Presenting evidence on these matters to the public is fine, but the ideas of specialized scientists need to be filtered through people who know the broad issues and interconnections among issues, or they're likely to do more harm than good. I'm referring, for example, to "professor[s] of civil and environmental engineering." They probably just don't know about the larger picture affected by their research.

In fact, on a number of the most important farm/food issues, there's been a lot of misinformation out there, with most mainstream media and even most progressive views ending up on the wrong side of desperate issues, due to a lack of correct information. I've addressed some of these falsehoods in dozens of comments on food and farm articles at Common Dreams.

Here I see two major errors of omission. First, there is no mention of sustainable alternatives (other than one factor, transportation miles for local food). In fact, however, many livestock often raised on grain in an industrial system can be raised with no grain in an organic system. That then reduces machinery use, as tillage, planting, spraying/cultivation, harvest operations are not needed. Animals do these operations themselves, a sort of draft power even from chickens on pasture (as much as possible, given local climate). Then there are the carbon benefits as soil carbon is increased rather than depleted. So the talk here is all about "the livestock sector," not about industrial vs sustainable alternatives.

Second, there is nothing said about the mega economic pressures that have led to the creation of this unsustainable industrial livestock system. So here is a second mega issue unmentioned. These huge policy factors are left unattended as gross anti "meat sector" solutions (boycotts) are suggested.

Ok, given what I've seen in hundreds of false mainstream media editorials (http://www dot commondreams.org/news2008/0211-10.htm, see my rebuttal there), and recently in dozens of false items at Common Dreams (where I've posted rebuttals), few folks probably know correctly what the policy issues really are. Correct information simply hasn't been out there widespread.

What policy issues? A. the big billions or historically multi trillions of the US farm bill Commodity Title (and similar legislation in the EU CAP, and more generally internatinally), the reduction and elimination of price floors and supply management, so then prices drop (due to the lack of "price responsiveness" for grains, etc.) and usually stay low, providing hidden below cost gains to giant animal factories (ie. $2.5+ billion EACH to Tyson and Smithfield 1997-2005, very conservatively, in a Tufts University study). This huge, anti farmer, corporate pushed transfer of wealth fueled the change to animal factories, for example, making pastures and hay ground much less competitive. So we need the Food from Family Farms Act of the Nationl Family Farm Coalition, (formerly the Harkin-Gephardt farm bill) B. The lack of competitive markets for livestock, related to point A. See policy proposals at nffc.net and at the Western Organization of Resource Councils.

Third, global warming is not the only crisis out there. Millions of people are starving to death. And in fact, the poorest countries in the world, the "Least Developed Countries," are farming countries. They're 70%+ rural. (US under 18% rural.) More than 180,000 farmers India have committed suicide in recent years. To recommend gross, narrowly focused actions that can significantly affect the world's desperately struggling farmers and farming countries with no consideration of their conditions and needs is a big problem. (And they desperately need the commodity title changes of the previous paragraph, and changes in WTO and other international institutions).

Errors of ommission and of comprehensiveness, like the many related errors of fact and paradigm, only hurt the cause of addressing global warming. Real life is not a utopia where simple, pure, mono solutions make destiny behave as narrowly focused elite leaders proscribe. There are real dilemmas to be faced, real comlexity. Lewis Mumford warned against "the fallacy of systems."

We need to win these issues. In so doing we especially need to unite. What we have now is a greatly divided movement, where many progressives, perhaps most urban progressives, advocated on the wrong side of crucial issues prior to passage of the 2007-8 farm bill, because of false understandings of the issues and the politics of the issues (google my name and "farm bill" for discussion or see my zspace blog). We must do much better, uniting the vast majorities of people worldwide who share common values.

Agribusiness elites have unleashed a masterly divide and conquer strategy, especially around the "scapegoat" issue of farm subsidies (http://lists dot iatp.org/listarchive/archive.cfm?id=121152). More than half of us have fallen for it, (especially in bashing farmers on the subsidy scapegoat issue,) even while proclaiming opposition to agribusiness. 2007-2008 they won. We were cut in half (search my name and "false paradigm". They're still winning. My comments are to heal that breach, double our strength (hey, we have the numbers of people sharing the same values) and end that defeat prior to the next farm bill (which could be an emergency farm bill, much sooner than 2012.)

Please, I urge some of you to reconsider and cut back on meat and hopefully eventually go vegan. This should be the diet of the future. It's so easy and much healthier.

great recipes: http://vegweb.com/

"Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."
--Albert Einstein, American physicist

I'm with Mkkk: "Too many people."

The article is a brutal call for the abolition of mammals high on the food chain by eliminating mammals a little lower on the food chain.

