Commentaries by Joann S.Grohman
Commentary 4 - Elite Food Security
Commentary 1 - Critique of Mark Bittman's NYT article "Rethinking the Meat Guzzler"
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Commentary 4
This TALK was given by Joann S Grohman at the MOFGA fair SEP 23 2011 with edits
A New Yorker story (August 2011 GRUB) promoting entomophagy - insect eating – asks us to consider: Where is the logic in trying to fight hunger in Africa by assisting farmers to pour insecticides on crops to kill locusts that are more nutritious than the crop being defended? Insects provide complete protein; crops do not. This seems unassailable logic. Borne along on his wave of enthusiasm the author, Dana Goodyear, proceeded to bolster his position with further claims, to wit:
Insects eat cellulosic materials (plants); these are cleaner than food eaten by warm blooded animals
Insects don’t compete with humans for food (the author has not met my Japanese beetles).
They have a low carbon footprint and don’t contribute to greenhouse gas levels (GHG) or pollute water sources.
And again: insects provide complete protein.
Predictably, the author declared that insects are far more efficient converters of feed to product than cows. It’s not true. I will explain shortly.
I wrote to the New Yorker and told them that I have somebody out in my pasture that meets or exceeds all these claims and more: my cow Jasmine.
Cows eat grass, their natural food, a stringy cellulosic material for which humans will never compete.
Cows on pasture have a zero carbon footprint. They sequester carbon by trampling grass and dung into the ground. If it is an organic farm there will be dung beetles which quickly bury the manure underground where it builds fertility.
Cows on pasture are nitrogen providers so farmers need not buy it in. Nitrogen is vital to fertility. It is provided by manure and re-enters the life cycle; it is not wasted or nor does it become a pollutant as occurs in confinement operations.
Cows do not contribute to GHG levels in the atmosphere because they are part of the short term carbon cycle. This is carbon (CO2) that is breathed in and out by animals and taken up by plants and recycled productively. This is equally true of methane (CH4) from enteric (rumen) fermentation. Because methane is produced anaerobically, by definition it cannot be a product of manure dropped on pasture in the open air.
The New Yorker story described a soirée at which promoters and celebrity chefs offered a variety of insect dishes. A hesitant guest said he supposed he had better get used to them because bugs are the food of the future.
Those unready for locust burgers will be interested to know that dairy products and beef are also complete protein produced by bugs, the “bugs” in this case being rumen bacteria. Insects derive their complete protein the same way it’s done by cows, from amino acids built by internal bacteria that break down cellulose. Using energy provided by sugars released in the splitting of cellulose and by adding nitrogen from any available source, bacteria compound the essential amino acids. Bacterial synthesis creates complete protein. Complete proteins are the essential building blocks of body tissues.
There are three reliable sources of complete protein. Either you have a rumen or comparable organ like a cow, and are a primary producer. Or you eat other animals. Or you eat eggs and milk. Since cows eat neither other animals nor eggs or milk, they are directly dependent on their own rumen bacteria to provide the complete protein that builds their massive muscles and goes into their gallons of milk. The only things lower on the food chain than cows are bacteria. This claim is equally valid for herbivorous insects. But in the case of the cow you end up with milk or meat instead of grasshoppers and caterpillars. You also get higher quality protein and more of it. The value of protein is measured on a scale of 1 -100 based on standardized growth in rodents. The high quality animal protein in egg, milk and red meat scores 90 to 99 whereas the protein in Acridids (Locusts) is 60 to 66.(1) Fish is 50 to 55. Soy scores about 48 and is not a complete protein.
The New Yorker article further recommended insects on the grounds that they are cold blooded and thus able to make more efficient use of food than warm blooded animals do because they needn’t waste energy keeping warm. That claim won’t survive the first hard frost, following which the grasshoppers will be dead but Jasmine will keep on producing. When an insect is below its functioning temperature it is not growing. When a mammal is in full production, the heat it produces exceeds its own requirements, so over a wide range of temperatures a growing or producing animal is by no means wasting energy staying warm. This is true also of bumblebees and moths, tuna and some other fish, all of which are able to maintain a constant body temperature because they produce more heat than they need and can control heat loss.
Cows have become suspect creatures, the object of unkind slurs. Their alleged feed consumption, water requirements, and contributions to pollution are passed back and forth among investigative reporters, environmentalists, scientists from all disciplines and the entire vegetarian community in a self reinforcing closed loop, all agreeing, “As by now everybody knows…” without troubling themselves with fact checking. These surely well meaning folks have one thing in common. They don’t raise their own cows. I know this about them because if they did raise their own cows there would be no niggling over whether it takes 1400 or 2100 gallons of water to produce one steak or gallon of milk. They would know perfectly well that beef cattle don’t use any more water than a pony of the same weight and probably less than a showering teenager. Dairy cows are thirstier, but they give it back the next day as milk. Here is an entertaining parable:
Camping with the Lone Ranger and Tonto
The Lone Ranger and Tonto go camping in the desert.
After they get their tent set up, both men fall sound asleep.
Some hours later, Tonto wakes the Lone Ranger and says, "Kemo Sabe,
look towards sky, what you see?"
The Lone Ranger replies, "I see millions of stars."
"What that tell you?" asks Tonto.
The Lone Ranger ponders for a minute then says, "Astronomically
speaking, it tells me there are millions of galaxies and potentially
billions of planets. Astrologically, it tells me that Saturn is in
Leo. Time wise, it appears to be approximately a quarter past three
in the morning. Theologically, it's evident the Lord is all-powerful and we are small and insignificant. Meteorologically, it seems we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. What's it tell you, Tonto?"
Tonto is silent for a moment, then he says,"Kemo Sabe, you dumber than buffalo. It tell me that someone has stolen tent."
If you are considering getting a cow, you may prefer to jump right in based on common sense like Tonto. You may agree with our friend and haying partner Ted who shared his perception of the future: “Anybody who isn’t giving serious thought to food self sufficiency hasn’t been paying attention.” Next spring Ted plans to convert his horse pasture to a crop of wheat. All kinds of food production are important and I may put in some wheat too. But nothing beats the dairy cow. What are the simple facts behind the crazy numbers? You’ll want to know them before investing in this “extravagant” beast. Before I give you the math, which you may be as relieved as I to discover is remarkably simple, here are a few of the benefits you can expect from a cow:
She gives you milk to support peak health and physical development.
She provides the raw material for butter and cheese
She gives you a calf every year to raise as her replacement or as meat for your freezer or to sell.
She provides skim milk and whey, the complete protein essential in the diets of pigs and chickens
She provides manure for your garden and her own pasture and does it without causing pollution or adding CO2, methane or nitrous oxide.
She sequesters CO2 and is a net improver of air quality (atmospheric green house gas levels).
She accomplishes this on local feed – grass and hay augmented by whatever else you have – pumpkins, comfrey, making her the ultimate locavore’
She is immune to early blight, late blight and market swings
She cheerfully works all day at her job of grazing, converting the inedible into the richly edible, freeing you to do other things. Like all grazing animals, she gladly uses rough pasture unsuited to any other crop.
She doesn’t care what is happening in the rest of the world. In his classic book Goat Husbandry, Scottish writer David McKenzie described the aftermath of a WWII bombing raid that destroyed a house along with the fence around the vegetable garden. When the smoke cleared, there was the family goat calmly eating the cabbages. There’s sustainability for you, not to mention resilience and milk for your tea. It could as well have been a cow. For year round food security in war and peace, you can’t beat the dairy cow.
What about all the trash talk against cows?
What about all the bad things we hear about dairy cows and beef critters, their competition for world grain supplies, vast water requirements, diabetes, heart disease and cancer laid at their door and now charges of elitism directed at their owners? Start with elitism, now a frequent charge against those who go out of their way to secure organically grown food for their families. Is the fact that many others are unable or simply unwilling to go to the trouble and expense of obtaining top quality food really a reason for you or me to eat inferior food? Does anybody pursue this reasoning with housing or education? The charge of elitism is used as a way to put down others. It puts us on the defensive where we don’t belong. “Elite and proud of it” may be the best answer, along with inviting them to join us. More substantive concerns about food security and health care costs will soon overtake charges of elitism, a puzzling accusation in any case against one who pitches manure.
I asked my daughter-in-law Mitra who keeps a milk cow along with pigs and meat birds what she thinks of the statement that farm animals cause 18% (or some say 28% or even 40% (2) of GHG emissions, more than transportation? Being a hands-on woman it is obvious to her that such numbers don’t apply on her farmette. She said, “Maybe they are talking about factory farms.”
Actually… not. Those numbers are not true anywhere. They come from the summary to the 2008 WHO paper, Livestock’s Long Shadow, which was apparently as far as anybody read in the report and are not supported by the facts within the body of the paper. A refutation was published within days by Frank Mitloehner PhD, an air quality specialist speaking at a meeting of the American Chemical Society (3), but who wants to read that sort of thing? The misstatement resonated with established prejudice against livestock, cows in particular, and remains little challenged. What Mitloehner pointed out was that when assigning GHG levels to transportation, the report estimated only what takes place in traffic whereas for the livestock sector it counted embodied fossil fuel inputs right back to the tractors that plowed the grain fields as well as chemical fertilizer and herbicides used on the crops and even energy used in food processing. Not fair.
Here are figures from my article Why We Need Cows and Should not Worry about Their Carbon Footprint or Methane Contribution See: The Maine Organic Farmer's and Gardener's Association June 2010 issue.
According to USDA figures for 2007, the latest year for which numbers are available, the entire agricultural sector accounted for only 6 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Out of this 6 percent, 24 percent was from enteric (rumen) fermentation by cattle (excluding manure management). So 6 percent x 0.24 = 1.44 percent. If all cattle were killed, then 100 - 1.44 = 98.6 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions would still be with us. If you exclude methane from manure lagoons, the methane contribution of cattle is negligible and is entirely enteric in origin (methane belched from the rumens of cattle, erroneously referred to as farts). Methane (CH4) from this source is part of the short term methane cycle. Less is produced by modern livestock than was produced by indigenous ruminants in ages past. It is not rightfully an issue at all.
