Cowspiracy movie presents powerful reasons to go meatless

I'm no psychic. But it doesn't take any ESP abilities to say that most of the people reading this ate meat today -- Christmas. 

My wife and I didn't. Nor do we ever. 

Which explains why we felt a pleasing sense of self-satisfaction when we watched "Cowspiracy" at the Salem Progressive Film Series last week, since the basic message of the documentary is that eating meat and fish is one of the most environmentally destructive actions a person can engage in. 

The "spiracy" part of the title comes from the assertion that environmental organizations like the Sierra Club and Greenpeace have been deeply reluctant to publicize the connection between eating meat and destruction of our planet.

After all, as the movie says repeatedly, how we choose to feed ourselves is a highly personal question that's fraught with cultural implications. 

Having been a vegetarian since 1970, my 45 years of abstaining from meat and fish have taught me how true this is. When my daughter, Celeste, was born in 1972, my uncle kept telling me that her health would suffer if raised vegetarian. 

Her pediatrician also was skeptical. But now Celeste is a trim and fit 43. Her own daughter, Evelyn, also has been a vegetarian since birth and is doing fine at the age of eight.

So for most people there's no health reason to eat meat. And anyone who sees Cowspiracy will be exposed to lots of reasons why livestock and fish production is doing terrible things to Earth's ecosystems. 

Here's what the movie's co-director, Kip Andersen, said in an interview:

Well, I thought I was doing everything I could to help the environment--driving less, riding a bike, taking short showers. And then I found out a UN report study that our diet and raising animals for food livestock creates more human-caused greenhouse gases than all the transportation put together.

And then that led me on a journey of discovering that not only that, but this one industry is the leading cause of rainforest destruction, water consumption, water pollution, ocean dead zones, and species extinction, and basically across the board, and then to find out that our world's leading environmental organizations--Greenpeace, Sierra Club, Oceana, all these groups, they don't mention this anywhere. And it seemed, if anything, they might have been covering it up.

Apparently because those groups don't want to irritate their meat-eating supporters. There's also a hint in the movie that livestock producers give money to environmental organizations with the understanding that the groups will downplay the negative effects of meat and fish production.

(It doesn't matter, by the way, if wild fish are being eaten; Cowspiracy says that catching wild fish leads to huge numbers of "unintended kills" and the consequent depletion of fish populations.)

Our local alternative paper, Salem Weekly, had a good writeup on the movie. But it included a bit of skepticism.

The movie ends with a note of optimism, perhaps required in such a pessimistic film, but which might be questioned by viewers shaken by the message. Also, some facts and figures come so fast and furious that the source of any particular assertion is not always clear – a problem when a film makes such strong claims.

Yes, it's true that strong claims are made. To their credit, the moviemakers devote a page on the Cowspiracy website to documenting the sources of facts presented in the film. I didn't see or hear anything that made me think this can't be right. 

But since I've been a vegetarian for so long, and have read so much about the harmful effects of meat-eating, I wasn't shocked by how emphatically Cowspiracy calls upon people to give up eating meat and fish if they consider themselves environmentalists.

I do, though, still eat some dairy products. And the makers of Cowspiracy tout a vegan diet -- given how poorly cows are treated in the process of milk production, along with health and environmental reasons.

I typically eat yogurt every day. After seeing the movie, though, I got some soy yogurt and found that I liked it just as much as the regular variety. I doubt that I'll ever become a full-blown vegan, yet cutting down on the small amount of dairy products I eat (I drink soy milk) now is on my to-do list.

Interestingly -- could this be a sign from the Veggie Gods? -- the day after I saw Cowspiracy, I came across a bunch of links related to diet and the environment during my usual Internet browsing. 

Take a look at these if you need more convincing that meat-eating is bad both for you and the planet.

