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.

The title of Nicolette Hahn Niman’s compelling new book, Righteous Porkchop, is honest, and indicates one of the book’s strengths—its exploration of the moral issues behind our broken food system. As a vegetarian rancher she is uniquely poised to be even more righteous than most. Not only has she abstained from eating meat herself since young adulthood, she spends her days sustainably raising cattle for others to eat. Who can top that?

Of course, this wasn’t always the case. Not even 10 years ago she was a young single gal in the city, recruited by Bobby Kennedy, Jr. to head up the Waterkeeper Alliance’s new industrial hog campaign. With a background as a lawyer, she set out to take industrial hog farms (primarily in North Carolina) to task via the legal system for their gross environmental transgressions. She worked crushing hours, giving up her healthy lifestyle and her social life. But along the way, she won several important legal battles and put the issue of industrial hog farming on the map. In addition, in a story line you just can’t make up, she met and fell in love with Bill Niman, an older-than-her sustainable cattle rancher and entrepreneur, and her life was changed forever. P.S. he calls her “porkchop.”

In addition, her work with Waterkeeper led her inside the belly of the beast—or inside the poop lagoons of the beasts, anyway, and the book follows her journey. The reader makes discoveries alongside her, experiencing her righteous indignation and disbelief upon seeing those farms, as well as her heartbreak over the treatment of the animals she meets. As she explains, “the assembly lines of industrial systems function well for the mass production of inanimate objects. But they are complete failures at respecting the individuality, instincts, and needs of living creatures.”

Niman takes the reader sharply and clearly through the evolution of industrial farming in this country, from its origins in poultry, up through hogs, then cows, and then fish. She expertly explains shows the connections between these various industries; and how this country’s industrialist mindset, and its desire for more efficiency and lower cost has brought us a livestock system that externalizes all costs and all inefficiencies. With her as a guide, you can’t help but see the ludicrousness of a system that produces so much poop, in such a fashion that there is absolutely nowhere to put it. Or produces food that is cheap for the consumer but leaves the farmer in a lifetime of inescapable debt.

And no one, by the way, is off the hook. For those vegetarians in the mix (although I wonder how many vegetarians besides Niman herself will read a book with the word “porkchop” in the title), you find out that industrial dairy farming of milk and eggs is just as bad, especially in the realm of animal cruelty. All of which could leave an eater feeling very despondent and out of options—hence one of the final chapters called “Finding the Right Foods.” This is one of the weaker parts of the book, I think, in which Niman describes a kind of motivated foraging that I, and likely most of you, attempt each day, one that is really helped by living in the fertile areas of this country’s west coast (Bolinas, CA). For the average reader, this kind of scavenger hunt might be less feasible; but until we have an overhaul of the food system, I suppose it’ll have to do. This chapter is evidence of where the book tries to be all things to all people, and where it falters, if only slightly. It’s memoir meets muckraking; shopping manual meets farming history.

The book stirred up a lot for me, and really got me thinking about our task at hand. At the heart of the sustainable food movement are many issues—ecology, animal welfare, community, sustainability, and, yes, morality. And this is where we sometimes hit roadblocks. I know that on a personal level I struggle to communicate the work I do at my job or the way I shop for food without an implicit value system looming over the conversation. Nobody likes to feel judged, and sometimes people stop listening when they do. With Niman’s book in my back pocket, I’ve got one more tool in my box. But the question that lingers for me at the end of this righteous book is: how do we tell this story of what’s wrong with our food system, and how do we suggest an alternate way without sounding self-righteous? Without pushing away the people we need to listen?