As the daughter of a cattle rancher and a person of omnivorous tendencies, I found the article “Vegetarianism humane choice” first unreadable, then annoying and finally, irritating for reasons beyond my initial disgust. After the first few paragraphs, I simply wanted to refute all the arguments made, many of which were based on unfounded evidence.
Indeed, to reinforce my sneaking suspicions about bias and invalid sources, I Google searched “how much water does it take to produce one pound of beef” and voila. Clabaugh’s claims about water consumption and livestock were touted by a number of pro-vegetarianism blogs and websites; that, my friends, is what we call bias.
In order to truly determine the water consumption of, shall we say, beef cattle in direct correlation to their weight gain, one would have to take into account an absurd number of variables, including rainfall for the particular animal’s region, rainfall in the region where the crop is produced, whether or not the crops were produced with irrigation circles, the temperature of the area and so on. However, to deliberate long over the water consumption of cattle and other livestock is trivial, at best; the fact of the matter is Clabaugh’s article mistakenly attributes the water consumption of livestock to the starvation of children.
My beef with Clabaugh is not that he’s a vegetarian and that I think this specific lifestyle choice is absurd; my source of contention is that “Vegetarianism humane choice” is inappropriately aimed at an ill-informed audience while exploiting starving children as the result of livestock consumption. There’s not even a significant foundation for a correlation between the two concepts.
Children in America and Haiti and Kenya and India and other corners of the world are not starving because an inhumane, godless tribe of infidels is bludgeoning cattle to death with baseball bats in a dark cave off the coast of Hell. No, these poor, starving children – for whom I truly do feel pity and anger – are a product of many other factors, including corrupt government systems, familial abuse, war, market prices, etc.
World Food Programme is an organization dedicated to saving lives all over the globe, with a special focus on hunger and malnutrition. At the organization’s website, wfp.org, one of the leading causes of hunger is – no, not livestock – nature. The site indicates that “drought is now the single most common cause of food shortages in the world” and includes poverty, war, agricultural infrastructure and environmental overuse as the other main causes of starvation and hunger.
Those who do not live in farming or ranching households often do not understand the expense associated with farming: equipment, seed, fertilizer, help, etc. A significantly greater amount of effort and money goes into farming crops today than just grabbing a hoe from the shed, tossing some cow manure in for fertilization and praying for rain.
If you’re still feeling uncertain about the source of global hunger, check out the World Hunger Education Service’s website, worldhunger.org. Not only is the website a valid source, but it is also updated frequently to accommodate our changing world.
“World agriculture produces 17 percent more calories per person today than it did 30 years ago, despite a 70 percent population increase,” the site informs readers. “The principal problem is that many people in the world do not have sufficient land to grow, or income to purchase, enough food.” Again, a list of reasons for world hunger is posted, comparable to those listed by the World Food Programme.
I am and always will be a supporter of the livestock industry – especially the beef industry – because many, many lives depend on the income farming and ranching provides. My goal is not to convert anyone, or hurt any feelings; rather, the point of this article is to educate and inform, rather than haphazardly thrust ill-informed opinions into the hands of readers.
Curious, too, that the point about the humaneness was never mentioned in Ms. Simon’s response. Doesn’t the fact that animal agriculture involves inflicting harm–needless harm, since vegetarianism is a possible diet for us– on sentient creatures matter? If not, why not?
Since I discovered I was not permitted to respond to this article via print, I will summarize my response here.
First, this article never addressed the principal argument of my original article. Simon claimed to find my arguments: unreadable, annoying, and irritating, even saying “I simply wanted to refute all the arguments made, many of which were based on unfounded evidence.” This article did nothing of the sort.
At the beginning of the article, it claims that the source of my water consumption statistic is from a pro-vegetarian website, and is thus discredited. First, it is fallacious to discredit a source based solely on its positions. It is simply refusing to examine any possible reasoning by way of attacking the source. Having particular views does not necessarily mean that the source is wrong. For all Simon knows, the pro-vegetarianism blogs and websites could be citing an objective source for their statistics.
