As I noted yesterday, I’ll be visiting the subject of the intersection of animal agriculture and climate change more often here. For now, I want to note two recent items, one a “NY Times” op-ed, the other a book review in the “New Yorker.” (Yes, I live in New York City.)
The former, an op-ed by a “livestock rancher” and author, basically says yes, meat consumption as we know it today has serious problems globally but if you buy only “green” beef it’ll all be fine. We are given a reasonable survey of the environmental burden of modern meat production and told “Don’t worry, be happy.” The letters in response are revealing. One comments “Ms. Niman’s argument amounts to lowering an ethical standard to fit the demands of our meat-centric culture and Western privilege.” (See, for instance, Nature, Poison and “Eco-Nomics” at the blog.) One letter argues for hunting and fishing for food, another for eating poultry instead of beef. And one letter posits the humane argument: “When Nicolette Hahn Niman refers to ‘a conscientious meat eater,’ she is using an oxymoron. Can anyone in good conscience be complicit with the unnecessary suffering and slaughter of another sentient being?” (That’s where I started with my vegetarianism 38 years ago.)
This brings us to the subject of Betsy’s Kolbert’s “New Yorker” review of Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals. Foer is a novelist, but delves into some new, not-uninteresting territory in this book. He looks at the massive pollution engendered by industrial meat production. “The pigs processed by a single company, Smithfield Foods, generate as much excrement as all of the human residents of the states of California and Texas combined.” And, “According to the Environmental Protection Agency, some thirty-five thousand miles of American waterways have been contaminated by animal excrement.” He looks at the extraordinary amounts of antibiotic pumped into animals we eat and how this has led directly to “…producing new, resistant strains of germs-so-called superbugs.” And he looks at the pain inflicted on the animals on which we feed. Good review of what appears a most compelling book.
This discussion appears to be one that is not soon going away.