Food and Climate Change (David Suzuki Foundation)
Agriculture Was Left Out of the Paris Deal, But That Won't Stop Countries From Taking It On (Climate Progress)
A New Year resolution that's good for you and the planet: stop eating meat (The Guardian)
Michael Pollan on how America got so screwed up about food (Vox)

Here's the Cowspiracy trailer, which focuses on the conspiracy aspect of the movie. The next You Tube video presents the facts in Cowspiracy.

 

 

Comments

[Walker]

This book is dated but the content remains the same -- the short summary boils down to this: If you want to live as lightly as possible, insulate your dwelling, live within walk/bike distance of your work, and don't eat animal products. Most everything else is a rounding error on those big things.

http://www.amazon.com/Consumers-Guide-Effective-Environmental-Choices/dp/060980281X

[Rain Trueax]

Look up the damage being done to the environment by soy production. We maybe, as humans, just should accept we are the problem due to our numbers and habits.

[Spruce]

Some vegetarians have claimed that livestock require pasturage that could be used to farm grains to feed starving people in Third World countries. It is also claimed that feeding animals contributes to world hunger because livestock are eating foods that could go to feed humans. The solution to world hunger, therefore, is for people to become vegetarians. These arguments are illogical and simplistic.

The first argument ignores the fact that about 2/3 of our Earth's dry land is unsuitable for farming. It is primarily the open range, desert and mountainous areas that provide food to grazing animals and that land is currently being put to good use .

The second argument is faulty as well because it ignores the vital contributions that livestock animals make to humanity’s well-being. It is also misleading to think that the foods grown and given to feed livestock could be diverted to feed humans:

Agricultural animals have always made a major contribution to the welfare of human societies by providing food, shelter, fuel, fertilizer and other products and services. They are a renewable resource, and utilize another renewable resource, plants, to produce these products and services. In addition, the manure produced by the animals helps improve soil fertility and, thus, aids the plants. In some developing countries the manure cannot be utilized as a fertilizer but is dried as a source of fuel.

There are many who feel that because the world population is growing at a faster rate than is the food supply, we are becoming less and less able to afford animal foods because feeding plant products to animals is an inefficient use of potential human food. It is true that it is more efficient for humans to eat plant products directly rather than to allow animals to convert them to human food. At best, animals only produce one pound or less of human food for each three pounds of plants eaten. However, this inefficiency only applies to those plants and plant products that the human can utilize. The fact is that over two-thirds of the feed fed to animals consists of substances that are either undesirable or completely unsuited for human food. Thus, by their ability to convert inedible plant materials to human food, animals not only do not compete with the human rather they aid greatly in improving both the quantity and the quality of the diets of human societies.

Furthermore, at the present time, there is more than enough food grown in the world to feed all people on the planet. The problem is widespread poverty making it impossible for the starving poor to afford it. In a comprehensive report, the Population Reference Bureau attributed the world hunger problem to poverty, not meat-eating . It also did not consider mass vegetarianism to be a solution for world hunger.

What would actually happen, however, if animal husbandry were abandoned in favor of mass agriculture, brought about by humanity turning towards vegetarianism?

If a large number of people switched to vegetarianism, the demand for meat in the United States and Europe would fall, the supply of grain would dramatically increase, but the buying power of poor [starving] people in Africa and Asia wouldn't change at all.

The result would be very predictable -- there would be a mass exodus from farming. Whereas today the total amount of grains produced could feed 10 billion people, the total amount of grain grown in this post-meat world would likely fall back to about 7 or 8 billion. The trend of farmers selling their land to developers and others would accelerate quickly.

In other words, there would be less food available for the world to eat. Furthermore, the monoculture of grains and legumes, which is what would happen if animal husbandry were abandoned and the world relied exclusively on plant foods for its food, would rapidly deplete the soil and require the heavy use of artificial fertilizers, one ton of which requires ten tons of crude oil to produce.

As far as the impact to our environment, a closer look reveals the great damage that exclusive and mass farming would do. British organic dairy farmer and researcher Mark Purdey wisely points out that if “veganic agricultural systems were to gain a foothold on the soil, then agrochemical use, soil erosion, cash cropping, prairie-scapes and ill health would escalate.”

