The quality of the meat you eat depends partly on whether the animals suffer heat stress on the way to the slaughterhouse. After an animal is slaughtered, its glycogen gets broken down and acidified to lactic acid, lowering its pH from 7 to 5.5 . The meat now “resembles soggy white blotting paper” and begins to smell of decay, says Neville Gregory of England’s Royal Veterinary College.
At what temperatures does this happen? Oh, at about the temperature of the ambient air after global warming.
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Mojib Latif, a climate physicist at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in Kiel, Germany, warns that natural variability may outweigh global warming for some periods in coming decades. Skeptics of the warming scenario will use this to cast doubt on the whole argument — but, Latif says, the warming will return.
Related posts:
Stefan Jones says:
The whole point behind global warming denialism is to prevent anything from being done about it as a society. It is a classic F.U.D. campaign.
June 18, 2010, 12:29 pmjsallison says:
I’ve enjoyed your published works over the years and really appreciate your reminiscences of Asimov, Heinlein and Clarke but c’mon. The very same folk and their forebears who are screeching about Glewball Wormening aka climate change today were screeching about the coming Ice Age not so very long ago. Frankly, compared to that gi-normous heat source overhead I’d say it’s the height of hubris to claim that we’re anywhere near having any sort of measurable effect.
June 19, 2010, 1:17 amTJIC says:
If we take as given the worst case scenario of global warming (which I do not), we’re looking at a 5 ° change in temperatures.
So, a change in temperatures about 1/4 the size of the daily swings in temperature between morning and mid afternoon is going to destroy meat production globally?
Does that makes any sense to anyone here?
> natural variability may outweigh global warming for some periods in coming decades. Skeptics of the warming scenario will use this to cast doubt
What a “heads I win, tails I lose” argument! “If the data for the next 30 years supports me, I’m right. If the data for the next 30 years contradicts me, then who are you going to trust? Me, or the data?!?”.
Do you think about these things before you post them?
June 19, 2010, 6:16 amRGM says:
Writing as someone who’s slaughtered several dozen animal in the field (field processing Deer, Pigs, Goats, etc,), and so seen the results of animal meat coming to ambient temperature thereafter, I find the respectable Mr. Gregory is very misinformed. Bear in mind that this includes gutting wild sows in the middle of a Texas August, when the temperature under the shady trees was 99f, I can speak with some authority.
Unless one drains ALL the blood from the tissue (which is very hard) it will stay red until the proteins denature or are bleached away. the minor elevation of temperature that a higher ‘average outdoor temperature’ would bring is insignificant. Chickens and Turkeys are ‘flushed’ after killing, to keep the breast meat white; as the consumers require.
Since slaughterhouses are intentionally kept cool, as a part of sanitary handling procedures; and animals due to be slaughtered are given time between transport and processing to rest and relax (which makes processing/butchering easier), the Respected Gentleman’s comments are uninformed, if not mendacious.
June 21, 2010, 2:57 amFrederik Pohl says:
Answering the question about whether I think about things before I post them: yes, I do. Let me tell you some of the things I think about concerning global warming:
One shipping line is now scheduling infrequent but regular voyages across the Northwest passage, there no longer being enough ice to interfere.
The storm belts in north America seem to be moving northward, from say Oklahoma to around Wisconsin. (We had a doozy here a week ago.)
One species of cold-loving Antarctic penguin has been moving its breeding grounds a little southward every year. Their old grounds are now deserted. The problem for the penguins is that at some point they will get to the part of Antarctica where the sun never rises at all, producing permanent darkness, and then that species will all die.
Clearly something serious is happening to our weather. You’re welcome to whatever theory you prefer as to its causes. Mine is that it’s global warming, probably produced by human burning of fossil fuels.
It’s true that not so many years ago the scientific community seemed more worried about future cooling than warming. It’s also true that at one point in history that same community believed that the sun went around the Earth and then, not all that much later, reversed their opinion on that, too.
You’re welcome to your own opinion of that as well. Mine is that when scientists learn that a new theory is more trustworthy than an old one they (usually) choose to accept the new one.
It isn’t fair for me to debate such questions with my readers, because I always get the last word, so I try not to do it. But you asked a question that I felt I had to answer.
June 23, 2010, 4:03 pmleslie de vries says:
Hello again Mr. P– as we enter the 8th global catastrophe, thought you might find this ‘amusing’:
‘Enjoy life while you can’
Climate science maverick James Lovelock believes catastrophe is inevitable, carbon offsetting is a joke and ethical living a scam.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2008/mar/01/scienceofclimatechange.climatechange/print
I am trying not to be too sentimental about the “late great planet earth” but it just keeps making me cry. When I discuss these things with my very prescient children, they seem to believe that it’s just going to get worse but that this culling process will, in many centuries, leave the planet a kind of new “Eden.” My god, teenagers are strangely realistic and idealistic simultaneously!
You also might find Dredd blog interesting, if a bit heavy. http://blogdredd.blogspot.com/ (Dredd’s MOMCOM is a perfect coining–Military Oil Media complex)
June 24, 2010, 3:00 pmGerry Quinn says:
The range of climates in which meat is a popular food is wide; it includes the hottest and coldest places inhabited by man. Global warming will have various effects, some beneficial and some detrimental – but I think we can rest assured that meat suddenly turning inedible will not be among them.
June 26, 2010, 3:13 am