In Meat Wagon, we round up the latest outrages from the meat industry.
Back in December, Michael Pollan wrote a important article about the antibiotic resistant bacteria MSRA, which Pollan decsribed like this:
... the very scary antibiotic-resistant strain of Staphylococcus bacteria that is now killing more Americans each year than AIDS -- 100,000 infections leading to 19,000 deaths in 2005, according to estimates in The Journal of the American Medical Association.
Pollan writes that such strains have been around for a while, emanating from hospitals, where our medical experts quixotically drench patients with antibiotics, inevitably incubating resistant -- and virulent, for those of us who avoid antibiotics -- bacterial strains.
Now, Pollan reports, "a new and even more virulent strain -- called 'community-acquired MRSA' -- is ... killing young and otherwise healthy people who have not set foot in a hospital." Evidence is mounting that the source is that other great center of antibiotic reliance: the concentrated-animal feedlot operation, or CAFO.
In CAFOs, conditions are so wretched that operators drench animals with antibiotics as a matter of course -- the unfortunate beasts' immune systems are so compromised that they'd likely die otherwise. Pollan's article points to mounting evidence of an MRSA/CAFO link; this edition of Meat Wagon brings you one more. From the Canadian Standard:
Canadian researchers have found antibiotic-resistant Staph bacteria in pork products purchased in retail stores across the country -- a discovery that raises questions about how the contamination occurred, how frequently it happens, and whether it has implications for human health.
The researchers say MRSA dies when pork is "cooked properly," so contaminated chops don't pose a huge health threat. But ...
But [the researcher] wondered whether people handling meat with MRSA on its surface would end up inadvertently "colonizing" themselves. People who carry the bacteria on their skin or in their nostrils are at greater risk of going on to develop a Staph infection, which can range from a hard-to-heal boil to pneumonia to a potentially deadly bloodstream infection.
Like Pollan, the Canadian newspaper points out this:
Where MRSA infections were once mainly acquired in hospital, in recent years increasing rates of infections have been recorded in people who haven't been in hospitals and haven't been taking antibiotics.
Wall Street: pass the Big Meat
Over on Wall Street, they're evidently not worried that the few conglomerates that control the meat market might face liability issues over a definitive MRSA/CAFO link. Big Meat shares rallied vigorously after a JP Morgan Chase analyst issued a favorable report on the industry -- focusing mainly on poultry.
Two factors underpin the analyst's case for Big Meat. One is lower corn prices, which have tumbled from recent highs lately as hedge funds and other speculators have dumped commodities. Corn remains at historically high levels -- above $5/bushel, versus under $2 as recently as 2006. But lower corn prices equal cheaper feed equal fatter profits for Big Meat.
The second is this: The chicken industry has been shuttering plants and buying fewer chickens, boosting retail prices through scarcity. As the analyst put it:
The chicken industry has proven it can pass on higher feed costs by adjusting supplies, and we are starting to see signs of easing supplies.
Industry shills: Big Meat rocks!
"Study: Conventional beef production better for environment than grass-fed," screams the headline of a news report.
Cool! Let's start buying beef from JBS, Cargill, and Tyson, the three mega-conglomerates that own 90 percent of the U.S. beef market.
On second thought, let's not. Turns out the study comes from the father-and-son team of Dennis and Alex Avery, long-time shills for industrial food. They run a think-tank-like organization called the Center for Global Food Issues -- which (judging from its website) has lately been most concerned with denying human-induced climate change (a long-time fixation of Avery père.)
Their sponsor is the Hudson Institute, an institution shot through with cash and flacks from Big Food, among other dirty industries. Right-wing foundations like Olin also shovel cash into Hudson's maw. Few take it seriously, and the Averys' tireless work is so wrong and so tedious that I usually can't be bothered to comment on it.
But with the Meat Wagon already rolling just before quitting time on Friday, I'll have a go.
