Climate change is one of the biggest issues on the political agenda today. With constant reminders that we only have 60 grow seasons left due to our top soil erosion, the amazon rainforest is dying, and the animal cruelty that results from massive factory farming.
One of the biggest “solutions” touted for climate change is to reduce or eliminate meat from your diet. People will make the argument that eating meat is one of the biggest contributors to global warming, not to mention, meat isn’t even good for you so we just should just eliminate it from our diets.
The alternative you may ask? Fake meat and dairy made in lab with a rapt sheet of ingredients, fad plant milks like oat milk and almond milk (also often filled with unnecessary fillers and emulsifiers like sunflower oil), and vegan swaps made from cashews or other monoculture crops that manage to single handedly wipeout entire ecosystems in the process of being grown before being shipped around the world to be sold at an exorbitant price.
All the while, human beings (and all creatures for that matter) have been eating meating for as long as we’ve walked the planet. Meat is filled with highly valuable vitamins and minerals that can be hard to get from other sources, especially at a 1:1 ratio.
Somewhere along the line we’ve lost our connection to the animals. We’ve forgotten that eating meat doesn’t mean going to the grocery store to buy 8 chicken breasts. Eating meat used to mean honoring the animal and using every part of it. Skin and fur was turned into clothing, fat was used to cook with. Undesirable parts may be used to make pet food, or a delicious stock. Bones were turned into bone broth, organ meat like brain, liver and heart was eaten for its amazing nutrients, “natures’ multivitamin”, and slowly but surely every part of that animal was used before another was killed.
Today factory farming produces so much chicken byproduct that after it’s ground into a paste to make Mcnuggets, the rest of the byproduct is being fed to fish on fish farms. Using undesirable parts of one animal to fatten another in a system that is completely unnatural.
Meat consumption has skyrocketed over the past several decades but more importantly, the waste from these animals has skyrocketed as consumers have decided that they no longer want to deal with the inconvenience of a whole chicken, or the head of a fish. What does one do with those things? If you buy them they just end up in the trash, so better to let someone else throw it in the trash before you even set eyes on it.
It’s almost as if humans have forgotten that they are part of, and contributing to larger ecosystems beyond themselves. There’s no balance anymore.
Studies over the years have linked meat to all sorts of increased risk in certain diseases. Heart disease, cancer, diabetes, etc.
This is simply inaccurate. Studies are highly flawed. There was once a time when smoking was thought to be healthy. Remember when they said that a glass of red wine could have benefits for the heart?
These studies of the negative effects of red meat don’t take into consideration the rest of the subjects diet. Does your red meat come from an elk steak that you caught yourself and grilled with a side of vegetables? Or does your red meat come from a Mcdonald’s quarter pounder with cheese, a soda, and a large fry. This is what the majority of red meat diets look like in these studies. Obviously eating processed foods from Mcdonald’s is going to lead to an increased risk in all the aforementioned diseases.
A grass fed regenerative steak, or organ meat, butter, eggs, raw milk, all of these foods are REAL foods. They’re whole foods. They don’t have unnecessary chemicals or additives in them and they absolutely have a place in a healthy, sustainable, balanced diet.
Consumers have also become largely disconnected with the cost of real food. I don’t mean how much money these foods cost, but the whole cost, from the moment the animal is born, (and before) to the moment it ends up on our plates, there is a cost for that food.
Cows are meant to graze on grasses. Cows are not meant to eat corn in feedlots while they’re being pumped full of antibiotics and artificial growth hormones so they can get unnaturally large all while not getting sick. This creates a vicious never ending cycle of breeding antibiotics resistant pathogens that create sicker cows that then need more antibiotics. This is not sustainable, in the simplest of terms, we cannot do this forever. People are now aware of that, however the solution that is being force fed to us (quite literally) is doing the same thing to the human race that we are doing to those cows. Force feeding us glyphosate filled corn and soy, canola oil and red dye 50 packaged into the shape of a beef patty with a greenwashed label making us feel like we’re making a difference. Meanwhile we too are being pumped full of fake food that makes us sicker and sicker, resulting in more and more medical intervention, more prescriptions, more antibiotics until the pathogens we’re faced with resistant to antibiotics (this is already happening)
So what’s the solution? The real solution is real food, balance, smaller scale farming, and increased self sufficiency and accountability.
