Here in the US, our food culture has been very beef centric for over a century. Hamburgers, BBQ, steaks, beef tacos, etc are all part of our food culture.
ETA: Our factory farmed chicken is often bland. Our pork often tastes like a pig pen without tons of seasoning, sauce, brining, etc.
Culture is a bad excuse to prop up one of the worst industries for climate change though
I agree, just answering the question for those outside the US.
I know a lot of folks advocate a plant based diet. I don’t think large portions of the US will be willing to do that. I think it is an easy sell to eat less beef and more other meats because it is cheaper and not a major diet change.
Now if we can get people to order online and go in instead of drive thrus…it is usually a lot faster too. Drive thrus suck because there is always someone who wants extra ketchup, exactly two pickles, 3 onion slices, half a cheese slice, and one drop of mayo.
Definitely true that people won’t go plant-based. I think we should be thinking about how to get lab grown meat into our food supply faster.
Also not trying to support the industry as well, and just adding onto the explanation. Historically, the animal processing industry in the US always wanted to use up as much of the animal as they could for profit, much like American cheese is a derived byproduct of cheese making that they found out they could sell as “cheese”.
In a weird way, it’s insanely efficient and “green” use of the whole animal, but also unfortunately, it has led to many downstream industries being dependent upon the upstream industry. Replacing the upstream industry would cause cost increases in myriad downstream industries.
In a country like America, that always looks for excuses to raise cost to the end-buyer and never lower it, it would cause an inflationary effect that would hurt the lives of millions. (Again, not excusing the behavior, proper regulation would be the answer here.)
Just look at how insulin in America became a grift in the last decade even though it was a patent-neutral product designed to always be cheap that states are now having to forcibly price-fix just so people can live. (Or epinephrine.)
Downstream beef products example list:
- Insulin
- Leather
- Glue
- Soap
- Ink
- Gelatin
- Fire Extinguisher Foam
Neutral sauce: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendering_(animal_products)
Probably not neutral sauce: https://arizonabeefblog.com/2019/03/01/cattle-byproducts/
Welcome to the Capitalist Third World!
Edit: formatting.