Well, according to a recent Harvard Business Review article, we would be wiser to reconsider the amount of meat products on our grocery list rather than merely looking for how many miles our food may have traveled.

How much more concerned should we be? A lot.

The HBR cites a Carnegie Mellon study that concluded that we’d each do more good for the planet if we ate meat-free just one day a week than we would if we ate exclusively—100 percent!—local foods.

Why? In short, because it generally takes vastly more resources to raise animals than it does to produce plants. For example, The New York Times reports that, calorie for calorie, the production of meat requires 16 times more fossil fuel than vegetables and rice.

Those of us in the sustainable food movement should take heed of the words of people like environmental historian James McWilliams, who notes in his book Just Food, “to be perfectly blunt, if the world continues to eat meat at current rates, there’s simply no way to achieve truly sustainable food production.”

In other words, Carnegie Mellon’s research concludes that most animal farming (and slaughtering) is so environmentally taxing, we’d be better off simply opting for a once-weekly plant-based diet than getting every morsel of our food from the local farmers market. (Of course, eating plant-based foods from that local farmers market may be even better.)

This is one reason WorldWatch Institute reports, “It has become apparent that the human appetite for animal flesh is a driving force behind virtually every major category of environmental damage now threatening the future.”

The good news is that campaigns like Meatless Mondays are gaining popularity throughout the country. As well, it’s often easier to find a vegetarian option than a local option at nearly any restaurant.

Whether it’s to protect the planet, prevent cruelty to animals, or improve our health, eating lower on the food chain is a win-win. And with all the free tips and recipes for reducing our consumption of meat out there, it’s never been easier.

Perhaps it won’t be too long before we see a TIME cover feature beckoning, “Move Over Meat—It’s Plants’ Time in the Sun.”

One thesis in my new book, The Bond: Our Kinship with Animals, Our Call to Defend Them is that so much animal mistreatment happens because so many of us in society have become disconnected from animals. In other words, they are far removed from our daily experiences, especially those animals used in institutional settings for a wide variety of purposes.

We are disconnected from the fur trade or the skin trade—we can select these products from the rack or even from a mail order catalog, and they later show up on a doorstep or at the apartment. We are greatly distant from the animal testing that goes on in the run-up to marketing of household products and cosmetics, which are nicely lined up and available to us at department stores bearing no evidence of any pain, suffering, or struggle on the part of an animal. We are certainly very removed from our meat, which comes neatly wrapped and packaged in its proper section at the supermarket, well-prepared at a restaurant, or barely recognizable at a fast food joint.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg faced up to this reality in announcing recently that he’d no longer eat meat unless he’d killed the animals himself. This of course means, according to him, that he’s reduced his meat consumption substantially. He then proceeded to slaughter some animals with a knife held in his own two hands. He’s presumably eaten these animals.

Many Americans expressed shock at the act and sympathized with the animals he killed. Some condemned Zuckerberg, accusing him of being cruel.
While I understand those natural reactions to the killing of these creatures, I think we owe Zuckerberg some plaudits, not only for reminding people that eating meat involves the killing of animals, but also for recognizing that it’s morally dubious to simply pass the “dirty work” off to an anonymous slaughter plant worker. Indeed, we should ask ourselves if there’s really much of an ethical difference between killing an animal (what Zuckerberg is doing) and paying others to kill animals for us (what most of us do).

Too many of us avert our eyes and prefer not to think much about how food gets to our table. It can make it easier for us to rationalize the mistreatment of animals in factory farms and slaughter plants if we believe ourselves far removed from the process—without feeling any connection or sense of obligation to the animals, or even seeing them at all.

Yet if every American were to adopt Zuckerberg’s approach—or even just witness, if not participate in, what happens to farm animals—you can bet there’d be many fewer animals suffering on factory farms.

Zuckerberg’s act, in its own way, was an act of conscience for him.  It was also a public provocation. Eating is a moral act, and it’s time we all face up to it, wherever we may ultimately land on this important question.

