Cattle ranchers are making less money in the US despite beef prices at an all-time high. In the meantime, Trump started importing beef from Argentina to lower beef prices, but only achieved to lower cattle prices.

Trump supporting cattle ranchers weren’t happy

  • VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    11 hours ago

    I don’t think we’ve deviated far at all. Our attitudes toward animals are the product of thousands or tens of thousands, depending on the species, of years of cultural development combined with the fact that we are, ultimately, just predatory social apes. We have an instinctual craving for meat, and culture directs that craving. Even our aversion to cannibalism is, ultimately, cultural.

    We’ve only recently seen shifts in cultural attitudes toward meat consumption and general treatment of animals with very little deviation having occured since the first cities were founded. And those shifts were only possible due to recent advances in agriculture and the invention of the internal combustion engine. Things won’t change quickly because nobody wants to be told that their beloved family recipe that they have fond childhood memories of is weird, or wrong, or evil. People tend to react poorly to having something they see as part of their identity questioned, getting aggressive, defensive, just shutting down, or digging in their heels and doubling down.

    If your goal with this is to get people to stop eating meat, then I’ll point out that people tend to respond better to possitive interactions. “I like that dish, and I’ve found you can replace [meat] with [alternative] if you’re on a budget,” or just suggesting a vegetarian or vegan recipe without mentioning that it’s vegetarian will produce more possitive results than just telling people why they shouldn’t eat meat. I’ve reduced my own meat consumption significantly due to that kind of thing. But you can’t convince people not to do something if you don’t understand why they do it in the first place.