Thanks so much for all the wonderful comments and discussions! I’m so impressed with how everyone is both passionate and civil, and HELLO, if there’s going to be drinks later, you guys better invite me too.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my assumptions about food, and especially my assumptions as someone who has read 60+ books on vegetarianism and factory farming, and not much about an other related agricultural topic.
These are things I believe to be true:
- Factory farms treat animals abhorrently in a variety of ways, including (but not limited to): being unable to live their lives naturally expressing their own instincts and behaviors healthfully, cruel handling of the “healthy” animals but also exceptionally cruel handling of the fallen, an unnatural diet that often makes them sick, and a death that is at least terrifying, if not drawn out and downright torturous.
- Factory farms are horrible for the environment as a whole, but especially damaging to their own regional ecology, causing sickness in surrounding communities, and polluting local soils and waterways.
(Seafood – a connected topic that I have thoughts about, but I’d like to concentrate right now on the farm animal industry and talk about seafood at a different time.)
Those are the 2 main reasons I’ve wanted to go vegetarian for so many years. Because I believe it’s possible, and because I believe it’s morally wrong to support an industry that causes so much needless suffering and environmental degradation.
Based on this, it’s clear that the values I feel strongly about here are:
- Diminishing suffering.
- Diminishing environmental impact as much as I can.
So, based on my education, and combined with my values, what are my assumptions?
- Eating a vegetarian diet will keep animals from suffering.
- Eating a vegetarian diet will keep me just as healthy as eating meat would have.
- Eating a vegetarian diet will be a net positive for the earth because it has less environmental impact than eating factory farmed meat does.
- It’s very possible for a significant portion (like, say, around 90%) of the human population to live quite healthfully and happily without eating meat, it’s “just” a matter of changing tastes, habits, and transitioning from one cultural norm to another.
These are assumptions I don’t regularly question, but am starting to now. Specifically:
- What is the environmental impact of industrial agriculture? What are the costs and benefits? Who are the big players, what’s being done to the land, how is it being done?
- I know where my beef comes from (literally I do – the name and address of the farm), but where does my brown rice come from? Where do my barley and soybeans come from? Why isn’t this question just as deserving of scrutiny as the source of any meat I might want to eat?
- What is the environmental impact of animal-based agriculture where factory farms don’t exist, where animals are raised in the open, where the impact to the land is minimized?
You might be asking why I’m not questioning whether we should animals at all. I’ll write about that more later, too, but that would be a pretty huge post and I want to think about my feelings on that more. I wanted to get this stuff down while it’s fresh.
Vegans (I) care about the environmental impact of industrial agriculture in all of its forms! Why do you think the locavore movement is so strong, as is the focus on organic produce?
I didn’t say that vegans didn’t care about the environmental impact of industrial agriculture, did I? Although my first thought was a joke from a movie: how do you know? Have you spoken to every vegan? :)
I’ve met a lot of vegans whose *sole* concern is the welfare of animals, and I mean above all else. I’ve never been in a discussion about whether or not to eat meat that included anyone (vegan or otherwise) bringing up the environmental impact of industrial agriculture until a friend of mine here in Seattle brought it up to me. I think most (not all, but most) people who think about it do acknowledge it exists, but they aren’t knowledgeable about the extent, and they certainly assume that it can’t be as bad as the same land with animals on it.
I think the deal is that the vast, vast majority of food animals (including most organic, etc) eat feed made from industrially farmed crops. I’ve heard lots of people who promote an animal-product heavy diet talking about how vegetarians eat lots of industrially farmed soybeans and such, and how therefore being vegetarian is just as bad (or worse) than eating animals, but the fact is that most of those soybeans go to feed livestock. Since it takes many more pounds of soybeans to make a pound of beef than it does to…well, make a pound of soybeans, to minimize your impact, you’re better off just eating the soybeans.
Animals from truly sustainable, biodynamic farms are a whole nother ballgame, of course. But the earth simply could not sustain our current level of animal consumption with sustainable farms. There’s not enough grazing land for that. I think the key is both reducing (not eliminating) animal product consumption AND using sustainable farming practices.
P.S. My rice comes from here! :)
I know where my eggs come from…frighteningly enough, I’ve seen one in the actual process of being delivered. Glah. *heh* The chicken was righteously indignant that I opened the coop door at the wrong time, lemme tell ya.
I just finished reading an article in Hobby Farm or Mother Earth News or one of my other hippy-dippy magazines about why one woman raises meat birds. She does it because she loves chickens and loves having them as pets, and wants to know her meat birds had as good a life, and a quick and humane death. She talks about shedding a tear as she decapitates a rooster, and about thinking about “that one hen” even years later. I kinda think that takes even more guts than going vegan (moral discussion about eating meat at all aside.) It was a good article.
Big Ag (plant-based) does have some horrific effects on the environment as well. And the effect of animal effluent as a greenhouse gas is still debated. (Don’t ask my opinion, I don’t have one at this point.) Google Monsanto and GMO and transgenic. GMO crops are a big, big discussion right now amongst local farmers and growers. It’s one of the reasons many are turning to heirloom varieties. Aside from the business ethics of them trying to patent every plant and seed they can get their hands on, there’s serious question about the health effects of some of the frankencrops they make. (Again, I don’t have a solid opinion yet.) There was a story recently about GMO corn and its effects on health, though with all this cold medicine in my system I can’t remember exactly what it was about.