First, the study referenced by the news story doesn't appear on the Averys' website, and a Google search of the title -- "The Environmental Safety and Benefits of Pharmaceutical Technologies in Beef Production" -- only turns up another news account. One wonders who reviewed it, outside of the family circle.
The news account tells us that the Averys delivered it at a "webinar for beef industry stakeholders." Must have been thrilling.
Here, I guess, is the nut:
According to the Averys' research, more than five acre-days are needed to produce a pound of beef from cattle raised and finished on grass in an organic system compared to less than 1.7 acre-days needed in a conventional feedlot system.
The reason for the difference, they say, is that industrial beef producers feed their cows copious lashings of synthetic growth hormones -- and that's not just a good thing, it's awesome. According to the Averys:
Growth promoting pharmaceuticals are a key component of North American beef production. Their use over the past 50-plus years has proven beneficial not only to beef producers, but to consumers and to the environment, all of which benefit from lower costs and more efficient use of scarce natural resources.
Right. To prove the safety of these hormones, the researchers (I've held myself back from using quotation marks) point to their approval by the FDA -- a group nearly as shot through with industry-kept men as Hudson.
Okay, let's say the Averys are right -- that grass-fed beef is much more land-intensive than industrial meat. (Of course, one would like to see their numbers and vet their assumptions before taking anything they say seriously.) But what happens to the land in question?
Industrial beef relies on land that's lashed heavily with fertilizers and pesticides to grow corn. I've rehashed the vast ecological calamities associated with conventional corn production way too many times to get into it on a pretty Friday afternoon.
Then there's the titanic mountains of manure, shot through with the hormones adored by the Averys, that concentrates at feedlots.
Properly pastured beef cows, meanwhile, munch grass and deposit manure into the soil that's taken up by more grass, a closed system.
Even if the Averys are correct -- a highly dubious assumption -- "environmentally conscious consumers" (ostensibly the Averys' target here) should reject feedlot beef and eat modest amounts of the grass-fed variety.
I would make a mean crack comparing the Averys' "research" ouput and the hormone-laden waste that comes out of industrial cows' asses, but it's quitting time.
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Comments View as Flat
JMG Posted 6:08 am
23 Mar 2008
Raw milk
Great article in the latest Harpers about raw milk and health. It's amazing how hard the feds will come down on someone who dares to sell raw milk to willing buyers, while simultaneously ignoring the catastrophic health risks of industrial meat.
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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caniscandida Posted 7:34 am
23 Mar 2008
"sustainability," et alia
Tom,
this is all fascinating. And rather overwhelming: you should have made three separate posts.
I am delighted to be reminded that Michael Pollan and I are on the same page, regarding our shared mistrust of "sustainability."
As for "webinar": Do we really need that word? Presumably it means "a seminar conducted online." So would it kill anybody to retain the genus name, even if that means a few more syllables, and say, simply, "online seminar"?
As for the chickens: Well, I for one always knew that they are precious. But, is this business about "shuttering plants and buying fewer chickens" going to be good for them in the long run?
As for the Averys: Their use of "production" and "beneficial" is an excellent piece of evidence for why economists get a bad name. The former word has a moral connotation, and the latter by definition is a moral term. And yet, the Averys' comprehension of ethics, with regard to both human beings and non-human animals, is plainly deficient. "Is the entire discipline of economics so outrageous?," we non-economists cannot help asking.
As for grass, then manure, then more grass, being a "closed system": Well, maybe; as good as it gets, maybe; but some may quibble. Erecting a force-field might help, though.
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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spaceshaper Posted 12:30 pm
23 Mar 2008
Sustainability, Pollan
Pollan fears the debasement of the word, as should we all. He appears to recognize however that sustainability is a test we must apply to agricultural practice and public policy alike: if it fails we will need to look elsewhere for a reliable future. Even though sustainability may only be defined by the absence of its opposite, it is still the one essential criterion for sound environmental practice.