Second, Simon never provides any reasons to suggest I am wrong that water consumption isn’t significantly higher for animal products than plant based ones. Plants and animals require water to live. However, most animals raised for food also require plant products. So to raise most animal products, an example being cattle, the animal must drink water of its own, and must eat plant products that in turn consumed their own given quantity of water. If this is not clear, there are objective sources to reference. Waterfootprint.org is one such source. The website contains a collection of various statistics on water used to produce a variety of products, not just meat. The same Google search that leads to vegetarian websites can lead to non-vegetarian sources as well.
The main focus of the article was a refutation of a claim that I never even made; water consumption, more broadly meat production on the whole, causes world hunger. What I actually claimed was that the food used in meat production is food that could be used to feed starving children, or reduce world hunger. I never said that meat consumption is the cause of world hunger. I only made the observation that most of the food used to feed animals raised for food could feed humans. Vegetarianism would free up that food, and could thus reduce the suffering caused by world hunger.
While mentioning valid points that are relevant to the problem of world hunger, like drought, this article fails to say why there wouldn’t be a connection between eating meat and human hunger. Simon goes so far as to say “there’s not even a significant foundation for a correlation between the two concepts.” This is erroneous. As addressed in my original article, this connection is in the food and resources that must be put into raising animals for food.
This article failed to address any of the points from my original article. Using sensational language like “godless tribe of infidels is bludgeoning cattle to death with baseball bats,” to misrepresent an argument you disagree with, and referring to the supporting reasons for said argument as “ill-informed opinions,” while never actually addressing them, is simply intellectually dishonest.
I would recommend checking out this rebuttal article.
http://ilriclippings.wordpress.com/2011/04/17/livestocks-long-shadow-rebutted-on-the-dangers-of-comparing-apples-and-oranges-and-lumping-production-practices-of-rich-and-poor/
Note that the last paragraph:
‘In their estimates of transportation emissions, however, the authors used the simplest form of LCA, looking only at tailpipe emissions. Contributors such as auto manufacturing, oil drilling and fuel transport were conveniently disregarded. This apples-to-oranges comparison resulted in the distorted conclusion that livestock produces more GHG than transportation. The authors of “Livestock’s Long Shadow” have since admitted the error. . . .’
I was going to write a long and detailed reply, but the Food & Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’ has already produced a detailed report of the effects of the livestock industry on people and the environment. The report is entitled Livestock’s Long Shadow – here’s an excerpt:
“A new report from FAO says livestock production is one of the major causes of the world’s most pressing environmental problems, including global warming, land degradation, air and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity. Using a methodology that considers the entire commodity chain, it estimates that livestock are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, a bigger share than that of transport. However, the report says, the livestock sector’s potential contribution to solving environmental problems is equally large, and major improvements could be achieved at reasonable cost.
Based on the most recent data available, Livestock’s Long Shadow takes into account the livestock sector’s direct impacts, plus the environmental effects of related land use changes and production of the feed crops animals consume. It finds that expanding population and incomes worldwide, along with changing food preferences, are stimulating a rapid increase in demand for meat, milk and eggs, while globalization is boosting trade in both inputs and outputs. ”
http://www.fao.org/ag/magazine/0612sp1.htm
The report from the FAO to which you have referred was based on incomplete data and has already been exposed as inaccurate by several scientific and and economic unbiased, sanctioned studies. One example inaccuracy is the fact that their data failed to credit the use of carbon from gases expelled from livestock production for plant production, both crops and flora, both of which has a positive influence on the health of our atmosphere. There were numerous mistakes in their study which frequently occurs from emotionally based politicly driven government based reports hastily done. Furthermore, the use of food(corn) for fuel (ethanol) has a more significant, and direct, impact on net available food for world human use than does livestock use of grains for feedstuffs.