Photo: Cary Smith

Originally published on Wayne Pacelle’s blog

More Americans are demanding higher quality meat–animals fed appropriate, antibiotic-free diets on small farms and slaughtered humanely–and they are choosing to eat less of it, too. Whether turned off by endless recalls, or turned on by the health and environmental benefits of eating less meat, growth in campaigns like Meatless Monday show a powerful shift in the Zeitgeist.

Meanwhile Big Meat is taking on the Environmental Protection Agency to maintain its right to let manure run into our waterways, as it defends the excess antibiotic use (80 percent of antibiotics used in the U.S. are given to livestock), inhumane practices, and consolidation of the industry as the only way to feed the world. The beef industry has even invested in a communications degree that aims to revitalize the consumer image of industrial beef.

The conversation around how we bring meat to the table is multifaceted and is the subject of a lively discussion on April 14 at New York University entitled “What’s the Matter With Mass-Produced Meat?”

The conversation around how we bring meat to the table is multifaceted and is the subject of a lively discussion on April 14 at New York University entitled “What’s the Matter With Mass-Produced Meat?”

Co-sponsored by Kitchen Table Talks and Eating Liberally, the event will feature Daniel Imhoff, editor of CAFO: The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories, Michael Moss, the New York Times investigative reporter whose exposé on E. coli-tainted industrial beef, “The Burger That Shattered Her Life,” won a Pulitzer Prize; and Marion Nestle, NYU nutrition professor who served on the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, and author of Food Politics and What to Eat, among other books. I am honored to moderate the conversation and welcome your questions below in the comment section or send me a tweet @civileater in advance of the panel.

The discussion will take place at Fales Library at New York University, 70 Washington Square So, Third Floor from 6:30-8:30 p.m. Please RSVP to rsvp@library.nyu.edu or call 212.992.7050. This event is free and open to the public, but please be mindful when you reserve a space as seating is limited. Books will be available for sale and there will be a signing following the event. Sustainable food and refreshments will be provided by Northern Spy.

More about the team behind the event:

Eating Liberally is a social network whose aim is to swell the ranks of ecologically enlightened “food citizens” through spreading the word about books, films, and other projects that promote an alternative, plant-based food chain powered by the sun instead of Sunoco.

Kitchen Table Talks is a regular conversation series about the American food system. Its mission is to build community and exchange knowledge and ideas that lead to specific actions to make meaningful improvements in our food system.

Photo: Nourishing Our Children Photos via Flickr

A number of Sodexo facilities including the Johns Hopkins Hospital’s Cobblestone Café conducted their own Meatless Monday campaigns. However, starting this month Sodexo expanded the initiative to all of its more than 900 hospital clients, “as part of its ongoing effort to promote health and wellness.” In the spring, the company will offer menus and materials to all of its corporate and government clients and in the fall it will officially implement Meatless Monday at its “Sodexo-served” colleges and schools.

Sodexo joins a growing list of Meatless Monday supporters. Some of the most recent high-profile Meatless Monday converts include Sir Paul McCartney; Mario Batali, Celebrity Chef and restaurateur; Laurie David, An Inconvenient Truth producer; and dozens of municipalities, universities, colleges, and restaurants.

The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Center for a Livable Future helped launch Meatless Monday back in 2003. The campaign’s primary focus is to reduce America’s saturated fat consumption by 15 percent, following the recommendations of the Healthy People 2010 report issued by then U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher in 2000.

The major source for saturated fat in the American diet comes from meat and high-fat dairy. “Cutting meat out one day week can help Americans reach the reduction goal with little effort,” says Dr. Robert S. Lawrence, Director, Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future (CLF).

While Meatless Monday awareness has increased, so has the need to reduce overall meat consumption. The 2010 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee has already called on Americans to “shift food intake patterns to a more plant-based diet.” Research shows that diets high in red or processed meat may increase the risk of mortality while diets high in vegetables, fruits and whole grains may reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.