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
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meander Posted 3:22 pm
23 Mar 2008
Grassy knolls
Cattle can also graze on land that is too hilly, that has too many rocks, or is otherwise unsuitable for growing corn or other crops (besides grass).
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caniscandida Posted 5:34 pm
23 Mar 2008
Sustainability, SpaSh
Keep careful records, dear SpaSh.
Or rather, dump the records; but make sure some oral poets glance over them first; and then get some heroes and heroines lined up, activist-types like many Gristmillers, only big and strong and cute and sexy : ) ; and then perhaps we will be ready for an epic tradition on the tragic lost
Wars of Sustainability.
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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caniscandida Posted 6:01 pm
23 Mar 2008
animal abuse
We should always remember that the exploitation of animals in China (see the following) is as horrible as what legally and commonly happens in the US, if not quite in so hands-on a way, or with so much gore.
This item on raccoon-dogs, exploited for the fur industry in China, was just sent to me:
http://www.hsus.org/furfree/news/raccoon_dog_fur_jackets_ ....
BE WARNED about the accompanying video. It is a snuff-film. And it is the most gruesome film of that sort that I have ever seen.
DO NOT let children watch it, without adult supervision.
The moral is: Most of us in the US treat the suffering of our captive animals with as little regard as do these Chinese fur-traders, who flay raccoon-dogs alive.
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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spaceshaper Posted 9:06 pm
23 Mar 2008
At a loss.
CC, your penultimate post flew completely by me, I understand it not at all. An expanded version is available perhaps, with footnotes?
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
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Pangolin Posted 9:21 pm
23 Mar 2008
Again, blame the feedlot...
rather than the noble pig for the problems of bacterial growth. FWIW cramming people into feedlot conditions breeds these infections even better than feedlots do. One of the highest risk occupations for MRSA is prison gaurds; fitting somehow.
I was on a pasture Easter Sunday with another thousand or so people for a celebration of seasonal wildflowers. Despite the obvious pasture patties there was absolutely no smell of manure and little erosion. Ths land was so rocky that other than pasture it would be nothing but a fire hazard. As pasture it was a fire break seperating it from surrounding thicket.
Some carefully herded pigs could have taken advantage of the enourmous bumper crop of acorns in California this last fall which still lie in piles under any oak tree. As is the squirrels are just about as fat as they can get and still get up a tree.
Respecting animal life should not preclude eating them. They, after all, have no qualms about eating each other.
Put the Carbon Back
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amazingdrx Posted 12:59 am
24 Mar 2008
Superweeds, superbugs
Mother nature is fighting back. Either enough of us get on her side and call a truce or....
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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caniscandida Posted 2:04 am
24 Mar 2008
yes, the winged words fly by
Do not worry, SpaceShaper, it was not important, just a dream-vision of a dystopic, post-civilized, neo-archaic future, once our sustainability games collapse for good.
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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amazingdrx Posted 3:13 am
24 Mar 2008
Incredible cruelty Canis
That video is very hard to watch, I had to stop it. Like the video of the marine throwing the puppy off a cliff, but so much worse.
Still it must be faced up to. I think a boycott of all chinese products is warranted. Not just fur.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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amazingdrx Posted 3:28 am
24 Mar 2008
Yep JMG
The raw milk scheme is a prime example of how industry/government revolving door regulators act to support monopoly gaming.
It's the same story with auto safety regulation.
Regulation, like the prohibition on raw milk sales, initially meant to protect public health, is turned into an excuse to target competitors to monopoly industries.
As in "Scarface", when the cop tells Tony that all he has to do is give them a competitor to bust once in awhile so they can appear to do their job in the drug war.
Arrangments that allow consumers to own the cow, then have the farmer do the dairying, seem to be able to skirt these regulations, but for how long?
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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javaearth Posted 4:52 am
24 Mar 2008
Change or live with it! Just stop whining!
