How is a heritage breed more environmentally friendly--especially if it's air-lifted in by FedEx?  A locally raised bird might keep all of the turkey feces and urine (and the offal when it's slaughtered) local, but that's hardly something to brag about.  The animals (even "pastured" turkeys) are still being fed huge amounts of grain that is shipped in from the grain-producing areas.  Going local means shipping 20# of grain across the country instead of shipping a 5# piece of turkey muscle.  In the end, all commercially available meat comes from big USDA-certified slaughterhouses, where mass consumption and mass production guide all decisions.

The key to a green Thanksgiving is replacing the meat, not substituting one type of offal for another or moving it from one area to another.  http://gentlethanksgiving.org/  has plenty of recipes.

You can enter a contest for a new eGo scooter here:  http://gentlethanksgiving.org/
You just have to correctly guess how many pounds of grain will be saved by Tofurkey Brand tofurkeys in 2008 (hint, this one manufacturer reduced grain consumption by about 1.6 MILLION pounds in 2007)

Grist has really disappointed me on this one.  Grist contributors, PLEASE do some reading:
http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2006/1000448/
http://www.emagazine.com/view/?142

You know, you don't HAVE to eat turkey for Christmas. All those families sitting around to a turkey every year - how horribly unoriginal!

Here's a couple of great menu suggestions from the BBC for a really green, and slight more adventurous Christmas dinner: http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/vegetarian_and_vegan/veganchris ...

http://www.ethicaleating.org.uk

exhortations to stop using animal products in their list of potential remedies. I suspect that is because they can't envision people volunteering to swear off animal products in numbers that would matter, and I suspect they are right. Simply because people tend to enjoy eggs, dairy, and meat as part of their diet, few are going to voluntarily stop eating them.

Because vegetarianism still uses animal products it is little different pound for pound of animal product than a regular diet.

Veganism is a statement of personal virtue for some, an attempt to gain stature by others. It is not so much a realistic strategy to save the planet.

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

Also, mail order means that your bird traveled, and that increases Ye Olde Carbon Footprinte.

It's not clear to what extent this is true. No matter what bird you buy, it has to get from the farm to your plate. Either it's driven to the supermarket, or you yourself drive to the farm to pick it up, or UPS takes it to your house. The relative impact of these routes is extremely difficult to gauge, and probably only makes up a small proportion of the life cycle carbon footprint of the bird.

So I wouldn't count this as a factor -- unless you're having it airshipped, which is almost certainly a bad thing.

Personally, I'd recommend going with heritage or pastured, with price and taste being the swing factors. Organic is a decent fallback of the other two aren't options.

www.terrapass.com/blog

"Note that the FAO report does not include exhortations to stop using animal products in their list of potential remedies. I suspect that is because they can't envision people volunteering to swear off animal products in numbers that would matter, and I suspect they are right."

The FAO report doesn't include exhortations to stop destroying the world for a few reasons.  One of the major reasons is that they think no one cares enough to make a change.  They sell us short.  The old "think globally act locally" rule makes perfect sense here.  We need individual action, and it's already happening:  http://courtneypool.blogspot.com/2008/07/no-meat-less-hea ...

No one has to "swear" or promise anything.  All I ask people to do is think about the world they want to build, and then to build it.

Articles like this are counter-productive, encouraging the attitude that we don't have to make any changes--we should just pay a little extra for the organic version.  It's like buying forgiveness from the church.  Most people are smarter than that.

consumes eggs and dairy, both produced by animals eating grain. The amount of grain consumed in the production of eggs and dairy is very similar to that consumed in the production of meat, depending on what kind of dairy and what kind of meat. Eating fewer animal products is a good idea, meat or otherwise. Being vegetarian does not get you very far up the food purity pyramid.

Many of us have been vegetarians at some point in our lives and many of us attended church at some point. Proselytizing has a tendency to backfire.

I ate a bison burger the other day. If I were king all beef would have to come from wild, free-range, grass-fed genetically pure bison.
 

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

http://action.farmsanctuary.org/site/MessageViewer?em_id= ...