Simon Fairlie, author of Meat: A Benign Extravagance, which I reviewed in the MOFGA issue for December, 2011, points out that Henning Stienfeld, author of the much read summary to Livestock’s Long Shadow, is closely allied to corporate agriculture and a supporter of what is called “intensive livestock production”, in other words CAFO’s or factory farming of animals. He is thus making a stealth case against “extensive” production, known to us as grazing. The point here is clear enough to agribiz enthusiasts though not necessarily to the rest of us: thanks to manipulation of the ruminants’ natural diet, confined animals produce less methane. This then becomes a talking point in support of CAFO methods. Opponents of animal agriculture together with those just after a snappy headline have found this 18% claim, however groundless, to be irresistible.
The most persistent charge made against meat production – meaning beef – is that beef demands wasteful feeding of grain. Four-color bar graphs enliven an endless stream of books, articles and blogs in support of this belief. “It takes 10 pounds of grain to produce one pound of steak” is the feed conversion rate most often stated although Wikipedia makes it seven.(2) Sometimes it is stated not as feed but as calories: 10 calories of energy to get one calorie of steak. This is then compared to chicken or pig feeding, always to the detriment of cattle, which are described as hopelessly inefficient. Two points must be considered.
Firstly, feed constituents vary according to price and availability and results vary accordingly. Labor costs and time are also factored into the estimate as these are impossible to avoid. The 10 to 1 ratio is a moving target. More meaningful to producers is IOFC (income over feed costs). The feed conversion ratio of 10 to 1 is then used to prove that cattle are inherently less efficient producers of animal protein because they are bigger and take longer to grow, eating all the while. They are being held accountable for trophic loss, another way of describing the food chain. The food chain works like this:
It takes a whole lot of mice and little birds to support a small population of hawks. And the mice and birds need a lot of seeds, roots and insects. And the insects need a lot of plants. There is a 20% loss of energy with each step up the chain or trophic level. So if the hawks could be persuaded to eat plants, perhaps intermediate life forms could be dispensed with leaving more unblemished plants for the hawks to share.
Does this make sense? I didn’t think so either, but it is the basis for the reasoning behind Diet for a Small Planet. When imposed upon cattle, perching them at the top of the food chain, the discussion loses all credibility, at least I think it would to Tonto. Because cattle are not at the top of the food chain. They are at the same level as grasshoppers eating plants as anyone observing them graze can plainly see.
The easy math
Now for point number two, which brings us to the math I promised you. It is called Kleiber’s Law. Max Kleiber and his colleagues put many decades into creating a theory immune to ideology. What he gave us is a charmingly simple feed conversion rate. It forms the basis of metabolic studies. It goes like this:
If you give one tonne (2200 lbs) of hay to 300 rabbits and one tonne of hay to one steer, at the end of one month the rabbits will have eaten up their hay and there will be 240 kilograms of new rabbit tissue. The steer will take four months to finish off his tonne of hay at which point he will have gained 240 kilograms of new tissue. The rate at which living things convert food energy to tissue is exactly the same for all, from the largest animal that ever lived right down to single cells and even applies to plants. The formula is R= M ¾ .All are equally efficient if by efficiency you mean how much energy is required for growth. (4)
Note that Kleiber’s example uses two herbivores. The grain to beef ratio of 10 to 1 is additionally weakened, in fact becomes meaningless, when you take into account that cattle are not evolved as grain eaters. Their natural diet is grass. Poultry and hogs, the meat animals to which cows are always compared, have a gut designed to thrive on high density feed such as grain. Try turning those comparisons around by asking poultry and hogs to fatten on grass, and then see what the bar graph looks like. This in no way conflicts with Kleiber’s Law, which can only tell us what to expect from calories that make it across the gut wall into metabolism.
The inexact ratio of 10 to 1 is really all about time. As I explained in my review of Meat: A Benign Extravagance, if I am a CAFO (Confined Animal Feeding Operation or factory farm) my objective will be speed of turnover, or rabbits in/rabbits out.
For the CAFO, it is a matter of finding feed that is cheap yet digestible so that the animals can maximize their potential and reach market weight fast. Chickens are well suited to this because they only need reach about 8 lbs before they enter the value-added phase of their careers. If I have the grass or hay and prefer to let my steer eat in peace while I do something else with my time, from my standpoint nothing is lost. Of course not all feed energy goes into growth. Some goes into urine and dung. For a large animal like a cow that takes longer to grow, this can make quite a pile. From Nature’s perspective this is not waste, it’s recycling fertility and I value it, but from the current marketing perspective it is wasted energy.
If we are talking about a dairy cow, things are even better. Here is where you truly get to have your cake and eat it too. Your dairy cow will provide milk every day, animal protein of the highest possible quality and a calf every year and you still have your cow.
In deep water
“Of all the statistical clichés about livestock that are passed like a relay baton from one article or website to another, there is one that stands out in it enormity. George Monbiot, writing in the Guardian, tells us that ‘every kilogram of beef we consume, according to research by the agronomists David Pimental and Robert Goodland, requires about 100,000 litres of water to produce.’ But it’s unfair to single out Monbiot because the 100,000 figure pops up all over the place, as often as not preceded by the word, ‘staggering’.” (5)
These are the opening words in Simon Fairlie’s chapter entitled Hard to Swallow. There follow a series of quotes from other distinguished names in environmental, climate, sustainability and other professional disciplines, all making virtually identical statements. To give it context, Fairlie applied these figures to his steer, Bramley. This would require Bramley, an Angus Jersey cross, to consume 12,500 long tons of water, the equivalent of an acre ten feet deep on each of the 500 days of his life. Fairlie is a witty writer as well as a scholar and I recommend you read his book. He then took the trouble to pursue every water use reference he could find. The water use writers quote each other or cite unavailable sources. The trail of references finally petered out like the Colorado River in the sand before it reaches the Gulf of Mexico.
Ideal time to get a cow
Since you are here, I assume that you are more interested in exploring the cow pathway to elite food self sufficiency than in insect farming, which I certainly don’t hold in contempt. But it should be understood that the cow already does it all and a whole lot more without anyone having to invent new terms for what they are eating.
Right now is an ideal time to get a cow if you don’t already have one. Commercial food is getting steadily worse and more expensive. The value of everything your cow provides is increasing in value relative to other foods. If you have the land, this is also true of the grass she eats. It costs the same as it always did. If you have a spouse or partner, this may make it possible to live on a single outside income. One of you can work at home as pasture god or goddess and maximize the value of the dairy products by making lots of wonderful things like butter and cheese. Then first thing you know the chickens will be laying more eggs on the clabber they get. What about a pig? It doesn’t take much of any more work or feed to raise chickens and a couple of pigs. A pig by himself gets picky so two are better than one. A few sheep may fit in well. They share pasture peacefully with a cow. Talk about elite eating!
Q: Do you feed any grain? How much?
A: I feed some grain most of the year. I know zero grain feeding has become an ideal for many people. The cow is unquestionably best evolved for grass but this does not mean her health will be compromised by the addition of pumpkins, apples, comfrey, corn stover, mangels .. or grain. All these foods except grain will probably be free. So why do I feed grain? Because I don’t live on an ideal farm. I am not always a perfect manager. I can’t always count on top quality hay. And above all, I don’t want my cow to get too skinny.
A cow’s impulse to produce milk varies by her individual genetics, stage of lactation and other factors. Some cows on a restricted diet will “milk off her back”. Unless you adequately support her production she will become a rack of bones. Some people deal with this by attempting to suppress lactation. There may be occasions for this. My preference is to feed the cow better so that she has enough nutrients to support both herself and her milk production. I don’t consider this to be pushing. I consider it humane management.
A herd that becomes selected or adapted to grass- and hay-only over a period of years will balance things out and be healthy but less productive. She or her daughters will adjust production downward, assisted by your choice of sires. This is the norm in New Zealand. I think it is best to feel your way in this direction, putting your cow’s welfare first and idealism second, reserving “grass only” as a goal. I have seen a number of cases where the ideal is imposed too vigorously, the cow becomes emaciated, and the owner finds that she won’t breed back.
Q: Are more people getting back into farming?
A: New small farms are on the increase. They are the only farming segment doing so. At YES Magazine, an editor remarked that “Every young person I know wants to farm.” Most want a mixed farm with animals. Animals complete the circle of sustainability and add hugely to resiliency. They give you more high quality food for less work than vegetable crops do. As one of my cow owning forum members said recently, “If our family had to make it on the vegetables we grow ourselves, we’d starve.”
To whatever extent one’s animal husbandry or food choices include eating meat or dairy, be clear that animals are not in conflict with human needs, they are key supporters. They do not add to planet stress, they relieve it. To suggest that the world does not have enough grass for pasturing cattle is disingenuous. The biggest irrigated crop in the US is lawns.
I hope that I have corrected some of the disinformation about farm animals, especially cows, that currently warps so many peoples’ views of their role in farming and in life.
(1) Locusts as protein source
International Journal of Poultry Science 7 (7): 722-725, 2008
ISSN 1682-8356
© Asian Network for Scientific Information, 2008
http://www.pjbs.org/ijps/fin1130.pdf
ScienceDaily (Mar. 22, 2010) — Cutting back on consumption of meat and dairy products will not have a major impact in combating global warming -- despite repeated claims that link diets rich in animal products to production of greenhouse gases. That's the conclusion of a report presented at the 239th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in San Francisco.
Air quality expert Frank Mitloehner, Ph.D., who made the presentation, said that giving cows and pigs a bum rap is not only scientifically inaccurate, but also distracts society from embracing effective solutions to global climate change. He noted that the notion is becoming deeply rooted in efforts to curb global warming, citing campaigns for "meatless Mondays" and a European campaign, called "Less Meat = Less Heat," launched late last year.
"We certainly can reduce our greenhouse-gas production, but not by consuming less meat and milk," said Mitloehner, who is with the University of California-Davis. "Producing less meat and milk will only mean more hunger in poor countries."