I recently read The Third Plate, one of my inspirations for this article. The Third Plate talks about the future of food in a different light. Not the elimination of meat, nor the replacement of real meat with fake meat, but rather “a different kind of plate”. A plate where the vegetables take center stage and are accented with less commonly utilized parts of the cow, perhaps in a sauce or glaze. Of course this means we still get steaks, or ground beef, but we also have to utilize every part of the animal to minimize the waste.
Another model of this takes us to White Oak Pastures. Will Harris is a sixth generation cattle rancher in Bluffton georgia. Thirty years ago he made the switch from grain fed feedlot cattle, like his dad taught him, to a more sustainable, grass fed cow like his grandad before him had.
Today he owns one of the largest regenerative farms in the country. It is also virtually zero waste. Almost every part of the cow (chicken, goat, or guinea) is turned into products that they can sell, or if not, it’s given back to the compost pile to be fed to the soil, which then feeds another generation of cattle.
Rendered beef fat is sold as tallow for cooking, turned into tallow salves, balms, and candles. They sell cowhide rugs, leather is turned into wallets, belts, earrings, dog collars. Chicken heads, feet, and necks are dehydrated and turned into dog treats, bones and organ meat are all sold to consumers as people begin to wake up to the benefits of these products.
It wasn’t always like this, and it wasn’t easy getting there. In Will Harris’s book “A bold return to giving a damn” Will talks about the painstaking process that brought him from a grain fed cattle rancher to a sustainable alternative- one that provides a model for what farms around america should be.
But even Will knows that changes have to be made. He doesn’t propose turning the biggest cattle feedlot in America into a regenerative farm, that just doesn’t scale. Instead, he encourages more small cattle ranches to adopt a more sustainable model. Ideally there wouldn’t be one or two prominent cattle ranches in America where everyone got their meat from. Rather, every consumer would be able to find their own local farm where they can get eggs, beef, milk, direct from farmer to consumer. This promotes several things. One: smaller scale operations are just more sustainable. It is easier to be regenerative when your demand allows you to slow down and really focus on the systems. Two: It brings the dollar back into the farmer’s hand directly and cuts out the middleman Three: It brings the consumer back in touch with the processes of how their food is made.
Imagine what a difference it would make in the American consumer if they were able to see first hand how the animals they were eating lived. Take the average American to the average chicken feedlot or cattle feedlot. There’s a good chance they’re not going to eat meat for a long time. Then take them to a small regenerative farm. The difference in the meat is night and day. Meat that is less stressed tastes better. That animal has value.
People make the argument that the amount of water and grain it takes to feed a cow is not sustainable, and the amount of carbon they emit is making carbon sequestration worse. When this argument is made people are only looking at the most unsustainable model of animal agriculture.
A cow on a regenerative farm actually sequesters carbon. One cow has the ability to sequester 5 gallons of carbon emissions on Will Harris’ farm. The cow eats grass that is growing in the pastures naturally, and the cattle are moved daily to prevent overgrazing. This promotes healthy, lush, beautiful grass, and rich soil.
Healthy cattle, healthy animals for that matter, play a very valuable role in a very delicate ecosystem. The argument that cows are bad from the environment stems, not from the cow itself, but rather the damage done by a disruption in the ecosystem. Cows have been around for a very long time. To make the argument that they are the problem when they were on the horizon long before the climate crisis, ignores the impact that society has had on the lifestyle of the cow.
The anti-cow argument also ignores the massive environmental strain that occurs on monoculture farms, like an avocado farm, or cashew farm. This land is first clear cut, wiping out every home for the existing animals that live there. Then as the crops are sewed, a conventional farm is going to spray everything with chemical pesticides and fertilizers.
At the end of the day I think there is balance to be struck, and an emphasis on diversity will benefit both your health and the ecosystem around you. Diversity is the best thing for our health, for cultivating a thriving gut microbiome. Wouldn’t it then make sense that the best thing for our microbiome would also benefit the soil’s microbiome?
The point of this article is not fear mongering. I’m not saying to never eat an avocado again, or that from here on out all your meat has to come from a local regenerative farm. Change happens slowly. I merely hope that when you read this you begin to examine your role in a larger system.
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