The majority of the meat we eat in America comes from intensive food animal production facilities, which are extremely resource intensive and pose major pollution risks. Dr. Lawrence says, “the impact on the environment can be substantial if we are successful in having a 15 percent reduction in meat consumption.”

To give you an idea of the environmental impacts Dr. Lawrence is talking about below is a short list of some sobering statistics:

• It takes an estimated 2,000 gallons of water [PDF] to produce one pound of feedlot beef. (Kreith, M. : 1991 Water inputs in California food production.) Based on EPA data that is enough water to meet a family of four’s indoor water needs for approximately a week.

• According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), agricultural operations, including animal confinement operations, are a significant source of water pollution. States estimate that agriculture contributes to the impairment of at least 173,629 river miles, 3,183,159 lake acres and 2,971 estuary miles.

• Of the antibiotics sold in 2009 for both people and food animals almost 80 percent were reserved for livestock and poultry. Producers often administer antibiotics in continuous low-dosages through feed or water to increase the speed at which their animals grow. The CDC has stated that non-therapeutic antibiotic use in food animals “may be more likely to contribute to the development of resistant bacteria which can create disease strains that may put human populations at risk.”

• There are many other environmental risks that industrial food animal production can pose, including the contribution of greenhouse gases.

The point of the Meatless Monday campaign is not to make people feel guilty about eating meat. Rather it is designed to encourage everyone to eat in moderation. Nicolette Hahn Niman, who, with her husband Bill, raises beef cattle on pasture and heritage turkeys, captured the concept well:

“We think that to really improve the way food is being produced and the way people are eating in this country people should eat less meat but eat better meat. All food from animals—meat, dairy, fish, eggs—should be treated as something special. Anyone who is raising food animals in the traditional healthy way, without relying on industrial methods, drugs and chemicals, is someone who will benefit from people embracing that approach. We think the Meatless Monday campaign is part of a shift in attitudes about meat, towards something that is precious not something that is consumed without thought or in enormous quantities.”

The new rules came on the heels of a series of joint workshops between the USDA and the Department of Justice at which many poultry producers, dairy producers and other farmers complained of unfair contracts that left them in debt and beholden to a few key players in the industry. These major reforms aim to reverse the trend of decline in small and mid-sized farms, a current focus for the USDA. The AP (via ABCNews) described the new rules back in June this way:

The rules would place the sharpest limits on meat companies since the Great Depression, drastically lowering the bar that farmers and ranchers must meet to sue companies whom they accuse of demanding unfairly low prices.

The rules would dictate how meatpackers buy cattle on the open market, and prohibit them from showing preference to big feedlots by offering them special incentives not available to smaller producers.

They would also limit the control chicken companies have over the farmers who raise birds for them. The companies couldn’t require farmers to take on debt to invest in chicken houses, for example, unless farmers were guaranteed to recoup 80 percent of the cost.

The law would also make it easier to file suits under the Depression-era Packers and Stockyards Act by stating that farmers don’t need to prove industrywide anticompetitive behavior to file a lawsuit under the act.

Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack acknowledged back then that these reforms were long overdue, saying “The reality is, the Packers and Stockyards Act has not kept pace with the marketplace … Our job is to make sure the playing field is level for producers.”

However, the livestock industry has brought their lobbyists out in full force, alarmed by the changes being pursued all around them: the potential for a ban on non-therapeutic use of antibiotics in livestock (via the FDA and Congress), which would require Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) to dramatically rethink their practices; the new dietary guidelines released by the USDA, which suggest decreasing meat intake along with eating more vegetables and whole grains; and the current debate over whether or not to build a pipeline for corn ethanol, extending the fuel’s tax credit, and increasing the amount that can be blended into our gasoline, which would all most likely raise feed costs for livestock producers. Thus the livestock, poultry and egg industry has already spent over $700,000 on lobbying, and it probably won’t let up soon.