Animals are also often sprayed with arcsine, to ward off and kill any micro bacteria's. Then:
a) is it right to spray an animal with arcsine, - which can go in to the animals eyes?
b) is it ethically right to eat these animals, after all the suffering they have endured?
c) is it healthy to eat these antibiotic/ arcsine / hormone pumped animals?
If we are willing to do such damage to animals, just to for the taste of meat. (Because there are other healthier options), than game on! Stop whining about this medical condition and that medical suffering.
Learn to eat lower on the food chain, or shut up and live with the disease. But please do not whine about how someone is now "SICK" because they ate a "SICK" animal!
Javaearth. aka The Happy and Healthy Vegan!
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Pangolin Posted 7:08 am
24 Mar 2008
Look, it's not even ABOUT meat.
I was listening to NPR this morning talk about multiple drug resistant TB that is breeding in the prisons of Kazakhstan. Anybody fool enough to think that those bacterium are going to limit themselves to the former Soviet Union should be limited to cleaning stables.
At a very fundamental level we (the industrialized members of the human race, that we) have had our minds infected with a meme that tells us that wealth exempts us from physical and biological limitations. It's simply not true but we refuse to believe it.
One hundred years ago it was very well understood that proper spacing, fresh air, fresh water and clean food supplies were critical to the health of anything bigger than a cockroach. People KNEW for a fact that crowded tenements spread disease and that it was healthier to spend summers at cooler altitudes. Don't rotate your crops and you are begging for crop failure.
The advent of antibiotics and pesticides allowed us to pretend, for a time, that we could just selectively kill off the bacteria and insects and continue on our merry way. All that labor-intensive management of healthy ecosystems could be trumped.
NATURE BATS LAST
There Is MRSA, hepatitis A, B and C, drug resistant TB, AIDS, drug resistant malaria, pesticide resistant bugs of all sorts and roundup ready weeds. Oh and the worlds wheat crops are threatened by some god knows what that resists all attempts at control.
All of which could have been prevented by exercising point by point attention to hygiene and the transfer of organisms in ecosystems. Ignoring how disease works within ecosystems can be fatal to huge numbers of people. Just trying to kill it when it shows up is not nearly as effective.
If everyone stopped eating meat tomorrow we would still have a genetic bottleneck in our food supply that is vulnerable to disease. Have you noticed the price of bread lately? Overbred wheat varieties are being infected by disease.
IT'S THE ECOSYSTEM STUPID!! Sheeesh.
Put the Carbon Back
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javaearth Posted 7:32 am
24 Mar 2008
Pangolin, Yes and No.
I agree about improved "hygiene" improving human conditions, and limit the number of diseases.
However factory farming and intensive farming causes much more damage then we can even understand.
Let me give you a very simple explanation. If you put 1000 pounds of lentils/beans in a small tight space, nothing happens. You can continue to eat them after a long time. (grain reserves).
However if you put 1000 animals in a very small space, and if even one animal is sick, that disease spreads, and it goes into your food system. - If this were not the case, why is there so much use to antibiotics given to animals?
I find your explanation of eating meat "oh because other animals do it", to be insulting and rather silly. Lions do not factory farm, nor do they pump their prey with hormones, nor spray their prey with arcsine.
Plus we as humans have a choice to eat better. -
I hope you can understand this crucial point. We can get protein plus any other healthy survival foods without "constant" killing.
JavaEarth. The happy and heathy vegan.
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Pangolin Posted 1:13 pm
24 Mar 2008
Equivalency? Not
First, if I dry 1000 lb. of beef down to the 16% moisture content of the dried lentils then I have a food that is just as stable. Of course I would want to keep both foods in a suitable container to prevent consumption and contamination by insects and rodents. If I have say 1000 lb. of say Salami I have a lot more food than if I had the same weight in lentils.
Now today I was out at Black Butte reservoir where there isn't enough in the way of soil or water to grow much lentils and besides the landscape is a tad vertical. You can't plow it. Out there there were many thousands of pounds of beef wandering around unsupervised gaining weight all by themselves. Heck left to themselves they would even make more beef, find their own food and water and basically self tend.