If you go a little deeper, and examine the article in context, the problem is not livestock, it is industrial agriculture. This whole cycle has been discussed at CD before, in re the MANURE CYCLE.

What nobody wants to talk about is the HUMAN MANURE CYCLE and the fact that it no longer exists because HUMAN MANURE has been taken outside the Natural Cycle and has been commodified and industrialized into for-profit chemical sewerage treatment plants subsidized by municipal taxation and bond issues purchased by people rich enough to buy tax-exempt municipal bonds.

Many dozens of human societies depend upon complex interactions with ruminants whose manure replenishes the soil. CEASE THE ASSAULT on these cultures. Including certain cultures in Pennsylvania! Wyoming?

The greatest producer of methane as a greenhouse gas is the human species, overpopulating and rationalizing self-justification. Since at least the 1800s we have been depleting the soil, of minerals, through agriculture. Our artificial fertilizers have not been replacing the minerals. We are becoming zombie artifacts of our former genetics through phosphorous additives. Anyone for a Coke? Eat your teeth!

There are many ways to provide protein. Let's start by saying that we need them all.
Then let's start making well-considered choices. We are being "hollowed out" by our governmental system, which is NOT a "culture." It is a disease.

-30-

Although I've been a vegetarian for the last 24 years (and doing fine, thank you :), I was one of those that was under the impression that grass-fed cows and the resultant beef were somehow easier on the environment. Apparently not, according to Nathan Pelletier (the same guy whose research work this article is based on).

From an an article in ScienceNews:
********************
Many environmentalists have argued that finishing up the fattening of beef cattle on corn is worse for the environment than cattle that are raised solely on pasture grass. Pelletier says his team’s analysis finds that at least from a climate perspective, the opposite is true. “We do see significant differences in the GHG intensities [of grass vs grain finishing]. It’s roughly on the order of 50 percent higher in grass-finished systems.”

When an audience member questioned whether he had heard that right, that grass-fed cattle have a higher carbon footprint, Pelletier reiterated, “higher. Yes.” The reason: “It’s related to the much higher volumes of feed throughput and associated methane and nitrous-oxide [GHG] emissions.” He added that most pastures were highly managed, and subject to “periodic renovations and also fertilization.” Finally, with grass-fed cattle “there is also a high [grass] trampling rate. So the actual land area that you need to maintain magnifies that [GHG] difference,” Pelletier said.
*******************

That said, do I expect anyone to change their mind just on the basis of reading an article here on CD or somewhere? No. Not really. It has to happen from within. Silently. And, in my case, suddenly - no gradual cutting down of meat for me. When I felt it was wrong, that was it - never went back to it. All it takes is to look beyond the 'traditional American' recipes - there's plenty of vegetarian stuff from all over the world. I've also come to the conclusion (not a big discovery - just my experience) that the actual taste comes from the spices, ginger, garlic, pepper, etc. - so, it's only an illusion to think that there's something particularly delicious about meat - again, it's my opinion, from my experience. When a TV ad talks of 'juicy burger' or 'juicy steak', think about what the "juice" actually is.

I do not hardly eat meat and when I do it is grass feed and produced locally by people I know.
Who says people are eating more meat than ever. I visit a lot of grocery stores and they are marking down their meats as not many people are buying them. They are too expensive.
I kid you not I heard an ad on the radio telling people not to pass gas in their home because of methane.
I would never go outside for something as dumb espeacially if it is cold and raining.
Al Gore creates global warming everytime he opens his mouth.

I recommend reading Stirring It Up by Gary Hirshberg (2008). Gary is the founder of Stoneyfield Farms organic and sustainable yogurt. The book talks about how businesses can be sustainable, save money, have a good product and help save the world. He really makes the case to business people that they can do the right thing (energy efficiency, treating consumer and suppliers well, investing $ in alternative energy, making a good product, etc) and be a "successful" business-he has played a leadership role in reducing GHG from dairy operations (they are the third largest yogurt company in US)--both through primary reduction (grass fed cows, alt energy, etc) and selective offsetting to help others in agriculture reduce their GHG through methane digesters. These changes ARE possible, we just have to do them.

From an article I read this weekend "It's past time to just be talking about changing things" so we should do the best we can to reduce eating unsustainable meat products. it's not that vegetarians are better people, but they definitely eat lower on the fossil fuel and food chain.

I do have to admit, I usually choose a burger when I eat out at a restaurant...but I almost never have beef in my house, I cook chicken instead.

It is obvious from the posts here that greedy, selfish Americans continue to dwell in the greasy realm of DENIAL when confronted with any science or facts that threaten their self indulgent lifestyles. America will plunder the world for their resources until there is nothing left but a bunch of lazy fat asses (Americans) sitting in front of teevees...