The focus of confronting climate change, he said, should be on smarter farming, not less farming. "The developed world should focus on increasing efficient meat production in developing countries where growing populations need more nutritious food. In developing countries, we should adopt more efficient, Western-style farming practices to make more food with less greenhouse gas production," Mitloehner said.
Developed countries should reduce use of oil and coal for electricity, heating and vehicle fuels. Transportation creates an estimated 26 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., whereas raising cattle and pigs for food accounts for about 3 percent, he said.
Mitloehner says confusion over meat and milk's role in climate change stems from a small section printed in the executive summary of a 2006 United Nations report, "Livestock's Long Shadow." It read: "The livestock sector is a major player, responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions measured in CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalents). This is a higher share than transport."
Mitloehner says there is no doubt that livestock are major producers of methane, one of the greenhouse gases. But he faults the methodology of "Livestock's Long Shadow," contending that numbers for the livestock sector were calculated differently from transportation. In the report, the livestock emissions included gases produced by growing animal feed; animals' digestive emissions; and processing meat and milk into foods. But the transportation analysis factored in only emissions from fossil fuels burned while driving and not all other transport lifecycle related factors.
"This lopsided analysis is a classical apples-and-oranges analogy that truly confused the issue," he said.
Here is a link to an article that repeats some unsupportable allegations.
(2)It is an interview with Jonathan Foley -- lead author of the study and director of the University of Minnesota's Institute on the Environment, as well as a member of The Nature Conservancy's Science Council advisory board -- to find out what it would take to make these recommendations a reality. Jonathon Foley, U of Minnesota, is lead author of a new study in the journal Nature which claims it takes 33 lbs of grain to make 1 lb beef.
Here is a Grist release about the Nature article followed by a commentary I wrote for the In the News section of the www.keepingafamilycow.com forum
Solution to world hunger? Eat less meat, new study urges
MONTREAL -- A newly published blueprint for doubling the global food supply
includes a key suggestion about how everyone can contribute to this increasingly
pressing ambition: eat less meat.
An international team of researchers has developed solutions to respond to what
it calls one the greatest challenges of the 21st century -- boosting food
production while slashing the environmental impact of agriculture.
The research, which will be featured on the cover page of the Oct. 20 edition of
the journal Nature, comes as international concern grows over how the planet
will feed the rapidly expanding human population.
With the world's population expected to climb from 6.9 billion to 9 billion by
2050, the issue of food was put at the top of this year's G20 agenda. The study,
published online Wednesday, says there are already a billion people who don't
have enough to eat.
McGill University's Navin Ramankutty, one of the team leaders on the paper, said
the research is the first of its kind to quantify both food production and
ecological consequences in the same analysis.
He added that it's also the first study to examine these factors while
considering the specific environmental characteristics of different regions of
the planet.
Ramankutty said limiting meat consumption is one of several ways to increase
food production.
He estimates that simply dedicating prime cropland to growing food for humans --
rather than growing biofuels or feed for animals -- could spike the global
output by nearly 50 per cent.
The study says that three-quarters of the world's agricultural land is devoted
to raising livestock, either for grazing or for growing feed.
Ramankutty added that beef is the most resource-intensive animal product of them
all.
"That doesn't mean we all have to become vegetarians and vegans, but even if
you... eat meat one or two days less a week, you can hugely contribute to the
amount of food that's needed," Ramankutty, himself a meat-eater, said.
"It would have a huge impact, but this also happens to be one of those things
where people are much more personally attached to it."
He said that scientists in his field rarely raised diet as an issue in the past
because they didn't want to infringe on a person's right to choose.
But Ramankutty said fewer researchers are staying quiet on this subject,
particularly when the consequences have global environmental impacts.
Changes to the human diet are only one component of the study's strategy to
double the global food supply.
The research also calls for improved crop management to increase yields; an end
to deforestation to make way for farmland; and a cutback on food waste, which
accounts for as much as half of the planetary food production.
The catch? Ensuring these strategies are adopted on a global scale.
Ramankutty laughed when asked about the likelihood of these tactics being
implemented in his lifetime.
"To be honest, I'm probably pessimistic about it, but I always think that
optimism is the only choice we have," the geographer said.
Joann
comments:
Any time I hear celebrity cooks, and other non farmers, in this case a
geologist, Navin Ramankutty, announcing his answer to world hunger, I sigh
deeply. In this case I have read only the above article. I await the pleasure of
seeing the original publication. But I can state right now, eating less meat has
no bearing on the issue of world hunger any more than supposing that if I spend
less money there will be more money in the pockets of the needy. Neither meat
nor money works that way and when you see these feel-good pronouncements, look
behind the door for who profits. Alternatively, find a high minded soul who
doesn’t do his homework.
Here are some of the weaknesses in the eat-less-meat argument. I will have to
compress my remarks so if I don’t make myself clear, questions are welcome.
People are starving right now and there is food available from a number of
sources. It is not equitably distributed partly because somebody had to pay for
that food and whoever now owns it will not part with it without recovering his
investment either by selling it or by gaining political advantage. This is not
new. The Pharaohs of ancient Egypt did business this way. Are we to delude
ourselves that those in power in the year 2050 will distribute food without fear
or favor?
Geologist Ramankutty claims that this is the first major report which attempts
to quantify ecological damage parallel with agricultural projections. This is by
no means true but maybe this one is illustrated with impressive new bar graphs.
I appreciate the criticism of biofuels, which I am able to support only if the
biofuel is carefully harvested from managed woodlands by small holders. Growing
corn as fuel I find completely indefensible.
The complaint that feed is being grown for animals, coulda shoulda been grown
for people, and consequently is a wasteful use of land and grain has now been
repeated so often that most people don’t question it. If you read it real fast
and don’t have the on-farm experience to picture what is really happening, the
flaws in the argument may pass unnoticed. Firstly, it is actually a restatement
of the belief in equitable distribution, the hypothesis that if 10 million acres
of corn were not in biofuel nor was fed to animals, then it would be planted to
food crops and fed to humans. Is there some evidence anywhere at all that this
would occur?
Small farms are not included in this social engineering.
In the real world of small farming, we have rotations of crops, some of which go
to humans and some to animals to mutual benefit. There is little competition
between people and animals; they share a productive web.
As farming is now being managed, megafarms, which are investment opportunities,
provide grain for the highest bidder. Or increasingly the land and crop is owned
by a vertically integrated holding which includes animals, a further investment
opportunity. If a grain crop is fed to pigs or chickens they grow well and
provide a rapid return on investment. If fed to steers, it is declared to be a
waste because unlike a chicken, the steer does not double his weight every two
weeks. On a small farm the steer spends most of his life after weaning grazing
on the world’s cheapest food and may or may not get some grain. He does not
compete for food with the family, my goodness no, he is the food. Neither is he
competing with the pigs and chickens. Just try turning the situation upside
down, making the chickens and pigs live on grass, then see who looks
inefficient. Cattle are being forced into an unnatural comparison. But let’s
also be fair to the pigs, chickens, sheep and goats, if any. They aren’t
competing either. The chickens and pigs get mostly stuff nobody else wants and
the sheep and goats graze land nobody else needs.
Sweeping statements about the use of land worldwide for feeding animals are
meaningless and intended as propaganda unless a distinction is made between
arable and grazing land. Mostly the two acreages are combined into a grand total
with animals, chiefly cattle, being accused of using too much land. In few
instances is grazing land wanted as arable, consequently grazing animals are its
highest and best use. Taking beef cattle out of their natural environment,
feeding them an unnatural diet and then declaring that they are the most
resource intensive livestock is a statement possible only to the willfully
ignorant. Why should I believe anything else they say?
The authors of the new McGill study being published in Nature speak of “improved
management” and “global”. It is here that we cut to the chase. This is the same
stealth language used in the report, Livestock’s Long Shadow, which groundlessly
accuses animals of contributing 18% of greenhouse gas (GHG). The case is then
made that if you will please get out of the way and let the big boys manage
worldwide agriculture it will be a lot more “efficient”. How? By getting all the
animals off the land (Oh goody, less ecological damage) and into CAFO’s
(Confined Animal Feeding Operations) and then planting the animal-free lands of
Africa, the US, India and China and everywhere else to GMO crops.
Read more:
http://familycow.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=news&action=display&thread=48022#ixzz1cz7tt6ZE
In 2007, the last year for which statistics are available, US agriculture accounted for 6%* of US greenhouse gas emissions. Out of this 6%, 24% was from enteric (rumen) fermentation by cattle (excluding manure management). So 6% x 0.24 = 1.44%. If all cattle were killed, then 100 - 1.44 = 98.6% of US agricultural greenhouse gas emissions are still with us. Omitting methane emanating from manure lagoons, the methane contribution of cattle (called enteric) is negligible. The real source of greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture are manure lagoons and the petrochemical inputs to plant crops. All declarations about environmental damage by cattle are based on our current unsustainable animal husbandry practices involving CAFO’s. Even so, it is still no 18%, in fact is less than 6%.
*Mithloenor, an air quality specialist, gives the contribution of GHG attributable to agriculture as 3%.
Kleiber’s Law
(4) Full quote from Why We Need Cows and Should Not Be Worrying About Their Carbon Footprint:
“If you take 300 rabbits and one steer and give 1 ton of hay to your rabbits and 1 ton to your steer by the time they have all finished eating their hay you will have an equal increase in rabbit meat and steer meat, 240 kg of new tissue. The only difference will be that your rabbits will eat up their hay sooner, one month for the rabbits, four months for the steer. (Kleiber et al)
How does this make rabbits more efficient? Not by a “better” feed conversion rate. Only by time. Only if efficiency = time = money are the rabbits more efficient. This may well be true for CAFOs where rabbits in/rabbits out is the measure of efficiency. The CAFO (Confined Animal Feeding Operation or factory farm) system wants a warp speed return on investment. I am willing to wait for my return. If my time = money than I have a far greater return on my longer term investment because the work involved in getting quick rabbit meat is greater; tending 300 rabbits even with the best equipment will take 2-3 hours of intense labor every day (14). My steer eats his quota of hay or grazes his pasture without supervision. All I have to do is be sure his water tub is full. How is this inefficient? Quote is from Joann S Grohman’s review of Meat: A Benign Extravagance in MOFGA newspaper December 2011. A detailed explanation of Kleiber’s Law may be found at: http://universe-review.ca/R10-35-metabolic.htm
Meat: A Benign Extravagance by Simon Fairlie: Chelsea Green Publishing. My review of this book appears in the December 2011 eddition of the MOFGA paper.
