Photo by julieabrown1/Flickr CC
On Saturday, the New York Times published an essay of mine, "The Carnivore's Dilemma," which made the point that all foods--not just meat--play a role in global warming, and that focusing solely on meat (as a veritable flood of media coverage has done of late) is unhelpful, especially since few Americans have any intention of becoming vegans. All eaters, I concluded, can reduce their global warming contribution by avoiding processed foods and those from industrialized farms; reducing their food waste; and buying food that's local and in season.
But fellow Atlantic Food Channel blogger Helene York wrote yesterday that my essay "went too far." Specifically, she objected to my statements that the global warming impact of traditional, grass-based animal farming is markedly lower than those at industrial animal operations. She also argues that the higher purchase price of foods from pasture-based farms put them out of reach for most Americans. Thus, she concludes, advocating for reduced meat consumption is more important than encouraging consumers to buy from pasture-based farms. While I have a boatload of objections to minor points York makes in her post, let me stick to those major areas of disagreement.
York's first claim, that my essay overstated the climate benefits of pasture-based farming, misses the mark in several ways. She emphasizes that methane, especially from enteric emissions (related to ruminants' digestion), rather than CO2 or nitrous oxides, is the real global warming threat related to meat. I agree that methane is the gas of greatest concern. However, as my op-ed notes, there are viable remedies. University studies have demonstrated that good cattle nutrition and management can substantially reduce such emissions. In addition to the research cited in the essay, consider the following: a study published in the Canadian Journal of Animal Science showed that access to high-quality pasture reduced cattle methane emissions by as much as 50 percent and that cattle grazing on pastures containing legumes and grass produced 25 percent lower methane emissions than cattle grazing on pastures without legumes. Legumes, such as clover and vetch, can be seeded in grazed pastures. In other words, enteric methane is a solvable problem.
It's illogical, or at the least skewed, to single out meat.
There's another thing about enteric methane: it's been around for eons. Logically, climate change policy should focus on things that are in fact changing, especially those caused by human activity that can be altered. The original draft of my Times essay contained the following paragraph, which we needed to cut due to space constraints:
Prior to European colonization of North America, enormous herds of large ruminant mammals covered the continent, including millions of deer, an estimated 10 million elk and somewhere between 30 and 75 million bison. "The moving multitude...darkened the whole plains," Lewis and Clark wrote of bison in 1806. The total number of large ruminants was surely greater than the 40 million mature breeding beef cows and dairy cows in the United States today.
Additionally, as the op-ed also points out, rice fields cause as much as one third of the world's human generated methane. So it's illogical, or at the least skewed, to single out meat.
A related point I emphasize in my op-ed but York ignores in her response is that a food's environmental impact should be considered holistically. It's important to consider grazing's significant environmental benefits. For one thing, pastures have been shown to sequester substantial amounts of carbon, much more than cropland. A mountain of studies have shown that pasture is by far the most ecologically sound method of producing food. Compared to cropland, pastures have much less soil erosion and cause much less water pollution. As the op-ed mentioned, they can also be excellent ways to maintain natural ecosystems and biodiversity. Moreover, the rumen's role in food production is nothing short of miraculous. As Cornell University professor David Pimentel wrote in Food, Energy and Society, ruminants can effectively make use of marginal land that is otherwise unsuitable for food production;they are intermediaries between naturally occurring, inedible cellulosic vegetation and human beings. In other words, by grazing on forage that humans cannot digest--thanks to their rumens, the very cause of those enteric emissions--grazing animals make efficient use of natural resources.
York's other major criticism is that meat from pasture-based farms is too expensive to be a practical solution. Thus, she argues, calling on people to cut back on meat is more important than urging them to buy from farms where animals are kept on grass. I first want to note that in my book, Righteous Porkchop, as well as my other writings, I have repeatedly made the case that Americans should reduce their meat and dairy consumption. In my view, there are far more compelling arguments to do so than climate change.
It's splitting hairs a bit, but I disagree nonetheless that urging meat reduction is more important than encouraging the purchase of pasture-based foods. Here's why: in spite of growing interest and awareness about food sources and farming methods, the large majority of Americans still do not base their purchasing decisions on how food was produced. Many give the question no consideration at all. If that minority of people who do pay careful attention to how their food is produced abandon meat, those animal farmers and ranchers who are doing the right thing lose the support of those few consumers to pay more. The good farms disappear and nothing is left except vegans and factory farms. My essay calls on all eaters to examine their eating and look for ways to cut back on their contributions to global warming. The world needs food production systems that are environmentally benign, produce healthy foods, and treat animals respectfully. Advocating that people stop eating meat does nothing to advance these goals. Creating a demand for food from pasture based farming, on the other hand, advances all three.