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

(yes, once again)

The argument that veg-ism is ok for some people, but that it's an individual's "right" to eat meat is, in my opinion as a vegan, not only tired, but about as defensible an argument as "I accept your choice to try and reduce your negative impact on the planet by driving a hybrid, but you should respect my choice to drive a 9-mpg SUV because I like the way it looks."  Or I'd go so far as to say it's analogous to arguing that "I respect your pacifism, but you should respect my choice to brutally beat someone I disagree with."  Or maybe even "although you believe in equality for all people, you should respect my right to own slaves because they make my life easier" (crude examples, but I'm just trying to illustrate the point).  I think most would agree that some arguments are indefensible, and for many veg-ns, animal exploitation falls into that category (whether for food, clothing, experimentation, etc).

The way I myself and I think many other veg-ns see it, the cruelty and violence perpetrated against animals is as immoral and unjustifiable as violence against humans, so I can't accept the argument that it should be an individual's choice to eat meat (and please spare me your accusations that veg-ns care more for animals than people, that is not what I am saying.  Or that human rights trump animal rights...that anthropocentric viewpoint is why we are where we are today).  Of course meat eating is a contentious issue...people defend their dietary choices vehemently...and so personally I tend to try and lead by example rather than give unsolicited opinion, but when asked or confronted, I try to explain the veg viewpoint, at least as I understand it.

And the reasoning , I believe, that people like myself who are vegan tend to promote that type of lifestyle to others has nothing to do with feeling superior or passing judgment, but instead, at least speaking for myself, has everything to do with having reached the epiphany-type realization after looking at the issue from many different angles that the animal agriculture industry is massively environmentally destructive, horribly cruel and inhumane, extremely unhealthy for humanity, and exceedingly costly to society...and that veg-ism addresses all of these problems....and that those who still eat a typical animal product-centered diet have likely not really been informed of these issues, much less looked at them in-depth, and upon doing so will likely (hopefully) come to the same conclusions.  And stating that vegans avoid animal products because they "don't like the taste of meat," for example, just highlights this.  So don't deride us for attempting to inform others of what we believe is possibly the most important decision an individual can make for themselves, the animal world, and the planet.

And as pointed out above, I think it's exactly right that "social dietary changes take generations to change, unless catastrophic changes intervene," because animal agriculture is the catastrophe, and veg-ns are trying to bring about that necessary change...that's the whole point.

So please, before spouting knee-jerk responses to people promoting veg-ism, take a moment or two to actually look into the subject if you haven't...maybe you'll be glad you did:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWWNLvgU4MI
http://www.vrg.org/nutshell/nutshell.htm  
http://www.goveg.com/  
http://www.ivu.org/  
http://www.brook.com/veg/  
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/29/business/media/29adco.h ...

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way it treats its animals"
   - Mahatma Gandhi

"Nothing would benefit humanity more than the general adoption of a vegetarian diet."
  - Albert Einstein

As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields.
   - Leo Tolstoy

Vegism: A word used to blur the distinction between veganism and vegetarianism.

Vegetarianism consumes animal products and is pound for pound of animal product no more environmentally benign or animal friendly than a diet that includes moderate amounts of meat.

"I accept your choice to try and reduce your negative impact on the planet by driving a hybrid, but you should respect my choice to drive a 9-mpg SUV because I like the way it looks."

An SUV is the car analogy for your average American's meat consumption.

A hybrid is the car analogy for moderation in meat eating/vegetarianism.

Veganism is the equivalent of telling people they have to walk everywhere. Veganism and vegetarianism are not synonyms.

I respect your choice of diet as well as whatever religion you've chosen. It's the proselytizing that gets old.

It isn't a matter of educating people about why you have accepted Jesus into your heart or veganism as a lifestyle, having heard it all a million times. Veganism is asking people to go against the grain of evolution, to crawl instead of walk upright--doable, but not an idea that will scale.

There are literally billions of people increasing their consumption of animal products because they can afford to do so and tens of millions of human beings arriving on the planet annually who will want to partake in the consumption of animal products if they can afford to do so. Vegan conversions won't make a perceptible dent.