The House Ag Subcommittee seemed to echo the industry’s fears. Chris Clayton of the The Progressive Farmer quoted some of the committee members on Tuesday, including Subcommittee Chairman David Scott, D-GA, who said that USDA officials had “very, very seriously overstepped their boundaries.” House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, D-MN, along with others on the committee are pushing to extend the comment period for the proposal for a 120 days after the August 27th Department of Justice workshop on livestock in Fort Collins, Colorado — a stalling tactic which could result in the industry watering down the rule.

The response to the GIPSA rules is a big test for the USDA, which plays the confusing dual role of promoting and regulating agriculture. On Tuesday, USDA Undersecretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programs Edward Avalos was in the hot seat, and according to Clayton, was “stressing, repeatedly, that the livestock rule “is a proposed rule” and that USDA wants to hear from the industry.”

The industry has built relationships with politicians on the right and left and has been lobbying them with the profits it is trying to protect for years. Will reformers, who have long fought for just these kinds of reforms, turn the heat up from their side? If there is a silver lining for the reforms, it is that the Senate is more open to them. (excepting industry stalwart, Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), whom Tom Laskawy at Grist predicts will lose in November in his though-provoking write up on the GIPSA rules controversy). But if major changes to the livestock industry are going to take hold, it will require voices from the public and the USDA holding its ground. We’ll stay on this story as it develops.

What do most of us know about Moby (not the whale, but the music artist)? I, for one, know that he makes good dance music, he likes tea, and he’s an outspoken vegan.  So how did he end up editing a book with a contribution by Paul Willis, Mr. sustainable hog farmer? And did they drink not-too-sweet organic peach tea to seal the deal? It seems like food politics may have made some super strange bedfellows here.

We are at an interesting moment, I think, one in which the vegans are trying a new tact. Sensing a possible ally, they have decided to team up with the sustainable food movement in order to improve animal welfare and decrease the number of animals suffering at the hands of Big Ag. It’s a pretty darn good match.  After reading Gristle: From Factory Farms to Food Safety, composed of 15 pieces on the negative environmental, health, community, financial and global impacts of industrial animal production, it’s hard not to feel that you must opt out of the system entirely.  For some—like me—that means choosing to eat less meat and to be careful about where that meat comes from and how it is raised.  For others it’s going to mean giving up meat altogether.

Moby and Miyun Park, who has long worked on farm animal welfare issues, collected these 15 pieces and organized them by type of impact (e.g. health; worker rights; climate change) to create a kind of primer.  They gathered a quirky assortment of contributors—determined perhaps by six degrees of Moby?—including food movement warriors like Frances Moore Lappé, Danielle Nierenberg and Meredith Niles to talk about global and environmental impacts; love-him-or-hate-him Whole Foods CEO John Mackey to talk about the true, hidden costs of cheap meat; Canadian ultra-Marathoner Brendan Brazier to talk about being a powerfully capable athlete living only on plant protein, and the bodily health that comes from skipping all those antibiotics and growth hormones.

The takeaway at the end of the read is disgust at a system of food production that could be failing humans, the physical environment and animals so comprehensively. The vegan handbag/shoe designer and the pork producer can agree upon this, as can any reader with a conscience and a heart.

Jonathan Safran Foer speaks with the reasoning of a vegetarian, the skepticism of an investigative journalist and the concern of a parent in Eating Animals. This persuasive narrative forces us to ask why we have ignored the issues associated with factory-farmed meat and fish for so long. We’ve done so, Foer argues, by telling ourselves a fable about our relation to the animals we eat.

Our story about meat is a longstanding one with the quality of a dream. We like to imagine animals and humans living side-by-side on rural pastureland. In exchange for a life free of suffering, animals “consent” to being eaten. Foer spells out this “myth of animal consent” to expose our “ambivalence about the violence and death dealing inherent in eating animals.” Probing our psychological relationship with food, he makes an argument for vegetarianism but ultimately proposes a more humane system for raising and killing animals.