SHOP THE ATLANTIC FOOD MARKETPLACE
Subscribe to Atlantic Food
Moreover, the cost issue could be a temporary one. Increasing the demand for pasture-raised meat is likely to increase its cost in the short term, but decrease it in the long term.
Yes, producing more pastured meats would bring the price down. But consumers are not likely to migrate to grass-fed meats on their own. It will require some intervening event--government fiat, or perhaps global warming?
I agree that the costs will come down as pasture based systems become more the norm. In particular, I believe that better access to more efficient processing would make an enormous difference. I was just talking earlier today with an ag economist from KY who said that the average cost per animal to slaughter and process cattle is about $150 for larger slaughterhouses while the slaughterhouses available to smaller scale cattle farmers and ranchers typically charge between $300 to $400. The same is true in the pork and poultry industry. This makes it much more difficult to get traditionally farmed meat to consumers at affordable prices. I think state and local governments should be working to address the problem of access to good, safe slaughter and processing facilities for all sizes of farms and ranches.
Thank you so much for these pieces -- here and in the NY Times. It is SO REFRESHING to have this "other side" articulated so clearly. Brilliant and absolutely necessary that you entered the fray!!!
I appreciate this genuine discussion very much. The first step here is to recognize that this is not yet a discussion about ethics towards intelligent and emotional individuals but rather an environmental discussion regarding the well being of humans and not animals. I would obviously also welcome an ethical debate at some point but I strongly believe that in this regard our own pain must first increase.
Given all this - I would like to define vegans as meat-eaters most loyal companions. They might make meat eaters feel bad due to ethical considerations but in practice they have been meat-eaters best friends. Nobody has contributed more to the introduction of better animal welfare laws as have animal rights activist which from the HSUS to PETA are usually vegetarian/vegan themselves. If it were not for animal rights activist and vegans such Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, or the CEO of HSUS or the president of PETA - animal welfare would have suffered and hence the quality of overall meat available today.
Also, I dare say - nobody supports small scale, local, organic and fair-trade methods as much on an individual level as do vegans and animal rights activists (reference is to percentage of income spend and consistency). In other words - it should be clear that vegans and animal rights activists are in total agreement with the author - that how we produce our food is important. Vegans and the authors and myself seem to agree that a decrease in meat and dairy as well as a shift towards organic production are both important. But are both really vital and do both carry equal urgency? If one of the two was much more pressing than the other - it is important to explore the arguments.
A typical vegan would, in my experience, probably welcome a full shift to humanely raised animals rather than a mere reduction of factory farmed animals. In other words - I believe that many if not most vegans would side with Mrs Niman's arguments. However - this would be for ethical reasons towards animals and not because of concern for the habitat of humans.
As this is an environmental context - I will argue that a reduction of any type of meat and dairy is much more pressing to human survival than a shift towards more humanly raised animal products. I am fully aware that these are not mutually exclusive events. But I am arguing in the context of reality and not what-could-be.
In reality, I personally believe, consumers of media do not realize how pressing a reduction of dairy and meat is for the planet - not compared to the awareness they have about organic and humanly raised animals. I believe that nowadays there are many more organic and free-range options available compared to a global reduction of meats. In fact - organic production is growing but so is meat production world-wide. Based on this argument alone - I believe it is more important for the media, journalists and authors to write about the need for reduction. It is a question of degree and not type - but I believe a very vital one. (Again - in the environmental and not animal ethics context that is).
I am very sorry to state that I do not feel that the Niman's have taken time to understand the arguments behind the UN ICC report and also not the latest science by WorldBank scientists. Otherwise they would not have made the following claims:
Just as the CO2 is a natural phenomena and just as climate change is natural as well - we are referring to imbalances caused by human behavior and population growth.
If we looked at North America prior to colonization we would have to put it in this equation and perspective when it comes to GHG producers:
mammals and birds after colonization - mammals and birds prior to colonization = delta
The delta is the imbalance - especially if it grew to big to fast. According to the FAO today we have about 307 million humans in the US (not counting Canada and Mexico) and ALL of them eating at the top of the food chain. Today we have about 2 billion live chickens and ca 100 million live cattle and 60 million pigs. There are almost no real predators left in nature - instead we have millions of dogs and cats in cities.
Let's look at mammals alone therefore (needless to say that these are estimates):
post-colonization: 307m humans + 60m pigs + 90m cattle + 60m dogs + 50m cats…
(we have almost 500m mammals eating at the top of the food chain here)
pre-colonization: 2m humans + 10m elk + 50m bisons + 20m wolves + 20m cats…
(we have no more than 50m mammals eating at the top of the food chain here?)
I think that even a child would recognize that there has happened quite a rapid shift towards the top of the food chain in only centuries (evolutionary micro-seconds). The situation is even worse in Asia. Just like CO2 per se is not bad - too much of it is. Eating at the top of the food chain is not bad for cats (look at their digestive system compared to apes) - but this too depends on degree. This is what scientists call human induced climate change. This delta would not disappear if we switched from factory farms to pasture!
