“We have to stop destroying the planet as we feed ourselves,” a World Bank official said, as red meat and dairy drive CO2 emissions.

Cows and milk are out, chicken and broccoli are in — if the World Bank has its way, that is.

In a new paper, the international financial lender suggests repurposing the billions rich countries spend to boost CO2-rich products like red meat and dairy for more climate-friendly options like poultry, fruits and vegetables. It’s one of the most cost-effective ways to save the planet from climate change, the bank argues.

The politically touchy recommendation — sure to make certain conservatives and European countries apoplectic — is one of several suggestions the World Bank offers to cut climate-harming pollution from the agricultural and food sectors, which are responsible for nearly a third of global greenhouse gas emissions.

The paper comes at a diplomatically strategic moment, as countries signed on to the Paris Agreement — the global pact calling to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius — prepare to update their climate plans by late 2025.

  • SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    In Europe soy milk can’t legally be called milk anymore. It’s Soy Drink on the packaging. The farmers won that one. Now they’re coming after vegi burgers allowed to be called burgers.

    • Tiefling IRL@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      6 months ago

      My arguments to “if it’s not from an animal or isn’t milk” are:

      1. What do you call the white liquid inside a coconut?
      2. What do you call the laxative/antacid that comes in a blue bottle?
    • Hacksaw@lemmy.ca
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      6 months ago

      They won’t win burger or sausage or anything like that. You can already put what you want in those, breadcrumbs, vegetable protein, fruits and vegetables, various flavours and spices, and it’s still a burger/sausage.

      The milk I get. Milk was highly controlled in terms of what adultrants were allowed, so when they say “we can’t even add extra aspartame, but they can make the whole thing out of oats?” They get a lot of traction. Now why they wanted to add aspartame I don’t have a fucking clue.

      https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/03/06/173618723/can-milk-sweetened-with-aspartame-still-be-called-milk

      • Num10ck@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        milk-like plant juices or saps have been called milk since 1200. such as milk of magnesia, milk of almond

        • Hacksaw@lemmy.ca
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          6 months ago

          That’s very true.

          I’m just saying that Milk is a regulated term that’s already been used to stop the milk industry from misbehaving so it’s easy for the milk industry to use it to keep out competitors. Burgers, sausages, and other highly mixed foods aren’t regulated the same way and I don’t expect the meat industry to have any success on those fronts outside of rogue states like Florida.

      • Nachorella@lemmy.sdf.org
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        6 months ago

        Stuff like this is so silly. I understand having rules around how things are named, nobody wants to be misled about what they’re buying. But were cow juice enthusiasts really getting tricked into buying soy juice? Do we have to specify the animal? Can I sell rat milk as ‘milk’ and they’d be ok? What’s the difference between that and oat milk? So long as the origin of the milk is clear I really don’t see the issue.

        Obviously I know it’s just dairy industry deep pockets doing what they can to remain #1 but it’s just so silly.

        • Hacksaw@lemmy.ca
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          6 months ago

          Well it was originally designed to stop the dairy industry from putting weird stuff in milk, so there definitely a need because they kept trying to put weird stuff in it.

          • Nachorella@lemmy.sdf.org
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            6 months ago

            That part I understand, no more formaldehyde and brains in the milk. It’s more the industry fighting against the term being used for alternative milks which should have their own standards associated with them. Coconut milk and cream have existed for ages and nobody cares. But my (dairy farmer) family all of a sudden have really strong opinions on using the term milk for alternative milks. Or other generic terms being used for vegan products like mince, sausage, burger, steak. All of these things typically have a word in front to describe what they’re made of, but for some reason certain people get real worked up when that word is ‘vegetable’.

            • Hacksaw@lemmy.ca
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              6 months ago

              Being a regulator is like being a teacher. There is one kids who keeps putting crayons in his nose so you make a no crayons in your nose rule to stop him and it works great until this one kid uses crayons in nostrils to make amazing pictures for a talent show and suddenly the first kid says “hey I thought you said no nose crayons, why is she allowed crayons now”

              The main problem is that it’s actually super hard to have a regulatory definition of “milk” that forces the dairy industry to not put stuff in milk, but also allows up to 100% of the product to be oats.

              Vegan steak will be difficult for the same reasons. But I would guess vegan sausage, burgers, nuggets, boneless wings etc… will be very easy to approve since some products are already more fillers than meat already lol!

              • AA5B@lemmy.world
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                6 months ago

                Simple. “Milk” is different from “soy milk”, just like “milk” is different from “sweetened milk” (in what godforsaken realm is aspartame in milk?). How is this not already handled?

                • Hacksaw@lemmy.ca
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                  6 months ago

                  I know it feels easy to armchair regulate but it’s not usually that easy. Like if you keep current milk regulations but then let people add a word before milk to escape the rules (to allow oat milk for example) then the dairy industry will pull shit like “pure milk” and “super milk” to escape the rules. It’s a cat and mouse game as soon as you start adding exceptions.

                  Milk is one of the longest regulated foods because the dairy industry misbehaves so much. The industrialisation of milk was so bad it caused tuberculosis outbreaks among other things.

                  I’m not saying there isn’t a good solution, there are always many good solutions possible. All I’m saying is not to forget that there is a reason the word milk was regulated for so long. Whatever exception is carved out for almond milk has to be well constructed enough not to weaken the current milk standards, yet broad enough to allow for any variety of plant based milk and that’s going to take some serious expertise. Enshrining plant based milks in a well thought out regulation is going to be the best way to stop this whole “only animal milk is milk” stuff. Until then the dairy industry is going to keep using the regulation to its advantage whenever it can to keep others out of the market.

                  • Mrs_deWinter@feddit.de
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                    6 months ago

                    But that’s not how it was framed at the courts at all, proven by the fact that all the other product names containing “milk” were considered okay. It was specifically argued that customers could be confused to accidentally buy the vegan variant. Based on your arguments “coconut milk” should be problematic, but it isn’t. Soy milk and almond milk could have been grandfathered in, but they weren’t, and the reason very specifically was pressure from the dairy industry targeting their competition.

          • jumjummy@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            This problem is worse with cheese, using words like “cheese product” or “butter flavoring” for butter. Nobody is getting confused about Oat milk not being from cows, but these “not quite cheese” products are misleading.

    • Rozz@lemmy.sdf.org
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      6 months ago

      what’s a better name we could come up with for Soy Drink? we just need a new word

    • illi@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      This drivesme nuts. On the other hand I enjoy the companies working around it such as calling their products “Not M*lk” and such.

    • barsoap@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      Not “anymore” it never could be called that. Figures that soy beverages are not a product containing excretions of mammary glands.

      Next up: You can’t call salt sugar. Oh the tyranny!

      …things like coconut milk got grandfathered in based on local usage when the regulation was enacted, in any case that was before Alpro started to sell you 4ct of plants and 0.0001ct of water for three Euros.