Title of the above talk given September 23, 2011 at the Common Ground Fair (MOFGA) was: Your Family Cow : Elite food security
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Commentary 3
Why we need cows and should not be worrying about their carbon footprint or methane contribution
The cow, that enduring nursery icon, has been losing fans lately due to serious misinformation being spoken in the highest places. Some of this character damage may be deliberate; much is due to city dwellers having become so distanced from cow reality that absurd statements fly by without a challenge. Example: It takes 2500 gallons of water to produce a pound of beef. I see that in print pretty often. If I said it takes 2500 gallons of water to produce a pound of dog I believe I would be asked for references. Flesh is flesh.
Along about 1996 when reporters got wind of the fact, no secret to biologists, that cows emit methane, they presumed this gas left by the rear exit. So entertaining was the concept that efforts to correct the story met with considerable resistance. In fact the humor value of this popular interpretation did not exhaust itself for some five years at which point it was grumpily replaced with another untruth: “So alright, cows belch out the front end, but they’re causing global warming.” The earlier myth remains at home in vegan discourse, a territory where it continues to prosper.
Cow digestion is so different from our own that it is not surprising that misunderstanding of how it works is widespread. It’s all about cellulose. Herbivores from caterpillars to elephants have all got specialized organs for dealing with cellulose, the basic structural support of plants often referred to as fiber. In cows this organ is called the rumen, so cows are “ruminants”. Cows are designed to process long stringy plant material such as grass. Ruminants do not have a requirement for grain, thus the idea that they are in competition with humans for grain is groundless. This belief must be relinquished before sense can be made of the role of cattle either as a food source or a factor in global warming. Feeding grain to cattle is an economic choice. Its profitability is dependent upon continued agricultural subsidies.
Buffalo (American bison) once roamed the US in numbers exceeding that of the entire current US cattle herd. Buffalos are ruminants. Like everything that breathes, buffalos are part of the short term carbon cycle (carbon that circulates in living things) and neither add nor subtract from atmospheric balance. But in addition the former herds, by trampling prairie grass into the ground, sequestered carbon, removing it from the short term carbon cycle. As a result they built what was perhaps the finest topsoil the world has ever known. Cattle at appropriate stocking rates do exactly the same thing. Farm activist Joel Salatin puts it this way: America has traded 75 million buffalo, which required no tillage, petroleum or chemicals, for a mere 42 million head of cattle. Estimates of buffalo numbers vary around Salatin’s figure but the point remains valid. Buffalo may be 6 ft high at the hump and the bulls reach 2000 lbs. Their production of greenhouse gasses will have been proportionately greater than is the case from an equal number of cattle on grass. In addition to the buffalo herd, there are estimated to have been 100 million deer, antelope and elk and countless small herbivores such as rabbits and prairie dogs all doing their part.
Cattle are solar collectors. Rod Heitschmidt, USDA rangeland scientist states: “Biochemical constraints determine that herbivores function as ‘energy brokers’ between solar energy captured by plants in the photosynthetic process and its subsequent use by humans. The inability of humans to directly derive caloric value from the 19 billion metric tons of vegetation produced annually in tropical and temperate grasslands and savannas provides the ultimate justifications for evaluating grazing as an ecological process.”
By “biochemical constraints”, Heitschmidt means cattle can make this conversion and we can’t. In other words, cattle are essential to the conversion of solar derived plant material, the principal component of which is cellulose, into human food. Specialized bacteria in the rumen accomplish this by fermenting cellulose, a function that can be accomplished only by bacteria* and not by human digestion. Using the breakdown products of cellulose, bacteria assemble the full spectrum of essential amino acids (othrwise known as animal protein). This function is possible only to bacteria. This newly constructed protein feeds the cow; she is not a vegetarian. She puts this newly minted protein into milk and meat. Within the cow, grass, inedible to humans, is converted into products of the highest biological value: milk and meat. Bacteria are the true authors of protein. The cow, her rumen and those specialized bacteria make an amazing team.
Methanogens, a life form smaller than bacteria known as archaea, do part of the work in the rumen.. Methanogens produce methane (CH4) when extra hydrogen is left over following less efficient fermentation of cellulose by rumen bacteria. This occurs when cellulose, a form of glucose, must be split Methane is also known as swamp gas or natural gas. If you cook or heat with gas you are using methane. Like CO2 from oil or coal, the methane we cook or heat with lies stored in the earth and remains inert until mined and released. Megatons, trapped following ancient fermentation, are now being released from tundra by melting permafrost. Oceanographers now describe vast belches coming up in the Bering Sea and South China Sea. In some places the sea is foaming like a shaken soda, the methane is emerging so fast. Anthropogenic (human derived) sources of methane are rice paddies and landfills, both of which emit more methane than does livestock. The rumen is a controlled fermentation vat and produces methane at a modulated rate.
Methane contains energy, as you know if you cook with it. The amount a cow’s rumen produces varies according to diet. As mentioned above, the rumen is designed to ferment stringy cellulose (grass, hay) not grain, consequently much of the grain a cow eats is passed unaltered to gut digestion similar to our own, and misses getting fermented. For this reason a diet high in grain results in proportionately less methane compared to grass or hay which always must be fermented in the rumen. Forbs (broad leafed plants) found in natural pasture assist with fermentation and boost its efficiency so that less of methane’s energy is lost to the cow. Like the buffalo before them and the deer in the woods, grazing cattle will always belch up excess methane. Ruminants produce more methane than other plant eating species because their large rumens are actively breaking down more cellulose, much to our benefit. This does not unbalance the universe and never has. It feeds us.
Cattle, whether beef or dairy, if eating diets high in grain, will as noted, produce proportionately less methane than do cattle on grass or hay because much of the grain fails to be fermented but is instead passed intact to the small intestine for standard carbohydrate digestion. However, the practice of collecting manure as slurry in vast lagoons produces methane by the ton. These lagoons are also the mode of collecting manure from swine and poultry CAFO’s (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations); thus swine and poultry, despite being non ruminants, also become responsible for methane production. Methane production is anaerobic (without oxygen). Manure lagoons crust over on top and the slurry does not circulate; these lagoons provide ideal anaerobic conditions. It is these lagoons, not cattle themselves, which are the chief source of methane now being attributed to livestock production.
Upon first consideration it might be supposed that if cows were out grazing on pasture the methane contribution from manure would be the same as in confinement, merely spread out over the countryside. This is not the case. Cow patties dropped in the open air on pasture result in no methane production. Cow patties in the open air do not support methanogens. They are consumed by insects, birds and aerobic soil bacteria.
Beyond its role as a greenhouse gas, methane remains an important energy source. Methanogens (the bacteria that produce methane) have many important roles. Archaea in the sea bed have been found to play a central role in the planetary nitrogen cycle on which all life depends.** Methane is at risk of becoming demonized before it is properly understood.
So why don’t we move cows out of feedlots and dairy barns and onto pasture where they can participate in the short term carbon cycle and carry on belching harmlessly like their ancestors? Quite aside from resistance from agribusiness which prefers things as they are, many well respected writers and scientists dismiss this as a practical impossibility. Insufficient land is the usual excuse. Comparisons of food calories per acre between animal and vegetable production are always mentioned. Academic studies consistently state that cows cannot be pastured locally on grass in numbers adequate to meet consumer needs. Until it has been attempted, nobody is qualified to make such a statement. Maine farmer and gardener Eliot Coleman, a national treasure, has repeatedly demonstrated that production from a vegetable garden is by no means finite and can be impressively greater than most people realize; the same is true with cows, no “pushing” required. Estimates of land requirements obtained by dividing the number of people into USDA stats for farmland acreage make it sound hopeless to depend upon local food production of animals or vegetables. These linear production models, seldom challenged, have formed the basis for assumptions about the potential for meat and milk production by virtually all environmental writers and researchers, few of whom have a cow in the back yard. But there is no linear relationship here. The upper limit for integrated local food production of plants and animals depends on dedication and imagination and is not known. When free market forces are allowed to operate, food production soars. We do not currently enjoy free market conditions. The very fact that so many local growers are already flourishing under stifling constraints hints at what we may look forward to in case some of the more onerous regulations are eased.
Coleman questions the assertion that animal agriculture has anything to do with global warming. He suspects that oil interests and corn/soy producers along with vegetarian cheer leaders are feeding us disinformation about the role of animal production as a factor in climate change. It is in fact plant crops that are responsible for displacing small farms in both the US and Africa and for deforestation of lands in South and Central America and in South Asia. Cattle are used as a quick cash crop before the land is dragged clear for corn, soy beans or palm oil. Statistics regarding the contribution of animal agriculture to greenhouse gas production are clearly being manipulated for somebody’s benefit. Here are US EPA figures from 2007, the most recent year for which information is available.
In 2007 US agriculture accounted for 6% of US greenhouse gas emissions. Out of this 6%, 24% was from enteric (rumen) fermentation by cattle (excluding manure management). So 6% x 0.24 = 1.44%. If all cattle were killed, then 100 - 1.44 = 98.6% of US agricultural greenhouse gas emissions are still with us. Absent methane emanating from manure lagoons, the methane contribution of cattle (called enteric) is negligible. The real source of greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture are manure lagoons and the petrochemical inputs to plant crops. . All declarations about environmental damage by cattle are based on our current unsustainable animal husbandry practices involving CAFO’s.
Sustainable local grassfed beef and dairy cattle, source of life giving food, are a big threat to somebody and it isn’t to us folks. Corn and soy are where the real money lies. These commodities can be stored and traded. They don’t have to be fed or refrigerated. They can have value added right down to the last molecule before being labeled “All natural” and sold in a package with a picture of a farm on it.