In theory - it is not only the methane that this overpopulation is causing - it is also "breathing" (mammals produce CO2 apart from the other GHG). Worst of all - worldwide forest destruction for grazing and feed. Looking at the planet globally (the US is not a good example as it has the lowest population density) - the methane from livestock alone is greater than those caused by rice production. But it would be ingenious to therefore claim - rice is also bad. It would imply that one does not understand the food chain at all?
When a cow produces methane it is in addition to respiration - and as we eat at the top of the food chain the cow is also wasting at least 8 calories for 1 calorie of beef or milk. Again - saying one unfairly singles out meat compared to rice is like admitting that one has not done her/his homework on a basic level? Degree - not type - although in this case even type!
As I fear that I cannot do the UN and WorldBank paper justice myself - I am simply going to quote a paragraph on "land":
What is my conclusion here? My conclusion is that anywhere I go - I see more and more organic and free-range option available. But I also see - and so does the FAO - an continuos increase in livestock consumption and hence production. If you really believed that we have to reduce meat and milk - why argue that there were millions of mammals before us when everybody knows that within centuries this has changed insanely much. And what about rice as a methane source without the proper scientific context and the food chain? It does not come across as in good faith given how sever our environmental situation is. We have the largest species loss in over 65 million years.
Organic is growing and there is NO reduction in meat and milk consumption yet - quite the contrary.
Who has most to lose by all this? Humans. Which humans - those who have something to lose - we in the West. We have to reduce meat and milk - we should do so even faster than the switch to organic farming - in case we cared about humans more than animal ethics. This however is out of balance and authors and media therefore carry a responsibility to set this straight and to research and argue in good faith! Don't feed your children what they want to eat but what is good for them!
Whatever you do - please make sure that your readers get the message that reduction is important. Don't give them excuses to support the status quo. If society does not want to change - then it wants the world to change for the worse.
Some quotes:
Carl Sagan
Animals are just too much like us.
Albert Einstein
Nothing would benefit the human race more than a switch to a vegetarian diet.
Leonardo Da Vinci
If we continued like this - nothing will be left. Not in the woods and not in the sea.
It's nice to be able to look at the problem globally, but this does not apply to most US free range livestock production. The US has ample natural grassland and there is very little deforestation to make room for livestock. In fact, farmers who graze buffalo are helping to maintain natural prairie. Even those who graze cows free range typically have very little land and take great pains to rotate in order to improve soil quality. This type of agriculture is very much not what produces most meat in the US, but it's growing. Encouraging people to switch to it does lead to a reduction in consumption. The fact that my buffalo costs $14 a lb, double or triple the price of grocery store beef, means that most people cannot afford to eat much. That's not bad...that's great! It means that my buffalo grows into stews diluted with lots of veggies.
I would also point out that the animal welfare reforms pushed by PETA and their ilk typically have had little or no bearing on traditional pastured livestock. It's being done the way it's always been done. Those reforms are great, but let's be realistic...vegans will never be quality meat eaters true allies.
Well, based on all the comments I guess we need to outlaw Rice (source of methane), all Mexican food (another source of methane), and people (source of CO2). Then the world will only get a little warmer....
Gunslinger,
Thank you for your thoughtful, in-good-faith comment. You rightly pinpointed the essential topic of the discussion - it is not livestock agricultural and consumption but rice and people? If I may add in all sincerity: WOW! And, really?
The problem is not that we have 300 times more people in the US than before Columbus. The problem is what these 300 million consume - not even how. What they consume. They consume at the top of the food chain and that is why we have to feed and slaughter more than 20 billion animals per year in North America alone. Imagine the rest of the world would follow suite - as we want them to...
E. O Wilson, America's most acknowledged biologists and Harvard's "Scientist of the Century" wrote the following a few years ago (from The Future of Life: The Bottleneck):
Unless one knows what the food chain stands for beyond the top and bottom indicators this might not mean much to readers?
But if we like it or not - something has to give. At the very least - reducing our meat and dairy by half would be the best thing that can happen to us economically and health wise. Authors like Niman and commenters like MGM would like to see this happening via higher prices for meat. They apparently wish for government regulations to prohibit factory farms and hence boosting the prices for meat and dairy.
Although I support an end to to factories farms with all my heart - that approach does not sound ideal to me by itself. If my child or parent were overweight, as the average person in the US is, I would not want to wait for government to be the solution to their problem. "I'll quit smoking only if the government forces me to" does not sound very American to me. Or, "I'll move my ass only if those countries in Asia do something first" does not sound very American to me either. I am afraid that the "let's make meat and dairy expensive and hence elitist so that people cannot afford it" hides the essential question of the whole debate? This issue is too important and pressing to be approached this way alone?
Thank you for this article.