Disclaimer: No, I don't think that eating meat is intrinsically bad, nor do I think that people who eat meat are bad people. I came off my vegetarian high horse years ago...and have since replaced it with a nice food-movement horse. (He's a good horse. Kind of hip but not too aloof, kind of earthy but not a total hippy, you know? Eats strictly perennial grasses.)
In other words, I DO think that industrial livestock farming is among the most devastatingly harmful industrial practices in this country, one that should be, if not abolished outright, at least heavily regulated like a factory with clear social-environmental-public health negative outcomes, rather than subsidized and propped up as if we'd starve without it or something. And I do think that, whether your meat's from Tyson or some fancy farmer's market vendor, Americans in general eat entirely too MUCH of it for our own good or that of the rest of creation. Exhibit A: the difference between a dinner plate here and one in pretty much any other country, especially if you're dining with the bottom 70 percent or so of the income bracket.
Anyway...this is a cool graphic that illustrates well just how many (energy-sucking, water-wasting, air-polluting, and yes, sentient) animals we slaughter in this country:
The prison writings of Alexei Navalny
19 hours ago
I think that, for folks like my parents who find the environmental angle or even world hunger angle too left-wing-hippy-dippy, this argument is best won by pointing out the health threat factory farms pose to them. Which is sad.
ReplyDeleteCool graphic. Not really news, though. Of course, changing the way Americans feed themselves will take far more than this graphic. It is a reality that wealthier people tend to enjoy meat. At least there is a shift away from the really unhealthy (for humans) to the less unhealthy as witnessed by the increase in consumption of chicken.
ReplyDeleteAs far as increasing regulation of the industrial livestock farms, we already have an issue with too few veterinarians to do the inspectiopns of the plants we have. To increase regs would mean increasing the number of veterinarians to oversee the regulators. Unfortunately, you are talking about at least 10 years to gear up the educational process. Not an unworthy goal, just a very difficult one.
ooh... i like meat, but this graphic made me sick to my stomach. thanks, steve, i was just about to eat a big juicy steak with my family.
ReplyDeleteAbram and/or Sarah: Glad I could help. Not that I consider it my mission to keep you from enjoying a steak.
ReplyDeleteMeghan: I'm resistant to the idea that things like keeping the poor from starving or not letting the U.S. turn into one big hog-manure lagoon might be too lefty-crazy for mainstream discourse. But of course you're right, whether I like it or not, and the only way to seriously expand the food movement's reach is going to be through a personal health focus. Exhibit A: Mark Bittman's new book.
Phil: The food safety and animal treatment issues implicit in your comment are big ones, and I appreciate the insight you bring there. But I was actually thinking more of the environmental questions: smokestacks are carefully regulated and taxed, because they pollute like crazy. The same should be true of an industrial hog producer, for the same reason. Except that federal policy doesn't conceive of an industrial hog producer as a factory that happens to produce meat instead of widgets--it conceives of it as a nice little struggling family farm that happens to be enormous and not at all struggling and not owned by a family (or even a human being) anymore. So instead of regulating their stinky pollution, we give them tax breaks at the local level and subsidize them at the federal level in the form of falsely cheap feed.
The question of vegetarianism aside, there's no question that the vast majority of Americans wouldn't be as healthy or healthier if they replaced a good bit of the meat in their diet with fresh produce. (And yes, poultry's better, but you still only need a little.) It would be much, much better for the environment, too. The thing that's so infuriating is that we wouldn't have to interfere with the market in order to make fresh produce more affordable relative to meat. All we'd have to do is eliminate the existing interference that makes meat artificially cheap.
On a side note re: food safety: whether you're talking livestock or produce or anything else, the industrial food system is bad for food safety. For a lot of reasons, but the clearest and most indisputable is outbreaks: right now, a single tainted-food problem at a large farm results in people getting sick (and perfectly safe food being thrown away just to be safe) all over the country--because that farm's food is distributed all over, and usually there's a good bit of uncertainty as to where exactly. Imagine if this happened with a bug that was also highly contagious between people, and that gives a pretty good picture of just how insane our current food system is.
I agree Americans of all income levels consume too much food.
ReplyDeleteI also love locally grown fresh fruit and veggies. Can't beat sugar snap peas.
It'd be great if we could rely on them more as a food source. Unfortunately, our growing season is very short and so the fresh veggies must be grown elsewhere most of the year. It does present health risks, but when you compare the volume of food with the problems we've had, I feel our food production and delivery methods are actually quite good. To have a thousand small farms spread out across the south, each producing a variety of fruits and vegetables as we enjoy here during harvest would be extremely innefficient and costly.
The other problem with fresh veggies is their shelf life and quite honestly people are too lazy or lack knowlege to process them on their own. In the fall I participate in a vegetable drive where 3 days a week we pickup and deliver around 2,000 pounds of corn, potatoes, tomatoes, lettuce and many other locally grown veggies. We bring them to the Rescue Mission and several other distribution churches. Some of the distribution points process the veggies before distributing them. While the management is happy to see us, we'll get looks and comments from the workers of those centers indicating they wished we brought canned goods. Other times they'll just look at the veggies we brought with no clue what they are or how they are prepared.
Regarding the image that started this topic. The numbers don't surprise me at all. At that rate, 24 million chickens are butchered per day with 300 million Americans that comes out to 1 chicken for every 12 Americans.
Most of the time when I read the accounts of how these farms are run I don't have a problem. Usually it just sounds like city people with no idea what its like to actually raise livestock. It does bother me though when the animals are mistreated in their handling.
If a person doesn't want to eat meat, God bless em, but I really don't see any moral grounds for their objection. Some of Jesus disciples were commercial fishermen and on occasion the Bible tells us Jesus helped their efforts. I'm pretty sure the animal rights crowd could make the suffering of those fish sound awful. I also wonder about that herd of pigs Jesus cast the demons into...
Steve,
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, the issues are not simple. There are already regulations on swine and cattle producers over a certain size of operation. Of course, to enforce the regulations requires frequent inspections by qualified people. This in turn requires the government to hire more- you guessed it-veterinarians, of which we do not have enough.
Then there is the law of unintended consequences. By increasing the number of regulations on the producers, we make it more expensive, thereby driving out the small producers who are better able to provide the type of agriculture you are desiring. This leaves only the large, industrial farms, which of course, are not concerned at all with what they do to the environment and truly see this as just another business producing saleable goods, which just happen to be alive.
As far converting the farm fields from soybean and corn production for livestock to vegetables and grains for people, there is no question it would be more efficient to remove the middle animal from the scenario. Feeding animals up to market weight requires lots of grain which requires lots of farm land that could be put to other uses. Again, this will require a major shift in agriculture in the United States and will again have unintended consequences.
I guess my point remains the same. You are trying to make a very complex issue seem simple. The reason some in my generation do not like the idea of changing agricultural production may be because it seems too hippy-dippy. For many of us the reasons have nothing to do with being too hippy-dippy. These changes will produce very real consequences that need to be addressed BEFORE the changes are made.
If you want an example of how this type of thing can get out of hand, you need only look to the idea of using corn to produce ethanol to reduce our consumption of gasoline. My son believed this would be a great idea until I was able to convince him that it would drive up the price of corn, causing many people world-wide to starve and also cause American farmers to go back to the old way of producing corn that allowed for increased yields but was horrible for the soil and the local waterways. These discussions need to occur before we make drastic chamnges so all the consequences of our manipulation are understood.