Where did we get the idea that without agribusiness and CAFO’s it is impossible to produce enough food for everybody? Where did we get the idea that a dispersed method of food production will make food too expensive? These beliefs did not start with local farmers. They have been pounded into us by agribusiness itself. Let’s look first at production.
Lately I have been reading posts on the Organic Consumer Association (OCA) site. They offered an opinion poll about a Cornell study that presented the daring finding that in an all out effort to feed the people of New York State it might prove efficient to dedicate a little marginal land to cattle grazing. A couple of ounces of meat a week might then be made available to New Yorkers. Prompted by this study, a poll invited readers to vote on the following propositions. (See the OCA review of the Cornell study below.)
Humans were meant to be vegans Humans were meant to be vegetarians It’s OK to eat a little humanely raised meat Eat all you want of lean meat
No option was offered for meat with a natural amount of fat, the choice of all our ancestors and my choice as well.
Our views in support of our votes were invited.
I live a sheltered life and wasn’t prepared for the incivility of the vegan responses. Reinforced by this study, they shifted ground. “Maybe now they’ll get it”, cried vegans and vegetarians alike as they rejoiced in a condemnation of meat supported by a WHO paper which declared that livestock contribute more to global warming than the transportation sector. They did not hesitate to describe themselves as more highly evolved and ethical than meat eaters and took the occasion to instruct meat eaters that their diet was identical to maggoty road kill. They did not make me feel as bad as they may have hoped because I know they are operating from a base weak on facts. When the cow is better understood her honor will be restored.
A more polite but no better informed position on meat and its role in global warming has been enunciated by Rahendra Patchouri, our US appointee to IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). In his public remarks he clearly states his belief that if everybody would eat less meat it would go a long way towards reducing green house gases and promises the bonus of improved health. As Dr. Patchouri must know perfectly well, wherever and whenever people get the means to do so, they eat more meat. I refer to the default vegans and vegetarians of the world, those whose diet is restricted by poverty, not choice. The demand for meat is growing in emerging economies at a rate far outpacing what top-down idealism is likely to achieve among meat eaters in the US and Europe. The meat industry itself predicts an increase of 21.3% by 2015. (add footnote to newsletter excerpt below) Patchouri’s suggestion to cut back on meat for the sake of global and personal health, made during a talk in London, prompted the Lord Mayor to declare his intention of going out for a steak. Patchouri will also be aware that it is meat produced by intensive methods (pork, beef, poultry and fish) that has the big carbon footprint. This meat is the product of a few powerful international corporations which have not shown themselves to be any more sensitive to global concerns than your average Wall Street bank. They are probably scary even to Patchouri. He may prefer not to prod this hornet’s nest. Urging well meaning, well heeled westerners to eat a little less meat strikes me as a tepid action. In fact, this reminds me of a local preacher who made it his business to stop in and tell me and other ladies that we were endangering our immortal souls by our choice of friends. He did not knock on the doors of big hairy wife beaters.
It is apparent that Patchouri has not done his homework on the relationship between meat eating and health or he could not make such an unqualified statement. I would guess that he was taking the opportunity to give a free ride to his cultural anti meat convictions. The subject is large and important and can’t be treated with justice in one essay let alone one paragraph. At present, anti meat rhetoric meets the definition of propaganda: a simplistic statement with no basis in fact which if repeated often enough comes to be believed. If one goes to the actual research on meat, what emerges is that where, as one example, cancer appears to follow meat consumption, the study fails to distinguished fresh meat from nitrate laden processed meats and just blames “meat”. Piling up hundreds of similarly skewed results does not constitute proof. I’m with the Lord Mayor of London on this: Patchouri’s views on meat eating do not belong in public policy. Whether Patchouri’s stance against meat is due to ignorance or ideology, one hopes that the rest of his advice on climate has a more defensible basis.
The assumption that more people can be fed on a given unit of land by growing plant products has been around for a long time and does not take into account the work involved in production. The issue is between agricultural productivity and agricultural efficiency. They are not the same thing. American farmland can be enormously productive if you have no need to count the cost of the inputs (fuel, chemicals, irrigation etc). The efficiency of a system is simply the ratio between the work or energy put into the system and the work or energy gotten out of it.
To provide a hint to the disconnect between productivity and efficiency (what you can get out of, let us say, an acre of vegetables with no help from fossil fuel or the machines that run on it) imagine preparing the ground by hand and carrying animal manure, planting the seeds, watering, weeding and harvesting all by yourself with only your own physical labor. I can’t predict your productivity, but you will not find this an efficient way to produce food. You will almost certainly put as much or more energy (your own) into it as you get out.
Food distribution theories based on calories per person ignore the fact that plant derived calories require huge inputs in terms of fossil fuel or human labor; right back to Egyptian times, this has primarily been slave labor. No matter how productive your efforts prove to be, you will end up with carbohydrate calories but no life supporting animal protein and fats.
So the more energy we get out of a given unit of land compared to the work or energy we put into it, the greater is the efficiency. Commercial agriculture as now constituted is productive but not efficient; in the case of many crops 10 calories of energy must be invested for each (1) calorie of food obtained. You may choose whether to expend these calories using fossil fuel or your own muscle. In the latter case, count on losing weight.
Suppose that instead of an acre of vegetables, I have an acre of pasture. An acre of land in good grass will support my 700 pound mini Jersey cow enabling her to produce four gallons of superb creamy milk each day while she cheerfully does all of the work by grazing which she enjoys and I do no work except milking her for 20 minutes twice a day. This is about the most efficient system you will ever find. This was so completely obvious to our ancestors that they would not have known whether to laugh or cry at claims that the cow is a waste of resources. The productivity of my cow or any cow depends on such factors as climate and grass quality and her breed. Her efficiency will remain quite constant.
An old fashioned integrated food production model is best. We call it a farm. Using some of the time liberated by my hard working cow plus some of her valuable manure, on an additional 1/8 acre, I am able to grow all the vegetables for a large family. Besides her dairy products, my cow raises a calf every year and there is enough skim milk and whey to raise a pig and chickens.
With cheerful help from my family I can readily produce more than enough vegetables for 15 people. This is on space that many people now devote to lawn. At present, US lawns comprise our country’s largest irrigated crop. My land gets better every year. All the people and animals that are fed by it are notably healthy. This is in cold and rocky Maine and I am over 80. Commercial agriculture cannot begin to match either this productivity or efficiency.
It is gratifying to find that the Cornell study takes at least a fairy step towards recognition that meat might deserve a niche in the human diet. It was especially rewarding to see a few responders to the OCA forum speaking up for meat and animal fat. People feel better immediately on any diet that cuts out processed food. But for sustained physical work either in the vegetable patch, in sports and (very importantly) to produce full term normal birth weight babies, there is quite simply no substitute for animal products.
While a medical student, my son Mark attended a seminar during which the discussion turned to meat quality and food production. A number of students were seriously interested in local food of better quality, yet many believed this to be an elitist choice. The assumption is that only agribusiness is capable of food production on a scale and at a price capable of feeding everybody, a belief much fostered by agribusiness itself.
When you examine the wastefulness inherent in the agribusiness production model you end up with something reminiscent of those $260 apiece carpenter’s hammers the Pentagon buys. No new studies are needed to demonstrate the efficiency and productiveness of small scale local farms and gardens. My own example is far from unique. Currently in the news is the model provided by Joel Salatin in Virginia. His farm is a stunning example of what one man with a few helpers and minimal inputs can produce in both crops (his main crop being grass) and meat while simultaneously improving the land. And as Eliot Coleman has demonstrated, even in Maine excellent vegetables can be produced the year around in a small space. Coleman also raises a steer for many of the same reasons that I do.
Food safety, food sustainability, reduction of greenhouse gases, reduction of food miles, freedom from the tyranny of imported oil, a lot more health and happiness, and above all food security, all are supported by a milk cow in your yard. And here is another significant point. We can’t get along without animal fat. That anti fat propaganda is not going to persist for another generation. Even now I don’t suppose it is a great stretch to accept that a diet devoid of fat is dull and barren. There is no need to distill rapeseed from Canada or ship coconut oil from Malaysia to supply your fat. Your cow will generate it right at home from your lawn clippings. It’s called butter. If you would also like some lard, your pig will oblige. How about some schmaltz? You want chickens too, don’t you? Well, there you go. Eggs! Chickens are champions at making do on very little. But I must point out, pigs and chickens can’t make protein out of vegetation any better than you and I can. They must be fed an animal protein source. Skim milk will do. It is ruminants that drive the cycle of life.
And yes, I didn’t promise food savings. So is local food and even home produced food going to cost more?
Local and home food production may indeed appear to cost more especially at first. This is because you with your tax dollars have subsidized commercial food production. For every $1 you pay at the supermarket you have paid at least an additional $9 hidden in taxes that go to subsidies. These are not just direct farm subsidies that make corn so cheap that people fuel stoves with dried kernels. Highway maintenance costs fall disproportionately on passenger vehicles, not long haul trucking. Property taxes of local farmers and homeowners are typically based on “Highest and best use” which means house lots: commercial farms in big farm states get breaks. University research supported by your tax dollars develops the seed varieties used by Monsanto as feed stock for GM foods. The list of helpful things your taxes have done to make food profitable yet cheap at the checkout counter is long indeed. Not least is the ease of low interest borrowing enjoyed by farmers growing USDA approved crops. For nearly a century our government has maintained a cheap food policy. The true cost of food is concealed. You and your local farmer can’t get out of paying these hidden costs of food production. So you may not save a bundle by buying locally or growing your own. But you will have food and it will be food worth having.
To call local food “elitist” recognizes that it is inherently superior even though often more expensive. To assume that this means that most people must make do with cheap commercial food is to cede the field to agribusiness and processed food, accepting their claim that only they can possibly provide enough for all. For this claim we have only their word. Many analysts consider current mega farming methods to be unsustainable and there is evidence that productivity is declining. Its cheapness is a fraud. We don’t know for sure how many people can be fed by local food but we do know that it is sustainable. Importantly, local production is empowering. Commercial food makes us into a client population dependent upon the whims and fortunes of governments and corporations.
