Meatless Monday - Still A Good Idea?

Mom was reading me an article on The Huffington Post Green this morning and it really got me thinking. Good thoughts of course. But it also made me mad because some people just don't get it.

Dad started doing Meatless Mondays last year and then stopped when he got sick in October. Since then he has gone back to eating meat on Mondays, much to Mom's dismay. Mom and others are convinced that eliminating meat from your diet just once a week is a great way to help address the global climate crisis because cows are a huge source of methane, a greenhouse gas. If everyone took small steps to change their actions we could change the course we're on, right? I mean everyone knows there are things we can do each and every day, from turning off the lights when you leave a room to carpooling but changing your food habits seems way too hard for some people. Why is that?

The thought of not eating meat for 24 hours is akin to cutting off a finger - just plain wrong. Painful as it may seem to some, not eating meat not only feels good because it gives the body a break from the heavy job of digesting animals, but it also provides the soul with a breather from eating those we hold close to our hearts - our animal friends. I was going to do a post on the book "Eating Animals" a couple of months ago but I thought the subject was a little too risque. The author of the book starts out by asking what the difference is between eating meat and eating dogs. Yikes! When Mom read this to me I put my paws over my ears and begged her to stop. Eat dogs? Who would do such a thing? It turns out that many people in certain parts of the world do in fact in dogs. But we eat cows, pigs, lamb, etc. so what's the difference?

Back to the article from today. Written by Ellen Kanner, the article is about an article written for Cattlenetwork, the online source for cattle news, decrying Meatless Monday. Cattlenetwork? Yes it seems there is such a website, just when we all thought the written word was dead. Hail to cattle!

Here's the article in its entirety. Please leave me your comments because I'm curious what you have to say on the subject. Do you believe that eating less meat is a good way to help the planet? Do you believe that eating meat is not really a problem in terms of the global climate crisis? Are factory farms to blame? Should we just leave the corporate powers that be so they can continue to ruin our soil, water supply, and air with their CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations)? What's the solution? And is there a viable solution for all people, not just yourself?

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Meatless Monday: The Meat People Hit Back

by Ellen Kanner

You know you're doing something right when you piss off the beef and pork people. The editor of Pork magazine recently decried the Meatless Monday effort on (wait for it) Cattlenetwork.

The pork and beef lobbies have a lot more power and money behind them than environmental organizations and health nonprofits like Meatless Monday, and the fact the editor saw fit to comment shows the plant-based effort has some punch. She's worried we're ganging up on her.

Her beef? She claims a Meatless Monday video likens working together to go meatless to supporting the war effort in World War II thus equating patriotism with being plant-based. What the video really says is what plant-based proponents of all stripes and flavors have been saying all along -- cutting back, cutting out meat once a week can only help the environment by conserving the natural resources used in animal farming. It can only improve our health by reducing our risk of cancer, heart disease and diabetes,three major health threats linked to meat consumption. Most Americans eat 45% more meat than the USDA recommends. Hey, it's only the truth.

The truth, though, can be dangerous turf. A decade ago, the Cattlemen's Association tried to bring Oprah -- Oprah -- to her knees. They sued her for defamation for a show in which she made claims linking mad cow disease to beef. The only reason the suit didn't stick is, she was right. She explained 10 people had died eating tainted beef. It isn't libel if it's true.

The animal industry is looking for meatless pushback and they have found Paul McCartney and the UN International Panel on Climate Change. In his paper "Clearing the Air," presented to the American Chemical Society, UC Davis air quality professor Frank Mitloehner says Sir Paul can't go selling meatlessness as a solution to global warming. No one can.

The heart of his argument is the way greenhouse gas emissions were calculated "Livestock's Long Shadow," the seminal 2006 UN report which links animal production to global warming. Co-author Gidon Eshel, a Bard applied mathematician, stands by his findings. "The basic analysis we did is so simple and relies purely and completely on uncontested information."

The problem is what some, in their zeal, have done with that information. "PETA did some kind of in-house analysis and reached high numbers of emissions that I thought were inflated."

The data went viral and the meat folks of the world seized on it as ammunition to dismiss our role in climate change. Mitloehner says the answer to global warming isn't less meat and milk, it's more. By way of factory farming. "The developed world should focus on increasing efficient meat production in developing countries, we should adopt more efficient Western-styled farming practices to make more food with less greenhouse gas production."

Eshel feels Mitloehner presenting his paper before the American Chemical Society is a little like the Pork editor ranting about the meatless movement to the beef folks. "It's more than enough to disqualify a person from engaging in an honest discussion about this, The pharmaceutical companies are the ones making a lot of money from supplying 65% of all antibiotics to healthy animals for weight gain and milk production."

Mitloehner's study also had $5 million in underwriting, five percent of which came from the beef industry. "Livestock's Long Shadow" was underwritten by "nobody whatsoever," says Eshel. "I am not beholden to anybody, financially, morally or otherwise."

He pulls out studies, graphs and charts which all add up to one thing -- "When you eat meat, you exert three times as much pressure on land demand and reactive nitrogen as you do with a plant-based diet."

Although plant-based himself, "I'm not an advocate of veganism or a plant-based diet," says Eshel "I'm a researcher whose findings always lead away from animal-based foods, environmentally speaking."

Mitloehner did not respond to requests for an interview.

The meat folks can take on Oprah, they can take on Paul McCartney, they can take on an applied mathematician or even a 97-pound vegan like me. But the meatless movement is gaining traction because the truth is still the truth.