Meat-Guzzler

Does your mouth water when you look at the scene on the left?

"Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler" (below) provides much food for thought (gristle for the noggin?). Seems we clearly need to take another look at meat.

Click on the charts to blow them up and we can begin to understand the impact of that chile con carne, burger or chicken wing.

Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler
A sea change in the consumption of a resource that Americans take for granted may be in store — something cheap, plentiful, widely enjoyed and a part of daily life. And it isn’t oil.

It’s meat.

The two commodities share a great deal: Like oil, meat is subsidized by the federal government. Like oil, meat is subject to accelerating demand as nations become wealthier, and this, in turn, sends prices higher. Finally — like oil — meat is something people are encouraged to consume less of, as the toll exacted by industrial production increases, and becomes increasingly visible.

Read "Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler from the New York Times

Comments

[Noelle]

My husband sent me this article yesterday. This is something I have been thinking more about in recent weeks (I've been reading Omnivore's Dilemma).

I think this is very fitting to examine during Lent, and season in which fasting (especially from meat!) is a tradition for many (namely Catholics). Isaiah 58 reminds us that the kind of fast God desires is one that loosens the bonds of oppression. Looks like fasting from meat has the power to do just that!

[Andrew Kang Bartlett]

I wanted to share the National Family Farm Coalition's letter to the editor (not yet published) about Meat-Guzzler; an important addition!

Mark Bittman's Rethinking the Meat Guzzler (Week In Review, 1/27/08) does an excellent job explaining the environmental and social costs of industrial livestock production and its profound implications for the planet.

However,his solution to abolish agriculture subsidies would only worsen the problem.

Bittman is right that huge livestock agribusinesses such as Smithfield and Tyson benefit from subsidized grain. But he misunderstands the nature of those subsidies. Under the New Deal, agribusinesses paid a fair price to farmers for their grain through a price floor (akin to a minimum wage for workers). However, farm policy since the 1970s deregulated the price of corn. Farm programs then emphasized overproduction and when prices collapsed, subsidies were needed to make up for some of farmers' lost income. A recent Tufts University study exposed that between 1997 and 2005, industrial livestock companies saved $35 billion due to cheap feed from below-cost corn and soybeans.

Depressed commodity prices in the 1990s gave factory farms an unfair competitive advantage to expand at the expense of sustainable family farms who raised their own feed for their livestock. We should end subsidies, but ensure farmers are paid a fair price for their costs of production by reinstating a price floor. That is the only way we can preserve sustainable livestock farmers and stop the spread of factory farming.

Katherine Ozer
Executive Director
National Family Farm Coalition

[Andrew Kang Bartlett]

Even if you don't have a strong stomach, you still should watch this video of the "downed" cows they feed to our kids through the school lunch program. USDA Approved!

Here
https://community.hsus.org/ct/g7111111dmR9/
is the video and a way to send your thoughts to the USDA.

[Andrew Kang Bartlett]

Anna Lappé of the Small Planet Institute also sent in a Letter to the NY Times. Don't know if they ran it, but it is hereby "published" here, with the author's permission, or course!

To the Editor:

Mark Bittman’s “Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler” (1/27/08) may have left readers scratching their heads. While Bittman’s article powerfully documents theconsequences of feedlot meat, it leaves us asking why: Why haven’t we seen stiffer environmental standards of factory farms or regulations on humane animal treatment? Why does such a dirty industry receive huge subsidy windfalls? And why do we continue to pay mightily for its cleanup through our taxes?

The answer, in part, is industry’s grip on our democratic institutions. Consider the revolving door between our Department of Agriculture and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. The USDA’s Director of Communications was formerly the public relations director at the Association; the Chief of Staff for past USDA Secretary Ann Veneman had been the Association’s executive director of legislative affairs; and, the USDA’s Deputy Under Secretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programs spent more than fifteen years at the Association before taking his post. The list goes on.

If we are to address the crisis Bittman describes, we must ensure our government reflects the interest of citizens, not business.

Sincerely,
Anna Lappé
Founding Principal, Small Planet Institute