Meanwhile, back on the flats somebody who wants to plant lentils is going to be plowing, then harrowing, then seeding, fertilizing, watering, weeding, dealing with insects and praying daily that a chance hailstorm doesn't render him bankrupt. Then he gets to harvest winnow, dry and market said crop at an uncertain price.
There's a reason that farmers are shorter than herd following nomads and have worse bones. They traded nutritional quantity for nutritional quality.
Now if the farmer plants lentils every year or the herdsman crowds his cattle both will risk ruin from disease; that's hygiene. It's specific to the ecosystem involved or the subset thereof. If you don't practice it you suffer; it's a given. The repeated claims that vegetarian diets are somehow superior or even fit for all populations is a faith-based rant. People can't eat grass, which grows where trees won't grow, but cattle, sheep, goats, yaks, emus, alpacas, guina pigs, wilderbeasts, horse and geese can eat it, and we can eat them.
Put the Carbon Back
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javaearth Posted 2:23 pm
24 Mar 2008
Pangolin - you just don't get it do you?
Everything you have shown as problems with growing grains/lentils is doubled, because that resource is going to animals and those animals use up more resources, to make food for limited people.
Plus, why are we feeding animals grains that should be feed to starving people?
Surely, you don't believe that the current American Standard Diet, is good for this country. Do you not see the fat and obese kids in this country? - I tell ya, if they ate more vegetarian meals, and less fatty meats maybe diabetics would not be at an all time high. Nor would blood pressure, or cholesterol. Have you seen the expanding waist size of people in this country?
I agree a vegetarian/vegan diet maybe not the answer to everything, but is great start.
As long as there are people defending the notions that is killing this country, the tax payer is going to continue paying for more drugs and suck up more resources.
Congratulations, you have succeeded in eating your sick dead animals.
Its okay, people like you will never get it!
Surely, you don't believe that the current American Standard Diet, is not good for this country. Do you not see the fat and obses kids in this country? -
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amazingdrx Posted 3:10 pm
24 Mar 2008
Dried veggie
Dried veggie protien is just as good and just as concentrated as dried meat. You can even grow brewers yeast, a super protien supplement.
You can get all the amino acids with veggies. with the proper cooking techniques it tastes just as good, if not better.
Quantity of food value and appetite are not the problem. Quality is. We are omniverous and our sense of taste and smell is tuned to eating meat.
So why not reserve meat eating for quality, free range, organic, grass fed,local, happy, humanely killed animals only.
Eat it only once ot twice a week or only on special ocasions. If it is more expensive than agripoisonous commodity meat it won't matter.
Eating mainly veggies saves money and energy. Why not go for quality of life and pass up the whole rat racing consumptive mess? Save your earnings to establish real financial security and prosperity.
Invest it in a no gas, no power bill, no heating bill future with your own renewable energy and conservation systems.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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javaearth Posted 4:03 pm
24 Mar 2008
amazingdrx - I agree, sorta!
Eating meat is not a option for me. However, I know that your solution is probably a more realistic one right now. "Eat it only once or twice a week or only on special occasions".
However, I feel that your solution was used about 100 years ago, when people did eat less meat. But with so much advancement in industrialization will society go back to the way things were 100 years ago? I highly doubt that. -We have come to a stage where our demands for over consumption's are greater than our sensibilities.
Also, with the growing demand for western "lifestyle", countries such as China and India, are also consuming much more meat than ever before.
I hope in my life time there is a good and workable solution to increase human health and end animal suffering. -
Javaearth - The Happy Vegan
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Pangolin Posted 4:25 pm
24 Mar 2008
I think I understand exactly.
Just a bit of background. I live in Northern California, always have, among some of the most productive farmland on the planet. I can honestly say that over 50% of my caloric intake comes from within less than 50 miles and three degrees of separation. I put money in the hands of somebody who can name the primary producer.
