Months in jail and thousands of dollars in fines and legal fees—those are the consequences Alabamians and Arizonans could soon face for selling cell-cultured meat products that could cut into the profits of ranchers, farmers and meatpackers in each state.
State legislators from Florida to Arizona are seeking to ban meat grown from animal cells in labs, citing a “war on our ranching” and a need to protect the agriculture industry from efforts to reduce the consumption of animal protein, thereby reducing the high volume of climate-warming methane emissions the sector emits.
Agriculture accounts for about 11 percent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to federal data, with livestock such as cattle making up a quarter of those emissions, predominantly from their burps, which release methane—a potent greenhouse gas that’s roughly 80 times more effective at warming the atmosphere than carbon dioxide over 20 years. Globally, agriculture accounts for about 37 percent of methane emissions.
Add this “war on ranching” to the “war on coal”, and the “war on oil and gas”. I wonder how much lobbyist money it takes to start a “war”, rather than a “debate”?
A video I saw recently talked about Bill Gates buying farmland and promoting artificial meat. I wonder if he is behind the anti cattle ranchers movement.
Artificial meat is made in fermentation tanks–probably very much like wine or beer. So he doesn’t need to buy farmland for that. Unless special nutrients are required. But usually the microorganisms used grow on corn or molasses.
I could be wrong, but I think the idea is that BG is buying up land to limit how many acres can be used for raising cattle. At least that’s what I think now, but my COVID shot is expired and I’m out of 5G range.
Not only extreme, but also anti-capitalist. The meat growers want a monopoly and will use any means to destroy their competition. Time for the feds to to look into this monopoly.
Demonize and restrict cattle to sell more lab made crap.
There is a uTube video that talks about small farmers having to sell when they die because they don’t have the cash to cover the estate taxes to let their kids inherit the farm. Since I have no interest in US taxes I didn’t watch the video so my above synopsis might not be accurate. It still indicates that Gates can buy these farms on pennies for the dollar and then rent the land out to wannabe or corporate farmers to live off the rent. Shades of feudalism?
But supportive of the narrative that “death taxes” need to be repealed, so Billionaires can pass on their loot. If there is only one possible heir to the “family farm” the estate would be easy to deal with. The moment a second, or more, heirs show up, the issue is who gets the farm, and can they buy out the other heir’s shares? Or, if only one heir, maybe that person doesn’t want to be a farmer.
I have mentioned before, the furniture store chain in Michigan, that was looted and dumped into bankruptcy by a PE group. The PE group bought the stores, because the founder was in his 80s and wanted to retire. None of his spawn wanted the stores, they wanted money.
But never let facts get in the way of the narrative that the “death tax” must be repealed. If I had a farm worth $11M, I’d sell, and live off the returns from investing the $11M, rather than working.
Under current law, when a farm or ranch owner dies, an estate is subjected to federal estate taxes. As of 2021, $11.7 million per individual and $23.4 million per couple in assets are exempted from the estate tax, effectively protecting most farms from the estate tax. Additionally, when a decedent passes farm assets to an heir, the heir is currently allowed to use the stepped-up basis of valuation, effectively avoiding capital gains taxes.
Cattle do produce methane, a green house gas. Limiting cattle production is a step toward resolving that problem.
But major land owners like Ted Turner often raise cattle as an income source to help pay taxes while holding land as an investment. In the West, cattle (or minerals) is about all there is.
Of course huge solar farm or wind farms might be attractive if you can get the electricity to market.
A huge part of the problems of ranching in the USA, especially in the West, are that the lands are not privately owned but rather leased from the federal government, mostly BLM or Forest Service. The leasing family’s vary greatly in their care or abuse of the lands. It is amazing to hike the boundaries between leased and owned lands seeing how far better cared for the owned lands (especially Indian rez lands) are than the leased lands.
Then you get “folk heros” like Cliven Bundy, who think they are entitled to graze their herds on Federal land, without paying the grazing fees.
Maybe the Federal government should give away oil and gas, the way Michigan gives away ground water to bottling companies? That would be really good for the “JCs”.
Cow blasted - classic! Not to mention the pork-p!ss-pestilence, chicken-chicanery, or the farmed salmon sewage impacts.
The industrial food production system in the US is broken. I get that lab grown food is scary to some, but it’s not as scary as a Soylent Green type scenario resulting from us poisoning the Earth.
