The Myth of Sustainable Meat- NYTimes.com

[Guest guest]

IF you love good artisanal local food some well-intentioned soul will no doubt

be sending you this article which appeared yesterday in the New York Times Op-Ed

section as well as other commentary by the same author. Here's my review of it,

(and a copy of the article).... you'll probably want to add more....

Will Winter

Locavore

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Ah, yes. This article has gotten around pretty fast, and I have to admit, if you

didn't know anything about sustainable farming, nada, zippo, this guys slanted

facts would probably make sense. However, those on " our side " can tear all his

CONCLUSIONS apart with real science. Unfortunately he really does have it wrong,

especially when it comes to recommending what you should do after you put down

the newspaper, basically what you choose to eat. We will all grant him his

thoughts about the place of true grain-eating animals like the pig and chicken

IF you continued to give them fresh grain that humans could eat. They need some

concentrate but it doesn't have to be human-edible corn and soybeans, God, there

are thousands of sustainable options. Even more correct is his notion about the

blatant and glaringly-obvious fact that feedlots and CAFOs need to go away.

Saying that doesn't make him Einstein though.

This article truly is infuriating to truly green farmers, still a vast minority,

a tiny and unlistened-to minority. I know many of the leaders in this group, and

they have been over this kind of thinking decades ago and have discarded it. The

sustainable farmers particularly hate to be lumped into the lagoon manure pit of

factory farms and " concentration camps " for farm animals. There is virtually not

one thing they have in common other than that they involve living animals. If

you truly want to know what's wrong with his conclusions and facts, you might

want to start with Lierre 's amazing new book " THE VEGETARIAN MYTH " , in

which she lays out " the rest of the story " about a) the feeding the world myth,

b. the cruelty myth and c.the nutritional health for humans myth. (Mc

even stole her title). We also like to reflect on what Mann (and

others) have said. Mann said it well in " 1491 " , that the estimate of American

Bison existing in North America prior to 1800 was somewhere between 100-120

million. Million. We now have about 46 million cattle in feedlots today. How

many people could 100 million bison feed? And remember, they needed nothing, not

even watering or care. Back then there was also virtually zero topsoil loss, no

erosion, no dead zone in the Gulf, no water pollution, no pesticides,

herbicides, antibiotics or hormones going into the aquifers and land, and,

thanks to grazing and manure, there was carbon sequestration beyond even

Branson's wildest dreams. On that last topic, the US currently averages about 1%

organic matter (roots, humus, plant material) in all our soil whereas the Great

Plains, back in the bison days, or any perennial polyculture prairie for that

matter, averaged around 6-8%. By increasing our pathetically low residue of OM

by only 1% we could reduce climate change CO2 levels in the upper atmosphere

from the current 375 back down to where it needs to stay. Just 1%.

No one these days has to guts to say it but when it comes to " feeding the

world " . Uh, guess what? We have too GD many people already! That part has to go.

The guy who 'splained it all was Quinn in his " ISHMAEL " series. If you

haven't read that yet, you owe it to yourself to read that first book about how

the humans really got where we are at. Then this kind of twerpy viewpoint will

fade away into the nonsense bin.

Lastly, it is my bet that " industry " will NEVER get it right! Never! Us humans

however..... we have a long history of finally, at last, at the last second

before doom, of begrudgingly doing the right thing. When that time comes I just

hope there are experts that can tell the masses what must be done. The

" blueprint " is already there, and, by the way, it has never been " industry " ! If

you want to know the history of " industry " read Diamond's books " GUNS,

GERMS & STEEL " and, of course, " COLLAPSE " .

People can and probably will argue about what to eat for another 1000 years. And

there will be another 1000 " theories " . But to get it right, just look BACKWARDS

1000 years. The main guy who did that was Dr. Weston A. Price. A 7 continent

epidemiological study of what all the indigenous peoples of the world were

eating as it pertained to their health (a study that could not be done today).

It's all right there in his masterpiece " NUTRITION AND PHYSICAL DEGENERATION " .

Will Winter

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OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

The Myth of Sustainable Meat

By JAMES E. McWILLIAMS

Published: April 12, 2012

Austin, Tex.

THE industrial production of animal products is nasty business. From mad cow, E.

coli and salmonella to soil erosion, manure runoff and pink slime, factory

farming is the epitome of a broken food system.