Try eating uncooked asparagus!

I'll give you my hamburger when you take it from my cold dead hands.

News out today that many thousand cows will be slaughtered due to high costs of milk production.

We may see the same with beef cattle, especially as the global depression drives the price of meat beyond the reach of western consumers.

My question ....Is there a low-cost alternative which can step in to replace rapidly disappearing beef and dairy? Do we have the ability to support a shift to a more "meatless" diet?

Most of the people (I use the term loosely) I pass on the street look like they could safely survive a year without eating. Maybe people used to be the size of elephants and we're just reverting to the mean? It's so disgusting. STOP EATING, OBESE DENIZENS!!!!!!!!!

Whatever we consume from an act of unnecessary violence in violence to us returns. Ancient Greeks traced a relationship between our acts of cruelty toward animals and the perpetuation of human upon human wars through time--a kind of fated energy transference which now can be measured as hormonal secretions that pass from the terrorized animal to the one who eats it. Maybe ending the 'war on terror' begins with examining the terror war we've imposed on other living creatures. To have us seriously contemplating the ubiquitous presence of the hamburger in our midst may go a long way to liberating us from more than one global ill.

Please take the time to educate yourselves about the impact of factory farming on the environment, health and the animals. It is so hard to believe that with all the information and alternatives available, that anyone still wants to eat a ground up cow, chicken or pig corpse!
Check out the misery we cause as humans to cows and other animals just because we want what we want and "it tastes good".

http://www.goveg.com/factoryFarming_cows_flesh.asp

www.meetyourmeat.org

Cattle should be raised on grass, not grain. And while raising grain increases atmospheric CO2, grazed pasture actually sequesters more CO2 than forests. -- http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/aug2002/2002-08-08-07.asp

Grass Fed Meat: our true environmental savior (http://nourishedmagazine.com.au/blog/articles/grass-fed-meat-our-true-environmental-savior)

Splendor from the Grass by Sally Fallon and Mary G. Enig, PhD (http://www.westonaprice.org/farming/splendor.html)

The Health Benefits of Raw Milk from Grass Fed Animals by Ron Schmid, ND(http://www.drrons.com/raw-milk-health-benefits.htm)

According to the EPA, the U.S. Inventory of Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks, Agriculture accounts for 8% of total ghg's with 1/3 of that from livestock. That makes livestocks contribution 2.66% (far from Nathan Pelletiers claim that 18% of ghg emissions is from livestock).
This compares to 19% industry, 29% Transportation and 33% Electrical Generation.

Again, cattle raised on grass and hay are one of the most efficient ways to convert sunshine into high energy and nourishing food.

Further, cattle raised on grass actually sequester additional carbon in the soil thus reducing the threat of global warming.

Too many people!!!

To those who think that cutting down on or avoiding meat consumption will not have much of an impact on climate change or on the environment, I want to say this: YOU ARE WRONG (sorry to be blunt :)

Google "Livestock's Long Shadow".

It turns out that livestock production accounts for more greenhouse gases than all the cars, trucks, planes and ships in the world combined. This may come as a surprise - apparently, a vegan driving a Hummer is probably more environmentally friendly than an average North American meat eater. In fact, I didn't know the scale of the emissions associated with meat production until a few days ago.

"Livestock's Long Shadow - Environmental Issues and Options" is a United Nations report, released by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) on 29 November 2006, that "aims to assess the full impact of the livestock sector on environmental problems,..."

If you cannot read through the whole report (the executive summary, which is Part-I on the website linked above, is about four pages), Wikipedia gives the following summary of this report:

The assessment was based 'on the most recent and complete data available, taking into account direct impacts, along with the impacts of feed crop agriculture required for livestock production. The report states that the livestock sector is one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global. The findings of this report suggest that it should be a major policy focus when dealing with problems of land degradation, climate change and air pollution, water shortage and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity.

Based on this report, senior U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization official Dr. Henning Steinfeld stated that the meat industry is “one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems" and that "urgent action is required to remedy the situation."