As a novelist, Foer’s main concern is for his materials, namely words. So to tell this story, he deconstructs the language of food, devoting an entire chapter to redefining words used to describe factory farming. “Suffering” is not as much about the science of pain as it is about our ability to feel what the object of that pain is experiencing. “Cruelty” is a conscious apathy toward “unnecessary suffering” and it depends on our “ability to choose against it, or to choose to ignore it.” “Cage-free” literally means that birds are not in cages but actually says nothing about their living conditions. “KFC” no longer stands for fried chicken but more often for animal cruelty (“workers were documented tearing heads off live birds, spitting tobacco into their eyes, spray-painting their faces, and violently stomping on them”). He titles one section “Our New Sadism” wherein we hear revolting testaments to human barbarism. So when Foer quotes a factory farmer (“You simply can’t feed billions of people free-range eggs”), we hear instead Foer’s definition of “free-range”: “Imagine a shed containing thirty thousand chickens, with a small door at one end that opens to a five-by-five dirt patch—and the door is closed all but occasionally.”

Foer then sets out to engage with others about eating meat. His hypothetical debates with Michael Pollan on eating animals lead Foer towards a critique of The Omnivore’s Dilemma in which he states that the book ultimately is a “disavowal of the real horror we inflict.” When he takes an illegal trip to a poultry farm with the animal activist named “C,” we relive Foer’s disturbing experience and read C’s testimony. There are voices from a factory farm, a small scale poultry farm and a small pig farm. There is a vegetarian cattle rancher who believes in her decision not to eat meat but is aware that “the meat industry affects everybody … all of us, living in a society in which food production is based on factory farming.” There is the voice of Foer’s own grandmother, a World War II survivor whose relationship with food means everything from “terror” to “gratitude.” There are voices of the voiceless chickens, fish, pigs and cows whose short lives are documented step-by-step in chapters on raising and processing within factory farms and industrial fisheries. What began as one person’s desire to know what meat is — “where does it come from? how is it produced?” — becomes our universal problem.

But perhaps the most striking and sobering question asked in Eating Animals is, “What did you do when you learned the truth about eating animals?” What do we do on the day when we discover that most of our meat is tainted? Don’t these facts force us to ask what it means to be human?

Foer’s argument stops short of considering this question only in his consideration of food production and the environment. He does offer a two-page definition for environmentalism as “concern for the preservation and restoration of natural resources and the ecological systems that sustain human life.” He does not, however, press the reader to consider the false stories we tell ourselves about our responsibility for global warming. We are given an elementary lesson on food production and greenhouse gas emissions. We learn about dead zones and the toxicity of manure lagoons. But he glides over pivotal questions about the meat industry that takes into account the importance of a healthy earth.

Still, Foer has a specific agenda: reinvent the system with the help of “modern technology and traditional husbandry” and restore the growth of husbandry-based ranching. It is helpful that Foer, a strict vegetarian, recognizes that Americans like to eat meat and they probably always will. Therefore, admitting that “ethical meat is a promissory note, not a reality” places his agenda at an appropriate distance from our current food mentality. If we want change, then we must subscribe to a story filled with different facts than the ones we accept unthinkingly. “The secrecy that has enabled the factory farm is breaking down:” 76 million Americans get sick each year from the food they eat. Less than 2% of the American population works in agriculture. Long-line fishing kills 4.5 million sea animals a year—and this is just the number of dead animals thrown back into the sea as by-catch. Numbers help tell the story of a world that should be valued more than our cravings.

“No one will come,” he said.

I knew he was right. No one wants a turkey-less Thanksgiving. I resigned myself to a meal at someone else’s house, cringing at the sight of a gravy-dripping bird proudly displayed in the center of a dining room table.

It was either that or dinner for three, which my husband, daughter and I did one year.

