this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2025
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519
Alarm as bird flu now ‘endemic in cows’ while Trump cuts staff and funding (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 18 hours ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world
117 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Summary

A new H5N1 bird flu variant has become "endemic in cows," with cases detected in Nevada and Arizona, raising concerns about human transmission.

Experts warn that without intervention, the outbreak will continue, but Trump has cut CDC staff and halted flu vaccination campaigns.

The virus's spread coincides with a severe flu season, increasing the risk of mutation.

The administration has also stopped sharing flu data with the WHO and shifted its containment strategy away from culling infected poultry, raising fears of inadequate response.

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[–] nsrxn@lemmy.dbzer0.com -2 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Raising plants to feed animals so we can eat the animals is less efficient than raising plants for us to eat.

if that were the situation, you might be right. but since we actually feed livestock mostly crop seconds and byproducts, it's actually a conservation of resources in a lot of situations, with minimal competition with human food sources

[–] usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml 6 points 15 hours ago (3 children)

1 kg of meat requires 2.8 kg of human-edible feed for ruminants and 3.2 for monogastrics

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211912416300013

we show that plant-based replacements for each of the major animal categories in the United States (beef, pork, dairy, poultry, and eggs) can produce twofold to 20-fold more nutritionally similar food per unit cropland. Replacing all animal-based items with plant-based replacement diets can add enough food to feed 350 million additional people, more than the expected benefits of eliminating all supply chain food loss.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1713820115

[–] nsrxn@lemmy.dbzer0.com -1 points 12 hours ago

your shepon paper shows a great deal of spinach being fed to chickens. why would it be fed to chickens if it were suitable for human consumption? I don't actually know, but my guess is that it is not suitable for human consumption, and that is why it is fed to chickens. that's a conservation of resources. the potatoes fed to cattle are likely the same.

this paper doesn't discuss this discrepancy at all. I have to say I don't find the analysis very compelling.

[–] nsrxn@lemmy.dbzer0.com -1 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

soybean cakes, which production can be considered as main driver or land-use, represent 4% of the global livestock feed intake.

you clipped this out of the abstract, but it's highly relevant to what I've been saying: this is a byproduct of pressing soybeans for oil. if we didn't feed it to livestock, it would be industrial waste.

[–] usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml 3 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

When we look at the most common extraction method for soybean oil (using hexane solvents), soybean meal [feed to farm animals] is still the driver of demand

However, soybean meal is the main driving force for soybean oil production due to its significant amount of productivity and revenues

[...]

soybean meal and hulls contribute to over 60% of total revenues, with meal taking the largest portion of over 59% of total revenue

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0926669017305010

This is even more true of other methods like expelling which is still somewhat commonly used

Moreover, soybean meal is the driving force for the whole process [expelling oil from soy] because it provides over 70% of the total revenue for soy processing by expelling

https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/9/5/87

Even other extraction methods being explored in research as well don't have soybean oil as the main driver of demand

From the results, soybean oil makes up around 24% of total revenues; revenue from insoluble fiber makes over 70%, due to the large amounts produced throughout the process. [of Enzyme-Assisted Aqueous Extraction]

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jasreen-Sekhon/publication/330375817_Economic_Feasibility_of_Soybean_Oil_Production_by_Enzyme-Assisted_Aqueous_Extraction_Processing/links/5c49d531a6fdccd6b5c586b6/Economic-Feasibility-of-Soybean-Oil-Production-by-Enzyme-Assisted-Aqueous-Extraction-Processing.pdf

[–] nsrxn@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 12 hours ago

a soybean is only about 20% oil to begin with. that means that even using the numbers you have here, the oil is twice as valuable per pound compared to the rest of the bean.

[–] nsrxn@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 13 hours ago

do you have the full papers? I can't really examine these claims from the links you provided.