Letters to the Editor
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Things change
I don't know why it's self-righteous to discuss how meat production harms the planet. I'm vegan- for ethical and environmental reasons. I didn't become vegan so I could feel superior, believe me. That would wear off real quick.
It can be a huge pain trying to find something to order at an American restaurant, and go to your local supermarket and look for any packaged food that doesn't contain chicken stock or a milk product. I spend a lot of money on food and I gave up things I grew up with that I missed at first. Again, no one chooses this lifestyle because of you. It's not about you. It's about realizing that you just can't contribute to an industry that you don't believe in.
Things change. Abolishing slavery had a major impact on the economy and people's lifestyles, but no one would argue that we should have kept doing it because it was tradition. People used animals for food for a long time. The planet can no longer support this practice, period. Deal with it.
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A hummer?
These people are bitching about people eating meat? Yet they protest by driving a hummer with a banner across it around the capitol? That is asanine, I would take them more serious if they marched around and stopped adding to the global warming problem by driving one of the most ridiculous consumerist vehicle with 8 mpg!
Ha! Can't stop laughing....
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@ whaddami r.e. lamb
I think I have an answer to your question, but you're not going to like it. The answer is "it depends." You should look up an op-ed that ran in the NY Times around the August timeframe regarding New Zealand lamb. The author of the op-ed appears to have been put up to it by NZ "big ag," which has a very lucrative export business involving England. Still, this author made a number of valid points about the relative carbon footprint of NZ lambs versus local English lambs. In NZ, the lambs are able to graze off of naturally-growing clover, and various practices in NZ apparently give NZ lamb an overall lower carbon footprint than locally-produced English lamb, even taking into account the fossil fuel needed to ship the lamb from NZ to England. This sparked a number of letters to the editor, one of which was from me. In my letter, I suggested that if it's actually more efficient to import lamb from NZ than to produce it ourselves, then perhaps we should be eating less of it. Yes, that's right, vegans, I advocated that we should eat less meat. But I'm sure that's not good enough for you to conclude that you and I might actually be on the same side of this issue. No, not when I still eat marshmallows and feed milk to my 3-year-old.
To the vegans (I'm sorry, I should have specified earlier that I meant "to the insufferably self-righteous vegans," not necessarily all vegans): All I'm suggesting is that, to the extent you think being vegan puts you on the environmental/climate change high horse, I would say you're splitting hairs. If you're in a developed country, sitting in front of your computer sending letters to Salon.com, and living off of produce shipped several thousand miles to your local grocery store (you don't by any chance use plastic bags to transport that produce home, do you?), I would submit that the extent to which you are part of "the problem" is comparable to that of some of our most avid meat-eaters.
If going vegan is your own particular way of showing concern for climate change, then bully for you. But stop acting like everyone else who is parlaying their concern into other forms of environmental consciousness, like backyard gardening, use of public transportation, CFL bulbs, solar panels, etc. is overlooking what you consider to be "the" solution. We're all trying here.
By the way, to the "anonymous" who corrected me earlier on the subject of dairy cows: thank you. Believe it or not, I don't claim to be an expert here, I'm just someone who is trying my best to educate myself on this topic and get my questions answered. I'd still like to learn more about this, and am curiuos whether, if we as a human race applied ourselves, we could breed dairy cattle that would be both more efficient *and* adaptable to third-world living conditions. I mean, gees, if we can figure out how to breed a pug dog so its nose is shoved halfway into its brain just because we think it's "cute" that way, can't we work on cows?
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The Current Level of Beef Production Is UnSustainable
Isn’t the problem really that we have an unsustainable level of meat/fish production?
What is ideal (and more natural and more healthy) is GRASS FED animals roaming pastures – not factory farms where 1,000 cows are kept locked in stalls, unable to move, being force fed grain (which they can’t really digest because they are designed by God to eat grass) – and then there is the 50,000 metric tons of cow shit these farms dump into our rivers and drinking water.
The problem is that you can’t have a McDonalds on every single block selling 900 hamburgers a day without resorting to a factory farm methodology – and that system has proven to be unsustainable for both the animals and the environment.
We’ve got cows being treated inhumanely because of the conditions of the factory farm.
We’ve got the massive environmental problems of how to deal with all that animal waste (right now it’s just dumped into rivers and streams. If these guys just happen to get caught – no problem! They pay the $25.00 fine and keep right on dumping. Kid died because he drank contaminated water? Do ya really think the CEO of ACME Factory Farms is going to sob uncontrollably and beg God for mercy? That dude couldn’t care less.)
We’ve meat recall after meat recall. Sometimes it’s “Mad Cow” and sometimes it’s just diseased beef. Oops! Did your kid eat a factory farm hamburger and die? (shrug) Oh well. The alternative of actually (gasp!) regulating the beef industry is to unthinkable to even entertain! Better to endure a few dozen dead kids a year than embrace communism – so reason the Conservatives. Why if someone actually TESTED the meat that would be worse than anything Hitler ever did, right neocons?
The sensible solution is to admit this level of beef production is totally unrealistic and unsustainable. Fer God’s sake a lot of this meat is diseased! And the environmental fall out from these factory farms is alarming and dangerous.
But nothing will ever change.
Back in WWII we were a nation that would rise to the challenge!
Now? Now we’re too fat to get off our lazy boys and deal with reality.
My God. How many Conservatives have already written in decrying the “evil liberal elites” who are “trying to control our lives and tell us how to live!”
One can’t help but think of the Appalachians. Those people embraced strip mining at a totally unsustainable level and (surprise, surprise!) shot themselves in the foot when the bottom fell out and have never recovered. They fought anyone who even dared to suggest that they slow down or ease up on the mining.
The same is happening with beef production. The warning signs are everywhere. But the Conservative have all sworn blood oaths to stand against any attempts to moderate the situation. God forbid they can’t get a Big Mac 24hrs a day.