This year there’s a twist in the family drama. Various dysfunctions among siblings, parents and even a friend prevent others from hosting. My dining room will be christened for Thanksgiving. What I’m most grateful for is the chance to gather nearly a dozen people for a meat-less harvest meal.

I stopped eating meat 30 years ago, the day I arrived at college. The decision was not borne of some great moral struggle, though I’ve always had a deep, abiding love for animals. I eat cheese and eggs. I never saw vegetarianism as a movement or something to broadcast, much less proselytize about.

Now I do.

Now I know far too much to hope only my husband (a vegetarian since we got together a decade ago) and my seven-year-old daughter will follow my lead. Now I hope to convince as many humans as I can to think about the connection between what they eat and how it was raised. I want to do whatever I’m able to connect the dots between E-coli and factory farming. I’m urging everyone I come in contact with to watch the documentary “Food Inc,” even though I spent a good portion of it crouching behind the seat, cupping my ears.

Food Inc. showed me I had work to do. I hadn’t made the connection that cheese I’d been buying at stores like Whole Foods might be made with milk from factory-farm cows. That next Thursday, I found a local cheese artisan, Shepherd Valley of New Jersey, at my town’s farm market. During the weekend, my family visited this amazing sheep farm that is responsible for the most delicious, grass-fed cheese. The butter I bought at their farm store showed me I had no idea what real butter tastes like.

I read egg cartons as carefully as I read bank statements. I know free-range and cage-free and all that marketing hullabaloo does not insure laying hens are living a humane existence. I try my best. Sometimes the twee farmy name on the cartoon makes me reach for a particular brand. Until I stop procrastinating and raise chickens (which I’ve been swearing to do since I moved to a big piece of land in suburbia) I will not be satisfied that I’m eating ethically-grown eggs.

We live with so many disconnects. So much about how we live and what we’re exposed to makes us feel powerless. Eating is an exception. Eating is the great equalizer. I can be conscious about every food I choose or reject. With every trip to the health food store or farm market or the farm out yonder I can teach my daughter she never ever has to set foot in an A&P. Or more importantly, what she eats has a story. And every story has something to do with dirt or a tree or an animal. And she has a place in this cycle of life.

I’m already anticipating a few wise cracks over the dinner table on Thanksgiving. Just for sport, you know. I could launch into a lecture on how turkeys have been so genetically modified that they are incapable of natural reproduction. Or I can cook up a harvest feast of my husband’s home-made breads, creamy potato leek soup, sweet potato fries, fresh salads and other vegetables dishes that will leave everyone just as stuffed and overfed as they would otherwise be.

If I’m really lucky, right before we gather around the table before dusk, someone will notice the sound of crunching leaves outside the window. The kids will run over first and squeal with delight at the brood of wild turkeys pecking at the lawn. The rest of us will not be able to resist watching these iridescent feathery creatures pursuing subsistence.

I love these birds. They are always a great source of pleasure and humor. But on Thanksgiving, I will raise my glass to them and whisper “lucky you.”

Nicolette Hahn Niman has been thinking about livestock for nearly a decade. Before she married (and began ranching with) Bill Niman, founder of Niman Ranch*, Nicolette worked as a senior attorney for Waterkeeper Alliance where she was in charge of the organization’s campaign to reform the concentrated livestock and poultry industry. Nicolette spoke with CUESA recently about greenhouse gas emissions, the sustainable livestock tipping point, and her book Righteous Porkchop: Finding a Life and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms (HarperCollins, 2009). She also authored a New York Times op-ed on Saturday called The Carnivore’s Dilemma.

What made you want to write Righteous Porkchop?

