Yes, I’m back on the subject of food. First it was turkeys, today it’s cows. Whether or not my tendency to eat like a hobbit influences how often I think about food, I’ll leave to your powers of deduction. Anyway, back to beef. Three things got me thinking about beef lately. It started with a board game and a rainforest.
Pandemic is a really fun game where players band together to fight a global health catastrophe. Whenever I play, it gets me thinking about antibiotic resistant bacteria (need a definition?) … be afraid - which then leads into how we’re encouraging the growth of antibiotic resistance. One factor? Food. Namely, meat.
The Rainforest
Pretty self-explanatory here, but rainforests – particularly in Brazil, one of the world’s largest beef exporters – are being cleared at an alarming rate in order to make room for cattle farming. Not only is it one of several industries threatening numerous species and one of the most important eco-systems on earth - but it’s also actively destroying indigenous cultures by forcing tribes off of their ancestral land and essentially ruining their way of life. Even un-contacted Indians deep in the Amazonian rainforest are at risk.