Let’s just say that I walk to the burger joint on the corner and buy a 100 percent pure US beef hamburger for NT$79 or whatever. Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) and prions aside, I can’t do this in good conscience knowing that I’m fueling an industry that is ruining the world.
Not a penny of what I pay for my US beef goes to stop deforestation in Brazil, where they’re cutting down trees like crazy in order to grow soy. Why? Because they ship this soy (by boat) to the US, where it’s shipped (by truck and sometimes train) to farmers in the Midwest who plump up all these factory-housed cows (and pigs) and then send the final product (by air) to the tiny island of Taiwan, literally on the other side of the world. Not a penny of what I might pay for a burger goes to offset the carbon-dioxide pollution caused by the shipping because everyone takes Earth’s atmosphere for granted.
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