By omitting to include methane generated in manure lagoons, meat producers operating cattle CAFO’s are able to accurately state that this method results in less methane production. The unnatural grain diet does not ferment to produce a normal amount of methane. The CO2 footprint and CH4 emissions of cattle living naturally on pasture belong in discussions on global warming only as an example of how to make better use of renewable resources by use of pasture. It is the inputs necessarily to commodifying livestock that must be addressed.
A man I once knew married a Japanese national who remembered World War II. Together they took a flight from west to east across the US. As she viewed the vastness of our country from her seat by the window she shook her head and said, “Whatever were we thinking?” Declarations that we don’t have enough land for livestock are disingenuous.
Livestock has been set up for us as an adversary in our quest for survival on our shrinking planet. In fact animals are our best allies. Our adversaries are to be found elsewhere.
* There are industrial methods of cracking cellulose involving acid and heat. **University of Washington (2009, October 1). Planet's Nitrogen Cycle Overturned By 'Tiny Ammonia Eater of the Seas'. *** The Cornell study doesn’t recognize the self-limiting reality of a vegan diet. Also, it presumes that “they” will produce food for “us”.
Copyright 2010 Joann S. Rogers
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Commentary 1
Critique of Mark Bittman's NYT article "Rethinking the Meat Guzzler"
The following article appeared in the New York Times on January 29, 2008.
I had always assumed that the NYT had a fussy editor who exercised a sharp blue pencil and advised fine cooks like Bittman to stick to their pots and pans. The junk drawer in my kitchen is better organized and contains more useful items than this NYT article.
Why did I bother to write this critique? Because somehow the assumptions repeated in Bittman’s article have crept unchallenged into the public mind. Since Bittman’s remarks do not follow a logical progression I have interwoven my comments with the original text, which I have italicized. The NYT article may be read in unbroken form at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/weekinreview/27bittman.htmlv
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The World
The title of this article tips us off that this is to be another meat bashing article. So don’t expect a balanced perspective because you will not be getting one.
Agribiz meat production, including all species of meat animals and poultry, is subsidized under the USDA Farm Bill which is rewritten every four years. A new one is now under review. Over the objections of many, it once again includes massive subsidies to grain farmers, particularly for corn and soy. Grain farmers lobbied successfully for continuation of these subsidies which permit US farmers to sell grain to developing countries at prices which undercut their farmers thus driving them off the land. A point which might be considered by those who advocate producing grain instead of meat so that we can provide grain directly to hungry people: they are already getting it and it is ruining their own farmers.
It is the grain being fed to animals in confined feeding operations (CAFOs) that is directly subsidized, not the meat itself. And it is only too true, as Michael Pollan has effectively written, corn, soy and consequently meat runs on oil. It is impossible to produce monoculture grain and oilseed (corn, soy, canola) except with massive expenditures of fossil fuel.
Bittman is perhaps unaware that locally produced meat animals with access to pasture are not dependent on large inputs of fossil fuel. They run on grass powered by the sun.
Like oil, meat is subject to accelerating demand as nations become wealthier, and this, in turn, sends prices higher.
As people become wealthier they invariably consume more meat. This is not a character flaw. It is human nature, or perhaps better stated, human physiology. Prices may indeed rise but there is no moral component.
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.
By
whom are people being encouraged to consume less meat and why? To starve
out CAFOs? How about we eat non-CAFO meat. That should slow industrial
production, right? But wait. Eat less meat because CAFOs are
increasingly visible? This is a neatly convoluted example of vegetarian
reasoning.
The foregoing paragraph is such bad writing that I can’t really get at it. Yes, wealthier people eat more meat if they can get it. This has always been true, as stated above. This taste does not require to be satisfied by CAFOs. CAFOs represent an opportunistic and non sustainable commercial response to the taste for meat. We will abolish CAFOs when we as a people get mad enough about them. This will not affect people’s desire for meat and if they happen to be affluent (or hard working homesteaders) they will get it.
The dependency to which Bittman alludes is the manmade dependency of CAFOs for grain. Most people, like Bittman, incorrectly assume that cattle require grain.
Assembly line slaughterhouses are nasty but we know little about their energy consumption. They don’t allow visitors. We do know that the energy they use is primarily that of human labor. They have never been fingered as producers of greenhouse gases. Dead animals are not exhaling CO2 nor do they eat corn.
I am pleased to learn that Brazil, now the world’s leading producer of soy, is starting to rethink deforestation. Forests in South and Central America are being cut primarily for soy. It should be noted that most soybeans are destined for oil extraction. The oil is used for human consumption and for industrial purposes. The heat treated defatted soy cake is what animals get.
Historically, when clearing for new agricultural land, cattle were put on as a catch crop to fatten while the stumps rotted. Now with big equipment forests can be scraped away efficiently and the soil, unimproved by manure or rotting stumps, is treated with herbicides and chemical fertilizer and can be put directly into soy production.
As
previously noted, consumption is going up everywhere that income is
rising. A great deal of the resulting demand is being met by CAFOs. The
demand will not disappear; we need to accept this fact. Instead of
telling people they shouldn’t want meat, how about telling them to avoid
CAFO meat? How about rescinding the forces aligned against local meat
production?
“Americans eat the same amount of meat as we have for some time.” Yes. Would you believe for over a century? American consumption of meat has actually declined during this 100 year period. By no standard is eight ounces of meat per day excessive. While it may be twice the global average, the rest of the world did not choose to abstain from meat. Lack of meat has been enforced by poverty.
The US exports a lot of beef, pork and poultry. A significant motivation
for NAIS* is to defend that export market by creating a perception that
US meat is totally safe.
Gee whiz! Thirty percent (30%) of the world’s ice free land has always been involved in agriculture, which has historically integrated crops and livestock.
Correction: The FAO stated that livestock production generated nearly a fifth of the world’s methane, not “greenhouse gases”. There is a significant difference. CO2, the greenhouse gas which is produced in the greatest volume, re-enters the atmosphere when manure lagoons ferment. Cattle on pasture are able to sequester CO2 by treading manure and dead grass into the earth.
What the FAO was warning about was methane production. Of recent years methane emissions from ruminants have attracted journalistic attention largely because earlier reports invariably referred to the emissions as farts; this concept seemed irresistible to journalists. After ten years, they do seem at last to recognize that methane is being belched out the mouth.
All fermentation produces methane. The rumen is a fermentation vat, consequently produces its share. Rumen bacteria have been breaking down cellulose by fermentation since the beginning of time. All cellulose is ultimately broken down by bacteria, if not within the rumen of a cow, then by bacteria inside of caterpillars or other plant eating species or by soil bacteria. Were this not happening, dead plant material would be piled to the moon.
Vast amounts of methane is now being released by tundra, melting due to global warming. Several spots in the South China Sea and sea off of California have been discovered to be the source of great bubbles of methane from the ocean floor.
Growing meat animals, raising meat animals, whatever words one chooses, Bittman lumps them together in a blanket condemnation for which he may be forgiven, since that is what the FAO has done. He (and the FAO) needs to sort out what it is he objects to. Is it confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) with their millions of animals packed together eating grain and excreting manure and dependent upon antibiotics for their survival? Or does he object to animals under any circumstances? When I complain of CAFOs I am complaining of bad animal husbandry. Properly cared for farm animals and wild animals pollute neither the local nor the atmospheric environment. There are now fewer grazing animals than there have been for the last 10 million years. Buffalo (American bison), just to mention one species, formed grazing herds a mile wide which sometimes took two days to march past. They are credited with having kept the grass of the Great Plains in a healthy condition. The digestive process of the buffalo is the same as that of a cow.
If cattle are crammed together all of their emissions become more obvious and unlike cattle on pasture, become offensive. The experts have not yet told us whether cows on grain produce proportionately more methane than cows on pasture. It seems unlikely, since the rumens of confined cattle have little of the source material (grass and hay) available. Nature has been somehow dealing with methane for a long time. Millions of ruminants have been around a long time. The excess methane load is of recent origin. Ipso facto, a recent factor must be sought.
By
focusing on CAFO meat production, the Bard Center figures miss the
point, as do all arguments designed to make people feel bad about eating
meat. But perhaps meat eaters can develop a system of EcoPoints which
can be traded for permission to eat meat. If I ride my bike to work, may
I eat a steak?
“Grain, meat and energy are roped together” artificially by a system of
governmental and corporate controls which exists for profit, not to feed
people. In my opinion, ethanol production from corn is a poor idea.
After accounting for all the fossil fuel energy inputs required to
produce corn, many analysts put the net energy gain at no more than 10%.
My cynical view is that the big push towards ethanol from corn can be
traced back to the fact that of all the potential energy producing
systems on the table, ethanol is the one that requires the most fossil
fuel. Oil company profits are minimally impacted. And by the way, meat
is a food crop.
The above statement is a variant on the nursery admonition to “Clean your plate, just think of all the starving children in the world.” The child of course then says, “So send it to them.” In the first place, you can’t send this or any other food to them unless somebody buys it. Farmers don’t work for free and should not have to. In the second place, as most of us, apparently excepting economics professors, are well aware, sending shipments of food to starving populations is at best a short term response to hunger at home or abroad.
In the second place, this tired and overworked admonition is invariably couched in terms of calories. Calories are convenient mathematical units applied to food. But calories derived from grain will support life only briefly. A calorie served up in meat or other animal products (dairy, eggs) will support life and reproduction indefinitely. People in every traditional culture ever known surround themselves with animals. They don’t do it to waste food. They do it because animals are food. They are the most efficient food source and the food source that supports life, health and reproduction. If those traditional cultures also produce crops for themselves they share these with their animals. They don’t consider this to be wasteful. To call it an “inherent inefficiency” is seeing food production from an urban based, and usually vegetarian slanted viewpoint.
Local food production in which animal and plant production is integrated is what has worked from earliest times. We can do it again when they let us. It will help if food writers were to recognize this logic.
