“You
cannot be an environmentalist and eat meat.”
This was the first sentence uttered by a guest speaker for the
Environmental Action Group at Furman University back around 1993 when I was an
undergraduate. We were shocked and dismayed.
HORRIFIED! Not the best opener
for a bunch of young adults born and raised in SC, a state as red as a prime
cut of beef. But her comment was
provoking—I had never made the connection between my concern about the
environment and my diet, although in retrospect the connection seems
obvious. My friends and I decided we’d
try a semester without beef and see what happened. For me, it was not a big deal. Two years later in graduate school I was
taking a conservation biology class and somewhat spontaneously decided to go
meatless for a six month trial. See what
happened and how it felt. And it felt
fine. My friend ordered me a
subscription to Vegetarian Times and
I was sucked into the propaganda of vegetarianism and never looked back or, at
least, not often.
I don’t
usually talk about the reasons that I became a vegetarian, because it could
make me seem like I think I’m an environmental martyr; however, my life would
give people plenty of reasons to point out that I have room for
improvement: my addiction to the bath
tub, my love affair with air conditioning at the slightest hint of humidity, my
tendency to drive short distances for the sake of time. I could go on, but it pains me to point out
my short-comings, so I will stop there. But
giving up meat was one of those things that just wasn’t a big deal. I decided that 1) if I had to kill my own
food, I probably wouldn’t do it, so maybe I should stick to vegetables; 2) it
was easier on my rather slim pocketbook; and 3) there were environmental
reasons for eating lower on the food chain (more on that below).
I don’t think everyone has to give
up meat completely (I live with an opportunistic carnivore), even if I think all
folks could try some vegetarian meals out during the week. Meat’s not mandatory at the dinner table. Sure, if you eat octopus (they’re too smart
to eat) or a pig (delicious, but again, too smart) or a carnivore (we need them
to keep the herbivores in check), I might feel the need to mention how I saw a
pig play a song on horns on Letterman or how the wolves of Yellowstone are the
cat’s pajamas. And, if you order farmed
or Atlantic salmon when I’m around I may mention how daring it is of you to
accumulate mercury so willingly. Wait, maybe I am a martyr! If, a bad one. I have been known to eat (and enjoy) chicken without
comment when visiting friends for dinner and it was the meal they had prepared
for my visit, and I went through a year of occasionally eating Alaskan salmon,
which is allegedly a sustainable fishery.
It’s fine to eat meat, but there
are a couple of reasons that make sense to eat lower on the food chain. One is basic energy transfer through food
chains. Eating lower on the food chain
means you can feed more people. Mammals
are not very efficient at gaining mass, because most of our energy is burned up
maintaining our body temperature, so we tend to be between 1-4% efficient,
the Hummers of the animal kingdom. (I
must be at the high end of mammal efficiency.) So a warm-blooded mammal that
eats plants will use about 1-4% of the energy it takes in for growth and
reproduction; most of the energy used for metabolism is lost as heat and isn’t
available for other links in the chain. A
mammal carnivore will use about 1-4% of the energy it takes in for growth and
reproduction and again, most of the rest of the energy is burned up in
metabolism and lost as heat. So, if we think in terms of Joules of energy, then
10,000 Joules of plant matter could build 100 Joules of herbivore matter
(assuming 1% efficiency, for the sake of easy math), which could
support 1 Joule of carnivore. If you are
the carnivore in that scenario, the initial 10,000 J results in 1 J for you,
because there is the middle man, er, cow—the herbivore.
But if you are the herbivore, then it is 100 J for you--no energy loss through that middle man. So the same amount of energy in the plant
matter can support 100X as much herbivore as carnivore. So, if you want to make the most of the
energy at the base of the food web, eat plants.
If all humans were vegetarians, the carrying capacity of the earth would
be greater than if all humans were carnivores.
Today in my Silent Spring graduate seminar, the students selected some papers
on Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) and some of the environmental impacts
of this type of animal farming, as well as some footage from the movie Food Inc. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the
United Nations (2006) found that animal agriculture results in more greenhouse
gas production than the transportation sector—so raising meat isn’t doing
anything good for us in the climate change department (not to even mention that
forests, our carbon sinks, are cleared for cattle). And CAFOs produce huge amounts of waste that
can contain antibiotic resistant bacteria, all of which can end up in local
ecosystems. There have been a number of
documentaries and books that address these operations, their impact on the local
environment, and the psychological impacts they have on people who work
there. Most people would probably be
disturbed to see footage of the conditions under which their meat is
raised. Eating meat isn’t inherently
cruel, but changes in practices have made the conditions inhumane.
To conduct research with vertebrates,
you have to meet federal animal care guidelines and the bar is set high to
minimize or eliminate suffering; it’s unclear why the bar is set so low for
animals that are being reared for food.
These animals may be bred to be food, but that does not mean that they
should be left standing in their waste unable to move or breathe fresh air. My grandfather had cows on his land; their
fate was sealed at birth, just as a cow in a CAFO, but until that final day,
my grandpa's cows lived a good life in the open air grazing on the grass of the field. This seems much more compassionate to the
animals, the workers, and the environment in the surrounding areas. And, certainly, there are options to seek out
meat that is grown locally and humanely.
Hunting is another option—deer, squirrels, or rabbits living their lives
in nature as they were meant to until the fateful hour when they are preyed
upon by the human hunter, a part of nature to the very end.
Your trophic position, herbivore or
carnivore, is not a decision that has to be black and white. But there are environmental benefits to
embracing shades of gray (or green). There
are reasons that we should treat all living things with respect for the miracle
that life is, and it’s hard to see that current industrial farming is doing
that. For me, a vegetarian diet is
something I do because it is easier on my conscience, and there are many environmental
benefits. But, there are many solutions
to environmental problems, not just one, and we can each contribute where it
makes sense for us because you can be an environmentalist, whether herbivorous
or carnivorous.