Good luck with your education efforts, but I'm with the FAO. We need to find viable, scalable solutions for the fact that the vast majority of people are going to continue to do what they have been doing for millenia--supplement their diet with animal products.

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

Hi everyone,
Checkout Line is an advice column. A reader wrote in asking advice on a perfectly reasonable topic; and Lou responded in a perfectly reasonable way. Suddenly, a whole debate about veganism (or something) broke out -- very tedious for all, save perhaps for the participants (but aren't even they getting tired of the same ol' screeds?).

Rather than going after Lou for not addressing questions that weren't raised by the advice-seeker (Tired of Odious Meat made pretty clear s/he would be cooking a turkey, and wanted info on the various options), why not send in a question related to the topic you're interested in?
You might ask, for example, which is the greener option, occasionally eating meat from nearby pasture-based farmers, or seeking out highly processed meat-like soybean products that come from ... well, where do they come from?
Or something. Lou can only respond to the questions that get asked.

Victual Reality

A great way of getting the classic turkey flavor and moisture into heritage or pastured birds is a salt brine. Harvest some fresh sage, parsley, marjoram and rosemary from your garden, wash them, macerate them with some salt (you'll use one cup salt per quart of water you need to cover your bird). Mix it up with some sugar (I preferred the local honey I bartered some eggs for, but YMMV) a few splashes of vinegar (I like apple cider), lots of pepper and smashed garlic. Submerge the bird and refrigerate for a few hours to a day (more if you like a saltier bird, but beware the corned turkey if you leave it too long).

I think that the carbon-smart thing for a lot of folks to do is to abandon roasting a whole bird. A whole bird is fine if you have folks you're feeding who will eat every part, but so many folks will only eat breast meet that it might make more sense to buy and cook one or two breasts, or legs if your eatees are dark meat eaters. Whole birds are a pain to carve, harder to bring and cook and way more likely to have a lot go to waste (thrown away food being a top contributor to waste in our ag system).

For the veggeterians, try marinating portobello mushrooms with the same herbs, but pureed with some nice oil and vinegar, then roasting or grilling. Wonderful taste (and 33 percent protein - by dry weight). I find that when I serve mushrooms along with meat, it reduces greatly the amount of meat folks eat, which is a good thing all around (given that humanely raised, local meat costs about as much as local, organic mushrooms).

On the other hand, I suppose some vegans might not eat fungi since they're, genetically speaking, more similar to animals than vegetables. If they're collected responsibly, the impact on the mycelium (the underground part of the mushroom) is positive (since a good collector will spread the spores far and wide). And if they're raised responsibly from sustainable feedstocks (manure, compost, wood chips, etc.), then the energy cost is probably less than animals (I haven't run the numbers. There is a considerably heat outlay for mushrooms for sterilizing the feedstock which may only slightly be exceeded by the energy costs of raising the crops to feed meat animals).

I suppose conversations about dietary requirements will always be a part of the negotiations leading up to a Thanksgiving feast. Let us hope for more goodwill on the subject at the table than in the forum.

Eat what you grow, grow what you eat

The ever-excellent Karen Dawn, of DawnWatch.com, praises an article on turkey-substitutes that appeared yesterday in (of all places!) the Wall Street Journal:

<<
Wall Street Journal subscribers will find the full, wonderfully positive article on line at:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122653028076622317.html

The following link makes the article available to non-subscribers for the next seven days.
http://tinyurl.com/5dr3nc
>>

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Check out this blog:  http://wildideabuffalo.com/blog/?p=335#more-335

Did you know Buffalo meat is better for the human body than Turkey? It's leaner, higher quality protein. And on this particular ranch, they harvest organic, free range, native grass fed buffalo. The animals are harvested right there on the prairie where they were raised and lived full lives, and processed in front of a meat inspector by a mobile refrigerated truck. Since the animal underwent absolutely no stress (they doesn't even run when one is taken)... the meat is free of all hormones. Since they are raised on the very grass for which they evolved to thrive thousands of years ago... they need no antibiotics. This is the healthiest, most humane (and delicious) meat available. Skip the Turkey.