RE: Eating less meat part 1

[John Giezensomething]

This is part one of my response to Hank's video on eating less meat, which has sparked a lot of controversy in the comments, as mention of eating less meat always does.

Hank lists a lot of good reasons for eating less meat, the main point being that it is a grossly inefficient use of land, water, and food resources that is hurting the global environment. We waste vast amounts of scarce fresh water by growing food to feed livestock instead of humans, and by watering those food animals instead of ourselves. The food requirements of our livestock also require a vast amount of land to be used for agriculture, including the infrastructure development, polluting machinery and application of herbicides and pesticides to grow all that food. If it weren't for the demand of all our hungry livestock, that land could be left as wilderness for recreation and wildlife, or if we were going to use it for agriculture we could eat that food and have enough left over to feed much of the developing world, instead of having only enough to feed ourselves once we filter all that soy, wheat and corn through food animals.

I think that's a really compelling reason to eat less meat, and I applaud Hank for coming out and saying it, and for trying a veggie corn dog with an open mind! Of course, the inefficiency of meat isn't the only reason to consider eating less of it. There's the global warming methane produced by belching cattle. There's the damage to wildlife as the government spends our tax dollars to kill tens of thousands of coyotes, thousands of foxes, and many bears, mountain lions, and wolves every year to protect that livestock. There's the water pollution caused by runoff from hog farms and other factory-style farms. There's the inherent cruelty of confining animals for their entire lives and feeding them food they aren't adapted to digest, which necessitates keeping them pumped up on antibiotics just to keep them alive long enough to slaughter (an example being how cows are fed corn instead of grass, because it helps them fatten up faster, even though it isn't their natural food.) There's the risk posed to human health when antibiotics are misused in this way, decreasing their usefulness, to say nothing of the E. coli, salmonella and other diseases that hitchhike on the meat. There's the cruelty inherent in slaughterhouses, which kill so many animals so quickly that over time it's inevitable that some of them are still conscious when workers begin to disembowel and dismember them. There's the slaughterhouse workers themselves, who are often composed of illegal immigrants who fear deportation if they complain and so must endure repetitive strain injuries, other injuries and bad working conditions without complaint. There's our own health, since many of the maladies that afflict Americans are due in part to diets heavy in red meat.

Is that enough reasons to consider eating a little less meat? In the second part of my response I'll reply to some of the common responses people are making in the comments to Hank's video.
Part 2 here: http://nerdfighters.ning.com/profiles/blogs/re-eating-less-meat-part-2