Following a Life Cycle Analysis approach, the report evaluates "that livestock are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, a bigger share than that of transport." GHG emissions arise from feed production (eg chemical fertilizer production, deforestation for pasture and feed crops, cultivation of feed crops, feed transport and soil organic matter losses in pastures and feed crops), animal production (eg enteric fermentation and methane and nitrous oxide emissions from manure) and as a result of the transportation of animal products. Following this approach the report estimates that livestock contributes to about 9% of total anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions, but 37% of methane and 65% of nitrous oxide emissions. Along the animal food chain, main sources of emissions are:

-- land use and land use change: 2.5 Giga tonnes CO2 equivalent; including forest and other natural vegetation replaced by pasture and feed crop in the Neotropics (CO2) and carbon release from soils such as pasture and arable land dedicated to feed production (CO2)
-- feed Production (except carbon released from soil): 0.4 Giga tonnes CO2 equivalent, including fossil fuel used in manufacturing chemical fertilizer for feed crops (CO2) and chemical fertilizer application on feedcrops and leguminous feed crop (N2O, NH3)
-- animal production: 1.9 Giga tonnes CO2 equivalent, including enteric fermentation from ruminants (CH4) and on-farm fossil fuel use (CO2)
-- manure Management: 2.2 Giga tonnes CO2 equivalent, mainly through manure storage, application and deposition (CH4, N2O, NH3)
-- processing and international transport: 0.03 Giga tonnes CO2 equivalent

*****************************
Being a vegan or a vegetarian is not so hard as it's made out to be. And any myths about the nutritional and health-related 'shortcomings' of a vegan or vegetarian diet have long been dispelled. And in a real economy that's not manipulated by special interest groups and where there are no subsidies and where taxation is rational, meat should cost significantly more than vegetables - as it does in many other 'poorer' countries, so that even those who eat meat do so only occasionally, out of economic reasons.

"Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture" by Jeremy Rifkin is a great book, though it came out 15 years ago, and I particularly liked the historical account of beef consumption. Once again you see the British hand in 'pioneering' the so-called marbled beef, which led to today's grain-fed beef and the strange ways of labeling by the USDA. McSpotlight, which calls itself "The biggest, loudest, most red, most read Anti-McDonald's extravaganza the world has ever seen" has this interesting page.

Another funny thing with meat eaters is that if you give them tofu meat and not tell them that that is what it is-they may like it. But once they know its not meat, they are likely to say: oh it tastes funny.

It has been linked to some psychological idea that meat = power. Which I find amusing, given how weak humans are.
The strongest land animals in nature are vegetarian-horse, gorilla, elephant , and being a carnivore isnt a glamorous life(as shown by that footage of the lions trying unsuccessfully to get a water buffalo). Humans like to romanticize it because they kill for want, not need. And they rely on tools to make it easy.

Also funny how fruits and vegetables are the colour of the rainbow and meat is the colour of fertilizer to put it politely.

I know some people want to believe we can go back to the 19th century farm structure and supposedly solve all the problems with meat(not the enslavement, water,land and wildlife killing however).
Pythagoros was a vegetarian 1000s of years before factory farms existed.
In Jonathan Swift's time they used to burn out the eyes of birds to make them grow fatter. Oh yeah! Now that's small farm compassion.

People who try to excuse meat eating are either just lazy, or human supremacists(George Monbiot says vegetarians are grey skinned-all those vegan celebrities do a great job covering it up). And for anyone to think humans are better than other species is somewhere between clownish and perverse.

Anyway-every argument against meat eating is listed here:

http://animalvegfaq.tripod.com

I used to debate ranchers and pig farmers, now I just send them there.
If you debate people long enough-you just see that they will keep going back to the same tired excuse, and no matter how often you knock it down, they conveniently forget and then bring it up again.

"tomatoes scream!" "what will we do with all the cows?" etc. That site is a great time saver.

"To be humane is to be cruel, vicious and unrestrained, like humans.
To be inhumane is to be compassionate, restrained, moderate, like non humans."

It sounds like beef production will eventually need a carbon tax or be part of cap and trade. Free ranging, grass eating cattle actually sequester carbon into the soil, but that is too expensive and I guess the beef too lean. Isn't it the feedlot fattening practice that uses so much grain? As I recall reading, the great buffalo herds had the prairie topsoil in great shape before we started plowing it.

Maybe we should make a modest portion of beef a weekly or monthly treat as opposed to the daily double-quarter pounders and huge cuts of steak every week.

Ignorance and lies from academes who would not know the difference between a steer and a bull.

Cattle should NEVER be fed grain. E-coli 0153 that has caused and continues to cause so much sickness and death is ONLY present in grain-fed cattle and NEVER present in cattle fed only grass and hay.

Feeding cattle grain acidifies their rumen, which is normally neutral. That not only promotes E-coli 0153, but it also causes abcesses of the internal organs that require routine feeding of antibiotics so the animal won't die. That routine feeding of antibiotics then stimulates the growth of superbugs like MRSA that is currently causing so many problems in hospitals, schools, and retirement communities.