Now, I cheat and eat lots of brown rice, beans, farm eggs, produce, olive oil, cheese, almonds, squash and yes, grass fed meats. My dietary luxuries are not available to most people at anything like a reasonable price. Some things I take for granted you just can't afford like eating 4-5 mandarin oranges a day for three months. Grapefruit I get for free just for the picking as well as walnuts, almonds and pecans if I look for them.
I know where my food comes from, who produces it, and where it's produced. It's a diet you just cant' replicate at Whole Paycheck no matter how rich you are. Like most things, it's not fair.
To the south of my town rice and almonds are produced but the further north you go the more likely it is there is nothing but rangeland. The land is too hot, dry and sloped to feed anything but grazers. Without meat production the land wouldn't be habitable as even the timber is poor until altitude allows the trees to thrive.
It's ranching that allows people to live in some areas at all and those people have their own culture that is deserving as your own. Would you evacuate Tibet? Mongolia? Why is your hostility towards american ranchers exclusively?
No sane person feeds lentils, or pulses to animals; it makes them sick. Other grains should be fed to poultry, cattle and horses only as a supplement to forage/fodder or they too get sick. It's bad hygiene to feed an animal something that will make it sick.
People are starving largely due to politics not due to any lack of food. It's politics that denies them access to resources like land, water, tools, education, health care and yep, birth control. The permaculture people have proven that you can produce plenty of food in most environments. Politics is starving those people and only a political solution will fix it. People used to starve in France, England, Ireland, Russia, China and Cuba not too long ago. Get on Google:Earth and look at Haiti and Cuba if you don't believe me.
I have never eaten nor advocated the "American Standard Diet" except once at Boy Scout Camp. Where do you get that I advocate that wreckage? See "The Art of Eating" by M.F.K. Fisher for a guide to my dietary preferences. Obesity is caused by inactivity. There are no obese Amish children. My kids are not allowed to use "screens" if the sun shines and are both very slender.
Hey, go for it. I'm not stopping you. I just think it's dishonest to pretend that it will fix global warming or destroy the CAFO's and the agribusiness that operate them. Opting out and spouting faith-based dietary advice is just not helpful IMHO.
No disagreement there but if you had actually read what I wrote you would know that.
Really, I insist on eating them in what would relatively be their teen years except the occasional retired laying hen that I purchase for the soup pot.
Back at ya friend.
Yep, I see them. Fully half of my daughters sixth grade class is fat. None of those kids are ever seen at the farmers market; none. They are kept inside and allowed access to sodas, video games, and television. I send my kid to school every day with an extra piece of fruit to give away but I can't go home with each kid and tell the parents what to do.Not ever do I advocate the "american standard diet." Just don't think the boutique food veganism that is practiced in the US is going to thin anybody down unless by boredom or starvation. I have known more than a few fat vegetarians and vegans so I just can't believe THAT is a solution either.
I advocate knowing your place in the ecology as the foundation of health. I just don't see a place for faith-based diets in that understanding. Eat what you want; just don't pretend it's science.
Put the Carbon Back
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Pangolin Posted 4:46 pm
24 Mar 2008
Aaack, Vegimite, thpthtttsss!!!
Dr X you invoked Vegimite? Not fair.
I recall that there used to be a vegetarian chinese restaurant in San Francisco. It served vegetarian duck, vegetarian beef, vegetarians pork, vegetarian chicken..........and bok choy with garlic sauce.
One of the ways they use to harass the detainees in Guantanimo Bay is to feed them a boring diet and then hold pork barbecues in the open air. The pork smoke would drive the devout Islamic captives nuts because their bodies would betray them.
Meat eating is pretty hard wired into human brains. Vegetarian diets can fake it but there is always that last bit of you that knows it's missing out.
Put the Carbon Back
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spaceshaper Posted 10:07 pm
24 Mar 2008
Rangelands, food choices, heightism...