There have been various responses to these horrors, including some recent

attempts to improve the industrial system, like the announcement this week that

farmers will have to seek prescriptions for sick animalsinstead of regularly

feeding antibiotics to all stock. My personal reaction has been to avoid animal

products completely. But most people upset by factory farming have turned

instead to meat, dairy and eggs from nonindustrial sources. Indeed, the last

decade has seen an exciting surge in grass-fed, free-range, cage-free and

pastured options. These alternatives typically come from small organic farms,

which practice more humane methods of production. They appeal to consumers not

only because they reject the industrial model, but because they appear to be

more in tune with natural processes.

For all the strengths of these alternatives, however, they're ultimately a poor

substitute for industrial production. Although these smaller systems appear to

be environmentally sustainable, considerable evidence suggests otherwise.

Grass-grazing cows emit considerably more methane than grain-fed cows. Pastured

organic chickens have a 20 percent greater impact on global warming. It requires

2 to 20 acres to raise a cow on grass. If we raised all the cows in the United

States on grass (all 100 million of them), cattle would require (using the

figure of 10 acres per cow) almost half the country's land (and this figure

excludes space needed for pastured chicken and pigs). A tract of land just

larger than France has been carved out of the Brazilian rain forest and turned

over to grazing cattle. Nothing about this is sustainable.

Advocates of small-scale, nonindustrial alternatives say their choice is at

least more natural. Again, this is a dubious claim. Many farmers who raise

chickens on pasture use industrial breeds that have been bred to do one thing

well: fatten quickly in confinement. As a result, they can suffer painful leg

injuries after several weeks of living a " natural " life pecking around a large

pasture. Free-range pigs are routinely affixed with nose rings to prevent them

from rooting, which is one of their most basic instincts. In essence, what we

see as natural doesn't necessarily conform to what is natural from the animals'

perspectives.

The economics of alternative animal systems are similarly problematic. Subsidies

notwithstanding, the unfortunate reality of commodifying animals is that

confinement pays. If the production of meat and dairy was somehow decentralized

into small free-range operations, common economic sense suggests that it

wouldn't last. These businesses — no matter how virtuous in intention — would

gradually seek a larger market share, cutting corners, increasing stocking

density and aiming to fatten animals faster than competitors could. Barring the

strictest regulations, it wouldn't take long for production systems to scale

back up to where they started.

All this said, committed advocates of alternative systems make one undeniably

important point about the practice called " rotational grazing " or " holistic

farming " : the soil absorbs the nutrients from the animals' manure, allowing

grass and other crops to grow without the addition of synthetic fertilizer. As

Pollan writes, " It is doubtful you can build a genuinely sustainable

agriculture without animals to cycle nutrients. " In other words, raising animals

is not only sustainable, but required.

But rotational grazing works better in theory than in practice. Consider

Salatin, the guru of nutrient cycling, who employs chickens to enrich his cows'

grazing lands with nutrients. His plan appears to be impressively eco-correct,

until we learn that he feeds his chickens with tens of thousands of pounds a

year of imported corn and soy feed. This common practice is an economic

necessity. Still, if a farmer isn't growing his own feed, the nutrients going

into the soil have been purloined from another, most likely industrial, farm,

thereby undermining the benefits of nutrient cycling.

Finally, there is no avoiding the fact that the nutrient cycle is interrupted

every time a farmer steps in and slaughters a perfectly healthy

manure-generating animal, something that is done before animals live a quarter

of their natural lives. When consumers break the nutrient cycle to eat animals,

nutrients leave the system of rotationally grazed plots of land (though of

course this happens with plant-based systems as well). They land in sewer

systems and septic tanks (in the form of human waste) and in landfills and

rendering plants (in the form of animal carcasses).

Farmers could avoid this waste by exploiting animals only for their manure,

allowing them to live out the entirety of their lives on the farm, all the while

doing their own breeding and growing of feed. But they'd better have a trust

fund.

Opponents of industrialized agriculture have been declaring for over a decade

that how humans produce animal products is one of the most important

environmental questions we face. We need a bolder declaration. After all, it's

not how we produce animal products that ultimately matters. It's whether we

produce them at all.

E. Mc is the author of " Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong

and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly. "