Before I talk about such a sensitive issue as our diet today, I want to get one thing straight.
I eat meat. But I’ve stopped eating it more than twice a week.
I was raised in a carnivorous household that attended Catholic mass every Sunday. Just about every dinner at our kitchen table included some sort of beef, pork or chicken. This isn’t a unique practice in America. It’s what we do. It’s culturally natural. But with a steady supply of fossil fuel emissions collecting in the atmosphere and the Earth’s temperature rising, I think it might be time to have a look at how “natural” our meat-eating culture really is.
I talked to quite a few vegans and vegetarians this past week, and surprisingly enough, very few of them gave up meat to save the earth. Many of them, however, choose not to eat meat because they believe humanity wrongly “assumed” the right to slaughter animals. The right that many meat-eaters assume has its roots in the first book of Genesis.
The story goes that God said “have dominion” over the fish, birds, livestock, and all else that creeps over the earth.  The United States was founded “under God,” so perhaps the veil over our meat-eating culture has been protected under God. I’m not here to start a debate on religion, but this “dominion” we’ve assumed over animals for so long is going to be what ends up dominating and annihilating the human race. And there won’t be a rewind button.
There are four major meat-packing companies that own all 13 of the slaughterhouses that produce the majority of meat in the United States.
Thirteen slaughterhouses for 50 states. That makes for some long road trips for all the cows, pigs and chickens we eat.
Dennis Dimick of National Geographic went as far as to call 2010 “the age of the 3,000-mile Caesar salad.” But with meat there are even more factors to consider than just transport emissions.
Take water. For a vegan, it takes up to 300 gallons of water to produce the food they’ll eat in a day. For the typical American meat-eater, it may take up to 4,000. Not to mention the fact that Las Vegas and other cities are scheduled to run out of water by 2020.
Take corn, for example. Government subsidies allow corn to be sold at under the cost of production, and more than 80 percent of that corn goes straight to factory livestock production. If you reduced your meat consumption from 10 servings a week to one, 10 more people could be fed because corn would not be going to livestock. While many free-range farms that grass-feed their cows claim corn is an unacceptable diet, factory farms use it as a tactic to produce their cows faster, fatter, bigger and cheaper. From a business standpoint, this makes sense. But the reality remains that we could feed one billion starving people if Americans stopped eating meat.
Take greenhouse gases as another example. Carbon dioxide from meat trucks driving from farm-to-slaughter and factory-to-supermarket isn’t the only fossil fuel to worry about. More than 300 million pounds of our meat is imported annually from Central and South America. And even if your meat is local, free-range and antibiotic free, there are toxic methane emissions to consider. The fact remains that flatulent, belching livestock account for more than 16 percent of the powerful greenhouse gas. It’s smelly, but true. The natural gas from your beef is heating up the Earth to dangerous levels.
Carnivores often play the economics card. One student pointed out that a dollar menu item is cheaper than a standard head of broccoli.
I asked the same question last year to my vegan writing teacher who told us eating veggies would fatten up our wallet. The ugly reality in America and the world is that McDonald’s has profited off our culture enough to vertically integrate the meat industry in their best interest. They control the price of beef. They control the price of russet potatoes. They allow a family of six to eat for $6.
Cutting meat completely from your diet can be difficult. But cutting it to a reasonable two or three servings per week reduces your carbon footprint more than riding your bike.
Have a bite of the vegan food at Holy Cow Cafe one day in the EMU. If you’re worried about your health, foods like quinoa are considered to be a complete protein due to the presence of all eight essential amino acids. The dhal and rice dish is 50 cents less than a foot-long sandwich from Subway. Now that’s fresh.
Some activists have been as extreme to say, “You can’t be a meat-eating  environmentalist.” If you look at the facts, there’s some truth in such a statement. But a country that identifies with double-cheeseburgers won’t change with the snap of a radical finger. Change needs to be incremental.
If you love meat too much to eliminate it from your diet, all I ask is you enjoy it locally, ethically and sparingly. Every bite counts.
[email protected]