Pangolin, it's good to see you writing with a little less anger than your usual anti-vegangelical rants, and you indeed make several decent points. One of course is (if I may radically paraphrase) that we should consider ourselves very lucky to be able to make choices about what food we eat. Most of the world's people can't. As an extension of that thought, it seems clear enough that as a society we are wealthy enough to make better choices about our national diet and that one of those choices should be severe restrictions on the abuse wrought by CAFO operations on our public health and on our common environment. I hope you would agree.
On the use of range lands: indeed they are unsuitable for agriculture. From another perspective of course this does not necessarily mean we should therefore use them for other kinds of human food production. The world is not just about us. Furthermore, your point is well made that there is already enough food in the world and that the problems lie with the politics of distribution, not production, and that we could perhaps afford to leave the dry, steep, untillable land alone - just a little bit? Thoughtful agronomists like Philpott have made the excellent point that sustainable agricultures have typically rotated gazing with tillage on the same land in order to build soil fertility.
On the nomadic herders: I am not aware of studies that show a causal relationship between their diet and their height. Indeed it may well be the reverse. Short-legged folks like me would be crazy to get into the chasing-after-animals-all-day business. And if I were born into such a culture I'd have a hard time keeping up, which would put me at a distinct evolutionary disadvantage.
And what's with the heightist assumption that tall and skinny = better health anyway?
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
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spaceshaper Posted 11:39 pm
24 Mar 2008
More on range lands
I should add that there is indeed a very important distinction between current American ranching habits and traditional rangeland pastoralism as has been practiced for many generations in Mongolia, Tibet, Africa, and in earlier times much of Europe.
Graziers and pastoralists who make us of difficult soils and climates have traditionally acknowledged the limitations of that land and moved with their animals as the resources were locally depleted (nomadism) or oscillated seasonally between different terrains (transhumance). These habits have sometimes put the graziers in conflict with settled agriculturalists, or with each other (as in the Range wars of C19 American West), but they have generally managed to subsist over time and develop and maintain a culture that was for eons and sometimes still is, in the fullest sense of the word, sustainable - sorry Canis, there's no other word for it.
Some Western ranchers still maintain vestiges of these practices but increasingly many have tried to have their cake and eat it too, living the lives of settled farmers while keeping too many animals on too little land that is never allowed to recover from over-use, and relying on external inputs such as aquifer-robbing deep wells, federal subsidies and grain and hay imports from over-fertilized fields elsewhere to artificially sustain the intrinsically unsustainable. Not to mention the CAFO "finishing" lots where many of these open-range cattle end up. So yes, there is some justifiable hostility which is extended by environmentalists towards american ranchers and others who follow this path throughout the world, but from which they quite reasonably hold traditional self-sustaining herding cultures exempt.
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
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caniscandida Posted 9:17 am
25 Mar 2008
carnivory "pretty hard wired"
Many neuro-scientists would say that religion is "pretty hard wired." And yet there seems to be no shortage of Gristmill commenters, quite convinced of the virtues of science, who think that burying religion once and for all is both desirable and possible.
So why is there a problem with suggesting that some of us should consider abandoning carnivory? It is not as though anyone would be condemned to starve to death, after all.
SpaceShaper,
thanks for your most informative posts. You are one of few who use "sustainability" with an appropriate sense of modesty, so you certainly do not need to apologize to me.
JavaEarth,
I appreciate all you do in standing up for the ideal of replacing our society's carnivorous dietary traditions with a better way, in which cruelty to animals is put far behind us.
AmazingDrX,
your pragmatic compromise is brilliant. From your mouth to God's ear!
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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amazingdrx Posted 3:24 pm
25 Mar 2008
Gotta prove it Canis
I need to make a video of how to make beans satisfy the meat hunger. It works, just a few extra cooking details and ingredients. I CAN prove it. It's a reapeatable experiment, thus scientific, hehey.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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