What does this mean, anyhow? Does growing grain create ¾ of the problem? Or is he saying grain contributes to ¾ of some fraction of the problem? Does he suppose that converting grain directly to human diets would cause grain to pollute less?
The cows and other animals on my pasture do not contribute to any
identifiable pollution of either water or land. Neither does any grain
that I grow.
The above statement is essentially true. We need to abolish CAFOs. They are a cancer on our land and our souls.
But a word needs to be said about efficiency. Since grain is not the natural diet of cattle, why should it be expected to convert as efficiently to weight gain as it does in species that are well adapted to digesting grain such as pigs and chickens? And what is meant by efficiency? Piling on the grain efficiently generates income for corporations so long as they have access to subsidized grain and are not compelled to take responsibility for resulting pollution. The belief that cattle are poor feed converters is a myth and a cheap shot.
See Endnote for an explanation of the difference between agricultural
efficiency and productivity. They are not the same thing.
Whenever research offers the least hint linking meat to illness there follows a stream of dire warnings. No causal connection with meat has ever been found for the above diseases or any other. Correlation is not causation. Piles of research refuting any such cause and effect have been published but seem of little interest to critics of meat. Space here does not permit a comprehensive discussion, which I would love to provide. I will merely note that several traditional cultures such as the Inuit and Masai have subsisted on a diet of virtually nothing but animal products and exhibited exceptionally good health. The Masai still do, but the Inuit now live on sodas and vegetable shortening and sad to say, have all the diseases mentioned above.
The eight ounces of meat Bittman mentions is not “way more than enough”.
Neither he nor anybody else is qualified to make such a statement. Less
may be sufficient for Bittman. Divide that 8 oz. into three meals a day
and it is pretty skimpy for a nursing mother or a man doing farm work.
Bittman’s figures are insupportable. Nobody but God knows how much Americans or anybody else eats of anything. It is entirely guesswork based on what are called “disappearance figures”. These are calculations based on collating reports of how much of a commodity, meat for instance, was produced, (a figure which is itself never hard currency) calculating carcass weights, trying to get accurate figures from supermarket and restaurant sales figures, then making a guestimate. To be remotely accurate you need also to take into account household waste; figures for this are likely more accurate as researchers have spent a lot of time sorting garbage to obtain it. They find that half of all purchased food in the US is wasted. The disappearance figure is what is thought to have been produced minus what is thought to have been sold in the US or exported. Now divide that figure by the population of the US and make it official by printing it in a government publication. Repeat that answer often enough and people start to believe it.
Bittman apparently thinks eating eggs and dairy are an added self indulgence. He is totally out of line asserting that 30 grams of protein from vegetable sources is enough for anybody. Lumping vegetable and animal protein together, getting 110 grams, then saying it is too much, is irresponsible. The National Research Council recommendations are the work of a large committee that by its mandate must take many factors into account including average income and a number of probabilities that have nothing to do with nutrition. Its recommendation for animal protein is closer to 40 grams. Inflating that figure by adding protein of vegetable origin may cause shock, awe and guilt to the unwary reader. Your body is not impressed. It makes limited use of vegetable protein. Growth, reproduction and tissue repair are sadly inhibited when forced to rely on vegetable protein. The immune system is especially vulnerable. Those of us who grow our own animal products and are able to provide ourselves and families with all the animal protein they wish to eat do consistently report less illness.
The above statement is valid although it does not advance the
discussion. Hopefully Rosegrant looks forward to local food production,
the only way in which the meat “footprint” can be sustainably managed.
Where is this argument headed? Shall we stick with confined swine
feeding so as to capture more methane?
GMO to the max.
Raising cows completely on grass is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Whenever this is suggested you find people gloomily stating that of course this means you can’t have as much meat. Yet the acreage now devoted to lawns exceeds that of all US grazing land. A puzzled African visitor once asked, “Please explain to me about lawns. You water the lawn, cut the lawn, you throw away the grass, then you do that again next week. What is the reason for this?” Those naysayers need to get their heads outside the box. There are also vast areas of grassy and brushy municipal land serving as verges for highways and airports. Besides cattle, sheep and goats could prosper on these. This is already the norm in other countries.
Note that Pollan, in granting some marginal land to grazing animals,
goes along with the assumption that grain is what farmers should really
be producing. I’ll come to that.
The belief that cattle are poor converters of feed has been printed and reprinted for so many decades that to now correct this fallacy may take an act of God. Hopefully, God is becoming impatient with this relentless distortion of reality so often used to bash the animal which may be his best gift. For now, let’s try common sense.
So
let’s try comparing the rate at which pigs and chickens convert grass
to meat compared to the cow’s conversion. Pigs and chickens will
disappoint you. In fact, pretty soon they will die. Give the grass, its
natural food, to a cow and she competes superbly. The dairy cow is an
incredibly efficient converter. She can eat grass and through the action
of rumen bacteria break it down and covert it from something we cannot
eat (grass) into milk, a perfect food. No industrialized system can
equal this.
This paragraph does not advance the argument against meat unless you accept it as a given that animals must live in prisons and cannot be raised locally. Animals do produce excrement just as does every other creature from caterpillars to elephants. Collecting it in lagoons and dumping it in waterways is obscene. Animals on pasture enrich the ground for future generations. Their excrement is the indispensable key to sustainability.
Industrial production of meat (in CAFOs) is only growing because it is profitable. It is profitable because it is subsidized by you and me. The feed is directly subsidized and the resulting pollution gets a de facto subsidy by becoming our problem, not that of the polluter. All over the US and the world people like you and me are perfectly willing to raise animals locally. We are prevented by a network of laws and regulations specifically designed to prevent us from doing so. With these forces in place to prevent us, to then assert that animals cannot be produced locally is more than specious. It is evidence of profound ignorance of animal husbandry, nutrition and human nature.
In Europe polluters must bear the burden of preventing pollution and of cleaning up after it and are liable for resulting health damage. Our laws protect the health of the polluter at the expense of the health of the consumer. Telling us to “Just say no” to meat in order to prevent environmental damage is not a program which has prevented much pregnancy or drug use.
Eshel, the geophysicist, is again quoted, now asserting that nearly all environmental problems have their source in food production. My daughter Sally, an active campaigner for environmental causes, found this claim especially outrageous: “What about offshore garbage dumping? What about suburbs, the ultimate in inefficient living? Draining the Colorado River to water lawns? RV’s? Dumping e-waste in poor countries? Let’s not forget the unregulated degradation from extracting tar sands.” All of these generators of environmental damage could be retrofitted to be pollution neutral, given the will to do so. All are optional behaviors, goods and services not critical to survival.
Food is not optional. Food security and sustainability require big new thinking and the courage to test theory against reality. Meat will find a major place in this new paradigm because it is part of the circle of sustainability.
Animal rearing and slaughtering practices when practiced out of the public eye lead inevitably to sickening excess. When these practices are exposed, revulsion against meat is understandable and it is hoped will lead to reforms.
But here Professor Eshel joins Bittman in the Land of Sweet Assumptions. If I work for a lower wage does this mean there will be more money for others? Neither does this brand of selflessness provide for better grain distribution. If grain today or in that future hour when vegetarians have rid the world of animals is to be distributed equitably, then somebody has to be totally in charge. This has a name: Totalitarianism. You take the crop or the land itself away from its owners and distribute the food according to the need you see. Remember the communist credo? “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” It did not work out happily in Russia or in China. I am a cradle liberal but I know cow poop when I step in it. Wasn’t it Winston Churchill who said, “Democracy is the worst form of government there is except for all the others.”? Let’s stick with democracy. The feel-good idea that dedicating more land to crops will make it possible for “us” to pass out morsels to “them” is not a long term answer to survival. So far, with the best will in the world, it has not even been seen to work well in a national disaster.
OK, equitable food distribution is a worthy goal. Let us supply the food pantries as generously as we can. Then let us strengthen our local communities with locally grown food in integrated production, plant and animals crops side by side. This was the Jeffersonian ideal and with a certain amount of bickering and snorting it has kept the human race vigorous and inventive in every time and clime unless somebody comes in and forcibly takes over.
Why is this economist taking satisfaction in reduced meat consumption?
Starvation does have a way of changing eating habits. As for the rest of
the litany, are you feeling guilty yet?
Who is planning to mount this public relations assault? The campaign against cigarettes took fifty years and was based on incontrovertible scientific evidence. This is not to suggest that a publicity campaign based on untruths, half truths and soft headedness cannot sway public opinion and behavior. Indeed, that is how we get into most wars and conduct political campaigns. In this case the scientific evidence supports meat eating, also eating eggs and dairy. Eventually truth will prevail. Let us hope that it does not, as in the case of Galileo, take 400 years.
Now the geophysicists feel qualified to tell us what to eat.
There are ellipses in this paragraph so we don’t know what Eshel really said. But one thing is clear from other sources; the FAO was looking at the global effects of CAFO’s. We are left to guess what Eshel means by suggesting that the same people who exert pressure for change will be willing to absorb higher prices. The statement is journalistic fluff.
Quite true. In fact, organic sales are the only segment of the food market which shows any growth not attributable to population increase.
Where is the cause and effect between farmers’ markets and decreased meat consumption? If we are willing to pay more for other local foods who is to say we will not pay more for local meat? If food costs more we will either pay more or eat less of it whether it is meat or tomatoes. What am I missing here?
I suppose these relentless attacks on meat eaters by persons who believe themselves to inhabit a higher moral plane may eventually discourage some people from eating meat. Their chief object is to be insulting.
Who said they didn’t?