Neanderthin author Ray Audette concurs with this view:

Since ancient times, the most destructive factor in the degradation of the environment has been monoculture agriculture. The production of wheat in ancient Sumeria transformed once-fertile plains into salt flats that remain sterile 5,000 years later. As well as depleting both the soil and water sources, monoculture agriculture also produces environmental damage by altering the delicate balance of natural ecosystems. World rice production in 1993, for instance, caused 155 million cases of malaria by providing breeding grounds for mosquitoes in the paddies. Human contact with ducks in the same rice paddies resulted in 500 million cases of influenza during the same year.

There is little doubt, though, that commercial farming methods, whether of plants or animals produce harm to the environment. With the heavy use of agrochemicals, pesticides, artificial fertilizers, hormones, steroids, and antibiotics common in modern agriculture, a better way of integrating animal husbandry with agriculture needs to be found. A possible solution might be a return to “mixed farming,” described below.

The educated consumer and the enlightened farmer together can bring about a return of the mixed farm, where cultivation of fruits, vegetables and grains is combined with the raising of livestock and fowl in a manner that is efficient, economical and environmentally friendly. For example, chickens running free in garden areas eat insect pests, while providing high-quality eggs; sheep grazing in orchards obviate the need for herbicides; and cows grazing in woodlands and other marginal areas provide rich, pure milk, making these lands economically viable for the farmer. It is not animal cultivation that leads to hunger and famine, but unwise agricultural practices and monopolistic distribution systems.

The "mixed farm" is also healthier for the soil, which will yield more crops if managed according to traditional guidelines. Mark Purdey has accurately pointed out that a crop field on a mixed farm will yield up to five harvests a year, while a "mono-cropped" one will only yield one or two (9). Which farm is producing more food for the world's peoples? Purdey well sums up the ecological horrors of “battery farming” and points to future solutions by saying:

Our agricultural establishments could do very well to outlaw the business-besotted farmers running intensive livestock units, battery systems and beef-burger bureaucracies; with all their wastages, deplorable cruelty, anti-ozone slurry systems; drug/chemical induced immunotoxicity resulting in B.S.E. and salmonella, rain forest eradication, etc. Our future direction must strike the happy, healthy medium of mixed farms, resurrecting the old traditional extensive system as a basic framework, then bolstering up productivity to present day demands by incorporating a more updated application of biological science into farming systems.

It does not appear, then, that livestock farming, when properly practiced, damages the environment. Nor does it appear that world vegetarianism or exclusively relying on agriculture to supply the world with food are feasible or ecologically wise ideas.

--by Stephen Byrne

[Rain Trueax]

The article posted by Spruce was very good. Humans want simple answers but life does not give them. If meat does not agree with someone, don't eat it. If it does, don't eat too much of it, but that's true of grains also. If Americans would get off of having their beef fattened by corn, to make it more tender and tasty (to their palates), this would all be a lot healthier.

Cattle raised as ours are on grass, grass that nobody else can eat. That leads to beef that is similar in value to salmon for nutrients. When the animals are killed, as ours are, right on the place, their lives are good-- right up to the end. Nobody lives forever-- not even us. There really isn't a good way, unless you buy from a local grower, to get chicken or a dairy product like cheese, cream, or yogurt. We, as a people, need to seriously look at what we eat and think long and hard about whether it's sustainable or healthy.

When I drive through California, as I recently did, and see the meat factories alongside the highway, where the animals are not treated as living beings but as part of a mechanical process, it is heartbreaking. It does not have to be that way but it takes more work for consumers to buy beef or lamb from a local producer where they can be certain no hormones or antibiotics are being used. Americans are lazy. They want what they can buy packaged and ready for them. To eat a slow food way takes thinking and sometimes costs more.

Documentaries always have an agenda... all of them... When it suits our own agenda, we like them. When it doesn't, we turn away. That's human nature too.