These issues hit home for me. The industrialization of agriculture has been an ongoing process. We had hogs when I was younger, and the occassional beef cow, but as my parents grew older, they wanted to travel more. Having livestock really locks you in, and the benefits of having the diversified risk of a diverse farm sort of went away with the increase of farm subsidies.
By age 10 it was down to what the government paid us to plant: corn and soybeeans. My brother stayed in hogs until the mid 90′s…economically, it was “get big or get out”. He got out, and bought more land.
I’m not even 40, but I’ve seen so much change back home. Fewer farmers, bigger farms, but the farmers are still just scraping by. Pioneer sells the “roundup ready” beans, so you can just spray the whole field with a rented plane. When I was a kid, we “walked beans”, going through endless hot fields with a hoe to remove the weeds. I hated it, so I can totally see the appeal of what Monsanto has to offer, but what a scary world that is.
My concerns are more selfish and provincal. It eats at me that Tyrone Askeland, my family’s neighbor for generations, wanted a big house on the lake, so he sold out to a hog factory. He clearly didn’t give a damn what he was doing to his neighbors. My mother used to go for long walks around the section. But that is now unbearable to her unless the wind blows from the west. I worry about her well water. But mostly, I worry about the increased traffic on her little road with no shoulders. These confinement operations have sprouted all over, since Kossuth county is the last county in Iowa to enact county zoning. The regulations are not even close to being acceptable.
So yes, I think of Tyrone Askeland now when I eat bacon, the selfish pig who sold out. And a little old lady who has to deal with his shit.
I really resonate with what you’re saying here. These are questions I’m thinking about as well. I’m also thinking about to behave in light of them. I’ve been vegetarian for 3.5 yrs, vegan most days but not all. Recently I moved to a new town that is not very veg-friendly. It’s much harder here to buy organic produce, locally-produced foodstuffs, etc, especially in winter. I (think I) think that ultimately the “locavore” movement is the most all-encompassingly environmentally-friendly solution. But at this point, the best way to live that out in my town, with the encumbrances that I necessarily have, is still unclear to me.
Yes, you should consider where your fruits and veggies come from (more on this in a minute), but it is not the same, because it produces nowhere near the level of suffering and environmental damage that animal agriculture does. The science on this is clear: the single biggest thing you can do for the environment (even setting aside the huge and crucial issue of animal welfare) is to go veg, and vegan is better. A few good sources:
This article from the Guardian regarding the UN report on meat and climate: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/07/food.foodanddrink.
Here’s the UN study itself: ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/010/A0701E/A0701E00.pdf
Author of the Stern Review on eating meat (somewhat hypocritical but no less true): http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6891362.ece
Yes, Big Ag is a problem all the way around. Buy organic and local when you can and you’ll reduce your impact even further. But, as another commenter said, the vast majority of GMO corn and soybeans are grown not for human consumption, but to feed those animals (whether they were meant to eat them or not) before they can be slaughtered for your enjoyment. Eliminate your meat consumption and you’ll help there too.
Regarding your last couple of posts: I was impressed by your list of books, except that you said that these were things you’d read over your lifetime. If you pick a couple of them and read them again with an eye toward the specific problems you’re having, it would be more helpful.
Also, a quick Google search for “soy-free vegan protein” turns up tons of options. I know a varied diet is essential for good health and enjoyment of your food, so hopefully you can find some more things that work for you. Nuts are high in protein and good fats. Also try quinoa, which is a complete protein in itself. Hemp is an excellent source of protein, and you can get hemp milk or add hemp powder to your smoothies. Also, you initially mentioned that processed soy was causing you problems. Have you tried edamame, which are fresh green soybeans?
I’ll stop going on and on after one more thing: I’m a vegan with endometriosis and I’ve never noticed a problem with wheat, so this is not universal — and seitan is my favorite (mmm…).
It seems like you’re contemplating two separate things — whether avoiding industrial agro would better serve your values AND whether the impact of eating responsible meat would really compromise your values enough (to be worth it to you). I LOVE eating local food (meat included). But for a variety of reasons, my diet isn’t my own primary venue for exercising my ecological values.
Wishing you a full tummy and a happy heart, whatever you do next!
Eating a vegetarian diet does have less impact on the environment than an omnivorous diet simply because of the extra step involved. Even if vegetarians eat more grain/corn/soy than an individual who eats animals, those animals were fed grain, corn, and soy before they become dinner. And the amount of food required to make one animal worth of meat could feed a human for at least three months.
That being said, industrial farming in this country is really messed up. Corn and soy are genetically modified, heavily sprayed, and obscenely overused. The best thing to do, (in my opinion) is eat local, shop at farmers markets, read food labels and try to cut down on soy and corn intake (if nothing else than for health reasons).
I am a vegan mostly for health, then for environmental factors, then for animal rights. If my body felt better when eating animal products, I would absolutely buy eggs, meat, and cheese as long as I knew where they were coming from, but I would not make them the staple of my diet.
Hey Hollie, did you see this?
http://www.hbo.com/movies/temple-grandin