Many of the books on this topic have been written by people who are totally opposed to raising animals for food — they think it’s ravaging the environment and that it’s inherently inhumane. Then there are people who think we can all eat as much meat as we want, and they believe the criticism of over-consumption is hype, that it’s coming from a bunch of “wackos.” I think that if done in the right location and at the right scale, livestock farming is a very valuable part of food production. I heard Fred Kirschenmann say recently that he knows of no healthful ecosystem that doesn’t involve animals; I agree with that. I believe sustainable farming really should mimic nature and nature involves plants and animals and they work together. On the other hand, I believe that meat should be consumed in moderation — like dark chocolate and red wine.

If you ask people if they eat meat in moderation, it’s likely that the vast majority would say yes. What’s your definition of “moderation”?

I’d say no more than once a day. My husband is an interesting case study; he transitioned from being someone who often ate meat two times a day to being married to me for the last 6 yrs — I’m a vegetarian and do all the cooking in the house — so he now eats meat less than once a day and smaller portion sized than he used to. I’d say he’s reduced his consumption more than 50%.

He’s really aware of all the concerns surrounding livestock production, and he and I are both aware that meat is resource intensive. I believe each person has a responsibility to not take more than their share of the world’s resources.

Is there enough land to produce all the meat we currently consume in this country on pasture?

Well, we would have to reduce the total number of animals produced — at least somewhat. But I like to point out that when you’re raising animals in confinement, you end up using a lot of land — the animals just aren’t on it. You still have to raise the crops to feed those animals and then you have to re-apply the waste to land.

When it comes to non-grazing omnivores like pigs and chickens, a rotation system that has them pastured on land between using it to grow crops — in my view that’s actually a more efficient use of land than raising them in confinement.

It would certainly require more land when you’re talking about cattle, and I’ve never seen a good calculation, but I don’t think it’s an amount of land that couldn’t be found. There is data [pointing to the fact that] pasture is an incredibly good use of land, compared to crop land.

Earlier this year, there was a lot of discussion of a study that said that grass-finished beef accounted for more greenhouse gas emissions than corn-finished beef. What’s your take on data like that?

I have heard evidence that when you have range-fed animals, especially if they’re on poor quality range, that they produce more methane than feedlot animals. But, because the overall GHG emissions are so much less when you’re talking about traditional meat production versus factory style or feedlot production, it’s not a compelling argument just to isolate that one issue.

I looked at a paper out of Scotland that linked emissions to grass fed animals that were raised on land with a lot of agricultural chemicals applied to it — herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers. The majority of cattle in the US are living on land that has not been chemically treated and certainly has not been fertilized. It’s also possible to provide fairly simple supplements in the form of a mineral lick, etc. that will actually reduce enteric emissions from cattle grazing on poor quality pasture. There are a number of different ways that it can be addressed and I honestly think it’s kind of a red herring.

Do you see signs that big agribusiness is taking notice and feeling threatened by the movement to produce and eat meat in a new way?

I think that we’re getting close to a tipping point. There are enough people who have enough information and agribusiness has had to face the fact that none of this is going away. When I started working on these issues eight years ago, the mainstream food industry still thought that if they just kept ignoring the opposition, it would go away. Now, they recognize there’s writing on the wall — people are more interested in knowing where their food is coming from, they’re more concerned about food safety. They care about quality, seasonality, food miles, etc. — all these concepts are coming into mainstream parlance that were French a decade ago.

Is there anything else you want to add?

When they hear about industrial livestock production, a lot of people say I’m just going to stop eating pork – and I’d say please don’t, because then the farmers who are doing it right aren’t getting your support. I also think it can be fun to explore new foods and new places, and to get a better taste experience. I want to get people thinking about [eating a variety of pasture-raised meats] as an adventure — because once you embark on it, that’s what it becomes.

*No longer affiliated with Niman Ranch, the couple now maintains their own BN Ranch in Bolinas, CA.

Nora Ephron’s effervescent Julie & Julia has evidently sparked a mad dash to snap up Child’s epic Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Butter’s back, and margarine’s been marginalized. Three cheers for real food! After all, as Joan Gussow says, “I trust cows more than chemists.”