Pollan is a beautiful writer and impressive investigative reporter. He is accomplished at following a train of historical facts and even teasing apart ethical solecisms. Unfortunately when confronted with questions of science or medicine he backs off. Were it otherwise, he would be aware that the evidence against naturally saturated animal fat, cholesterol, and meat as a health risk is, quite simply, nonexistent
It takes a lot of evidence to overturn well entrenched positions and in this case the challenge is increased by the parallel difficulty of proving a negative. Those wishing to go where Pollan has not yet trodden might start with investigative reporter Gary Taubes’ March 30 ‘01 article in Science**. Taubs describes in rich detail the birth of the anti animal fat idea, which started as a quick political fix by Senator George McGovern designed to help out Lyndon Johnson’s War On Heart Disease. Soon dignified by the name, Lipid Hypothesis, the concept immediately began making so much money for medical people, researchers and food processors that the voices of doubt have been nearly smothered. Pollan and most living vegetarians were born too recently to recall these protests. While pondering this history consider some facts about which there can be no argument: our epidemic of heart disease and cancer is a 20th Century and now 21st Century phenomenon. It cannot logically be blamed on the foods upon which people relied for the preceding millennia back to the year Dot and have been eating in declining amounts since about the year the 1900.
A number of recent writers have given us enlightening books on aspects of the house of smoke and mirrors which comprise the now orthodox nutritional belief system. The Weston A Price Foundation’s quarterly magazine Wise Traditions and their website www.westonaprice.org are easily accessible sources of valid nutritional information founded on outcomes rather than theory.
What’s that she said?
Meat animals need not be reared in prison-like confined housing. Instead of rejecting meat, buy meat from locally and humanely reared animals. It’s there.
Research appearing to show that meat causes cancer always gets a lot of press. None of these reports has withstood scrutiny. The cancer relationship turns out to be with polycyclic hydrocarbons formed when meat is overcooked or with chemicals in processed meats, or other factors, not with the meat itself. These corrections get little press coverage.
The relationship between animal fat of any kind and circulatory disease is chimerical and may safely be ignored.
Cattle and other animals are not by nature source points of pollution and should by no means be blamed for the evil results of confined feeding. There are more effective ways to end confined feeding than to avoid meat. For starters, make the feedlot owners pay for damages and clean-up.
The same goes for megalithic kill-a-minute slaughterhouses. We must demand a return to small community based slaughterhouses.
Cattle and other animals on pasture do not unbalance atmospheric CO2 or methane. There are fewer animals in existence now than in former centuries. As with heart disease, no fair blaming a current problem on normal metabolism and breathing that has not changed in thousands of years.
CAFOs are not, as their advocates argue, a necessary evil without which it is impossible to produce enough meat for everybody. Alternatives have not even been considered, let alone tried. Animals can and should be raised locally. To state this will make meat cost more is based on the assumption that subsidies will continue. Meat is cheap not because it is raised in factory farms but because the system is subsidized in a hundred ways. Either offer those subsidies to local growers so that they too can produce meat with the true cost concealed in subsidies that you already paid for in taxes. Or yes, pay the true price for the product.
Eating less meat or a vegetarian diet does not free up grain for the hungry. Aspiring vegetarians need to think about where this bit of unexamined lore is taking them.
Meat eaters are used to being talked down to. Fashionable food discussions maintain a mirthless tone. Last week on a BBC program in which concepts similar to Bittman’s were under discussion, a women speaking in a tone I associate with a grade school principal shaking her finger and saying “You are all staying right here until we get to the bottom of this”, came out with it straight: “People are going to have to learn to suffer!”
That’s not the way I see it. People who keep a cow and grow their own food don’t view this way of life as a penance. There are plenty of people in cities and towns who would delight in working a small farm if they had the opportunity. Depending on the crop or type of livestock, a small family working together can easily produce enough food for ten or 100 people who prefer do something else and buy their food.
But there is that word “work”. From infancy we are steeped in the notion that work is unpleasant, go buy our product and avoid work. Work up a sweat at a gym in costly clothing, not by grubbing about with a pitchfork. TV and movie role models are seen scaling mountains or shooting bad guys. They never dig their own weeds, certainly never maintain a milking schedule. Yet the amazing truth is that there remain thousands, perhaps millions of people who don’t mind admitting they love hard work on the land and with animals.
Endnote: The assumption that more people can be fed on a given unit of land by growing plant products has been around for a long time and does not take into account the work involved in production. The issue is between agricultural productivity and agricultural efficiency. They are not the same thing. American farmland can be enormously productive if you have no need to count the cost of the inputs (fuel, chemicals, etc). The efficiency of a system means the ratio between the work or energy put into a system and the work or energy got out of it.
Using these criteria, a cow grazing on solar powered grass and producing milk and a yearly calf exceeds the efficiency of any system humans have devised. This was obvious beyond any need to explain or defend it until people moved off the land.
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*National Animal Identification System, an invasive USDA plan to microchip and track every domestic animal for life.
**The Soft Science of Dietary Fat by Gary Taubes. The article appeared in the issue of Science for 30 March 2001 Vol.291
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Commentary 2
National Animal Identification System (NAIS)
Here is a brief overview of NAIS
Note that no disease prevention initiative is involved, only animal tracking. A point that is not mentioned here but can be corroborated elsewhere is that the premise registration incorporates a warrant to enter property and “depopulate” the animals thereon. This Storm Trooper type invasion has already taken place in England and France. Millions of healthy animals, many representing several hundred years of family nurturing of rare breeds, were slaughtered to create a 10 to 50 mile wide swathe around an outbreak of foot and mouth disease. Hundreds of farmers in England and France committed suicide following this destruction of their life’s work.
Bear in mind that foot and mouth disease does not affect humans and is rarely fatal to animals. Animal owners with the time and inclination to treat animals do so with success. It is however costly to agribiz type operations, both in terms of lost weight gain and embargoes on exports. The slaughter in this case, and in every conceivable circumstance in the US or elsewhere, serves no purpose but to protect the interests of large producers. No known disease is prevented nor is its spread prevented by NAIS. To impose this almost unbelievably complicated and expensive burden on small farmers and livestock owners in order to prevent spread of some new and hypothetical disease clearly has a hidden agenda as did the WMD’s. This agenda is to wipe out small local food production. Were it truly designed to prevent spread of some hypothetical disease it would include family pets and wild birds as they are equally if not more likely to spread disease. But this would raise public consciousness to the outrageousness of NAIS.
Every totalitarian government in history has done its best to gain central control of the food supply and destroy small farmers. To control the food supply is to control the population. And you cannot control small farmers except by destroying them. Self sufficiency is anathema to totalitarian rulers.
NAIS was written by and for the meat producing industry under the umbrella of USDA. USDA’s claim that NAIS is voluntary is insupportable. Dozens of coercive methods are already being used to compel compliance.
I urge you to become aware of the nature and threat of NAIS. More information can be found at Libertyark.net and NoNais.org
Joann S. Rogers
Farmers chafe at federally mandated animal-tracking system Plan seen to hurt small producers
By Nicole Gaouette, Los Angeles Times | January 27, 2008
WASHINGTON - After days of parading around her beefy black steer in the dung-scented August heat at the Colorado State Fair, Brandi Calderwood made the final competition. For months, the 16-year-old had worked from dawn to well past dusk, fitting in the work around school, to feed, train, and clean her steer. But just before the last round, when the animals are sold, fair officials disqualified her.
They alleged that Brandi had not properly followed a new and controversial rule that requires children to register their farms with a federal animal-tracking system. After heated words, Calderwood and her family were told to leave.
"Emotionally she went through the ringer and didn't get the honor of showing in the sale. For a 16-year-old, that's a big deal," said Cathy Calderwood, Brandi's mother.
A Bush administration initiative, the National Animal Identification System is meant to provide a modern tool for tracking disease outbreaks within 48 hours, whether natural or the work of a bioterrorist.
Most farm animals, even exotic ones such as llamas, eventually will be registered. Information will be kept on every farm, ranch, or stable. And databases will record every animal movement from birth to slaughterhouse, including trips to the veterinarian and county fairs.
But the system is spawning a grass-roots revolt.
Family farmers see it as an assault on their way of life by a federal bureaucracy with close ties to industrial agriculture. They point out that they will have to track each individual animal while vast commercial operations will be allowed to track whole herds.
Privacy advocates say the database would create an invasive, detailed electronic record of farmers' activities.
Despite the administration's insistence that the program is voluntary, farmers and families, such as the Calderwoods, chafe at the heavy-handed and often mandatory way states have implemented it, sometimes with the help of sheriff's deputies.
The result is a system meant to help farms that many farmers oppose.
"It's totally ridiculous," said Joaquin Contente, who oversees 1,700 Holsteins on his Hanford, Calif., dairy farm. Contente said existing regulations in California and other states meant his cows and their movements were well documented.
"We already have a good paper trail. It will be more of a burden for the small-to-average producer," said Contente, who worries about the expense for an average-size farm such as his.
Run by the US Department of Agriculture, the system is meant to help combat threats such as avian flu and mad cow disease.
Cattle groups were working on a registration system when, in 2003, a mad cow disease scare in Washington state set the industry on edge. Foreign beef trade stopped immediately, with industry losses estimated at $2 billion to $4 billion. Trade still has not fully recovered.
Within the cattle industry, the database is seen as essential to restore US exports in the international market.
The first stage of the animal ID system involves free registration of the "premises" where livestock is kept. A seven-digit number is stored by the federal government.
The second stage involves identifying animals with a microchip or a plastic or metal ear tag containing a 15-digit code. Federal officials aim to register cattle, bison, poultry, swine, sheep, goats, deer, elk, horses, mules, donkeys, burros, llamas, and alpacas. Household pets are not included.
The third stage, not yet in effect, would require farmers to report animal movements to the database within 24 hours. Farms that move animals in bulk from feedlot to slaughterhouse can get one animal ID for the entire herd. But smaller farmers who move and sell animals individually would have to get each animal an ID at a cost of about $1.50 apiece.
Small farmers are complaining about the cost of ID microchips and technology readers, as well as the labor costs involved in tracking and tagging animals.
"The small guy will get hit the hardest," said Pam Potthoff, of Women Involved in Farm Economics, whose family runs a cow and calf farm in Trenton, Neb.
Other farmers argue that a one-size-fits-all system is not appropriate.
"Where is the scientific proof that small farmers pose the same disease risk as large, confined feeding operations?" asked Judith McGeary, an Austin, Texas, farmer and lawyer who founded the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance to fight the database system.
Copyright 2008 by Joann S. Grohman