pounds of feed per quarter-pound hamburger.

64.5 square feet of land

The Animals study authors calculated land use using the requirements for the cows' feed - how much land was required to raise the feedstuffs that the cows eat. They reported that conventional beef production requires 5,457 hectares of land per 1 billion kilograms of beef. One hectare is the same as 2.47 acres. This breaks down to nearly 65 square feet per quarter pound of beef.

Flickr/richevenhouse

0.126 pounds of methane

Reuters/Nguyen Huy Kham

When most people think of greenhouse gases, they think of carbon dioxide, but methane is actually even better at trapping heat in the atmosphere. The EPA estimates that methane is about 20 times as potent as CO2. And one of the biggest sources of methane in the US and worldwide is agriculture - especially cows.

A cow's digestive process naturally produces large quantities of methane in a process called "enteric fermentation." The cow then belches the methane into the atmosphere.

It sounds funny, but it's no joke - enteric fermentation accounts for a quarter of all the methane emissions in the US, according to the EPA. The Animals study estimates that cows produce 501,593 metric tons of methane per 1 billion kilograms of beef produced. That amounts to about 0.126 pounds of methane for every quarter-pound hamburger you eat.

4 pounds total carbon footprint

Beef's total carbon footprint includes all the greenhouse gases released during its production. This includes not only the methane the cows produce, themselves, but also all the fossil fuels burned or released to raise the crops that feed the animals and to transport the beef once the cattle have been butchered. (The energy required to actually cook the meat wasn't included.)

The Animals study tallies conventional beef's total carbon footprint at 15,989,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per billion kilograms of beef. That comes out to about 4 pounds of greenhouse gases per quarter pound of beef.

While we didn't crunch all the numbers for grass-fed beef production, which was also tallied in the Animals study, it's worth noting that this particular study found that conventional beef production used fewer natural resources overall than other options. That means that turning to grass-fed beef production won't necessarily save on feed, land use, or even carbon emissions.

As we pointed out above, these numbers came from one study. Many other organizations have attempted to quantify the resources that go into beef production, and the results can vary depending on which sources they reference. NPR and the Center for Investigative Reporting have both put together their own handy explainers using a variety of sources, and other organizations like the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the Water Footprint Network, and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have compiled their own reports on the different resources used in cattle farming.

No matter what, the few dollars you shell out at your favorite burger joint are small pennies compared to the total cost of the resources that go into that quarter pound of meat.

We may not feel the burn in our wallets just yet, but as the Earth's population, and its meat consumption, continues to rise, our land and water resources may become increasingly strained.

And conversations surrounding global climate change have already taught us that we must cut our fossil fuel consumption - even the fossil fuels associated with agriculture - or risk drastic climate-related consequences in the future.

In reality, your hamburger isn't something bought and paid for, but a symbol of a debt that, one day, must be repaid.

SEE ALSO: Bill Nye the Science Guy has finally changed his mind about GMOs

NOW WATCH: Research Reveals Why Men Cheat, And It's Not What You Think

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We are killing the environment one hamburger at a time

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A quarter-pound hamburger at your typical fast food joint is probably only going to cost you a few dollars at most. Good deal, right? Not as good as you might think.

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Scholars believe that up to six million Jews lost their lives during the Holocaust. Six million people, all capable of experiencing pain, suffering, hope and love, all lost. In contrast, 56 billion farm animals are killed every year for human consumption. Carnivores want to argue that these animals are not capable of feeling emotions such as love, fear, or happiness, and while science is beginning to prove that many animals are indeed capable of experiencing such emotions, I will forgo this point for the sake of asking a much simpler question: Do animals feel pain? Research has shown the answer to this question is yes, animals do feel pain. So then we might concede that if animals feel pain, they are also capable of suffering.

Most of us will never experience the pain, suffering, and anguish experienced by some, such as those who were tortured and killed in acts of war and genocide, yet we are willing to continually submit countless other beings to such atrocities on a daily basis. Peter Singer termed this neglect for the pain and suffering of animals "speciesism" in his 1975 book Animal Liberation. If then, as Mahatma Gandhi states, "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated," we have made much less progress than we might like to believe.

E-Edition

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TIM WAKELIN: Plant-based food for thought

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