Cattle that are fed correctly, which is to say on grass and hay alone, are one of the efficient converters of the sun's energy to high value food on the planet. And that is especially true when the pastures on which the cattle are grazed are the most suited to grazing and the least suited to other forms of agricultural production, i.e., high hill country where the slopes are too steep for mechanized cultivation.

See http://www.eatwild.com for more information on the grassfed alternative.

It’s nice to finally see that someone is advocating less meat in our diet for other reasons than “it’s not good for you”

However, when we engage in a war of aggression, which expends into the air toxic chemicals such as depleted uranium, chemical gas, expended fuel, and a host of other nasty things, add to that the limited MPG thousands of vehicles that war requires get, the toxic materials released when stuff is blown up, the millions of gallons of fuel that aircraft use during missions, and the other hidden costs of war besides death and injury, not eating a burger seems like too small an act.

If we really want to control global warming, the first step is to stop the wars and make peace with our neighbors, and secondly stop raping the environment with our unhealthy mining operations.

Great article-although advocating that more people eat chicken as one suggested isnt the solution, since it just maximizes the unnecessary suffering of chickens in factory farms.

Eating meat is destructive and unnecessary-and attempts to justify it are just excuses. So very tired anti-intellectual excuses.

In addition to global warming, there is also the wasting of water and crops that could be used to feed humans.
The loss of rain forest for Brazilian cattle AND for growing soya to feed livestock.
The slaughter of wildlife to protect livestock interests(wolves and weasels were demonized because of their association with domesticated animal herds).

Humans are not naturally equipped predators like a wolf or cougar-they lack the equipment from birth to do it-they need to resort to tricks and tools.
They wouldnt be able to take down a sick bird without aid of tools.

There are the health concerns, not just heart disease, but the incubation of new diseases (influenza from pig herds, sars, bird flu etc).
That in addition to the basic ethical problems with it-that you are causing suffering and death that is completely unnecessary.

Slaughterhouse workers have been known to take out their frustrations on the animals waiting for slaughter--gouging their eyes out, castrating them for fun, breaking the legs of chickens, scalding them alive.

"It tastes guud" is really the only argument that you can out forward to defend it. It hardly stands up against the rest.

If you claim to be an environmentalist but eat meat you are talking without the actual walking.

Simple solutions are common sense.

"To be humane is to be cruel, vicious and unrestrained, like humans.
To be inhumane is to be compassionate, restrained, moderate, like non humans."

True enough.

As logansafi suggests this is indeed a simplistic characterization. I don't mind saying that I enjoy a good hamburger, but I completely understand and abhor most of the practices involved in commercial beef production. Much could be done to improve those practices, and we could probably find ways to harness or otherwise utilize the methane from manure. There is at least some research into methane capture technologies for one example. And given that beef is only one source of methane, a more comprehensive inquiry and discussion of the general topic might be time and effort better spent.

I'm not convinced. Eating hamburger is bad for the environment, but so, too, is eating fish these days, what with the destruction of fish stocks around the planet. Many fish are on the verge of total extinction from overfishing.

And eating vegetables is no guarantee of anything, as the news about scientists setting up 'seed banks' to keep so many seldom used seeds from being lost forever from the genetic variety available on the planet illustrates. Factory farming of a few chosen vegetables-grains-fruits is totally destructive, too.

When articles like this one promote simplistic ideas and solutions in isolation from the greater reality it is no real advance from what is currently going down. People get the idea that just stopping from eating as many Big Macs as possible is some how a revolutionary act when so much more than that actually needs to take place to save the ecology of this planet. Individual change of personal eating habits just is not the real change the world really needs so badly.

Somewhere in America there MUST be a burger joint where the biggest, baddest burger on the menu is called "The Hummer." Near or on a military base? In the "heartland"?

I would not eat it on a bet
I would not eat it on a jet

WARNING
WARRING
WARMING

FOR REVENGETARIAN PEACE:
IN WESTEXAS NEAR KILLEEN
DON'T BUY A CHEESEBURGER
WEAR A "BUSH'S CHICKEN!"
T-SHIRT FROM A CHAIN SAW
MASSACRE IN FASTFOODLAND
AND - WEAR IT EVERYWHERE

A TOO INCONVENIENT TRUTH:
AL, ANIMAL FARMEATING POO
GIVES U MORE GAS THAN CO2

YOU DON'T NEED A WEATHERMAN TO TELL THE WEATHER
THERE'S NOT TIME TO TALK ABOUT IF IT'S WHATEVER
OR WHETHER WE SHOULD STOP WAR MAKE PEACE BEFORE
WARMING DROWNS US IN STORMS TO REALLY CRY ABOUT

www.poetreefree.US