When I first read Ingrid Newkirk’s article “You can’t be a meat-eating environmentalist” (CT, April 20), I naturally assumed that, being Earth Week, surely someone would call her out on her polarized “meat-eating or environmentally-conscious” position.
The next day, I read such a response from Erin Rockwell in “Anti-agriculture claims need further examination” (CT, April 21), but I found myself sinking into disappointment the further I got in her column. It seems to me that both sides currently highlighted in the debate about livestock production are missing the point.
The fact is that raising livestock under the industrial model, whether with the abuses vilified by Newkirk or just “business as usual” as Rockwell described, is both unhealthy and unsustainable, not just for us but for the animals and the environment.
Let’s start with the animals themselves. In her column, Rockwell argues that the waste of resources argument made by Newkirk is false because livestock feed is of a quality too low for human consumption, not just feed corn but also cottonseed hulls, distiller’s and brewer’s grains, and soybean meal.
What’s not being addressed, however, is the fact that ruminants like cattle are designed to eat grass, and feeding them grain instead of grass destroys the microbial population in their gut and can lead to serious health problems.
In addition, housing them in feedlots creates conditions in which diseases can develop and spread rapidly, necessitating regular use of antibiotics that the scientific community has not thoroughly tested for effects on human health.
In contrast, raising livestock on pasture and allowing them to pursue natural diets allows the animals to maintain healthy biological functions. The question we should be asking is not under what conditions can we mass produce livestock for consumption, but should we be mass-producing in any way that so radically alters their natural states?
Tied directly to this are concerns of environmental health, the most important of which are water quality and soil fertility (There are admittedly many other concerns, but for the sake of brevity I’ll focus on these two.).
Water is, after all, an increasingly scarce resource, and soil is the foundation for all our food, whether we eat crops directly or feed them to the animals we eat.
A version of this article appeared in the Apr 28 issue of the Collegiate Times.
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http://www.greatgrassbeef.com/CGRWhyGRFin.htm
If this is the website that you used to write your column, I want you to see how biased the article can be before you actually write and blame on different things. This is a biased source for you to write an article. I'm sorry but as a philosophy major, you should know better.
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As a writer for the CT I am prevented from engaging in discussion so that is not my aim here, but I'd like to clarify my credentials.
First of all, my primary major is Crop & Soil Environmental Sciences, agroecology option. Philosophy is my second major, and this is the first piece I've written for the CT where the CSES major wasn't listed under my name. I've spent the past several years learning about both the industrial model of agriculture and the many alternatives to it (diversified cropping systems, agroforestry, permaculture, etc.) and the evidence is overwhelming in support of the benefits of these alternative systems.
Second, I did not use that particular website for information. I took the majority of my information from readings I've done in previous agriculture classes, including writers such as Wendell Berry, Wes Jackson, and Fred Kirschenmann. I believe if you look them up you'll find they are well respected and long-time advocates of agrarian reform with enough experience under their collective belts (both firsthand and through their ties to the scientific community) to know what they're talking about. Biased does not automatically mean incorrect.
And third, you're right...as a philosophy major, I DO know better. :)
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I feel like the major point these articles have missed was the awesomeness of bacon. Something taste bad? Cover it with bacon and it becomes great.
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